She holds a degree from the School of Architecture and Design and Urban Planning at the University of Buenos Aires and Higher degree in Plastic Arts at the Escola Llotja in Barcelona. Her work hinges on urban space seen as a group identity which is constantly changing and under construction. The outcome of her work was the project titled Un lugar en el mundo, which consisted of visiting several street schools in Dakar and to exchange materials with children attending the schools.

More about the project (PDF)>

Abdoul Aziz Cissé
January-February 2008

He studied at the National School of Arts in Dakar and at the Daniel Brottier Centre for Communication in Saint-Louis. Since the early years of this decade he has specialised in documentaries, his documentary titled La Brèche (2007) is worthy of mention since it won the Grand Prix for short films and a Special Mention by the Panel in Recontres Cinématographiques in Cerbère (France) in 2007, and Best Film and Best Documentary at the Festival du Film de Quartier in Dakar in 2007. Cissé believes in cinema which portrays the true Africa –not clichés on the continent’s poverty and hunger-, and in supporting national cinema as a way to train and educate.

During his stay at Can Xalant he carried out the project on the documentary called The Lighthouse on the life of African immigrants in Catalonia based on people who explain the reasons why they decided to emigrate, their living conditions since they arrived and their view on life here.

Roser Caminal is studying at the Faculty of Fine Arts at Barcelona University and carries out creative processes with different formats, though recently she has focused on contextual and social works. Among her most recent works worthy of highlighting are Sundaying city presented at the Post-it. Ciutats ocasionals exhibition (2008), the video Fat girls stay single (2008) and critical essay Street signs for the Sociology Magazine at the University of London.

Domingos de azul y amarillo. Recorridos “canaya” de Rosario, is the documentary she directed during her stay at the El Levante centre. Starting from two previous ideas –belonging to a specific group and their use of public spaces– and using the “hinchada canaya” (the supporters of Atlético Rosario Central football club) group as a model which cover several social levels and are characterised by their actions in public spaces, both for sports and social themes, she “mapped” the city with the aim of showing the living city as a real experience compared to the city as a brand which the municipality offers.

Text to download (PDF):
“Domingos de azul y amarillo. Recorridos “canaya” de Rosario”, Roser Caminal. 

Cecilia Font
June-July 2008

She obtained a degree in Fine Arts at the Universidad Nacional de Rosario, and carries out art processes with different formats, focusing part of her studies on contextual or social works. She sees art as a movement that is able to build links of sharing and establish networks, and to actively be involved in collectively inhabiting areas. During her stay in Can Xalant she worked on developing light, mobile and adaptable structures for different scenarios able to house temporary, creative individual or collective leisure events in public areas.

She focuses her work on creating foldable prototypes which, like an extension of one’s body, may fold by adopting different shapes and functions. She sketches geometric patterns and diagrams which show waves in territories in the form of maps with the valleys and mountains, thus codifying the meaning of the folds to be made.

All the patterns she created fitted in with epidermal structures with different degrees of flexibility and adaptability, the ability of going back to their original state after taking different shapes, thus somehow preserving the memory of actions which have been made on them.

These patterns folded over each other finally end up with shapes that look like nests and stalks. They shape the space wherever they go either individually or connected with each other. The diagrams and prototypes were made on paper and polypropylene and part of the frame was made of recycled vinyl-like material from advertising.

Holds a degree and is lecturer of Fine Arts at the Faculty of Humanities and Arts at Universidad Nacional de Rosario, Argentina. Since 1995 he has worked in collaboration with artists, experts and activists in Argentina and Spain in aesthetic events linked to public areas and the media, researching ways to build free programs and seeking analogies with the field of arts.

During his stay at Can Xalant he conducted his project Sincita Mataró, which consisted of seeking fragments of texts in the blogosphere and locations in the city to install them n the shape of a sign. These locations stemmed from the relationship he built with several citizens in Mataró. Thus, he moved the fragments of hand-painted texts from blogs, and installed them in urban spaces in Mataró. Finally, through photographs which documented these installations, the texts were returned to the blogosphere.

http://soyfaca.com.ar/

Vicente Vázquez
May-June 2009

He is an expert in Graphic art and Advertising (advertising graphic art) and studied Fine Arts at the uclm, University of Castilla-la Mancha, Cuenca. He is a member of the weareQQ group.

