Fabra i Coats: Contemporary Art Centre of Barcelona launches a programme to create spaces for dialogue and learning around artistic practice and its languages. Understanding learning as the articulation of doing, experimenting and thinking, and with an emphasis on exchange and discussion, the programme offers a series of conferences and two workshops, with internationally renowned artists and theorists.

When the textile factory was running it had a nickname, Can Mamella. Given that 80 % of employees were women, that there was a “cradle house” for their babies where they could go and breastfeed them, and that it fed the whole neighbourhood, it was said that Fabra i Coats was like a huge breast that never stopped flowing.

With this in mind, the Art Centre opens a space for intergenerational exchange, where the discursive lines and practices of the artists who are part of the year’s programme can be shared and explored.

Coinciding with David Bestué’s exhibition curated by Marta Sesé, the centre’s director, Joana Hurtado, has invited them to design and run this summer school together, which will be based on two conceptual pillars: On the one hand, to address an affective history of the city, which responds to a critical look and a reading against the grain of history; and on the other hand, to propose a material thought traversed by questions linked to time: can an object bring together different fragments of time to give us back a concrete image or idea?

In 2020, we inaugurated the new programme talking about unofficial narratives and situated memory. Our intention was to question the authorship, the originality of the work and the supposed neutrality of the exhibition space. This time we use it as “vibrant matter”, as Jane Bennett would say, to vindicate material agency and its capacity to create and transform imageries.  
 

PROGRAMME

Thursday 6, from 16 to 20 h and Friday 7 July, from 10 to 14 h
Workshop with Gian Maria Tosatti*

Friday 7 July
17.00 The Milk of the Factories, presentation and conference by Joana Hurtado Matheu
18.00 City of Sand, conference by David Bestué
19.00 Sharing and open discussion of the workshop with Gian Maria Tosatti and participants

Thursday 13 and Friday 14 July, from 10.00 to 14.00
Workshop with Rabih Mroué*

Friday 14 July
17.00 BARCELONA 1979-2023, conference by Manolo Laguillo
18.00 A Kilo of Sand, conference by Rocío Robles
19.00 Higo Mental #28 Barchinona superilla (Ricardo Pérez Hita and Marta Sesé)

*In English only.

WHO IS IT FOR?

A programme designed for all audiences who are interested in contemporary art and thinking.
Please register for the workshops by writing to activitats-centredart@bcn.cat, indicating your connection with contemporary art and thinking, your motivation for registering for the workshop and attaching a brief CV (if relevant, with links to your work).

With the support of: GREC Festival de Barcelona; Elisava, Facultat de Disseny i Enginyeria de Barcelona; i la Universitat Oberta de Catalunya.

With the collaboration of: Facultat de Belles Arts de la Universitat de Barcelona; el grau d’Arts i Disseny de l’Escola Massana; BAU Centre Universitari d’Arts i Disseny de Barcelona; i EINA, Centre Universitari de Disseny i Art de Barcelona (UAB).