Soil, stones, seeds and leaves... The transformation of the green space in La Marina, featuring a new ‘contamination’ session at the Institut Montjuïc secondary school

Inula [MC G. Mahedero] and a group of secondary school students and teachers research the landscape surrounding their educational centre and present their explorations through a tour of artistic interventions.

Soil, stones and seeds converted into artistic creative materials. This is what the entire educational community at the Institut Montjuïc secondary school discovered in a new iN RESiDENCE ‘contamination’ session held on 8 February. A surprising proposal from the 3rd-year secondary school students who, throughout the year, have been working with Inula, a visual artist, through an artistic and scientific research process looking into the natural spaces surrounding the educational centre. The session was conceived as a journey that travelled through different spaces through a quiz game.

A conceptual map was created in the school’s lobby which related the various green spaces of the neighbourhood with their uses. The relationship between the plant world and society is also expressed through an artistic creation that reminds us of Can Sabaté Park. This green space, which was created after a long battle fought by the neighbourhood’s residents in the 1970s, has led the students to reflect on human intervention in urban and natural habitats. Thus, the installation located in the school’s lobby recreated the shape of the park with paper and seeds that the students had been nurturing for weeks so they would germinate, just like the neighbourhood battle did.

Later, the tour pauses at an artistic intervention based on a former allotment plot belonging to the Institut Montjuïc secondary school. Here, the growing process of various plants entered the dialogue, with the photographs which documented the growth of the vegetables with the passing of time. Also nearby, the group prepared an exhibition of the monotype prints which they created using leaves on their visit to the Miró Foundation.

The ‘contamination’ session concluded in the centre’s playground, where two tables full of fruit were set up, and the attendees were invited to take a piece. The activity encouraged each of the attendees to observe, smell, appreciate the texture, taste and classify the flavour of the fruit they had chosen. The proposal attracted the participation of students and teachers alike, who ended the activity by drawing pieces of fruit on the paper serviettes they were given before eating it.

This final joint creative process carried out in the playground held one last surprise in store for the attendees. Spontaneously, the 2nd-year students taking the optional Living Arts subject, suggested recording the sound of the leaves of the plants and trees of Montjuïc. Once again, this recording invited them to reflect on and conclude the ‘contamination’ session tour.

All the details of this research, and the ‘contamination’ session itself explained by the students themselves are available on Inula’s blog, iN RESiDENCE at the Institut Montjuïc secondary school.