Socially Engaged Art. Collektive ARTerias Urbanas. Santa Cruz. BOL. 2018.
#appropriation #decentralising_culture #empowerment_of_the_neigbourhood #selforganizing #right_to_the_city
CONTEXT: In Santa Cruz, public space is strongly regulated which barely allows participation and co-creation. In addition, the centralization of its cultural offers in the city center which misses the neighborly networks in the remote city quarters leads to culturally poor and neglected suburbs. In one of these suburbs a container was placed attempting to activate these public spaces and neighborhood networks through community work and artistic practice.
Apart from the infrastructure and economic neglection curated and institutionalized, culture is completely invisible in the suburbs of Santa Cruz. El Contenedor is a mobile cultural space that was active for three months in one of these peripheral districts. The aim was to energise this space and encourage self-organization and to decentralize culture.
For this purpose the mobile cultural space was developed in the form of a container which will stop at two month stages in various deporting neighborhoods over the next two years.
At the first station (see pictures) a variety of workshops, lectures, markets, urban gardening events were carried out. The aim is to work with local people to find out, bit by bit, what kind of neighborhood they long to live in. From this, opportunities can be given to locals to be proactive in shaping their neighbourhood and to establish themselves as active creators of the city.
Website.
www.elcontenedor.org/
Press.
https://www.eldia.com.bo/index.php?cat=448&pla=3&id_articulo=244932
Photos: © Jakob Wirth ©Ozzo Ukumari
