On Thursday I will be in conversation with Lidia Gil, an event part of the series of talks "Los artistas cuentan", where artists share about their artistic processes. This will be taking place in Centro Cultural Doctor Madrazo, Santander (Cantabria, Spain). Free entrance, open to all.

More information in the following link: www.elfaradio.com/2023/11/06/sheila-fernandez-clausura-el-ciclo-los-artistas-cuentan/ 

"Sailing Through Liquid Realities"
Seila Fernández Arconada

"The liquid realities of the city go beyond what we see. The unknown also exists. Water is going through an ecosocial crisis that reveals its vital existence and fragility. In this collective drift, we will focus our senses on hydrological changes and transformations as we navigate through the city, exploring the hidden aspects that manifest themselves through the temporality of tides, connecting us with the land, the sea, and the cosmos. This artistic process is embedded within us to lead us to questions such as:
​What memories will the future water flows we inhabit carry?"

I am very pleased to share that on the 28th of October at 10:00am (Colombian time), we will be presenting the collective fanzine "En las Desembocaduras" (In the Estuaries)

We will engage in a conversation with an interdisciplinary group of researchers, artists, and environmental activists who, as a result of a series of collective creative processes, created a collection of fanzines titled "En las desembocaduras." Through various collaborations, including texts, watercolors, photography, drawings, and poems, we will address the question of what grievances are generated by various forms of extractivism in different territories. We will focus on the interdisciplinary and transnational dialogues that made this collective project possible, as well as the specific cases of extractivism that these fanzines address in the Atrato and Magdalena rivers in Colombia, mining in Mexico, Germany, and Colombia, the Besaya River in Spain, and the Córdoba Wetland in Bogotá. We will also inquire about which communities are affected by these extractive practices and what we understand by the term "community."

About the collaborators: In September 2022, a group of activists, artists, researchers, and educators from Colombia, Venezuela, Argentina, Bolivia, Peru, Spain, Switzerland, Italy, and Germany gathered in Kassel to reflect on the grievances of extractivism, with a focus on Colombia. This took place within the framework of a summer school with speakers invited by the University of Kassel, Más arte más acción (MAMA), and the DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service), in the context of contemporary art exhibitions at Documenta Fifteen. The collection of fanzines received support from Más arte más acción, Documenta Institut, and CAPAZ (Colombian-German Institute for Peace). The collaborators who participated in the fanzine were Ara Goudsmit, M. Jose Ortiz, Chiari De Marchis Garofalo, Rossana Alarcón, Pedro Jiménez Herrera, Samuel Sarmiento, Gabriela Aquije Zegarra, Andrés Tafur Villareal, Maribel Rivasvas Concelos, Nohora Alejandra Quiguantar, Sabrina Herrmann, Seila Fernández Arconada, Claudia Howald, Elizabeth Gallón Droste, Pablo Torres, Ana Álvarez Prendes, Elena Blesa, Carolina Sánchez, and Diego Lagos.

The event will be in Zoom via this link, event will be in spanish: 
https://rutgers.zoom.us/j/94354824456?pwd=eUQrNk44RFJwZFBxSmdlRFZ3eVg1UT09

ID de reunión: 943 5482 4456
Código de acceso: 564013

More information about the Humanidades Ambientales collective, host of the event: 
www.humanidadesambientales.com/cafe/28-desembocaduras

Gracias, por la oportunidad de compartir este bonito trabajo colectivo. 

This week I am in Kyiv, I am well honor to be one of the selected international artists to be part of this program invited by Інша Освіта / Insha Osvita and Асортиментна кімната in partnership with Proto produkciia, Prague Civil Society and Centre post impreza. This project focuses on Ukrainian context, where we will learn more from locals in particular from artists and cultural agents working here.
​
There are a two open events, on the 11th we will have a networking event at Urban Space 500.

Also I will be giving a talk on the 14th at the space National Union of Composers of Ukraine. Everyone is welcome.

Registration is required please follow the following links: 

Зареєструватися на нетворкінг:
https://cutt.ly/DwmoUaW2
Зареєструватися на артісттоки:
https://cutt.ly/WwmoUxaj

"La iniciativa “DelasCallesUNMUSEO” propone cinco nuevos paseos por Santander -del 21 de octubre al 19 de noviembre- para mirarla ciudad a través de las artes y explorar los lugares por los que transitamos en nuestra vida cotidiana -desde otras perspectivas-. Diseñado por la empresa cultural DidacArt y reconocido en la convocatoria de ayudas de la Fundación Santander Creativa (FSC), este año se editará -además- un libro sobre las distintas narrativas que ofrece la ciudad.