During the exchange, the artist staged the project You Kant Max Mix, a cooperation project based on recording new remixes on Max Mix 5, the first recordings of mixes published in Barcelona by Max Music Productions in the 1980s. He uses as his basis the first remix recordings published in Spain to mix them again by changing the original composition of Max Mix 5 by adding new beats and sounds to the original audio tape and by divulging the idea of authorship in more group work.

You Kant Max Mix has as a backdrop a reflection on copyright, new digital media and their gradual and careful formalization towards the strict harsh “Charge Law”. The webpage is a blog which includes important data on the project. So far he has uploaded both current news concerning the dispute of managing rights, the culture of remix and openings to music practices whose economies exemplify feasible alternatives to the current dominant model of production and distribution.

http://weareqq.com/

Claudio is an architect who studied at the Universidad Técnica Federico Santa María in Chile, and is a member of the Arquitectura Disidente group and the former editor of the students of architecture group Criptonita. He has edited the book titled Propagations: Exploring New Scenarios and Technological Research Fields (2008), has conducted research into the field of architecture such as “Exploring software as a tool of capitalization” (2008) and “Intelligent Cover Reacting to Climate Stimuli” (2009), in the Students’ Academic Research Programme (PI>A) at utfsm in Chile.

During his visit to Can Xalant he conducted the project titled Sound Cartography as Visualizing Urban Data in Barcelona: the Forum of Cultures in Barcelona led to a series of transformations on the city’s urban landscape and has not had much success in improving the existing social fabric, which can clearly be seen in the public spaces designed for the Forum. Sound Cartography is a project about developing a cartographic methodology which seeks to determine the intensity of usage of public spaces by visualizing places ranging from the Forum to the Parc del Besòs, opposite the poor la Mina neighbourhood.

http://arquitecturadisidente.wordpress.com

Pau Faus
August-September 2010

He obtained his degree in Technical Architecture from the etsab, and combines his work as an ar- chitect with several creative and research projects focusing on the dynamics which are part of eve- rything we understand as being public space. A number of these projects have taken part in exhibitions in places such as the cccb in Barcelona or La Panera in Lleida and others are the result of personal initiatives or specific commissions from towns or independent exhibition directors. He has published a book titled Retired City, taught workshops in Brazil and Argentina and staged several shows and projects with Osservatorio Nomade.

During his visit to Valparaíso he staged the project titled The Unfinished House. Based on the premise presented by the Forum of Cultures held in Valparaíso –the old town in the city was declared a World Heritage site by unesco, and the core theme of the Forum was the idea of “heritage” from a tourist and market perspective, without bearing in mind the social networks that form it. The project started from the need to define and uncover vestiges of heritage in Valparaíso which avoided this hegemonic logic. Hence in the Cordillera hills, far from the tourist areas of the city, an area which has a quite peculiar style of housing, it was decided that a study would be conducted on one of these houses to establish the factors that determine its morphology and ways of life therein. A platform was built on the chosen house, whose roof is at street level and hangs on the edge of a ravine on four different levels: the house is genealogical since its style is directly related to the history of the family who lives there; the house grows as the family grows, and this does not occur in other places and cities, it becomes another kind of heritage.

http://www.paufaus.net
to see the publication>

Educated as a painter he began a series of installations, sculptures and videos after 2000 which delve into the relationship between identity/body/space. Recently he conducted several interventions in public and urban spaces and videos on social issues. He has participated in events such as the 3rd Bienal do Mercosul (Porto Alegre), the Bienal do Barro de Sao Paulo, Biennial of Valencia and also in festivals such as Festival Internacional VideoBrazil or Festival de Cinema Latinoamericano de Sao Paulo and has exhibited at the Museu de Arte Sacra de Bahia, Art and Media Centre ZKM (Germany) and in other South American cities such as Maracaibo (Venezuela) or Quito (Ecuador).

During his visit to Can Xalant he made several videos and photographs related with the centre’s surroundings and the people who carry out activities there.

