Transitory Landscapes Laboratory

Since its creation, CeRCCa has aimed at linking the local and the global, while at the same time developing a constructive dialogue between what is understood as theory and what we denominate as practice. It is with this objective that CeRCCa complements it’s A.I.R program with other international research and curatorial projects.

CeRCCa was born from a mentoring initiative developed with the support of the London South Bank University (LSBU) through its Creative Media Arts and Critical Arts Management Program. This two-year period of research culminated in the first initiative developed by CeRCCa in 2009, the FURNISH ME! Workshops, the experimental documentary A Winter Ritual that aimed at investigating the possibilities of integration between CeRCCa and its immediate community, and a research paper entitled Theory As Practice, a Practitioner based Research on CeRCCa Local Context.
After these two years of research, and thanks to the different connections established through the LSBU mentoring initiative, CeRCCa actively engaged in several national and international projects. The international approach started by joining the main A.I.R international networks such as Trans Artists and Res Artis, as well as other regional initiatives such as the Anna Lindh Foundation, a network that works for the promotion of intercultural dialogue in the Mediterranean, and Xarxaprod, the network of artistic production centers of Catalonia as well as the project Obert per Reflexio organized by Centre d’Art de Tarragona.

Between 2009 and 2013, CeRCCa has participated in projects related to both the theory and practice of artistic and cultural mobility. The theoretical projects have been materialized through the research papers Theory as Practice, a Practitioner Based Research on CeRCCa’s Local Context, The HyperMobile Icarus or the Social and Ethical Responsibilities of Artists-In-Residency Today and Nomadism and Commodification.
The practice of theory has been implemented with the participation in several international projects such as T.R.I.B.E – The Transitory Research Initiative for the Balkans and Eastern Europe, a project being developed by MoTa (Ljubljana, Slovenia) and N.A.C.M.M – The North Africa Cultural Mobility Map, a project that is being developed in conjunction with the Egyptian based organization El Madina for Performing and Digital Arts (Alexandria, Egypt) and initially funded by the Anna Lindh Foundation.

These projects would not have been possible without the support of different funding institutions such as the Catalan Arts Council and the Oficina de Suport a les Iniciatives Cultural of the Generalitat de Catalunya, the Spanish Ministry of Culture, the European Cultural Foundation, the Erasmus Young Entrepreneur Program, Cimetta Fund and Anna Lindh Foundation, as well as the promotional support of Trans Artists, Res Artis, and the H-Net Humanities and Social Sciences Network.

The transitory condition and changeable nature of the landscape gives the name to the project, as there are as many landscapes as experiences of it. ‘Transitory Landscapes Laboratory’ , TransLAND Lab., is a project based on the connection between art, geography and territory that aims at creating new discourse and artistic experiences about the elements that configure contemporary landscapes. Talking about landscape is talking about perception and we are talking about senses and the human body . TransLAND Lab. is based on the exploration of the multisensory nature, the intangible values and the multiplicity of existing landscapes through the body and sensory lived experience. TransLAND Lab. links theory and practice, combining this dichotomy. This relationship is considered in both directions : the practice leads to theory, and theory into practice. The aim is to develop a cross-cultural study on the perception of the body and the environment complemented with texts by contemporary Western and Eastern studies : Christine Greiner, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Yi-Fu Tuan, Augustin Berque Francesco Careri, Joan Nogué Watsuji Tetsuro, Shigegisha Kuryama, among others. The starting point of this analysis is the research on concepts such as fudo and fudo-sei as conceptualized by Watsuji Tetsuro. The starting point to to study the subjectivities of the landscape and the individual and collective imaginary of the people who inhabit the areas where TransLAND Lab. is developed.

The methodology of TransLAND Lab. is open to the site and to the community of the site. The work is developed at individual and collective level and is articulated through various actions: Landscape’s experiences: performances in the site (landscape’s choreography) video creation, links and relationships with the local community: walks, drifts, workshops, collective choreography and emotional mapping with the aim to participate in the process of sensibilitzation of landscape’s conflict and climate’s change . An important character of TransLAND Lab. is the interdisciplinary (artists, geographers, landscapers , architects…) and the heterogeneous nature and versatility of the professionals involved.

Zoe Balasch