2022
FRONTIÈRE - Cross-border artistic practices
FRONTIÈRE - Cross-border artistic practices, an event in collaboration with the Montreal artists' centre DARE-DARE and Bitamine Faktoria. This meeting takes place on the occasion of the launch of the publication Frontière, which reviews TOPO's thematic programming for 2019-2022. Helga Massetani, from Bitamine Faktoria, will present the project Atlas Emocional del Bidasoa. Sylvie Cotton, from DARE-DARE, will present the Satellite project and its publication.
PROJECTS.
FRONTIÈRE by TOPO.
Under the theme of the frontier, TOPO has created a cycle of exhibitions and online projects from 2019 to 2022. Rooted in human history and still very current, the theme brings together several issues raised by TOPO, political as well as social and technological.
The Frontier programme includes three thematic cycles with three female authors and art historians: Nuria Carton de Grammont, Paule Mackrous and Mirna Abiad-Boyadjian. To enrich the reflection, four other specialists address the notion of the border more broadly according to different approaches linked to their field of research: Ricard Zapata Barrero (politics), Chantal Pontbriand (aesthetics), Jean-Dominique Leccia (psychiatry) and David Jhave Johnston (technology).
The paper publication, a map that traces the works of the 10 artists proposed by TOPO in the framework of the programme, is expanded on the web with essays and multimedia content (essays, videos and podcasts).
SATELLITE by DARE-DARE.
"This publication traces the first trajectories of a programme of cross-border artistic explorations initiated in 2011 by the artist-run centre DARE-DARE as a satellite of its home territory in Montreal. More than just a retrospective visual overview and a presentation of works produced in three very different urban contexts (Detroit, Tijuana, Mexico City), the book proposes a series of recent observations of the artists and host partners to relive their vivid memories, retrace the path of thought and experience, reveal the imprint on creative practice and intellectual reflection, or even the repercussions on career or artistic mission."
- Extract from the essay by Martin Dufrasne, coordinator of the SATELLITE project and coordinator of DARE-DARE programming
Bitamine Faktoria's Emotional Atlas of Bidasoa.
This publication is the continuation of the research carried out in 2019 within the project "Emotional cartography of Bidasoa". It is a series of notebooks accompanied by the work of the illustrator Elena Odriozola, which highlight significant social aspects. These ten fascicles tell the stories of a geographical area - that of the river Bidasoa - elegantly written by María José Noain Maura in a language accessible to all audiences.
Helga Massetani's visit is possible thanks to the support of the Etxepare Institute and the Ministère des Relations internationales du Québec, within the framework of the cultural cooperation agreement between Québec and Euskadi.
PARTICIPANTS OF THE COMMUNITY
MORE PROJECTS
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.