Matadero Madrid center for contemporary creation

INHABIT THE AIR

Santiago Cirugeda
Start date
End date
Price
Free admission
Venue
Naves Matadero
Nave 11. Sala Fernando Arrabal
Institution
“Subversive”, “revolutionary” and "necessary" are appropriate adjectives to describe the work of Santiago Cirugeda.
This artist and social architect from Seville focuses his mind, heart and sweat on taking advantage of legal loopholes for the benefit of the community, and his work is admired and recognised throughout the world. Cirugeda regularly occupies public spaces with containers, he constructs prosthetics on façades, patios, roofs and even on plots of land with the agreement of local residents, creating protocols that can be used by the citizens’ collectives themselves, both for the improvement of urban fragments and for the development of specific projects that will make it possible to resolve housing issues. All of this in what is a negotiation between legality and illegality, to help us remember the enormous control to which we are subjected.
In 2003, he set up the Recetas Urbanas (Urban Recipes) team to carry out subversive projects in different areas of urban reality that will help people bear the burden of this complicated social life. He also serves as an advisor for urban planning and teaching projects in various countries around the world. His work has received numerous awards and recognition at the international level such as the International Fellowship of the RIBA, the FAD medal, the Global Award for Sustainable Architecture (2015), the Ones Mediterrània award (2016), and the Curry Stone Design Prize (2017).
Cirugeda will build a house in the interior of Nave 11 together with collectives of the city of Madrid, led and trained by the Recetas Urbanas team (which has considerable experience in collective do-it-yourself construction). Suspended in the air, all this building’s artistic potential will be developed by inviting such creators as Llorenç Barber and Montserrat Palacios, Ignacio Marín Bocanegra, Vértebro, Los Bárbaros and spectators to live and experience it intensely. Once its life in Naves Matadero has come to an end, its materials will be recycled by the members of La Kalle to create La Casa del Barrio (the Neighbourhood House). “We will begin the project by searching for, purchasing, and stockpiling materials. We will build a house in the air, high up, so we can find ourselves in an even stranger situation where there are no tenants or landlords, where its use in time is intensified, where we have to find a way to live it. The experience its inhabitants can unfurl will be complemented by the social function inherent in the materials with which the house will be built. The work of Recetas Urbanas has been marked over the last 20 years by the incorporation of actors and users to their construction processes and the acquisition of the rights to use this public capital. This is made evident in this case by the appearance and collaboration of the La Kalle collective. This is an Associative Collective, diverse in nature, with more than 30 years’ work in the neighbourhood of Vallecas, where they get numerous neighbours involved who are immersed in different situations that put them at risk of social exclusion and who are struggling to get out of it”, Cirugeda explains.

 RELATED ACTIVITIES:

Llorenç barber y Montserrat Palacios

Imaginations and Spells

Madrugá

The Snail Strategy
INHABIT THE AIR