SPCUNY Artist
Rafael De Balanzo Joue
Collaborators
Sitesize Collective Artist (Elvira Pujol Masip and Joan Vila Puig Morera): We are a platform dedicated to creation and research into the contemporary metropolis. Since 2002 we have been developing artistic projects and researching autonomous forms of cultural production and community learning. Water from headwaters, rainfall, filtered by the mountain. The response that we wish to pursue with the Water Snakes project sees watercourses as responsible for shaping significant relationships in the construction of the city, regarding the character, territorial identity and urban transformation actions as directly connected and strongly conditioned by the influence of the flow of water.
Tierra: Espacio para habitar (Earth: Space for Inhabiting) Collective: Alix Camacho Vargas, Artist, educator and social researcher. Her work is focused on the plastic dimension of society. She is interested in body, time, spaces, among other elements that are part of our daily interactions and the social forms that collectively we create. Founder: Tierra: Espacio para habitar (Earth: Space for Inhabiting), a platform for pedagogy and social practice art. It is dedicated to thinking about the action of inhabiting – a performative act, with plastic qualities, that can be executed in multiple ways. Through artistic, educational and participatory processes, TIERRA seeks to expand the repertoire of how to live on this planet.
Nomad Resilience Thinking Social-ecological Practice
The Nomad Resilience Thinking Social-ecological Practice is a Social Practice CUNY project that is developed by three artist collectives, the Urban Resilience Thinking Initiatives (Rafael de Balanzo Joue) from New York, Espacio para Habitar (Alix Camacho) from Medellin, Colombia and SiteSize (Elvira Pujol and Joan Vila-Puig) from Barcelona, Catalonia focusing on their local watershed territories with the support and collaboration of academic institutions such as EINA, Barcelona School of Art & Design, SPCUNY, Medellin Comfama School of Art, and Pratt Institute.
Using multimedia tools, the three territorial Artist collectives will work, develop, and discuss how local vulnerable communities are linked and affected by their ecological systems, specifically to their territorial freshwater creeks, basins, or sheds as fluent and symbolic natural elements for all communities. Based on the resilience thinking tool, we will analyze how local social systems are affected by wicked problems and how the current systemic crises provoke the local community’s creative destruction process such as gentrification, climate change, drought, industrial and residential contamination. The chosen territory in NYC will be the NYC Watershed, Medellin River, and Llobregat watershed delta in Barcelona.
The results of this project will be three multimedia documents of 20 mn including territories mapping, resilience thinking diagrams and symbolic or identity river’s objects, such as plants, rocks, abandoned elements that represent the systemic struggles of these local communities and what the interactions are between social and ecological systems
Events
COMMUNITY WALK SOCIAL-ECOLOGICAL PRACTICE
TUESDAY 17th JANUARY 2023
BARCELONA/MEDELLIN RESILIENCE THINKING SOCIAL-ECOLOGICAL PRACTICE
- Tuesday 17th January, 9.30 am (EST); 15h30 mn (CET) (1 hour duration aprox.)
- Thursday 19th January, 2 pm (EST); 18h00 mn (CET) (2 hours duration)
Zoom Meeting: https://us02web.zoom.us/my/rafaeldebalanzo
Location: Barcelona, Spain Medellin, Colombia
Watershed Rivers: Llobregat and Medellin
Artist Collective Organizers:
Site Size * Elvira Pujol & Joan Vila-Puig
Resilience Thinking Design Initiatives
Espacio para Habitar Collective, Alix Camacho, Diego Agudelo
College Student Collaborators:
Eina, School of Art & Design, MURAD Graduate
SPCUNY
Comfama School, Ciudad, Pensamiento y territorio
Image courtesy of Edge Effect
OUR STUDIES SHOW ($100 for Truth, 2020). Sculpture/process and photo by Esther Neff
