Minarte will be a multidisciplinary festival which will bring together the mining landscape, experienced research and art through a biannual public contest. The aim of this contest is the activation and interpretation of the post-industrial landscape of La Carolina (Andalusia, Spain), whereby mining industries were essential. It.will put together education, heritage, architecture, art and environment tçthrough the guidelines established by the soulful stories of former miners and culture of work
Minarte (Spanish word for Mine+Art), will be a multidisciplinary festival which will bring together the mining landscape, experienced research and art through a biannual public contest. The aim of this contest is the activation and interpretation of the post-industrial landscape of La Carolina (Andalusia, Spain), whereby mining industries were an essential contributor to its economic, demographic and cultural development.
The chosen location for this idea is the territory of La Carolina, located in the former mining district of Linares-La Carolina which was, during the Industrial Revolution, one of the most important mining industries in the country becoming, during the 19th century, the world´s leading exporter of lead.
Nowadays, in addition to its geological and historical importance, the location still preserving quite a few vestiges of the mining activity that took place. Numerous buildings, slender chimneys, machinery, lugubrious mining galleries, hidden landscapes and heart-rending stories which, together with an imposing orography, conform the enormous attractive potential of this area.
Therefore Minarte, which has the patronage of the University of Seville (Instituto Universitario de Arquitectura y Ciencias de la Construcción) and La Carolina City Council, seeks to strengthen the heritage architectural and landscape resources of this territory through ephemeral land-art installations complemented by gastronomic, commercial and environment fairs related to the local economic activity. Furthermore, theatrical performances, seminars, lectures lead by specialists in these fields and other educational meetings will take place.
Minarte will put together education, heritage, architecture, art and environment through the guidelines established by the soulful stories of former miners who will place value on the culture of work, bringing the population closer to its history and industrial landscape, encouraging the identity and collective memory.
Please highlight how the concept/idea can be exemplary in this context
The proposal has been developed in a post-industrial landscape which was active until the early 80s. The territory, where this activity took place, has suffered several changes towards its territorial identity and collective memory loss.
Europe is suffering how certain territories involving towns and industrial operations have stopped their activities leaving these architectural buildings, chimneys and mining galleries in a complete isolated situation. Several cases are shown how these places are forgotten and on the other hand, new interventions are placed without any relevant historical trace instead of reusing and reinterpreting territories like in this post-industrial landscape. Because of these reasons, Minarte proposes a festival in a forgotten heritage like a manifesto for the isolated and not reused areas.
The idea has the intention to achieve a solution for locations where the environment is not cared, where the history is lost and society does not feel related to it anymore. But this festival concept is a beginning for the caring and the environmental features of this territory due to the attraction of people would involve action in the landscape frame. It is therefore, the proposal is not just sociocultural attractor, it is as well a tool to pressure sustainability of the settlements here located.
The festival brings a diverse catalogue of ephemeral interventions which are the platforms for the landscape experiences. These ephemeral land art installations will be all made by recycled materials, mostly local like industrial remains or noble products such as pine or oak wood. In no case, it would be able to propose installations which improve negatively to the carbon footprint. All these interventions will be disassembled automatically after the end of the festival by the parcipants themselves together with voluntary community. This methodology believes in the participation of the locals like a strategy of sustainability.
Please highlight how the concept/idea can be exemplary in this context
Minarte is conceived as a promenade that begins in the urban area of La Carolina, which is a very accessible place near one of the main highways of the country and close to a train station that communicate it with the main cities of Spain. This promenade spreads towards the Industrial landscape, with a walkable and cyclable itinerary that gives the spectators a general view in their way to the interpretation centre of mining (which is already built) as the first landmark in this path. This first landmark also has a limited parking area mainly thought for persons with reduced mobility.
Later on, this path leads us to the main scene located in the centre of the landscape where the main stage will be built and lectures, conferences, performances and fairs will be developed. This will be the area where community will have the main role in terms of social and cultural exchanges. This central location makes a good distribution of the remaining landmarks along the landscape.
At this point, people will use the remains of the old train tracks, primarily designed for the transportation of mineral, as a node of distribution to the different landmarks. In this case, activities that have a greater impact on the landscape such as Land-Art installations, will be developed around chimneys, infrastructures, barren land accumulations and big industrial structures that will be seen from the viewpoints already conditioned and linked to the path. However, industrial buildings, operative galleries and structures with a minor scale will be used as a place for art exhibitions and projections in which culture of work will be commemorated and where former miners will teach about bad work conditions and the work processes in which they participated.
In conclusion, local community will see an abandoned industrial landscape, grey and without use, turned into a coloured and full of activity landscape commemorating the mining processes that took place there bringing up their recent past.
