Concomitentes is beneficiary of a new European project that will focus on the repair of land wounds

The Art Living Lab to Repair the Land project, led by Concomitentes, has been awarded a new grant from the European Commission's Creative Europe programme.

The European project ‘Art Living Lab to Repair the Land’ will address the work in three European territories (Germany, Croatia and Spain) that have undergone a process of industrial reconversion and whose legacy has meant alterations in the landscape or changes in the ways of life for local communities. This mutability requires a constant process of reassembly that allows us to think about the future of these places. The challenge is to see how participatory art can contribute to support or encourage this anticipation of what is timidly emerging in those territories that have suffered the consequences of the closure of polluting industries..

Just Transition is an act of justice with those territories and communities that suffered doubly the effects of a polluting industrialisation, therefore Art Living Lab to Repair the Land focuses on the concept of «ruins of modernity» (Crocker and Chiveralls, 2018), applying it to those social and environmental legacies that remain in the territories after having been exploited during a certain economic activity that has subsequently been abandoned.

Reparation is conceived as an action that considers crises as propitious moments to analyse reconfigurations and not only as a rehabilitation of that which has been damaged, but as a commitment to making anew, to re-creating together. Hence the power of art and participation, the pivotal points of a project that will take place over the next two years in Barruelo de Santullán (Palencia), Wietstock (Germany) and Šibenik (Croatia), in collaboration with the organisations: Concomitentes (Spain), Kunstverein Rügen e.V. / KVR (Germany). Association for Interdisciplinary and Intercultural Research (Croatia), Fundación RIA (Spain), Ciudad de la energía - CIUDEN (Spain). Neue Auftraggeber / GNA (Germany), the Daniel and Nina Carasso Foundation (France / Spain), the Municipality of Barruelo de Santullan, the Municipality of Altwigshagen, Dorfhaus Wietstock e.V., Bröllin International Art Research Location and the Museum of the City of Šibenik. 

This new European project is a further step in Concomitentes' strategy to continue leading citizen art projects that focus on sustainability. and the capacity of communities to care for their immediate territory.