Jordi Mitjà
July-August 2010

Jordi Mitjà’s work, formally heterogeneous, conceptual in nature, finds inspiration in the images of everyday life which the artist constantly records. He collects experiences, images, invents situations, delves into collections and provides actions to examine the simplest human reactions when faced with unexpected circumstances. He extracts and invents from reality, in the form of treating film or creating publications or objects, his work raises doubts about the individual, social behaviour and art.

http://www.jordimitja.com/

Art critic and freelance exhibition organiser she holds a degree in Fine Arts and a master in Communication and Art Critics from Girona University. She won the Espais 2002 Award for Art Critics and combines her usual activities with contributing to the supplement Cultura/s in La Vanguardia newspaper, with articles and comic strips for other publications and fanzines with appearances on the radio and television (Paramount Comedy). As an organiser of exhibitions her projects feature issues regarding the analysis of audiovisual images popular culture and critical dissertation on the way contemporary art works. Mery Cuesta has drawn cartoons for some 3 years. Her most popular comic book is called Caída y auge de Antxon Amorrortu (Ed. Iguapop Gallery) and is a satirical view of how contemporary art works. She also publishes comic strips featuring the character of Merycuestasuperheroína for the TMEO magazine. Her project for the residence in Platform Garanti focused on analysing comic books as a critical element and researched the way comics and fanzines were produced and distributed in Istanbul. This research ended up as a comic book called Istanbul Zombie 2066.

www.merycuesta.com
 

-Comics as a critical feature_
The process of drawing a comic is personally a way of exercising my freedom and which includes the difficulty of combining text, image and design. This complexity however is a language which I firmly believe is a magnificent fitting option to convey critical discourse and essays. Turkey has a long history of cartoonists and satirical caricaturists who are critical with the current regime. The circuit of distribution and printing these satires is quite peculiar, the methods of organising groups of cartoonists and due to the political risks they face and the economy of the production and vertiginous frequency which they are printed. The popularity of these cartoonists’ work is also tremendous. Amazing… 150,000 copies of each edition. Istanbul Zombie 2066 will have the co-operation of several Turkish cartoonists who work with different publishers (Penguin, Lombak…). This is the first time cartoonists from different Turkish magazines work together for a joint publication. Istanbul Zombie 2066 covers how comic books are produced in Istanbul and also reflects on how the ways of Turkish society are disappearing as it becomes more European, coinciding in a humorous way in some aspects of its popular culture, such as the pure stereotypes of the idols of traditional music or the surprising absence of the figure of zombies in films and comic books.

Mery Cuesta

Erkan Özgen
September-October 2008

Artist and exhibition organiser, he was awarded a degree from Faculty of Fine Arts by the University of Cukurova, Adana, in Turkey. This Kurdish artist’s work is mainly based on his coming from an oppressed land in Turkish Kurdistan, and he resorts to the use of the language of art by means of videos or photography to open up a breach in what he calls a screen of coercion and restriction. During his stay at Can Xalant the artist made a video called Origin, in which he performs a military parade with African immigrants residing in Mataró while they sing a typical song which refers to the pride of being Turkish. A metaphor on his own feelings of being a Kurd in a country he does not consider his own.

www.erkan-ozgen.blogspot.com

A researcher and producer of culture. She holds a degree in Fine Arts from the University of Barcelona and a Master in Curatorship from Goldsmiths College, University of London. Her work is based on links between making art and critical theory related to feminism, transforming urban spaces and visual culture.

Her project carries out research with the aim of making a plan of group art practices on a social level in Istanbul, aiming to create reflection on new ways of depicting individual and group work. The project will be completed with a website and several publications, presentations and conferences on her research.

Text to download (PDF):
“General Notes on the Research Work”, Montse Romaní. 

Cevdet Erek
October-November 2008

Artist, musician and architect, he obtained his degree in Fine Arts at the Mimar Sinan University in Istanbul and studies at the Centre of Advanced Studies in Music in Istanbul and the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam. He uses sounds and rhythms, movement of images and objects, constructions and performances to create intense experiences capturing and reformulating areas and situations. Cevdet Erek has exhibited his works at places such as the Stedelijk CS museum, the Istanbul Biennial, the ZKM (Centre for art and media Karlsruhe), the Platform Garanti, V2_ (Institute for the Unstable Media in Rotterdam), Martin Gropius Bau (Berlin Festival), IFA Gallery (Stuttgart and Berlin), MOMAS (Museum of Modern Art Saitama), and Living Art Museum in Reykjavík.

