2016
RIBERA #1
THE MEMORY OF THE BIDASOA THROUGH ART
The RI8ERA project is taking place in a specific setting of activity: the festivity of the Bidasoa River is going to meet with the 250th anniversary of the disannexation and creation of the city of Irun and also with the centenary of the Avenida Bridge construction.
The proposal is based on the artistic interpretation of the historical and anthropological materials about events that took place around the Avenue Bridge. The projects are developed by various artists, technicians, researchers and groups; mostly locals, who have contributed to common reflections on the geographical-temporal space. They came from different disciplines and the proposals articulated along three main axes: the river, the memory and contemporary art.
The public presentation will be held in two days. The first, in the public space around the Avenida Bridge will take place on Saturday 24 September 2016. It aims to recover the river's geographical space through the dynamics of creation, sensations and experiences; recalling history in a transversal way from contemporary art through the hybridization of disciplines such as mediation, technology, contemporary artistic practices and landscape design. The second day, scheduled for 6 October at the CBA cultural centre, aims to distribute and publicize the artistic projects in which the artists has worked, and to show what the working processes have been like, inviting the public for a collective reflection.
The program presented the following works, created specifically for Ribera:
Word of border
Javier San Martinen, Aloña Zubizarretare & Maider Likona - “Pescando Aniversarios”, “Sonidos del pasado”
Jeongsoo Lim - “Give me your name”
Parasite - “Camino narrado”
The new invisible border
Aitzpea Leizaola & Helga Massetani - workshop d'art et d'anthropologie
Ezmugak - “Zubi sweet home”
Border music
Maider Elcano - “Karaoke mobil”
Objetologies of memory
Lander Etxedona - installation audiovisuelle
Jeongsoo Lim - “Ask and respond”
Bitamine Faktoria - "Gauproject"
Galería
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.