MAC/SAN - Prototype for an institution dedicated to contemporary art practices in the public realm

MAC/SAN, site-specific to San Agustín (western suburb of Havana), addresses the practice of art in the public realm - its form(s) and its relevance from local and international points of views. The project was developed through a collective creative approach resulting from a series of residencies at LASA-laboratorio artistico de san agustín.

MAC/SAN is a hybrid: an artwork and a framework. Rooted in a conceptual approach, MAC/SAN is also contextual and proteiform; a project that is both site-specific and mutable. Amongst its forms are contexts for the design and presentation of other artworks and programmes. Stimulating dialogue on the status of material and immaterial artworks, MAC/SAN also acts as a catalyst for participation, generating a broad approach to contemporary art aesthetic and politics. Combining diverse art practices, MAC/SAN will interconnect discussions often occuring in isolated silos. Hence, for its launch during the 2012 Biennial of Havana, MAC/SAN invites artists, curators, architects, journalists and scholars coming from several European, North and South American countries to contribute to its shaping and its activation.

Stickraiser (Call for USB flash drive donation)

MAC/SAN TV by Candelario

A project for MAC/SAN (Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de San Agustin)
11th Bienal de Arte Contemporáneo de la Habana, Cuba

MAC/SAN TV is a new Cuban cuenta propia (private) TV channel, with a hybrid nature:

MAC/SAN TV is a performative installation - a TV studio/set that will be installed in the Cuban suburb of San Agustin during the 11th biennial of Havana. Located in the public MAC/SAN building, the MAC/SAN TV set will be used for live performances, public projections and as an open recording studio.

MAC/SAN TV will be "broadcast" through the distribution of UBS sticks. Using the USB flash drive as a means of dissemination, MAC/SAN TV formalizes a very specific Cuban phenomenon. With very limited access and slow Internet connections the global digital revolution is lived in Cuba on its own terms - through the widespread use of USB sticks. Information, software and movies circulate at fast speed in Cuba through this little object, as will MAC/SAN TV.

Donate two or more USB sticks for MAC/SAN TV (Cuba)

In return you will receive one multiple:
a USB stick including MAC/SAN TV programmes!
All donated USB sticks featuring MAC/SAN TV will be distributed to inhabitants of San Agustin and Cuban visitors to MAC/SAN).

Canadian drop-off location:
Gallery TPW
56 Ossington Ave
Toronto, ON
M6J 2Y7
416.645.1066

No later than Friday, May 7, 2012
Gallery Hours: Tuesday-Saturday 12-5pm

USB donations can also be dropped off in Cuba at the MAC/SAN Building.

As a reference to conventional TV, the MAC/SAN TV channel features news and weather reports, commercials, and a variety of programmes such as films, documentaries and video clips. MAC/SAN contributors will use these format conventions as tools to experiment with audio-visual form, local content and personal voices. Sound and video sketches will focus on the territory, heritage and environment of the Havana suburb San Agustin and will provide updates on other artist's investigations at MAC/SAN being developed during the Biennial. The project is also a broader participatory platform featuring two opportunities for local participants to see their work on TV. Members of the San Agustin community are invited to creatively advertise their agricultural products on TV and local journalism students will take part in a programme exploring the crossovers between art and journalism, focusing on experimental audio-visual narratives.

MAC/SAN TV challenges the traditional paradigm of television by reinterpreting standard TV programmes, by extending its function, means and outlets, by diversifying its contributors and by using an experimental approach to develop audio-visual forms and content. MAC/SAN TV collaborates with visual artists, designers, musicians, journalists, curators, engineer, and the local community to create products that blur boundaries between the art world and the television industry.

MAC/SAN will run Sunday, May 13 to Saturday, May 26, 2012
Grand Opening: May 14 at 3:30pm

Call published on Akimbo (Canada) on April 27th, 2012

Curatorial Focus 2: Sustainability: curatorial practices and territories

Participants: Aurélie Sampeur (curator, France-Cuba-Germany), Catherine Sicot (curator, Canada-France) and I-Wei Li (curator, Germany)

Research will focus on:

• Alternative curatorial practices focusing on territories
• Explorationof new territories (geographies) as spaces for experimentation.
• Research onhow economic mechanisms could financially support such curatorial practices and the other way around: how could art projects result in boosting local economy?

