Proposals are invited from organisations or groups that have a proven track record in the field of collaborative and free culture for the third edition of the Grigri Pixel programme. Deadline for submission of entries is June 24, 2018.
Grigri Pixel is a programme of residencies, workshops and seminars whose purpose is to explore the practices of cultural cooperation and citizenship between Africa and Europe, through the manufacture of grigris or magic objectsintended to protect and re-enchant urban spaces through artistic and digital production practices of a collaborative and experimental nature, from both continents. We understand magic to be practices that are yet to be built, collective processes that are difficult to measure and quantify, learning that arises on the boundary of the unexpected and are able to change us by changing our most immediate environment.
This third edition of Grigri Pixel, scheduled from 15 to 28 October in Madrid, will focus on claiming the right to the city.
After a first phase in February-March 2016 in Medialab Prado, the experience moved to Dakar during the fifth edition of the Afropixel festival. In October 2017, the second edition of Grigri Pixel was held in Medialab Prado (Madrid), in collaboration with the Espacio Vecinal of Arganzuela. The initiative was also invited to Barcelona in 2017, where work took place in collusion with HANGAR and the Taula Eix Pere IV – both entities are located in the neighbourhood of Poblenou.
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In this third edition, objects and diverse actions will be designed, constructed and activated. At the end of the workshop, they will also form part of a festive action by way of a pilgrimage around the immediate vicinity of Medialab Prado. This action will be carried out in the Barrio de las Letras (Literary Quarter), located in the historic and tourist centre of Madrid. Its aim will be to conjure and re-enchant these spaces in which a model of the city is being increasingly imposed that is far removed from the neighbourhood scale and from the needs of those who live in them on a daily basis.
These objects that will be made in the form of charms or grigris, will incorporate and materialise experiences and visions brought to us by the African initiatives and those of local collaborators, while they will at the same time try to make visible and propose ways to living the city as a place of encounter and collective creativity. To do this, the work process carried out during the workshop will serve to recognize, pool and hybridise those protective forces, know-hows and peripheral, neighbourhood and non-conventional knowledge, from both the invited African experiences and from the local collaborators, with which we will invoke the common luck brought on by the urban grigris that the groups have built.
Before the workshop takes place, there will be a mediation process with groups and local experiences that will lay the foundation to open a space for collaborative dialogue, exploration and analysis, together with the invited African initiatives, on those conditions, factors and actions that defend and promote the right to the city and places for creativity, and those others that hinder or threaten that right. This exercise of exchange and joint analysis of the transformations affecting the city and its places for creativity and encounters will provide the diagnosis and the conceptual basis on which to define the design and construction parameters that will guide the creation of the grigris during the workshop.
The call goes out to organisations or groups that have a proven track record in the field of collaborative and free culture and in the promotion and generation of citizen collaboration and innovation networks in their local environment.
Requirements:
GRIGRI PIXEL MADRID 2018 will be developed through the following phases:
Phase 1: Call for African initiatives: 21 May to 24 June 2018.
- Anyone who participates in citizens’, cultural, and artistic initiatives on the African continent can apply for the call. This initiative, group or space should be related to transformative, collaborative and artistic practices, particularly aimed at defending the right to the city and to common urban spaces. These practices may have to do with intervention and action in urban spaces, the establishment of forms and methodologies of collaborative organization, the development of artistic, cultural, design or digital manufacturing practices that reflect on collective creation, or work on recovering or updating artisan crafts.
- Only one person may apply per group or space, by filling in the form you will find in this call.
- In total, a maximum of four people will be selected.
Phase 2: Call for local collaborators: from 4 to 23 September 2018.
Once the African initiatives have been selected, the resolution of the call will be published in the Medialab Prado and Grigri Pixel web pages, and the call for local collaborators will be opened.
Phase 3: Design, production and activation workshop: from 15 to 28 October 2018.
- The workshop will last for two weeks. The working sessions will be held at Medialab Prado from 4.30 to 8pm. In the mornings, the Medialab Prado space will be available for those participants who want to work there. Throughout the workshop, several visits and parallel activities will be scheduled.
Benefits:
- The organization will look after the travel of those selected from their place of origin to Madrid, as well as their accommodation and living expenses for the duration of the production workshops that will be held in Medialab Prado from 15 to 28 October 2018. Additionally, each person will receive a fee of 500 euros.
