Create and IAF City Conversation Series: Javier Rodrigo

Create and the Irish Architecture Foundation are delighted to partner once again to present the second in the ongoing City Conversation series.

Welcoming architects, arts collectives, collaborative practitioners, activists, sociologists, planners and geographers, the City Conversation series explores how arts and architectural initiatives engaging with broader civic expertise can animate the public sphere and reimagine our cities, town and neighbourhoods. We particularly encourage practising architects, artists, planners, geographers and other professionals with a keen interest in more socially engaged and collaborative forms of architecture to attend. Each conversation features a short presentation by an invited guest followed by a discussion.

On the 29th October, we are delighted to welcome Javier Rodrigo, a Barcelona-based art educator, cultural worker and researcher. This conversation will take place in the Irish Architecture Foundation.

Javier’s talk will be titled: The Right to the City and Cultural Ecosystems: From Unbranding the City to Cooperative Neighbourhoods.

Javier Rodrigo is a Barcelona based art educator, cultural worker and researcher.

Javier is also Head of Transductores, a platform of collective pedagogies, spatial politics, community culture and applied research. Transductores have developed several cultural and collective pedagogical programmes in art centers and cultural institutions in Spain, such as Centro José Guerrero, Arts Santa Monica, Sala Amarika, Tabakalera Art Centre or Fundación Museos Quito (Equador) and Museo de Antioquia (Medellón). In their national and international work Transductores set out to reinforce public sphere practices and socially engaged initiatives from a wide range of perspectives including: feminist, urban participatory research and projects, open city-labs and public space education projects.

They have edited 3 volumes of Transductores, and several articles about critical pedagogy, public space practices, museums and community art programmes, cultural politics, community based management and urban commons, and their intersection with cooperative/ Feminist cultural economies. Recently they have co-authored a book about urban commons, culture and cultural politics with La Hidra. Entitled Community Management in Culture, or the “Desbordar la cutlura: Un relato alternativo de Barcelona (Overflowing culture: An alternative narrative about the history of Barcelona city) the book is about a radical approach to the intersection of urban planning, city branding and cooperative culture.

Currently, Transductores is developing experimental community cultural programmes in Centro Cutlural y de Memoria Born with special emphasis on dissident memories and public space. Examples include Fabrai Coats, which focuses on citizenship labs with urban research and public interventions based on participatory budget and direct democracy. Interficies (interfaces) is a hybrid programme between community health, collective pedagogies and arts research that links urban commons and health issues under the umbrella of health and “caring territories”. The Arnau Itinerant programme is an experimental nomadic institution being run by Transductores in collaboration with different cultural and social networks. This programme is based on assemblies and direct democracy and consists of activities dealing with the idea of anti-gentrification practices, urban and community and dissident knowledges. Transductores are currently developing an urban and cultural health ecosystem around the axis of the Paralel Venue (one of the most important urban arteries of Barcelona which has undergone a savage gentrification and smart-city process since 2011).