- 14th EDITION 2022 / 2023
- 13th EDITION 2021 / 2022
- 12th EDITION 2020 / 2021
- 11th EDITION 2019 / 2020
- 10th EDITION 2018 / 2019
- 9th EDITION 2017 / 2018
- 8th EDITION 2016 / 2017
- 7th EDITION 2015 / 2016
- 6th EDITION 2014 / 2015
- 5th EDITION 2013 / 2014
- 4th EDITION 2012 / 2013
- 3rd EDITION 2011 / 2012
- 2nd EDITION 2010 / 2011
- 1st EDITION 2009 / 2010
Martí Anson IN RESiDENCE at the School Infanta Isabel d’Aragó
Daily routes. From home to school
The field of exploration for the project that Martí Anson and the group of pupils launch together is focused on their own neighbourhood itself, the spaces they inhabit and their day-to-day relationship with these spaces. Right from the start, they begin to trace out the daily routes they routinely follow: from home to school, from home to the underground, the square or leisure venues. These initial routes will appear and reappear constantly over the course of the academic year.
Visit to the exhibition Espècies d'espais [Species of Spaces], at MACBA
A visit is organised to the exhibition Espècies d'espais. The guided tour, designed especially for the occasion, focuses particularly on works linked to movement through spaces and representations of the public space. This outing also serves to contextualise the piece by Martí Anson that the group will visit over the weeks to come.
A photographic relationship
To focus attention one what is around us, the group begins to take photos in a process generated by dialogue. Firstly, a session is devoted to working on aspects of the camera and its use, after which a theme is suggested to provide the thread for a conversation involving the whole group. To this end, the artist proposes a photograph via a WhatsApp group, and the pupils respond to this with their own photos. During the session with the artist at the weekend, all the material generated in this way is brought together.
How we inhabit the neighbourhood
This first intuitive exploration of the neighbourhood through photographs was followed by another approach. In this, based on the pupils' different interests, outings were made to places where they engaged in activities of some kind. In these outings, a member of the group of pupils always leads the session (previously prepared with the artist), explaining to the rest their relationship with the place and they activity they engage in there. These sessions are devoted to discussions of parkour, different sports, video games, etc.
Anson's shop
A visit is proposed to the shop that Anson has installed at the Espècies d'espais [Species of Spaces] exhibition. The visit gives the pupils food for thought, and they begin to discuss issues related to the limits of artistic practices, artists, the circuit and the art market. These discussion sessions alternate with others devoted to exploring the neighbourhood and different spaces in it.
Plans: drawing the school ground plan, a classroom
Sessions are devoted to drawing with the aim of finding a common language to represent the spaces the group is working with. The pupils begin by discussing and drawing the ground plan of the school and the streets around it in an exercise of collective memory in which their work constitutes a new map of these spaces, so well-known to them, so close to home.
Creating a newspaper...
The group works on the possibility of creating a publication in the form of a newspaper to contain all the work that the pupils have done over the course of the academic year. To this end, drawings, texts, photographs and so on could find a shared means of expression in this format. The group decides that, in the final activity, this newspaper will be distributed among local residents, embedding it in the everyday life of the neighbourhood. The pupils work on the content and design of this publication. However, after a few sessions, its final form is redesigned: in the end, the pupils will make a plan of the neighbourhood in the shape of a tourist map.
Making a map: marking the places
To give this idea shape, the group returns to the drawing from memory of spaces, but in this case explore different ways of representing the entire Sant Martí de Provençals neighbourhood. The pupils work with copies of real maps and with plans where the place the photographs they have taken over the academic year. Finally, a series of plans are generated from memory, all with a shared, central point of origin: the school. On this plan, the places of particular interest to the pupils are marked, locations very different from the tourist sites that would be indicated on a more normal map.
Concept, design and construction: an information point
Going back to the idea of sharing the publication that is generated with the neighbourhood, the group decides on two distribution points for this: two wooden huts like tourist information points, from which the pupils will distribute the plans. The group creates various possible designs for these huts before building the final model, a fusion of all the ideas generated during the design process.
Outings to different sites in the Sant Martí neighbourhood
Daily routes, activities engaged in around the neighbourhood and the relationship with the public space were ideas explored at the start of the course. For this reason, the group organised several visits to places in the Sant Martí neighbourhood linked to their everyday and leisure activities in order to share these activities with the other pupils and show them the places where they did them: squares for parkour, football pitches, etc. The group also followed the routes taken by each pupil to get to the school.
http://blocsenresidencia.bcn.cat/infantaarago1516/?p=55
La Botiga de l'Anson (Anson's Shop 11/12/15)
The visit to Martí Anson's installation La botiga de l'Anson (Anson's Shop) encourage the group to think about a series of issues concerning art: what an artist does, the limits what is and is not art, exhibitions, etc. These issues were discussed at a number of session and led to exploration of the ideas behind Martí Anson's work itself, work that camouflages itself, which takes a range of “non-artistic” forms.