During his stay he was involved in the virtual area of Can Xalant –his web page- changing some of his pictures to create a new personal view of the centre. He also made a temporary structure for the centre’s courtyard, Shading Monument for the artist, a sculptural and architectural construction in which the structure is a text that can only be read when projected as a shadow, wich was exhibited in 2011 at the Tate Modern in London and at the Darat al Funun centre of Amman, Jordan.

http://cevdeterek.wordpress.com/

Jasmina Llobet and Luis Fernández-Pons live between Berlin and Barcelona and have worked as an art group since 2002. The project conducted in Istanbul was Towelflag, an ephemeral intervention in the public space in Istanbul. A piece of white towel measuring some 60 metres hanging from two existing flagpoles n the fa- cade of the former headquarters of Platform Garanti Contemporary Art Centre, situated in on of the most central streets in Istanbul. The white flags fall from the flagpoles –found on the third floor – and enter the windows on the first floor, passing rooms and corridors till reaching the washrooms, where they end up hanging from a towel rack, and can be used as a hand towel. In the midst of a noisy explosion of vendors, neon lights and the overwhelming visual and acoustic cacophony of this street, Towelflag is presented as a tranquil and partially hidden work, fully accessible only by the building’s security guard, the only person who can use the flag as a towel.

http://www.jasminallobet.net/

Yasemin Özcan Kaya
September-October 2009

Graduated from the Department of Ceramics at the University of Mimar Sinan, and from 2005 to 2007 participated in the exchange programme developed by North-Rhine Westphalia, Germany.
Her work is based on the crossroads of art and politics, civil society, cultural and social policies and gender identities.
Her most recent projects are mainly photography and video installations.
During her stay at Can Xalant she conducted the project Theories of Everyday Life. The project focused on detecting the tiny details and habits of some people when doing daily tasks –making biscuits, designing furniture or sorting clothes– they do this with an almost obsessive pattern. The result will be a video which will talk about these apparently insignificant daily jobs that become significant according to who does them and how they are done.

http://www.yaseminozcankaya.com/

Visual artist, he is a techer of the Pole Arts Action, HEAD (Haute École d’Art et de Design) in Geneva and head of teaching at l’École Superieure de Beaux-Arts in Perpignan. He lives and works in Barcelona, Geneva and Perpignan. For years Josep-Maria Martín’s art projects have focused on creating new intervention strategies in certain consolidated structures of today’s society through art, but this is not lacking in fractures. He raises doubts about and criticises the world he decided to work in with a subjective and reflexive will. His works underline the idea of process, research, participation, implication and negotiation, turning the agents identified in each project into the true creators of common project.

During his stay at Matucana 100 this artist carried out the projects titled Made in Chile and A roof for Chile.

Text to download:
“Made in Chile and a Roof for Chile”, Josep-Maria Martín.

www.josep-mariamartin.com

Walmor Corrêa
Exchange with Base 7, Sao Paulo
October-November 2008

El primer contacte real de l’artista amb l’art va tenir lloc a partir de les classes de ciència i biologia a l’escola. Les disseccions i l’estudi de l’anatomia de petits animals, els estudis sobre la flora i la fauna amazòniques i l’observació de les pintures i dibuixos científics tradicionals dels museus d’història natural, seran les seves fonts d’inspiració. Walmor Correa pinta éssers totalment fantàstics basant-se en mites i llegendes de Brasil. Durant la seva estada a Can Xalant l’artista va realitzar el projecte Salamanca do Jarau: partint d’una llegenda antiga del sud de Brasil –que parla d’una princesa mora que va arribar a Brasil des de Salamanca i que per un encanteri d’un bruixot indi es convertí en un ésser híbrid, meitat dona, meitat salamandra, la Salamanca do Jarau o Teiniaguá- l’artista va treballar amb dones del barri de la Mina de Barcelona que suporten situacions d’exclusió social, establint un paral·lelisme entre el personatge de la llegenda popular i la vida d’aquestes dones.

www.walmorcorrea.com.br

Holds a degree from the Faculty of Fine Arts at University of Barcelona and studied a Master referring to the study of Women, Gender and Citizens at the same University.

Her work focuses on provoking a reflection on social aspects related to the situation of women in the world through videos, photography or installations, combining strategies of journalism, documentary or conceptual art with dynamics of social work.

During her stay at Sao Paulo she made the project Eu Brazileira, a reflection on how the stereotype of Brazilian women projected in the media affects them, where 38 women of different ages and social classes participated, and interviewed in relation to this stereotype. Later debates were held and an exhibition with the photographs and videos recorded.

