en

32 Centro Cultural Nomade
a77
Buenos Aires, Argentina
2011
www.centroculturalnomade.blogspot.com

The Centro Cultural Nómade is an abandoned sea container which has been transformed into a flexible module and can house various events in public spaces in collaboration with social and educational institutions in every place it passes through. In just a few square metres can be held numerous kinds of events: a library, art gallery, theatre and even a school, thanks to the specially built furniture using recycled material from automobile industry packaging.

This project is linked to a series of previous actions and interventions carried out by a77, which aim to bring art, urban planning and architecture closer to various communities thanks to the stimulus provided by their artistic and creative skills, encouraging participation in decisions regarding real urban projects and cultures, and the message of reuse and recycling with the aim of imaginatively incorporating it into everyday life.
The principle of reusing resources not only works as a global subject of our present focus on sustainability —quite often dismissed by its use in strategies carried out by our consumer society— ; can become an entrance of identity to be weighed up as part of our own idiosyncrasy.

The Centro Cultural Nómade is presently carrying out artistic and cultural activities for the community in its travels through Buenos Aires with the main aim of developing and implementing cultural strategies to foment access to these and social inclusion aimed at those people from the historically disregarded southern area of the city.

31 Temescal Seed Swap
Marksearch
Oakland, USA
2005-2011
www.marksearch.org

We created Temescal Seed Swap in 2005 in response to our insatiable habit of collecting seeds while walking the dog in our neighbourhood. Temescal is one of the smallest neighbourhoods in Oakland, California. Our cart is made of recycled materials which we found here and there: perforated tablex—a highly resistant kind of conglomerate—; wood from the local store that recently closed down; wheels and old tyres from one of our old bicycles; Springs from a mattress which someone happened to leave on our sidewalk and an old, hand made bell. This seed exchanger is now a travelling event in our community: we visit local street fairs, neighbourhood feasts and the farmers’ market in Temescal. We still collect seeds with the help of our faithful dog Chica, which carries a special basket made from one of our old raincoats.

The neighbours share flower seeds, vegetables and garden products, and also stories on the neighbourhood gardens. As they exchange seeds, they usually write stories on plants. One woman gave us some historical seeds which had been passed down from generation to generation in her family. She traced the line of seeds back to the first settlers in the north eastern region of the US. Our stock is constantly changing and includes biological seeds from plants that grow well in the Californian microclimate: beans, beetroot, red leaf lettuce, rocket, coriander, grass, peas, California golden poppies, poppies, mesclun, equinatia, Nile lilies, marigolds, corn cockle, mallows and a cosmos of mixtures, cornflower and scabious.

30 Museo Ambulante
Theo Craveiro
Sao Paulo, Brasil
2010
theocraveirotrabalhos.tumblr.com

The Travelling Museum is an exhibition platform that enables different configurations in the field of art to be presented. The challenge is to understand the subject of art not only as a picture on the wall but as a series of relationships surrounding it. The strategy is to create a personal system with the aim of encouraging these relationships. This exhibition platform was first used as part of the project “Strategies of circulation”, a series of initiatives which aimed to enable different ways to exhibit works. The challenge was to invent a way to show on line the works presented with verbal contact with the official circuit. Unlike what occurs in the exhibition rooms or art awards, where only one work can be shown at a time, it was possible to present a series of things and a way of thinking. Each time this platform is used, the challenge is to update its meaning and find a way to converse with the context. In future we aim to receive projects from other artists and occupy new spaces.

The aim is to do it differently, break down the limits and mix up the roles. This is not about being in favour or against the institutions, but to state that there are always other places and ways. If the conditions offered are limited, you can create your own system and offer another universe. The main point is the declaration of possibility.

29 Open-roulotte radio
LaFundició
Ripollet, Espanya
2008-2011
http://open-roulotte.pbworks.com

Open-roulotte is a process to collectively design, build and manage a light, mobile infrastructure which provides those individuals and collectives who so require this with the organization of events in public spaces in the neighbourhood of Can Mas (Ripollet). The task of designing and building this light, mobile infrastructure as well as the process of training a citizen’s organization in charge of managing it is closely linked to a collaborative research action process on the present and/or possible uses of public spaces.

