It is not surprising to find that Zona Franca, the former commercial area of traditional industry, and 22@, the area recently zoned for logistic and technological capitalism, are part of a huge real estate operation publicised under the umbrella of Barcelona's post-industrial urban renewal. So, what economic and symbolic benefits do they generate, and for whom? What advantages do companies and institutions gain from this symbiosis? And what about the workers?

Theory and practice of care

"Loneliness is on the rise. "Mainstream discourse hides the fact that the ‘normal’ situation of a 40-hour working week, plus daycare, plus grandma for tricky times, does not just leave room for improvement, it is downright unacceptable.”

Carolina del Olmo, where is my tribe?

In Sweden – an extreme case of Western trends within the Protestant tradition –, over 50% of the population live alone. People also die alone, forgotten by everyone, after a lifetime of pursuing the desire for personal independence, adapting to social norms, comforts, and socialisation without physical contact. The dream of an independent life, free from community bonds and patriarchal family ties, has turned out to be a nightmare of loneliness, sadness, and existential emptiness.

We need to overcome the binary oppositions that lead us to choose between two almost equally bad options. We don’t have to go back to the old, strictly patriarchal family, but we shouldn’t have to settle for metropolitan solitude either. The idea is to create and experiment with other ways of living and loving.

"According to anthropologist and primatologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, female lab rats locked in cages with only their young for company started to behave in a manner very similar to 1950s American housewives, with their obsessions and their neuroses. But when observed in the wild, mothers and their offspring showed a wide range of different behaviours in all kinds of social contexts."

                                                                                                                                                             Carolina del Olmo, Where is My Tribe ?

In the documentary The Swedish Theory of Love , a Swedish social worker investigating the growing number of people who die abandoned, completely isolated, asks: “What does it matter if I have a million in the bank if I am not happy?” But it’s not just about achieving happiness, it’s about the immense somnambulant sadness washing over a decaying civilization, where life unfolds in the midst of the epiphany of a mountain of waste. “ Did you hear that? It is the sound of your world collapsing ,” say the Zapatistas. Individual independence is the catastrophic ideal of a world that is perfectly organised and efficient but cold as ice.

“ At the end of independence there is no happiness. At the end of independence there is the emptiness of life, the insignificance of life, and utter, unimaginable boredom.”

                                                                                                                       Zygmunt Bauman, interviewed in The Swedish Theory of Love

Wanja is a documentary about “the Block”, through the eyes of Auntie Barb and the life of Wanja, her blue heeler dog, recently deceased. The community on the Block's many and varied stories of Wanja reflect on the issues affecting this indigenous community in the heart of Sydney. Auntie Barb is an elder of Redfern's community: Wanja was an integral part of the community, known to all for her ability to sniff out the police -in uniform and undercover- “the Block's guardian angel”. Through Wanja, Aunty Barb and the community's memories of this tenacious, loyal, smart and loving dog tell of the early days on the Block when there were elders and families, good housing and a strong sense of community. The stories of Wanja tell us how the tension between the community and police escalated, why the housing has continued to deteriorate and largely been demolished, and why the strength of the community - it's elders, moved on. Aunty Barb was one of the last elders forced off the Block. In spite of this, Aunty Barb continues to call the Block her community and home.

City planners decide to pull down parts of Shanghai's old town in order to regenerate the city. Every year more than one hundred thousand families are forced to leave their homes and move into buildings on the edge of city. Under construction is a two- and three- dimentional flight across the now destroyed living areas of Shanghai which shows how random and brutal decisions can affect peoples's lives.

Everywhere in the parks and on the river bank of the Osaka river one sees blue tents or barracks covered with blue plastic tarps - at times scattered throughout the park area, sometimes lined up in rows, or united to form small communities. The term homelessness only insufficiently describes the situation of these No-jukusha - the campers in the rough. Without any budget and only the simple camera at the place the reason to start the documentary was the threat of evictions of homeless tents from parks. Now the film is used in Osaka as a tool against new evictions by No-juku-sha, andbecame a vehicle of articulation for those who live outside of the Japanese society.

“Located in the historic city center, the once old former Barrio Chino had become a succulent real estate treat waiting to be carved up. To the North, a legion of civilians holed up in museums, universities and centers of contemporary culture waiting until the police finished clearing the streets of the destitute. To the South, the deputies of the tourism industry unloaded the hordes of the idle from the modern cruise ships anchored in the port. It was the start of an all-out siege, a war that fed on the city's streetwalkers. The battle was waged one house at a time...”

While the housing bubble was deflating across the US, an explosion of demolition and construction was steadily transforming Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Open House documents the brutal nature of the development spree which occurred as a result of the neighborhood's re-zoning from light manufacturing/residential to the loosening of codes that allowed for forty-story towers on the waterfront. This video chronicles a neighborhood being literally torn apart by outside developers capitalizing on a frenzied housing market, and locals under pressure to “sell out” while the price is right.

ECOSYSTEMIC MEMORIES OF THE CITY

NON-SUBMISSIVE LANDSCAPES

ECOSYSTEMIC MEMORIES OF THE CITY

Collaboration with Bornlab (El Borne CCM) for a collective approach to the contemporary imaginary of natural resources and territory, based on the sharing of current geopolitical issues that have an echo in the city of Barcelona.

This edition of the community studies group "Ecosystemic memories of the city" proposes a series of sessions in which we collectively approach the contemporary imaginary of natural resources and territory, based on the sharing of some current geopolitical issues that have an echo in the city of Barcelona.

Natural resources and the territory, based on the sharing of some current geopolitical issues that have an echo in the city of Barcelona. Through the contributions of various entities and people who connect us with critical archives, social actions and cultural initiatives in the city, we will address the recovery of community forms of agricultural social organization in contemporary pedagogies, images and slogans of movements for the protection of the land, as well as the reflection, from various worldviews, on cultural heritage and in connection with environmental issues that affect different international contexts.

The programme is organised in a participatory methodology that includes working groups where knowledge is pooled and perspectives are shared between guests and participants. In the different meetings, cultural proposals are discussed to explore the relationship between memory, community and ecology through collaborative experimentation and public action, which are included in the fanzine that is distributed in the closing session.

The Community Studies Group is a proposal of Bornlab, the community mediation programme of Borne CCM with the support of community mediation programme of Borne CCM in collaboration with Coalició Prou Complicitat amb Israel, La Colectiva de Chilenas de Barcelona, Comunitat Palestina de Barcelona, Laboratorio Móvil, OVNI (observatori de Vídeo No identificat) , Ruangrupa i docents i investigadores de l’Institut Català d’Antropologia, el Col·legi de Psicòlegs de Barcelona, l’Escola Massana and la Universitat de Barcelona.

Further information and registration: elbornculturaimemoria

NON-SUBMISSIVE LANDSCAPES

Thursday 8.2.24 from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.

Through the audiovisual archive, we will reflect on movements led by communities in Chiapas, Palestine and Ecuador who are

Chiapas, Palestine and Ecuador who are organising themselves against the deterioration of their ecosystems and claiming the right to use and protect their land.

1_ Land and traditions

“Radical Imagination (Carnivals of Resistance)” is the second part of the “Entre sueños” (Between Waking and Sleeping) series. It deals with the “Global carnival against capital”, an action staged by the Reclaim the Streets movement in London on June 18, 1999, which brought urban commercial life to a standstill. The City of London, a world financial centre and a major hub of international capital, was paralysed, and the protest developed into an epicentre of a political current that reappropriated the idea of the carnival as a tool that points to new approaches of the occupation and formation of public space in recent anti-globalization movements.