Curatorial Focus 1: Espacios Prácticos

Participants: Aurélie Sampeur (curator, France-Cuba-Germany), Catherine Sicot (curator, Canada-France) and Mapa Teatro: Rolf Abderhalden (Theater Director, Colombia) y Alex Morales (artist, Colombia, France)

Research will focus on:

• How to work outside cultural institutions while integrating art and curatorial practices into the social, political and economic tissue of communities?
• How do we creatively document the processes and resulting workdone in this context?
• How can we best value this type of practices within and vis-à-viscultural institutional contexts?

Botellas curadas, una Etnobotánica visual (Healing Bottles, a Visual Ethnobotony)

Multidisciplinary research team from Colombia: Rocío Polanía, Jaime Ruiz Solórzano, José Leonardo Ruiz and Juan Pablo Rodriguez (South-Colombian University); Gonzalo Díaz, Jaime Leudo Hurtado, Jairo Marín and Denis Antonio Palacios (Technological University of Chocó), Florencia Mora (Javeriana University - Cali), Jorge Reyes (Valle University), Sua Dabeida Baquero (independant researcher), Gonzalo González (Catholic University Lumen Gentium), Diana Carolina Torres and Viviana Guarnizo (artists and documentalists), Jazmín Andrea Gómez and Carlos Lerma (research assistants).

• A group of multidisciplinary scholars explore the impact of contemporary artistic practices on territory, using MAC/SAN (alternative and independent) and the Havana Biennial (institutional) as a newplatforms of observation.
• Botellas Curadas (Healing Bottles) is inspired by ethnobotany–a science that exploresthe relationship between people and plants. The researchers will continue their inventory of objects and goods used by traditional medicine in Colombia and Cuba.They will look at their socio-economic characteristics and how they impact on local agriculture.
• Botellas Curadas is a set of interviews with scientists, doctors and a variety of San Agustín´s inhabitants, who practice traditional medicine, growing or selling medicinal plants for religious or medical use. Data such as legends, stories, pictures and drawings will be compiledin an album accessible to the public in MAC/SAN Building. Performances and group discussions will also be programmed at MAC/SAN Building. A map locating sites of their research in San Agustin and surroundings will be available to the public.

http://botellascuradas.blogspot.com/

Cubic-OH/órgano HU-rbano

By Alex Morales (artist, Colombia, France)
In collaboration with a group of dancers and actors from San Agustin: Alexis Povea Dreke, Hilda Hernández, Orlando Fajardo, José Luis Peréz ,Yordarys Mendoza, Darien Hidalgo, Yosnel Ascuy, Jorge Abril, Isabelle Million, Támara Rodríguez, Maricet Cadalso, Ailey Almeida, Yisel Capote, Esperanza Núñez Cruz, Mario Guerrero, Beatriz Pulido, Claudia Correa, Estela Toledo and the LASA team.

• Inspired by Alexis PoveaDreke’s personal story – renowned Cuban Hip Hop dancer from the 80’s and promoter of the Break Dance movement in San Agustín, Alex Morales proposes five audiovisual interventionsin San Agustín’s public space anchored in the reality, the fantasy and daily life of the neighbourhood.
• Mixing languages such as dance, theatre, video, performance and music, the piece tells Alexis Povea’s story as a thread that leads the viewerdeep into the history of San Agustín.

SAN Café

By Lauren Elder, Oscar Melara and Kate Connell (artists, USA)
Collaborating with five chefs – non professionals- from San Agustín and surroundings: Inès Arozarena Belasco, Ada Cardentey Molleda, Madelein López Sánchez, Margot Gonzales Pérez and Anier Fernández Reina.
Production in collaboration with Anier Fernández Reina, and volunteers from San Agustín

The artists create a culinary platform for MAC/SAN Building where five publictastings and book eventswill be performed for San Agustínians and Biennial visitors. Dishes will result from a collaboration between the artists’ expertise in International Grande Cuisine, and the one of five local talents. Non-professionalChefs will bringtheir sense of gastronomy and interpret recipes in light of their knowledge of local products, taking into account Cuban cost of living.  San Café will also publish a map, advertising local food producers involved in the project, and a book with additional details and recipes.

BIOCUB-artist’s nutrition

By Erik Göngrich (artists, Germany),
Production in collaboration with Julietta Vigueras (art historian, Cuba) and Esther Suarez (architect, Cuba)

BIOCUB – artist’s nutrition is a sculptural artwork, a new system involving the artist collaborating with San Agustínians in the local production of a multiple – packages of 100g of dried mango - that will be sold within and outside MAC/SAN Building for 20 Cuban pesos (about 0,65 €).

