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To destroy and to construct: history of a factory

06/10/2011 admin 0
Friday october 7th, at 7.30pm, projection of Destruir y construir, video documentary about the factory of Can Ricart, in Barcelona's neighborhood of Poblenou. Can Ricart was a group of factories active in Barcelona since mid-19th century: in its construction had been involved important architects of catalan modernism. During the years of Barcelona's real estate euphoria (2000-2008), the City Council authorized the demolition of an important part of the premises, with no regard to the protests and the detailed studies who asked respect for the industrial heritage. Similar to what is happening in other parts of town, recently the administration admitted that it hasn't got enough money to build the "Museum of Languages" - the misterious, romantic and sustainable building that architect Benedetta Tagliabue was projecting for the part of Can Ricart spared from the demolitions.
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Racism in “Santako”

07/08/2011 admin 0
Six cities around Barcelona - Hospitalet, Badalona, Terrassa, Sabadell, Mataró, Santa Coloma de Gramenet - are among the ten most populated in Catalonia. But only Hospitalet and Santa Coloma have a higher density than Barcelona, compact city par excellence. The urbanistic chaos that characterises Santa Coloma de Gramanet is the direct result of real estate speculation and political corruption: persistent racism among some sectors of its population is the other side of overcrowding and impressive diversity of origins that defines the people of Santako. But if in the beginning of the 20th century, those who rejected the immigrants from southern Spain settled in the casas baratas at least could hold to their local origins and catalan speech, in the 21th century those who promote boycott to arabics, chinese, latinamericans, romans of the city, are themselves - for the most part - second generation immigrants. The video Mézquita no! (2005) describes the conflict around the opening of a mosque in the Singuerlin neighborhood.
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Barcelona’s new mayor, in a barrio that doesn’t fit him well

25/05/2011 admin 0
We always liked this photo. In 2004, who is now the new mayor of Barcelona visited Bon Pastor neighborhood: this photo was taken in the casa barata of some friends (and informants) of ours. What is really interesting here is the presence, we might call it, of the different kind of people portrayed. The man on the right, the grandfather, the girl, look solid, real, strong. The politician in the middle seems like he was cut out and sticked on a scenario that doesn't fit him: it makes him feel unconfortable, like he didn't know how to behave. Some places make the power feel unconfortable; and the power - rightwing or leftwing, it's the same - tries by all means to wipe them out.
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Poblenou 03-08 (Barcelona about Barcelona)

09/05/2011 admin 0
POBLENOU 03-08: Video realized by Suporttotal, gathering part of the visual work done by Jordi Secall during the years 2003-2008 in Poblenou. Photos of historical moments like the evictions and demolitions in the alleys now part of Parc Central, images of can Ricart and La Escocesa still alive, the biblical entrance of Makabra in can Ricart, and other more recent ones filmed in video, like grafitis on the roof of former Caminal art workshop, or the eviction of a family in calle st. Francesc in summer 2008. 11 frenetic minuts of music, video and photos.
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Foreigner Rome (the uses of diversity)

23/04/2011 admin 0
[/caption] Zoning means that some parts of the city, for real estate or urbanistic reasons, are devoted to certain groups of population: if there are neighborhoods where immigrants live, it's obvious that the schools of these neighborhoods have to cope with much more children born from foreigners. Such is the situation in Torpignattara, in the east periphery of Rome: a primary school is undergoing a series of public debates abounding in words like "ghetto", "emergency", "alarm", "banlieue". While right and left-wing politicians declare themselves worried for the school's "italianity", its teachers are carrying out their work worthy of the best italian pedogogical tradition, using diversity as a resort to supply to the massive cuts and decadence of public education. Until when they will call them "foreigners"? Rome is changing, and while some use this transformation to boost war among the poor, others understood its potential to come through the cultural and political stagnation of the so-called "Italian society".
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The quality of life in Naples: between Pomigliano and Posillipo

