Concomitentes is a non-profit organization founded in June 2018. It promotes a program for producing artworks commissioned by the citizenry through a process of mediation between art and society. This program emphasizes the importance of art in social life and, to do so, it proposes a new system of art production that involves transforming cultural policy.

Thanks to the generous support and impetus provided by the Daniel and Nina Carasso Foundation, Concomitentes begins its existence in Spain with a solid pilot project in which other public and private organisms will take part in the coming years.

Between 2018 and 2020, mediators Felipe G. Gil (ZEMOS98), Fran Quiroga, Julia Morandeira and Veronica Valentini will respectively accompany pilot concomitancias in Tenerife (Canary Islands), Betanzos (Galicia), Madrid (Community of Madrid) and Barcelona (Catalonia).

At the same time, these mediators and Concomitentes' coordinator, Sören Meschede, will share knowledge of this art-production model with possible patrons, sponsors and cultural agents to successively receive new commissions from anywhere in the country.

Concomitentes is the Spanish version of the French Nouveaux Commanditaires program. Its basis was established by artist François Hers in 1990 when he drew up a protocol that laid out the terms and conditions necessary for reestablishing art production as a part of social fabric.

Through this methodology, society can become the patrons [comitentes] of an artist's work. This is thus a response with infinite possibilities intended to address a need or demand formulated by the patrons. The process of negotiation and co-creation among the different parties involved (patrons, artists, sponsors, public or private organisms and all other participating social agents) is accompanied by a mediator who works throughout the process to concretize the patrons' demand, propose the right artist for the commission and accompany the development of the process of collective creation, thus assuring the work's production.

The resulting artworks are both the artist's pieces as well as the culmination of a shared undertaking that reflects the will of everyone involved. Financed with private and public funds, they become the property of the patrons [comitentes] with a value determined by the use and symbolic importance assigned to them by those patrons and by the collective of which they become a part.

The processes require a high degree of commitment by all involved parties. Two or more years can easily pass between the first contact and the formalization of the artwork. But this co-creation by artists, citizens and mediators generates something truly transformative: artworks with a deeper tie to society.

If you want to know more about other embodiments of this program, feel free to consult: