Introduction
Open source prototypes
is a project conceived by Oriol Fontdevila and the team of
Arts combinatòries
, formed by Rosa Eva Campo, Maria Sellarès, Núria Solé Bardalet and Linda Valdés. Arts combinatòries is a project of the
Fundació Antoni Tàpies
that has the purpose of “making the institution’s documentary collection available to visitors through a space at the foundation’s headquarters and a web platform, along with a collective work and relationship platform with the foundation’s visitors, researchers and collaborators that would allow sharing, disseminating and updating the contents that the museum has generated in the exercise of its functions and activities since its foundation.” In the words of its organizers, Open source prototypes is proposed as «a work network that is developed within the framework of the Arts combinatòries platform of the Fundació Antoni Tàpies, and with which different groups, organizations and education centers are involved in carrying out research and intervention projects around contemporary cultural and artistic practices. For this purpose, the historical archive of the institution itself is proposed as a tool to facilitate collaborative work processes and the development of autonomous projects, while at the same time the Fundació Tàpies is proposed as a framework for work, an object of research and as a possible area for intervention».
In this context, the association
CandeL’Hart
is invited to participate (along with other groups such as the
Escola d’Art i Disseny Deià
, the Facultat de Belles Arts of the UB – a group of
Critique of representation
tutored by Aída Sánchez de Serdio and another group of
Contemporary visualities
tutored by
Martí Peran
– and, finally, the group of the
Xarxa d’Arts Combinatòries
).
The CandeL’Hart association is currently formed by a group of women from the neighborhood of Bellvitge in L’Hospitalet who share their passion for painting. The group was formed as a result of the painting classes taught by our colleague Mariló in the old Aula de Cultura de Bellvitge from 1998 to 2007, the year in which the new Centre Cultural Bellvitge-el Gornal is built. The cultural policies in charge of the district councilor do not contemplate that painting or ceramics have a place in the new equipment, which will only program temporary activities, with a limited duration and that do not leave a trace in the spaces conceived as classrooms.
From that moment on, the group looks for a place in the Bellvitge neighborhood to continue with its activity. Finally, the
Centre d’Estudis Jaume Balmes
gives them a small space in one of the school’s warehouses. In these circumstances, the group, which until then had been informal and variable, is pressured by the school to constitute itself as an association, in order to assume legal responsibilities in case of accident, etc. The new legal identity of the collective provokes a reflection on the activity it develops and its impact on the social and cultural context of Bellvitge.
The participation of CandeL’Hart in Open source prototypes responds to the group’s need to rehearse processes and experiences different from learning and practicing painting.
Visits to the archive
The collaboration between CandeL’Hart, LaFundició and the Fundació Antoni Tàpies was initially specified in a series of visits to the foundation’s archive. This archive is made up of a series of boxes that contain all the documentation referring to the production of the foundation’s exhibitions and activities: invoices, letters, assembly plans, emails, work calendars, etc.
The first visits to the archive were mediated by the team of the Fundació Antoni Tàpies, who selected and showed the CandeL’Hart group those documents that they considered could be of interest to them in relation to specific exhibitions that they understood could arouse the group’s interest. It became evident during these sessions that there was too great a distance between the codes by which artistic practices are legitimized in “the field of art”, and the codes that the women of CandeL’Hart handle when thinking about their own artistic practice. For this reason, the group requested to be able to consult the documents freely without any mediation, paying more attention to the structure of the archive than to the contents.
The conversations during these sessions revolved largely around the historical value of the archived documents, as well as the methods used to classify and archive said documents.
Summits
Oriol Fontdevila intervenes in the first summit of ‘Open source prototypes’ held at the Faculty of Geography and History of the UB
Within the work scheme of the project, a series of “summits” or meetings were proposed between the different participating groups and the driving team of Open source prototypes, which aimed to generate spaces for learning and exchange between the different groups. The format of these meetings turned out to be too rigid to promote said exchange, which is why this tool is being rethought for a second edition of the project.
CandeL’Hart proposal
In view of the group’s difficulties in finding a meaning to their participation in the project, from LaFundició we proposed redirecting the focus of attention from the archive of the Fundació Antoni Tàpies towards the context and practice of the group itself, and examining what could be the means and purpose of an archive of the collective itself.
As a result of this rethinking, the possibility arose of producing an archive of images of the Bellvitge neighborhood. This initial idea was transformed into an exhibition that was produced in collaboration with
Jess Espinoza
. The exhibition We live in Bellvitge. Visit us took place at the Centre Cultural Bellvitge-el Gornal on February 10, 2012, and collected different screen prints created by the members of CandeL’Hart on the imaginary that they associated with the neighborhood. The exhibition also featured individual screen prints by
Efrén Álvarez
and
Marcos Prior
, and included a cycle of talks and meetings with various cultural agents among whom were Oriol Fontdevila (critic and curator), Laurence Rassel (curator and director of the Fundació Antoni Tàpies) and the team of the Fundació Antoni Tàpies responsible for the project Open source prototypes,
Javier Rodrigo
(researcher in art and education) and the artistic collective
Sitesize
formed by Elvira Pujol and Joan Vilapuig.
Exhibition ‘We live in Bellvitge. Visit us’ at the Centre Cultural Bellvitge-el Gornal
The exhibition and the cycle of talks were included in the activities related to the platform
Aula a la deriva 2011
in which we were working at that time and which provided the necessary resources to produce said activities.
This work process, in relation to the experience with the archive of the Fundació Antoni Tàpies, led us to propose and raise together with the CandeL’Hart group a new work process that, through the use of drawing and graphic humor, would analyze the functioning of the group itself, its dynamics, challenges, difficulties, conflicts, etc. We proposed to establish an analogy with the functioning of the archive of the Fundació Antoni Tàpies, whose opening responds to the institution’s interest in making public and accessible the mechanisms of production and evaluation of contemporary artistic practices. In the same way, the drawing work with the women of CandeL’Hart aimed to make them reflect on their work dynamics and on the role that their activity plays in the social context, beyond personal fulfillment.
Part of this work was collected in the publication Open source prototypes. First stage