14/01/2011 admin 0
[/caption] “An oasis of luxury in the capital of mafia" was the title chosen by a peruan newspaper in publishing this photo reportage about Naples' Circolo Posillipo. But in spite of many elements that might make us believe it, we can't pretend that Napols is just like a stereotype of a South American city, where the rich lock up in their golden bunkers, while in the streets the people shoot each other with guns. Partly because the members of Circolo Posillipo are not as rich as we could imagine; but mainly because Naples, as south american cities are, is a place far more complex than the unambiguous narrations we receive from the media, that now only see/sell the violent deaths, criminality, urbanistic and social chaos, while in the Nineties they only showed the monuments that were reopening, the dynamism of the new upper classes, and the rebirth of tourism. Even them the camorra controlled the neighborhoods, the peripheries were second-class places, the young people were beginning to assume crack and cocaine, hidden by the invisibility in which they were being kept. All these things, at that time, were not so fashionable as they are it now.
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Barcelona: La Perona (1985-1989)

08/12/2010 admin 0

Esteve Lucerón (Pobla de Segur, 1950), photographer, portrayed the gypsy settlement of La Perona for 10 years, from 1980 until its demolition. His photos are strongly influenced by the american reporters who worked on the Great Depression of 1929, Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange and Lewis Hine, especially in the relationship towards the people he portrayed: empathy, self control, he never manipulates his subjects to stress the drama, never breaks the intimacy, doesn’t steal poverty. He doesn’t either have a sweetened merciful attitude: there’s social critique, it’s an anthropological document, historically valuable, since these settlements belong to a time of economical prosperity in Spain, when real estate speculation and conflicts among “lineages” or subgroups of gypsies burst, as the City Council decided to relocate – transfer/deport – some groups from an area to another with no regard except for the number of people. Lucerón gives a personal view of it, with a special attention towards children, and towards gypsy’s typical sense of humor, naughty and defiant“. Froum María José Furio‘s review on her blog. Some photos: [1][2]

  • Esteve Lucerón. La Perona (1985-1989). Agenda de la Imatge n. 56 (2010). Xavier Camino and Pili Díaz Giner wrote the text, and Jordi Gratacós, secretary of UPIFC, made the laboratory work on the photo negatives. [Exposition announced in UPIFC webpage]
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“Passatge Cusidó: un adèu” (Farewell to Cusidó alley)

11/10/2010 admin 0
…on saturdays we went out, and she and her sister remained with our neighbor, miss Maria, and wouldn't come with us. [...] We would have taken them to the cinema, to Mcdonald’s, but they didn't want! They wanted to stay here in the alley“. This short video documentary by Jordi Secall, Manel Muntaner, Yolanda Bermúdez and Chema Alonso (2004) describes the demolition of the small “Passatge Cusidó”, just on the side of Barcelona's Diagonal. A real estate company, “Espais” (recently under trial for corruption within the Caso Pretoria) took advantage of the forced expropiation of this small alley, executed by Barcelona's City Council within the “22@” urban renewal project for the neighborhood of Poblenou. More info in this research draft written in 2006 by our group-

Des del Ressentiment (Barcelona, 2006)

14/08/2010 admin 0

Short documentary film we realized in 2006 on the factory of Can Ricart (Barcelona), under the effects of the “22@” urban renewal plan. All the industries and organizations that used the XVIIIth century stucture had to leave, as well as most of the inhabitants of the surrounding buildings. …

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From the center of Sevilla to the “3000 viviendas”

13/08/2010 admin 0
Polígono sur. El arte de las tresmil, de Dominique Abel (España-Francia, 2003) WATCH THE ENTIRE MOVIE. Life and art of the gypsies who lived in the historical districts of the center of Sevilla, evicted and now living in the neighborhood known as the "3000 viviendas" in the Poligono Sur. "Our roof was the sky. Now we have houses; heating; fridges; but we miss what we had before, those ideals we had before. Do you remember how it was in Triana, we had nothing to eat but we were in grace of God, with only a tomato, singing and dancing, no shoes, we didn't get ill".