2022
Emotional Atlas of Bidasoa
Atlas: A collection of maps, mainly geographical, presented in book or notebook form.
This project arises as a continuation of the research carried out thanks to the 2019 Ribera Grant awarded by Irun City Council, which was entitled "Emotional Cartography of Bidasoa".
The main idea revolves around the decision to carry out a practical mediation exercise on the contents researched. Not only to highlight different characters, events, hobbies, etc., but also to work on it in a transversal way with different artistic disciplines.
We are sure that research of these characteristics that deals with interculturality, in a border context at the moment we are living in, provides more plural results in the revision of many aspects of the historical memory of this territory. "In a time of globalisation, the most revealing object of study, the most questioning of ethnocentric or disciplinary pseudo-certainties is interculturality" (Canclini, 2006: 101). Interculturality is the tool with which we have to work for integration. Dialogue, in order to understand and accept our diversity as cultural richness and intangible world heritage, is the basis of our coexistence.
We have called it an atlas, because it presents a series of educational booklets combined with the work of the illustrator Elena Odriozola, highlighting relevant social aspects. Ten small notebooks that tell stories of a geographical space written in an elegant way by María José Noain Maura and with a language that is accessible to all kinds of audiences.
Texts: Maria José Noain Maura
Coordination and layout: Helga Massetani Piemonte
Ilustrations: Elena Odriozola
Traduction: Joxan Elosegi
LG D 00104-2022
2022
Web of Scientific Journal - Ausart 10
Massetani Piemonte, Helga. 2022. «Emotional Atlas of Bidasoa». AusArt 10 (2)
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Intx'Apain
Intx’Apain is an urban art festival that, over three days, transforms around ten walls across the neighbourhood into spaces for creation and connection, bringing together local and international artists and the neighbourhood community. The Basque language will be at the heart of the murals, guided by the central theme Zein da zure hitza? (“What’s your word?”), an invitation to artists and residents to take words as a starting point for creating, sharing and coming together.
Music, rap, bertsolaritza (Basque improvised sung poetry), breakdance, workshops and participatory activities developed in collaboration with ikastolas (Basque-language schools), local associations and community organisations will accompany the artistic interventions, turning the festival into a collective experience.
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Urumeako Atlas Emozionala - Erakusketa
Body, Memory and Riverbed
This Atlas does not follow a river: it immerses itself in it.
The exhibition invites us to read the Urumea through those who have inhabited it and the gestures that remain embedded in its memory. Bodies bent over the water to wash clothes. Bodies pulling oars in rhythm. Bodies carrying sand, bottling oil or rolling tobacco. Bodies dancing at local festivities, holding flags, crossing bridges time and again until these crossings became part of everyday life.
The river thus emerges as an organism in constant transformation, but also as a place marked by the traces others have left behind. Some remain, while others have disappeared along with the trades, factories, forms of leisure and ways of relating to its waters. Exploring the Urumea through the body also means asking ourselves what remains of all this, and what kind of relationship we wish to build with the river from now on.
This exhibition marks the culmination of a project developed over three years. It began with a research process that gave voice to local residents. Through surveys, group interviews and participatory workshops, we gathered the perceptions of the people of San Sebastián regarding the river that runs through their city: memories, images, sensations, historical information and more.
Drawing on these testimonies, we created a written atlas, a publication comprising ten narratives that explore the history of the river, the city and the ways in which people inhabit these two places. Now, these ten narratives take on a different language as they enter the exhibition space: words give way to images, sound and movement, revisiting the same events through other ways of telling and experiencing them.
Helga Massetani Piemonte
Curator: Helga Massetani Piemonte
Heritage Collections Management: María José Noain Maura
Texts: Helga Massetani Piemonte and María José Noain Maura
Emotional Management in the Art Ecosystem: Towards a Decalogue of Good Cultural Practices
Bitamine is launching a research project on the emotional, professional, and relational conditions that shape the artistic and cultural ecosystem in Gipuzkoa.
The project starts from a simple yet necessary question: how do precarity, uncertainty, open calls, production rhythms, and sector dynamics affect the everyday lives of the people who sustain this ecosystem?
Through this questionnaire, we aim to gather experiences, perceptions, and forms of discomfort, while also identifying practices of care, strategies of resistance, and possible paths for transformation. The ultimate goal is to develop a collective diagnosis and a decalogue of good cultural practices that can contribute to a more sustainable, fair, and caring cultural sector.
The research is coordinated by Helga Massetani Piemonte (Bitamine) and developed in collaboration with:
Mónica Crespo Doval
Degree in Sociology, Academic Secretary and Tutor Lecturer at UNED-Bergara.
Larraitz Nerea Zumeta Sánchez
PhD in Psychology, researcher and tutor at UNED-Bergara.
If you work professionally within the artistic and cultural sector in Gipuzkoa, we invite you to participate.
👉 Access the questionnaire: https://form.typeform.com/to/ijbBLP7I
Estimated completion time: 15-20 minutes.
Your participation is anonymous and will contribute to generating collective knowledge about working and living conditions in the cultural sector.