• BIOCUB will collect mangos daily from both private gardens and larger plantations in San Agustínand will dry and package them.

• BIOCUB will experiment with a new drying technology developed by the artist in consultation with Malnutrition Matters, a Canadian NGO specializing in food drying systems.
• 7 Dryers will be installed in the homes of Cuban families and 13 will be installed on the rooftop of MAC/SAN Building. After the biennial all of dryers will be given to local families for use in their personal consumption.
•  Artists will also conduct drawing interviews with participants that will tell the story of local food production in San Agustín. Drawings will be exhibited at MAC/SAN Building.

Surreal Estate: Walking Backward

By Carissa Carman (artist, Canada, USA)

For this project, the artist has created a performance as a means to initiate contact within habitants of San Agustín. She will walk backward, anticipating reactions such as surprise and laughter that will, in turn, generate questions and conversation. Carman will draw out stories about people’s relationship to public and domestic space which she will translate into drawings to be exhibited at MAC/SAN Building. In doing so, she makes visiblethe reality of housing and life in the neighbourhood, as well as representing the imaginary of San Agustínians in this regard.

Próximo nivel (Next Level)

By Andres Victores(engineer, Cuba).

Next Level is a functional sculpture born out of the necessity to connect the ground floor and the roof top of MAC/SAN Building during the Biennial.Using recycled material, Next Level combinesVictores’s engineering skills with his singular aesthetic.

The work echoes a Cuban attitude – developed since the Periodo Especial - for recycling and building with any available goods inthe territory. The work also echoes a lineage of modernist sculpture andcontemporary design, contextualising the artist’s gesture simultaneously as survival, art, fashion, low tech and “high” aesthetic.

MicroE111b: The Micro-construction of the future

By Florian Zeyfang, Lisa Schmidt-Colinet and Alex Schmoeger (artists and architects, Germany- Austria)
Production in collaboration with Cesar Riverón (architect, Cuba)

• MicroE111b is a model of an utopian approach to housing and city planning. It presents an idea for future do-it-yourself housing, taking into considerations three different scales: The scale of a component (detail), the scale of the building (unit) and the scale of a neighborhood (city).

• MicroE111b takes the form of a physical model representing a future housing. The project looks both backwards in history, and forward, into an imaginable future, provides models for modular, participative housing.

MAC/SAN TV

MAC/SAN TV is a project by Cuban artist Candelario.
Collaborators: Leslie Salgado and Pedro E. Moya (journalist and professors at the Facultad de Comunicación de la Universidad de la Habana), Aurelie Sampeur (curator, France-Cuba -Germany)
 and Catherine Sicot (curator, Canada-France).
Contributors: Esther Suárez y César Riverón (architects), Amilkar Feria (artistas), Andrés Victores (engineer), Eloy Ramón Hernández and Liset Vidal (designers), Claudia Montes de Oca, Karla Valero (students in journalism), Dairon Calvet (art student), Ricardo García-Rojas (student, Harvard, EUA), Lys-Ange Sénescat (Art student, Ecole des Beaux Arts, Bordeaux, France), Jenny Feal (visual art student, ISA (Havana)), Nestor Siré Mederos (visual art student, ISA (Havana), Danay Gil (bióloga), Arnaud Sallé (composor).

MAC/SAN TV is a new Cuban cuentapropia (private) TV channel, with a hybrid nature:

• MAC/SAN TV is a performative installation - a TV studio/set located in MAC/SAN Building - that will be used for live performances, public projections and as an open recording studio.

• MAC/SAN TV will be “broadcast” through the distribution of UBS sticks. Using the USB flash drive as a means of dissemination, MAC/SAN TV formalizes a very specific Cuban phenomenon. With very limited access and slow Internet connections the global digital revolution is lived in Cuba on its own terms through the widespread use of USB sticks. Information, software and movies circulate at fast speed in Cuba through this little object, as will MAC/SAN TV.

• As a reference to conventional TV, the MAC/SAN TVchannel features news and weather reports, commercials, and a variety of programmes such as films, documentaries and video clips. MAC/SAN contributors will use these format conventions as tools to experiment with audio-visual form, local content and personal voices. Sound and video sketches will focus on the territory, heritage and environment of the Havana suburb San Agustin and will provide updates on other artist’s investigations at MAC/SAN,as well as on others being developed within the Biennial.