Open-roulotte has staged several processes carried out side by side with various collectives and action groups with whom we have established different ways to work. In the context of schools, the work processes may be divided into three moments which overlap and are constantly mixed: 1. Exploration: the territory as a subject of study, common area and “wall-less classes”; drifting as a way or technique to proceed. 2. Cartography: cartography as a non objective of collective representation of the territory. Representation as a pretext and vehicle of debate on subjects that affect the territory. 3. Dialogue: conversations on the knowledge generated and negotiating actions to be taken in each point /moment.

28 Wikitankers
Taller QUAM 2011 WIKPOLIS. Cartografies i construccions col·lectives de l’espai social de arquitecturas colectivas
Straddle3/ Todo por la Praxis
Vic, Espanya
2011
www.acvic.org

The WikiTankers are various units that were built during a workshop organized in July 2011 by the ACVic Centre d’Arts Contemporànies on collective architectures that were made using recycled materials.

The aim of WikiTankers is to create Nomadic-like, mobile structures, in situations of emerging mobility of citizens. As we have seen throughout the years in different cities and towns as well as other places around the world how the process of mobility arises, and this makes the construction of mobile units of buildings and structures necessary, not only as features of support from these mobilizations but also as driving forces of situations. The units we built are as follows: InfoTanker (a specific request by members of the camping group in Vic as a substitute for the present information office), MediaTanker (technological, internet-wifi, communication, media point, etc.), GastroTanker (the kitchen), AgroTanker (urban vegetable garden as a support and provider of food for cooking), BarraTanker (meeting point as a support for MediaTanker or GastroTanker, with units of furniture).

27 Imprenta Móvil
Nuria Montiel
Mèxic
2010-2011

The Mobile Press, built to fit the structure of a travelling cart can be set up anywhere, and has been designed as a social means of expression where the press is the device that builds up collective dialogue. The idea of taking the device to the streets and placing it at the disposal of passers-by, arose from my own research to occupy public space with a political stance which vindicates the way we appropriate this and the way we communicate with it.

I’m interested in graphics due to their rebellious nature, for the role they have played in uprisings by propagating revolutionary ideas, demands, pleas and requirements, providing revolutionaries with a written voice. This is the case of Taller de Gràfica Popular (TGP) in Mexico which throughout the post-revolutionary era, despite its demagoguery, was paramount to workers’ causes and anti fascists of the period with their production of posters, flyers and newspapers.

The graphics workshops at the Autonomous University of México (UNAM) are another immediate reference point in my work. It does not overlook the discursive role achieved by the Students Movement in 1968. In these workshops the students used carbon copiers to print the flyers which were used to inform the public about murders which had taken place, the subjects covered during students meetings and were also used to announce political rallies and protest marches. Another workshop that was paramount to the success was the Taller Popular de Serigrafia made up of a Group of visual artists who were involved in the context of the movements and social struggles which affected Argentina from 2002 to 2007. The graphic work created by these workshops in such different periods was a means of collective expression which led to iconography that still stands for those times of social conflict. And thus I believe it is important to vindicate the power of the press as a tool that is closely linked to activism and social struggle.

Throughout this process I have developed a methodology of creation which involved people from outside the world of art, based on the interaction of the workshop with the city and the people who live there, taking the cart and seeking various communities, economic, political and social contexts that make up a town.

26 M.E.T
Floating Lab Collective
Washington DC, USA
2010-2011
www.floatinglabcollective.org

The Modular Engagement Transporter (MET) is modelled on the NASA Modular Equipment Transporter used on the Apollo missions to document the surface of the moon. The MET, referred to as the “rickshaw” by the astronauts was a cart outfitted with pneumatic tyres that carried geological tools, cameras and sample cases on the lunar surface.

