A Confined Place is a collective artistic initiative dedicated to exploring how confinement -due to the COVID-19 pandemic- is transforming our relationship with the spaces we inhabit in the period of seclusion, or with those we stopped inhabiting. The program is part of the A-Place project, co-financed by the Creative Europe Programme (2019-2023) and coordinated by La Salle-URL Technical School of Architecture and Building (ETSALS).
Based on the application of creative practices, the A-Place project aims to explore new ways of creating connections between people and places, and also between people through places. A Confined Place joins as well initiatives that aim to use digital technologies to support creativity and the exchange of ideas beyond social, cultural and geographic boundaries, in the current confinement time.
A COLLECTIVE REFLECTION ON PLACES IN TIMES OF CONFINEMENT
The activities of the A Confined Place program that have been developed so far include a blog and an open call for the reception of multimedia works carried out during confinement. The blog contains photographs and texts produced by the students of the Representation Systems subject in the third year of the Architecture program at La Salle-URL, and is open to students from other educational institutions, from secondary schools to universities, in any subject and field of knowledge. "The blog is a summary of visual and textual reflections about the personal experience of each student about the space in which they are confined" says Leandro Madrazo, professor of the ETSALS and head of the project. "At the same time, it is the expression of a collective feeling of a place that reflects the global dimension of this way of living that we are sharing; a place without defined limits, a suspended time that includes us all equally.
Students participating in A Confined Place reflect on how our relationship with spaces changes as we live in a confined environment and by communicating with the outside world through digital media after leaving urban spaces. "As we are confined in our homes, we are discovering and reinventing ways to use domestic space, expanding its boundaries through telematic networks, and turning previously neglected spaces - such as balconies - into public spaces, in order to respond to the need to keep being part of a community, despite the confinement”, explains Madrazo.
People and institutions interested in contributing to the blog can contact info@a-place.eu
PROMOTING CREATIVITY IN CONFINED SPACES
A Confined Place seeks to turn the current restrictions into an opportunity to promote creativity and the exchange of ideas beyond disciplinary, social, cultural and geographical limits, exploiting the capabilities of digital technologies and media to this aim. At the same time, and along with the blog, a call has been opened to all those who wish to share their reflections -through texts and drawings, photomontages and photographs, audiovisual works and performances- on the experience of living confined. Work pieces presented on social networks will be awarded in two categories: ‘Living in confined places’, on the experience of time and space during confinement, and ‘Transformation of confined places’, focused on the changes experienced in domestic spaces.
Work pieces can be submitted via Facebook and Instagram until May 31st, 2020.
A-PLACE, FRAMEWORK OF THE INITIATIVE
A Confined Place is structured under the wings of A-Place (www.a-place.eu), a programme co-financed by the Creative Europe Programme (2019-2023) and led by La Salle-URL - ETSALS, in which higher education institutions such as the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Ljubljana (Slovenia), the Department of Architecture of the KU Leuven (Belgium) and the University Nova Lisboa (Portugal) also collaborate. In addition, multidisciplinary artist groups and cultural agencies also join the initiative, such as Alive Architecture (Belgium), prostoRož (Slovenia), Urban Gorillas (Cyprus), Screen Projects (Spain) and City Space Architecture (Italy).
The project began in October 2019. Activities will be carried out over the next four years, including interventions in the public space and exhibitions, documentaries and video art, along with the artists, architects and students’ collaboration, and the involvement of citizens and local entities, as well as of civic and cultural associations. With these activities, A-Place aims to become a platform to promote debate and reflection on the sense of belonging, attachment to places and the sense of identity linked to them.