•  The project is also a broader participatory platform featuring two opportunities for local participants to see their work on TV. Members of the San Agustíncommunity are invited to creatively advertise their agricultural products on TV. A contest for the best advertisement will award the winner with a trailer designed and built at LASA-laboratorio de arte contemporaneo de san agustinas a means to make their business mobile in San Agustín. Local journalism students will take part in a programme exploring the crossovers between art and journalism, focusing on experimental audio-visual narratives.Ten student works will be selected and included in MAC/SAN TV programme. One student will be awarded with a laptop computer for their work.

MAC/SAN TV challenges the traditional paradigm of television by reinterpreting standard TV programmes, by extending its function, means and outlets, by diversifying its contributors and by using an experimental approach to develop audio-visual forms and content. MAC/SAN TV collaborates with visual artists, designers, musicians, journalists, curators, engineer, and the local community to createproducts that blur boundaries between the art world and the television industry.

MAC/SAN (Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de San Agustín)

Conceived by Stefan Shankland (artist, France-Switzerland-Great-Britain), Candelario (artist, Cuba), Erik Göngrich (artist, Germany), and Aurélie Sampeur (curator, France-Cuba-Germany).
Developed in collaboration with: Catherine Sicot (curator, Canada-France).
Produced in collaboration with engineer Andrés Victores and architect Esther Suarez.
Production Assistant/Translator: Danay Gil

MAC/SAN, site-specific to San Agustín (western suburb of Havana), addresses the practice of art in the public realm - its form(s) and its relevance from local and international points of views. The project was developed through a collective creative approach resulting from a series of residencies at LASA-laboratorio artistico de san agustín.

MAC/SAN is a hybrid: an artwork and a framework. Rooted in a conceptual approach, MAC/SAN is also contextual and proteiform ; a project that is bothsite-specific and mutable. Amongst its forms are contexts for the design and presentation of other artworks and programmes.Stimulating dialogue on the status of material and immaterial artworks, MAC/SAN also acts as a catalyst for participation, generating a broad approach to contemporary art aesthetic and politics. Combining diverse art practices, MAC/SAN will interconnect discussions often occurring in isolated silos. Hence, for its launch during the 2012 Biennial of Havana, MAC/SAN invites artists, curators, architects, journalists and scholars coming from several European, North and South American countries to contribute to its shaping and its activation.

A prototype for an institution: MAC/SAN is a museum without walls with a cross-bred nature. Currently, there is no contemporary art museum in Cuba. We propose MAC/SAN as a adaptable prototype, for contemporary art practices that explore the public realm within Cuban territory. MAC/SAN deconstructs Western museum traditions by positioning itself as a museum; by building on the economic, political and cultural context of San Agustín; and by interconnecting various artistic traditions. MAC/SAN aims to be a “one of a kind”, enriched by a mix of local and international influences.

A mandate: MAC/SAN’s vision is shaped along the exploration of the following questions:
What can a contemporary art museum be in the 21st century? What can it be for San Agustín? Can it be conceived of as a sculpture or a public monument?
What is the function of a sculpture in public space?
What can art bring to a territory?
Can artists propose relevant ways to examine and contribute to building heritage?
What new perspectives can they bring to sustainable environmental urban planning?
Can art and a new museum be an experimental and participatory platform to envision and build the future?

A vision: MAC/SAN will weave together and explore art, territory, heritage, urbanism and environment.

Protei-formalism: MAC/SAN’s vision will be implemented through the experimentation of different art forms including:

• MAC/SAN Building is the skeletonof an unfinished building appropriated by the artists - a 60 x 25 x 8 meter concrete structure - located in the heart of San Agustín. It is a sculpture; an architectural structure that embodies one of MAC/SAN’s numerous forms. Its architecture ironically reminds of the traditional white cube that hosts many modern and contemporary museums.
• MAC/SAN - sign for a 21st century institution, dedicated to contemporary art practices in the public domain in Cuba. Six giant illuminated letters – MAC/SAN –will be installed on the top of MAC/SAN Building. Referring to stereotypical contemporary and modern art museum logos, the sign performs and marks the museum entrance, suggesting the function of the architectural space. The sign cements the overall project, a necessary landmark for the project to make itself manifest.
• MAC/SAN takes on the form and space of other art projects,some of them being hosted in MAC/SAN Building, others in the streets of San Agustín, in domestic spaces, on USB sticks and on the web. Inviting artists to think about the broader concept of MAC/SANas a context for their own artwork further encourages the critical examination of its assumed functions, also introducing its potential as a framing device to examine the surrounding neighbourhood. This activity, when installed or performed in MAC/SAN Building, transforms the concrete structure de facto into a museum.