Floating Lab Collective has recreated this device to explore the surfaces of our planet that have become alien to us, specifically areas such as BP’s oil spill along the Gulf of Mexico; the mountain top removal sites of Appalachia or even our own neighbourhoods or communities which, due to an alienating culture and society, have lost their sense of public spaces and solidarity.

The MET is equipped with four digital cameras, projectors, speakers, a backdrop, a pull out table and chairs coated in chalk board paint to encourage meetings and project planning, and also storage space with specific equipment for each project. The MET is thus a conglomerate of documentary tools to explore the aesthetics of alienation and to show the meetings with communities and landscapes.

The MET made its first expedition to Louisville, Kentucky, with the aid and funding of the University of Louisville, and explored several social change initiatives. The outcome is a series of portraits, drawings and diagrams based on these meetings.

25 Biblioteca de Nezahualcoyótl
Diego Pérez
Mèxic DF, Mèxic
2006
www.diegoperez.org

The Nezahualcóyotl library is a collection of books that I have bought in the markets of materials retrieved from the landfills of Nezahualcóyotl and Iztapalapa, neighbouring areas on the eastern side of Mexico city, where all the waste materials and scrap from the various landfills in the city end up, and where all the waste water leaves the city, in stretches along open sewers. Places that are environmentally devastated. Most of the things are collected by the recyclers and put on sale again in poor areas.

For years I found sought after books at bargain prices with which I could recreate the universal and Mexican history of literature. It is important to highlight that Nezahualcóyotl, who was lord of Texcoco and a poet, in the years prior to the conquest of Mexican territories by Spain had an extensive collection of codex and literary documents which were robbed and later burned by the Catholics.

The cart format that was used by the book collection was inspired by the model of the waste collectors; it is worth noting that scrap is still collected at Nezahualcóyotl with carts pulled by mules and horses which cover the town street by street.

The work is also a tribute to the Prince and poet Nezahualcóyotl, an honourable personage who we now know was greatly concerned with the environment and now lends his name to a place completely degraded by our disaffection with nature.

24 La Maquila Región 4
Amor Muñoz
Mèxic
2010-2012
www.amormunoz.net
Maquilas are work centres whose activities focus on the production of textiles and electronics intended for export, which is the necessary condition for their existence; they enjoy a special, advantageous tax regime which allows them to import goods without paying import duties and to export with a duty paid by Mexico. Another key feature is that they operate under the globalizing concept “of taking advantage of being competitive” which in this case means cheap Mexican labour,  who are mostly women.
The Maquila Región 4 is a project which reflects on the processes of the textile and electronics maquilas. It is a mobile, extendible device which works like workshop, for the community manufacturing of textile and electronic goods in public areas.

In the Maquila Región 4, expanded graphics are made in groups, some of which are functional and others, simply, with imaginary classic electronics (PCB’S, schemes, electronic circuits, etc.). This leads us to make an analysis on the implications of work related with the collective imagination of technology, thus linking it to jobs related to manual work such as embroidery and electronics.

Each participant will receive some remuneration for his or her work, base don a scheme where the hourly wage of Mexicans is paid the same as in the USA. The artist and participants enter into an individual labour contract according to each work, and the time they are willing to work.

23 Fiteiro Cultural (Culture kiosk)
Fabiana de Barros
João Pessoa, Brasil
1998-2011
www.fiteirocultural.org

Fiteiro Cultural is a public and contextual work of art. In the north of Brazil, “Fiteiro” means kiosk or street stall. The owner of the stall sells specific products to his patrons. This relationship with the public inspired me to create my own Fiteiro dedicated to culture and art. Since the Fiteiro Cultural is foldable and light it is a “Nomadic” structure for artists, a “non space” which depends on the community where it is set up to survive and the aid of various artists.

The Discovery of the other is the meeting point between the artist and the community in which the Fiteiro is placed beginning a creative process. This is what I mean when I mention a “social sculpture”. In accordance with the wishes or needs of the community, the cultural Fiterio may be made into a workshop, a showroom or exhibition hall, a theatre stage, a place for public or private debates, or it can just be an area to rest in and think. This work is constantly changing: with no beginning or end, no evolution and no ideal shape.