Please highlight how the concept/idea can be exemplary in this context
The idea will bring together a community little linked to its recent past, into the Industrial Landscape where their ancestors spent the most part of their lives in almost inhumane working conditions risking their lives and fighting against specific diseases such as silicosis.
Inhabitants and tourists will participate in debates and speeches lead by former miners which will develop the humble conditions of their work, immersed in galleries located hundreds of kilometres underground with a lack of ventilation and very tiny dimensions favouring the lack of oxygen. Miners will also place value on the role of women in this industry, who usually took care of large families and were in charge of providing housing resources, being the first victims of this situation because they never knew if their children and husbands would return alive from the mine every evening. In addition, former miners will teach the community about the labours that they used to do in their jobs and also the different kinds of employments that mining companies brought to the city until the early 80s. These sessions will be accompanied by projections and recreations of their work and labour and also by testimonies of those who are no longer here.
Minarte will definitely bring together younger, elderly and ancient generations and it will build an intergenerational debate about the past, present and future of this Industrial Landscape, collecting the initiative of artists, architects, biologists, engineers, miners and other people related to the sector who will wonder about the future of this territory with an important look at its living history turning the place into the first “Industrial Landscape Laboratory”, a place from which to think about the future of this landscape and other abandoned industrial sites.
Please highlight how this approach can be exemplary
These three dimensions of the project will be materialised in an International public contest organized by the City Council and the University of Seville and it will have the aim of bringing together the best artists, actors, architects, professionals and researchers of Europe and other territories, which will give their approach about the current situation of the Industrial Landscape of La Carolina and will investigate about the possibilities for the future. This International Contest, is intended to give three economic prizes for each category; land art, art exhibition, theatrical performance and Academic Lecture, and what is more important, the recognition of the Academic Field and Political institutions such as regional governments or even the European Union.
Research and the academic field will be the element that will put together these three dimensions of the idea, in which the experience designed for the contest participants and the community will be the best example of Minarte.
Nowadays, Industrial heritage places and landscape are a recurring topic in every country along the European Union and other territories, bringing up really interesting projects related to memorial museums, architectural reinterpretations or even art installations. Many of these initiatives are limited to museums and interpretation centres where external people show visitors the history and installations of these industrial areas and they often forget about other themes without which Industrial Heritage cannot be completely understood.
However, Minarte seeks to promote an interactive idea where everyone and every theme have their own opportunity. This festival has the aim of bringing together a whole intergenerational community that is going to experience a “different landscape” every two years, making the difference to those kinds of museums that people often visit once. This will be an initiative in which the whole community itself will be the main character bringing up their ideas and contributions to reactivate a post-industrial landscape.
Finally, Minarte can definitely be extrapolated to other cultural landscapes and architectural installations worldwide because this initiative is not linked to a certain landscape but to a community and culture of work that is present in most of the territories.
For the further development and the success of the proposal, the project will follow the next program which is specified for the placement here taken, La Carolina, but it is extrapolated to any other post-industrial landscape:
FIRST PHASE (Promotion): Presentation of the contest to the audience, bases of the contest + dossier of the place for further information, advertising poster (corporate image ready) and first visits to the placement with adaptation of lanes and environment.
SECOND PHASE (Promotion): Collection and selections of proposals. Communication to the selected interventions about detailed information. First meeting with winners to specify program, budget and technical requirements.
THIRD PHASE (Promotion-Implementation): Transversal action. Hiring of external activities such as: gastronomic tastings, seminars and invitations of relevant figures in the art and architectural context.
FOURTH PHASE (Implementation): Opening. Conferences and gastronomic activities are implemented. Visits to the the different interventions and performances.
FIFTH PHASE (Implementation): Publication of winners with open discussion. Special visitings from relevant academic figures.
SIXTH PHASE (Implementation): Closing. Gratefulness and conclusions.
Lastly, the festival will be disassembled according to the technical requirements of the program which was known by all the parcipants.
Minarte has been thought and designed as pragmatic project which would be implemented in the close future. Because of these reasons, the proposal has an agreement with the IUACC (Instituto Universitario de Arquitectura y Ciencias de la Construcción of Sevilla, University of Sevilla) and the townhall of La Carolina where the idea is based on. The Direction od the project would be announced and it will be start with the program specified in the point before. A zero phase would be added, in this point the direction would contact the townhall of La Carolina and IUAAC together with others private and public sponsors to make a strong basis for the festival.
From that phase on, the program will be implemented following the phases which have been explained before with flexibility, adaption and perseverance according to the situation.