Claudia del Fierro
Exchange with Matucana 100 (Santiago de Chile)
September-October 2009

Holds a degree in fine Art from the University of Chile, and her latest projects have been related to groups or small communities working from the search for disputes. Her work is performance oriented. The behaviour of humans in groups and the relationship between he centre and margin is a constant aspect of her work.

During her stay at Can Xalant she worked with styles related to newly arrived migrant gypsies who temporarily occupy public areas and the differences of how the gypsy people are identified within the hegemony of the local area where they live. This difference and its connotations for the local sur- roundings were the leitmotif of this work.

After conducting thorough research, a script arose for a video which addressed the issue of the differences, not only the differences of ethnic groups that are marginalized but also the differences as needs to build identity, survive as a group, provide culture programmes to allow modern art production. Both this material and the styles of landscapes and journeys form a video-installation that was the result of the project.

Participants: Associació Cultural Gitana de Mataró and el Maresme, Pla d’en Boet Neighbours Associa- tion, Aula de Teatre de Mataró.

http://www.claudiadelfierro.org

She holds a degree in Fine Arts (University Jorge Tadeo Lozano in Bogotá and the Higher School of Fine Arts in Paris). In her career worthy of mention are her awards, internships and international residence periods together with a long line of exhibitions.

Un cuento personal, is a project by Ana Patricia carried out during her stay at Can Xalant based on interviews recorded on video made with several teenagers. During her stay she also published a video titled Coming to blows.
 

-A personal story-
This came out of narrative, storytelling, life stories where adolescents from different backgrounds tell, sing, opine and transcribe their personal experiences about their sexuality and daily routines. When does a fantasy become a dream or nightmare? Fact and real-life? Entering this other reality which adolescents in our culture experience, understanding why it occurs, where the “no future” lies or the “imagined” future of adolescents who bring into this world human beings, like dolls to play with. Why do adolescents focus their future and emotional security on another imagined one? Man, who in most cases in our culture as an adolescent, becomes a ghost, when reality shows its ugly head. Videos and graphic oeuvres are a register, where adolescents envisage dreams and daily routines, which can be as mistaken as the truth this involves.

Ana Patricia Palacios

Verónica Aguilera
July 2007

She holds a degree from the University of Belles Arts de Sant Jordi in Barcelona, and lives and works between Mataró and Frankfurt. Her work includes projects related with public art, critical involvement and social interaction. She has a long list of exhibitions. The result of her work was the project No me digas ke fue AMOR, a project involved with public space, with the collaboration of the citizens of Medellín.
 

-No me digas que fue amor-
This project aimed to do research into the social problems in the city of Medellín by directly asking people: what are your problems?, with the purpose of facing both subjective and/or personal problems and also those of a more general nature. Problem for sale was just one of these ideas. This project was open to all kinds of people with the help of citizens, their institutions, schools and particularly their youth. In the 15 days the laboratory lasted, over three thousand problems were collected from different people on a display designed for the event. This was a symbolic even where people writing the problem could publicize it so as to shed it. This idea was carried out by means of a series of posters and a mural painted outside which reflected on each participant and provided the essential foundations for the problems aired in the laboratory: education from institutions, the commercialization and use of of personal problems by consumerism and the use of areas of privacy and intimacy of the youths. Finally the project was accompanied by a kiosk filled with all the problems which was moved to a public area in the foyer of the Colombo Americano Centre. In this centre the public was invited to buy the problems of others which were collected and to reflect on these: Does this problem seem trivial? Do you identify yourself with it? Do you think it has a solution? Would you swap it for one of yours? All this work, i.e., the displays full of problems, the mural, posters and kiosk, form a circle of relations which invite one to think of public areas as places where we may materialize our ideas on art and creativity.

Verónica Aguilera

The laboratory which included the two selected artists was Latin kings – Including the Youth in Building the Community. Both the Catalan artist and the Colombian artist participated in the activities (workshops, producing the work with the community, intensive seminars with university students …) and they carried out an sculptural and visual design with the community during the period of joint work.

Si o què? Is a project which forms part of the work which Miquel Garcia, the artist from Catalonia selected to be part of the exchange, made in Medellín, together with the chosen Colombian artist, Fredy Serna.

All the process of research and production involved in the exchange finished with Fredy Serna staying at Can Xalant, where he worked together with Miquel Garcia in organising the documentation obtained throughout this process and by forming it into an exhibition at the centre, Mi casa es tu casa.