Thus, its name may be appraised and translated into several languages depending on the cities where it is set up: João Pessoa, Athens, Sion, New York, Havana, Erevan, São Paulo, Dunkirk, Larissa, Milan, Geneva, Biel and Second Life.

22 Fala dos confins
Virginia de Medeiros
Sao Paulo, Brasil
2010
www.faladosconfins.com.br

Every city has its own language, business, values, ways of thought, habits... an empirical order used by its inhabitants to build their identity.

Fala des confins is an audio installation which sprang from a dialogue with a number of popular poets, popular tales and stories, legends and people in general who turn the act of speaking into a creative art. The aim of the project is to become directly involved in the oral repertoire of people who live in the area.

Fala de confins is an audio installation which acts directly in the area of Bacia do Jacuípe, Sertão da Bahia, and covers the cities of Pé de Serra, New Fátima, Riachão do Jacuípe, cities close to Feira de Santana, and Portal do Sertão, where it first appeared.

The installation consists of projecting on these dry, mute places the traditional tales and legends that were told by the popular poets, always told by those who saw the act of speaking as something creative.

The identity of the place is changed with this intervention by broadening the oral repertoire of those who live in the area.

21 Le CNA Dans les villages
Cinéma Numérique Ambulant (CNA)
Bénin, Burkina Faso, Mali, Níger i França
2004- 2007
www.c-n-a.org

Cinéma Numérique Ambulant (CNA) is an international network of mobile cinemas which has set up their projection units in Cameroon, Madagascar, Senegal and Togo.

The CNA sets up these units in rural areas with no access to electricity and with no knowledge of the world of cinema. The films are always free.

The projections are essentially African feature films, the rights to which have been acquired. The first part of these film shows is carried out in collaboration with the main NGO institutions and organizations which aim to disseminate social issues: International Plans, the High Commissions in the fight against AIDS, decentralized cooperation...

With the technological and technical breakthroughs in mind, the CNA constantly examines the ways to improve the quality of their projects, whether these are digital innovations in the field of image and sound, mobility or safety.

Through their educational projects of image such as Studio Numérique Ambulant (SNA) or the School of Image, CNA tries to share its technical and artistic knowledge and skills to a mainly young public.

20 RallyConurbano
RallyConurbano
Gran Buenos Aires, Argentina
2004-2009
http://rallyconurbano.com.ar

RallyConurbano is the name of the group and project modelled on exploring and experimenting with time and urban public spaces. The journey through places affected by conflict, the arguments that arise spontaneously and the interdisciplinary reflections raised generate a critical thought via a collective static experiment. The various chronicles, comments, photos and opinions are later uploaded and shared on a blogsite, another “virtual” discussion exchange platform.

RallyConurbano is a travelling, foldable, informal laboratory of social micro urban planning, including research and training, an exploration of collective physical territory and also open to discussion. Our experiments first decide on a place to visit and add a series of questions or doubts raised by the place. Here the role of the experts is not like that of tourist guides but rather catalysers of collective research.

RallyConurbano tries to find the problems of social relationships in the context of a collective trip (project).
Prior to constructing a building, RallyConurbano builds up a non-permanent relationship among the hikers taking part. In any case, RallyConurbano can construct social buildings, a many sheeted unstable and utopian building, and a self-structure that is jocularly unstable.

19 Puck Cinema
Caravana
Toni Tomàs i Carles Porta
Bellpuig, Espanya
2009-2011
www.puckcinema.com

Tombs Creatius is a company that creates games and is led by Toni Tomàs, artisan and creator of the project. In 2000 I decided to leave the La Baldufa Company of Comedians, which I had founded and worked in for four years, and I began the project Tombs Creatius. Thus for over ten years, Tombs Creatius has devised, designed and crafted wooden street toys and games for all ages.
In 2009, working cheek by jowl with Carles Porta we coproduced Puck Cinema Caravan, the smallest cinema on earth. At Tombs Creatius we believe streets are places to play because they have always been a place for socializing and recreation and, they are losing this function nowadays. That is why our projects have filled many squares, streets, school playgrounds and festivals in many towns.

