Komanditario berriak = Nuevos comanditarios = Nouveaux Commanditaires

It is a project propelled by Tabakalera and Artehazia within the framework of Nouveaux Commanditaires of the Fondation de France. The project Nouveaux Commanditaires offers the opportunity to participate in the development of an artistic project that gives answer to a social-need, collaborating with an artist and with help of an intermediary.

The idea is that artists, and art in general, can help finding an answer to problems that concern citizens. This is what the Belgian artist François Hers, who started up the initiative Nouveaux Commanditaires, expressed 20 years ago. Our project belongs to this initiative and has three key elements: artists, promoter citizens and the intermediary, together with public and private partners of the project.

The main objective is making citizens part of the artistic projects development process. Tabakalera opened some months ago a public-call for those mediators that were interested in topics related to archives, history and memory.

• FIRST PHASE

Nowadays the project Nouveaux Commanditaires is ongoing. The proposal presented by the Equality Council of Hernani was the winner of the public call. We celebrated the first meeting in May in Tabakalera, where Haizea Barcenilla, the intermediary, and Arantxa Mediharat (Artehaziak), also took part. In this mentioned meeting, many mutual perspectives, objectives and wishes around the project where shared.

The group created around the Equality Council is an heterogeneous group, where people of several ages and implication levels, but with a general concern of the gender as a nexus, work together. The base of this project is the presence of women in public space, as well as a reflection about the urban order of cities from a gender perspective. Specifically, Andrekale, the street that officially is named Kardaberaz, has been the starting point and engine of the project that is being developed in the framework of Nouveaux Commanditaires. On the rest of the meetings and with help of Haizea Barnecilla, we have been working to define what we want to achieve with this project. As a first step, they talked about the groups denomination, due to the fact that not all of its members are part of the Equality Council, neither all of the Council members are part of the group. As a consequence, they have chosen the name Kalandria, as a reference to the street were the project was born.

Afterwards, other issues were covered and several topics debated and reflected, in order to give an answer questions such as as what we want to achieve, what for, to whom and/or why…, among others. Additionally, Haizea Barnecilla also presented some project examples that had already been developed in other parts of the world on the Nouveaux Commanditaires framework.

As a conclusion of this first phase of the project, the group has drawn some conclusions: the objective of the project is inviting people to reflect about visibility and public presence of women (in the past and nowadays), based in a specific case, but encompassing an universal and symbolic field. They will try to develop a citizenship directed work, that leaves a mark, both in space and time.

• SECOND PHASE
  

In September we will introduce ourselves in the second phase of the project. Haizea Barnecilla will propose an artist to the group, and after Kalandria accepting it, we will focus on developing the project that will answer the group’s wishes and objectives.