Culturnautes 2020

 

How it would be Culturnautes this summer?

The security protocols that we have to follow this summer in order to carry out leisure activities force us to drastically reduce the capacity of the Culturnautes day camp, profoundly affecting their organization. Facing up the serious situation that the Raval district is experiencing, which is directly affecting the children and young people who live there, we offer all the summer camp places for groups coming from the social entities of the neighborhood. That way we want to contribute, with the culture tools, to lighten the weight of a summer that will be extraordinarily difficult for some families.

 

Who’ll be presenting it?

Culturnautes 2020 lasts five weeks, with proposals formulated jointly by the CCCB and the collectives listed below:

 

• Voltes cooperativa d’arquitectura, a cooperative specializing in architecture and urbanism: bioconstruction and sustainability, rehabilitation and citizen participation.
• Big Bouncers, a dance company with extensive experience in teaching dance and contemporary creation. Created by Anna Rubirola, Cecilia Colacrai and Mireia de Querol, who currently manage La Visiva creation space. The workshop will be facilitated by Anna Rubiola, Mireia de Querol and Ursa Sekirnik.
• Angélica Dass, the photographer behind the Humanae project, who was launched to fame after giving a TED talk.
• Melania Henrich, Alejandro Palacín and Mònica Planes, artists, designers, researchers and teachers in the field of the arts and design.
• Companyia Olveira Salcedo, a company devoted to children’s and family puppet and shadow theatre shows, set up by puppeteers Olga Olveira and Juvenal Salcedo.

 

Summer day camp calendar

The street as a play laboratory

Week 1 - 29 June to 3 July

Experimental collective construction workshop to reflect on public space and itineraries as places to play. Facilitated by Voltes cooperativa d’arquitectura.

We move constantly through public space, walking along streets and across squares, moving in different ways, tracing different routes. Negotiating spaces invites us to record, to look carefully to see what we find in our path—or what we want to find! In week one, we want to transform these spaces of transit into new settings for play, regarding play as an essential activity for human beings and a right for children, when today the practice of play in public space is either displaced or strictly limited.

Culturnautes will create their proposals by collectively sketching, designing, building and producing models. The workshop sets out to highlight the gaze of children, experts in play, to reflect on public space.

On Friday 3 July, families will be invited to play and to share the proposals and reflections worked on during the week.

 

Trans-mission

Week 2 – From 6 to 10 July

This performance creation laboratory reflecting on the present and the imaginaries of the future is facilitated by Big Bouncers.

During the week, the culturnautes will land on a planet with a very strong magnetism that will force them to keep their distance from each other. In this new situation they will have to explore how they can communicate in the distance through movement.

Based on different game strategies, we will try to solve different unknowns: How is the space between you and me, is it empty, is it full? What strategies can we discover to measure space, rebuilding it through a shared imaginary? In this new reality how can we trans-form, trans-mit, trans-port? This will be a shared mission that we will all discover through play, movement, and imagination.

On Friday 10 July, families are invited to attend a performance that brings together some of the possible futures that the Culturnautes have imagined, a sample of the creative experimentation methodologies worked on during the week.

 

Artist’s box

Week 3 – From 13 to 17 July

Creation of an artist’s box, inspired by the artist’s book, to explore the way in which “I” and “we” fit into the world. Facilitated by the artist and photographer Angélica Dass.

The work of Angélica Dass invites children to reflect on racism by exploring skin colours and their associations with concepts such as beauty and power. Her playful dynamics set out to question the existence of a single, invariable flesh colour and prompt reflections on the cultural constructions surrounding diversity.

This journey towards self-meaning and recognition begins with a self-portrait workshop and continues with the construction of individual narratives about identity using family album images and archives. Typographic collages will help to build a cloud of words related to all the images and, to complete our artist box, there’ll be a design and exhibition workshop.

On Friday 17 July, families are invited to discover the symbolic universe of each of the Culturnautes.

 

Journey to Mars: creative research workshop

Week 4 – From 20 to 24 July

A look at forms of creative research by means of drawing in the framework of a fictional journey to Mars. Facilitated by Melania Henrich, Alejandro Palacín and Mònica Plane.

The CCCB is organizing an exhibition to reconsider Mars. The Red Mirror from different viewpoints and disciplines. The story we aim to unfold is polysemic and open, just like our current knowledge of the ultimate nature of the universe in which we live.

In week four, Culturnautes will use drawing techniques to carry out speculative research into a journey to Mars. Research will be based on fiction and imagination, and developed in a space of material exploration.

On Friday 24 July, families will be invited to discover the process of investigation carried out in the course of the week.

 

Lights and shadows of William Kentridge

Week 5 – From 27 to 31 July

Creation of a shadow theatre show inspired by the installation More Sweetly Play the Dance by William Kentridge at the CCCB, facilitated by the Companyia Olveira Salcedo.

Based on the introduction of pre-cinematographic techniques such as shadow theatre and puppet theatre, Culturnautes will create plays using images moving in two dimensions. In this way, we will explore the techniques that William Kentridge uses in his installation. To understand Kentridge’s work in conceptual terms, the workshop will reflect on the concepts of power and exclusion by means of everyday situations in our reality.

We will propose experimental games using the body and different objects to discover the main characteristics of shadows: opacity, transparency, large or small, outline, profile, depth and transformation. Despite the apparent simplicity of these characteristics, when they are used for dramatic purpose, we see that shadow theatre offers infinite expressive and communicative possibilities, combining different means such as dramatic, literary, visual, musical and body languages.

On Friday 31 July, families will be able to attend the shadow plays created by the Culturnautes.