Puck is a caravan which can turn into a cinema. It has wheels and can go anywhere. It projects animated films like the ones not usually shown on television. It selects films from all over the world relentlessly seeking out the vast collections produced by the movies over time. The menu is varied but select. It is specially aimed at the spirit.

The objective is to capture new animated film lovers. Or simply recover the experience of a particular type of cinema, for a moment to enjoy getting close to a small but great audiovisual work.

18 Caravana Natura
Nuria Güell
Vidreres, Espanya
2006
www.nuriaguell.net

Caravana Natura is a service that offers one the chance to live in a caravan on one’s own and was set up in an unspoilt forest far from any contact with the city life, which one could only experience alone. The caravan had several recording devices: a camera, a video camera, a notebook and a voice recorder. The documentation was only created when the users decided to leave a clue on their experience. Caravana Natura was designed as a space for introspection and a getaway, creating a space of poetical resistance in a society where time, it seems, can only be productive, offering the subject available time, free use of the caravan according to the needs and desires of each person. This leads one to reconsider one’s own identity from other angles of recognition, far from the confusion and determinist consumerism which reigns in the city.

17 Camping, caravaning, arquitecturing
Miquel Ollé and Sofia Mataix
Barcelona, Espanya
2011

Camping, caravaning, arquitecturing empirically and humanly documents and analyzes the architectures created in campsites, where each patron designs, builds and personalizes the area according to his or her needs, bearing in mind the main functions are leisure, rest and recreational and social activities.

Thus we can see from a habitable module, which works as an initial investment (tent, caravan, etc.), how campers structure the extension of their dwellings in a flexible and temporary way.

Patrons become architects, designers, building according to their needs at that time and their budget, and often recycle and change the uses of their furniture and fittings of their main homes.

The close proximity of the plots, the open aspect of their dwellings and the recreational and relaxed nature foster social relationships among neighbours, and actions which in everyday life are done in the privacy of their homes become public and shared ones (eating, personal hygiene, siestas, etc.).

The earlier form of the CX-R evokes the function it was designed for and, as an extension of the museum, does justice to the idea of modular, flexible and temporary architecture. In the first stage of the project it was used as a laboratory for collecting and managing data en route. In the second stage, it was turned into an exhibition area of processed data.

16 We Can Xalant
a77, Pau Faus
Mataró, Espanya
2009
http://wecanxalant.blogspot.com

The project We Can Xalant: Laboratory of Nomadic architectures and self-construction first decided to reinterpret the old construction devised by Tadeshi Kawamata in the courtyard of Can Xalant (known as the “Mataró kiosk”), and then to develop a mobile unit seen as an extension of the institution itself towards the public space. This was a collective construction project, formed by a network of institutions and people representing the most immediate surroundings of the Centre Can Xalant.
This is how new analytical strategies and involvement in the area were developed, collaborative dynamics were also explored and new reflections on mobile, flexible architectural structures were presented for commercial uses. The Laboratory was seen as a social-constructive process based on both physical construction and outlining programmes and an agenda of activities which was set in place for the continuity throughout time of the aforementioned architectures.

The final result was the construction of a new architectural complex —mobile and static— seen as an emblematic feature as regards its surroundings. The materials used came from the ruins of the old structure and from the nearby waste recycling plant. Following the structure’s completion, the complex has been given several uses and activities within the Can Xalant programme. Also, the New Mobile Unit (CX-R) has enabled the centre to develop projects linked to public spaces, both in Mataró and other towns.

15 S.P.O.T.
(Public Service to Optimize Junk)
Makea tu vida
Vic, Espanya
2011
www.makeatuvida.net


S.P.O.T. // Public Service to Optimize Junk is a mobile, temporary public workshop, which travelled through the streets of Vic and Torelló for a fortnight offering a free advice service and aid to repair, reuse and creatively transform pieces of junk into something new.
S.P.O.T. is a place where people can bring their objects to be repaired, and has community equipment and professionals to advise and provide guidance on techniques regarding transformation.