“Perspectivas” es el título que envuelve a esta edición que recorrerá tanto el centro de la urbe como las zonas periféricas para descubrirla y alejarse de los circuitos habituales. “Se trata de un ejercicio de práctica visual que hace que los participantes descubran las piezas, los edificios, los elementos patrimoniales, los recursos del diseño urbano y el arte tras el telón urbano”, explica Laura Crespo, creadora del proyecto.

Las inscripciones, que son gratuitas, se realizarán a través de la web www.didacart.com a partir del lunes 9 de octubre. Este año se proponen cinco nuevos paseos con un total de diez sesiones. La duración de cada paseo será de dos horas y en cada uno podrán participar 20 personas.

La artista Laura Escallada, la historiadora Miriam Callejo, la investigadora y artista Seila Fernández Acornada y la gestora cultural Itziar Jiménez guiarán los paseos abordando diferentes temáticas como el urbanismo, el arte, el patrimonio industrial y la creación contemporánea....

-“Navegando entre realidades acuosas”, de Seila Fernandez Arconada – 4 y 5 de noviembre de 10:30 a 12:30 horas
Las realidades acuosas de la ciudad van más allá de lo que vemos. Lo desconocido existe. De este modo, al unirnos como cuerpos de agua en el ecosistema acuosoque habitamos, se abren nuevas experiencias percibiendo flujos no visibilizados. El agua atraviesa una crisis ecosocial que evidencia su vital existencia y su fragilidad. En esta deriva enfocaremos los sentidos hacia cambios y transformaciones acuosas mientras navegamos la ciudad preguntándonos. ¿Cómo será el futuro de los flujos del agua que habitamos?"

Extracto desde: www.elfaradio.com/2023/10/07/delascallesunmuseo-cinco-nuevos-paseos-para-contemplar-la-ciudad-desde-otras-perspectivas/

Inscripciones en: didacart.com/

Tomorrow, 2nd of September, we present final results of the Socially Engaged Art Lab. 

The OD/thER border creep, is a collaborative project made during the Socially Engaged Art Lab led by the artist Seila Fernández Arconada as part of Viadrinicum 2023.

This project is done in collaboration between:
Ishrat Shaheen
Daura Polonskytė
Oleksandra Nych
Olga Łojewska
Arina Cazac
and Seila Fernández Arconada

Viadrinicum is an annual summer school at the European University Viadrina in Frankfurt (Oder), devoted to the countries of the Eastern Partnership, and the larger context of Central and Eastern Europe. Its 2023 edition will revolve around the multifaceted question, how cities learn, and will look into the entanglements of urban learning and dwelling practices.

viadrinicum.blog/viadrinicum-2023/

Even on facebook: 
https://www.facebook.com/events/1379940376067824/?ref=newsfeed

I am very pleased to share that today we, HangaroH Collective, will present our creation „FLOT“ at the Festival d’Art Contemporain in Roquebrune-sur-Argens (France)
The work has been made during a micro-residency that is part of the local Festival d’Art Contemporain.

We explored ways of attunement with the landscape of Roquebrune which is dominated by a brown-red reflecting rock aligned by the Argens River, in between the Mediterranean Sea and its interior. A process of salt-leaking bodies, crickets cricketing, sharp-edged Earth crust lines awakening bones, hot air muting linear thinking, and breath shaped by rock lines and curvatures.

Together with experiences in the residency epicentre, an extended camping ground, this led to the creation of a Sun-responsive sculpted object: an ephemeral intervention coming alive in both a sandy arid riverbed and a popular swimming pool overlooked by Roquebrune. A conversation between two landscape elements of a different nature.
HangaroH Collective is a collaboration between artists Bartaku (FI/BE), Seila Fernández Arconada (DE/ES), Anne Glassner (AT) and Laurie Sheridan (US).

https://hangarohcollective.wordpress.com

With support from Le Forum Culturel Autrichien and the Rewilding Cultures project (https://rewildingcultures.net/).
​
Special thanks to Le Festival d’Art Contemporain.

I am very pleased to share that some images of the first edition of “Post Truth? Countering disinformation narratives” in Kyiv, Ukraine which I have been directing as being its curator, designer  of the program and facilitator of the process which followed a hybrid experimental program between training course, experiential collective engagement and a collaborative artist residency, a space to create artistic responses from the collective experience. 

