En Residencia
Created in collaboration with dramaturg Benedict Anderson, En Residencia brought together 20 visual and movement-based artists from Wales and Asturias under the artistic direction and curation of Marc Rees.
This site-specific installation emerged from an intensive two-week laboratory at Laboral Ciudad de la Cultura in Gijón, Spain. The artists inhabited and responded to the semi-derelict mid-south wing of the vast complex—an area that had remained untouched by its wider renovation.
Classrooms, offices, stairwells, antechambers and landings were filled with the remnants of their former lives: archival materials, abandoned artefacts, memorabilia and hundreds of discarded pieces of furniture, found in configurations both ordered and chaotic. These charged interior and exterior spaces, together with the extraordinary social and architectural history of Laboral, provided the stimulus for a series of performative and spatial interventions.
Each artist was allocated a particular space and invited to excavate, reimagine and reanimate it. Together, their individual responses formed En Residencia: an immersive encounter with memory, abandonment and the lingering presence of those who had once occupied the building.
Creative Producer: Siân Thomas
Participating Artists: Holly Davey, Anthony Shapland, Richard Morgan, Benedict Anderson, Tanja Råman, John Collingswood, Cai Tomos, Simon Whitehead, John Rowley, Montse Penela, Monica Garcia, Pelayo Varela, Nel Amaro, Fiumfoto, Avelino Sala, Melville Mitchell, Marc Rees , Orson San Pedro
En Residencia brochure
Symposium 2012 Interior: a state of becoming” related paper by Benedict Anderson