S.P.O.T. combines the aspects of a do-it-yourself and media workshop with a meeting point where knowledge, ideas and tricks are exchanged, and is an area of creation and debate on environmental policies, rational consumerism, recycling and waste, a place where one may think of alternatives and new habits.
With S.P.O.T. we first wanted to study the feasibility and acceptance of a permanent repair and transformation workshop and later to bring together the different agents who currently work in related activities (waste management, public participation, employment, creative recycling, etc.) so as to formalize the possible process of setting up this service.

We humbly believe that S.P.O.T. has worked and been surprising, both due to the use of the service made by the public, and the interest and involvement of all those who have worked on developing the project.

This project would not have been possible without the help of: Jordi Boadas, Fabiola, Guiomar, Assumpta, Alan, Cristina, Bruna, Feliu, Fina Torelló, Quim Clos, Elisenda Soler, Carles Furriols, Ingrid, Sandra, La Torratxa... Thanks to you all.

14 Centers of the USA
The Center for Land Use Interpretation
California, USA
2010
www.clui.org

Centers of the USA is an exhibition produced by the Institute of Marking and Measuring and the non profit organization CLUI, Centre for Land Use Interpretation, which opened on 14 August 2010. The exhibition lies within a CLUI Unit (mobile unit) which was temporarily set up at the dead centre of the USA, to the north of Lebanon, Kansas. The exhibition portrays and describes the nation’s various “centres”, such as the geodesic centre, in Lucas, Kansas and the geographic centre, close to Belle Fourche, South Dakota.

A telephone number on the door informs the visitors about where there have to call to obtain the access code to unblock the entrance, a technique used in several exhibition areas managed by the organization. The trailer, which was also used as a shelter by the members of the local roads department, has been visited by hundreds of people in the last six months. The place where the mobile unit is located is, in a way, an historical relic, since it is placed at the very centre of the 48 adjoining states, and is a popular place for those who wish to reach the very core of things.

The project is part of the CLUI Lines of Site Thematic programme, a constant series of presentations on topography, cartographic lines, perimeters and borders. The project was made possible thanks to support from the Salina Art Center, Creative Capital, The Hub Club of Lebanon in Kansas and the Institute of Marking and Measuring (IMAM).

13 Mobile Stealth Unit 002
Beth Coleman i Howard Goldkrand
Nova York, USA
1999
www.soundlab.org

The Mobile Stealth Unit 002 (MSU) is a DROID (robot) which retrieves and disseminates data. In order to build this unit, a delivery tricycle was turned into an INPUT/OUTPUT device using new technological media. The unit works like a mobile broadcast station. The MSU is both a sound sculpture in situ and a web based project, where the users are able to control a live camera connected to the front of the vehicle and hear an audio broadcast. Its aesthetic principles range from Futurism to the culture of the Californian Low Riders —who tune vintage cars both as a way to differentiate themselves and as a message to society—, to found or readymade art, robotics and also homemade sound systems. The unit works like an artefact and a broadcasting device which disseminates sound information and gathers visual data.

The MSU is cordless and fully operational as a mobile data distribution mechanism and collector of samples. It has an internal, rechargeable long-life battery to reproduce the sound. It also features a computer and a local area network (LAN) linked to an Ethernet port for broad band Internet connection. This portable device constantly receives an audio broadcast from an MP3 sound file which is programmed by the creators. The computer sound signal is sent via radio frequency (local within a range of a mile) to the sound system. The unit’s radio receiver sends the broadcast flow by means of a homemade 1,800 watt sound system. The unit’s “data collection” system is carried out via a camera mounted on the upper part of the unit which broadcasts a live signal from the laptop computer to the Web, where spectators can make different camera movements to view the whole area from the viewpoint of the driver.