During 8 days, 8 selected Ukrainian artists explored the topic of post truth from different perspectives, focusing on the growing problem of disinformation and fake news and how it could be countered through critical thinking, media literacy and other artistic strategies.

We had the honour to have invited researchers from different disciplines: Mykhailo Koltsov, Bogdan Bondarchuk, Alessandro Rolandi, Txaro Arrazola and Bernard Fairhurst. We also had a number of experiential and experimental collaborative activities including a collective engaged dialogue with the Dnipro river. The collaborative process enabled ideas to be materialised in the final presentation where the artists created some artworks presented as a multidisciplinary installation in the Art Space «Вежа» located at The National Technical University of Ukraine in Kyiv.

This project has been organized by Lernlabor in partnership with Logos Ukraine and financed by the Auswärtiges Amt and Civil Society Cooperation. Thanks to the local coordinator Veronika Kurkina in support of her team in Logos Ukraine (Viktoriia Nuzhdova , Emir Shevkiev) who took care of logistics providing a safe and comfortable working environment.

Thanks to much to all who made it happening, in particular to the selected artists who managed to create very inspiring and meaningful artistic outcomes, thank you:
​
Vartan Markarian
Roksolana Dudka
Mikhail Ray
Gennadiy Che
Karina Synytsia
Fedir Khorkov
Bohdana Zaiats
Anna Kravchenko

Here you can see some visual glimpses, however, you can see more and discover more about the project in the website of the following website, also you can follow @Lernlabor.berlin social media and hashtag: #posttruthproject  
​
PROCESS: https://www.posttruthproject.net/process--blog​
VISUAL JOURNEY AND OUTCOMES: www.posttruthproject.net/ukraine.html

"Cueva de Sombras, Plantas de luz" ("Cave of shadows, Plants of light") is a collaborative project between the Cantabrian artist Seila Fernández Arconada and the 5th course of CEIP Cuevas del Castillo school in Vargas (Cantabria, Spain).

The project is framed on the project "Pedagogías del mañana: educación ecosocial, escenarios de futuro y arte" (Pedagogies of Tomorrow: Ecosocial Education, Future Scenarios, and Art), which suggests the following: "In the face of ecological and social emergency situations, we need to rapidly deploy a comprehensive education capable of preventing catastrophe, anticipating alternatives, and fostering hope in uncertain futures."

Organised by the Reina Sofía Museum of Contemporary Art and the Garúa cooperative, this proposal has selected three artists and three schools from across the country. Over a period of slightly over three months, the teaching staff has participated in training on the subject, as well as engaging in an artistic process alongside the students and the artist Seila Fernández Arconada, in the case of Cuevas del Castillo school.

"Cave of shadows, Plants of light" is an artistic intervention that has taken place at Cuevas del Castillo school, where Seila Fernández Arconada has guided an artistic process that involves a journey through plants, from prehistoric times to the present and into the future. This artistic intervention, as Seila states, "arises from feelings and care, and its objective is to rethink ourselves in our habitat and explore what other ways of understanding ourselves in nature can offer us, ultimately seeking to become more like plants."

That greenness of the "green Cantabria" that we inhabit is them—the diversity of plants that accompany us. In these times of climate uncertainties, one can observe changes in tone, dependent on their relationships with other living beings, especially water. Where are the plants represented in prehistoric caves? This question was the first of the reflections posed by Seila in the process, given that no recognized plant representations exist among the studied caves.

"The shared process has been very intense, and the artistic experiences have provided us with other ways of experiencing and approaching the nature to which we belong," comments the teaching staff. The 5th course students have participated in various activities, including mapping the territory they inhabit, creating a "living herbarium" with stories about identified and drawn plants, representing themselves as seeds, and envisioning future imaginaries in an attempt to "become more like plants," among many others. Imagination and critical thinking have been vital elements in the process, and that is where this journey has led the group to create a film through the act of projecting a series of plants onto one of the walls of the Cave of Castillo in Puente Viesgo, using projected light as pigment or engraving. Furthermore, the soundtrack of this film is a collective sound creation, where the group has represented an imaginary ecosystem through sounds.


The project culminated on June 6th with a meeting-exhibition of the works created at the Reina Sofía Museum, where both the students and the teachers, along with the artist, will be present in Madrid. There, they will present all the materials created as a multidisciplinary installation, which will also serve as the stage for the "collective ritual" invented by the group of students. It is a collective performance to express gratitude towards plants while symbolically seeking to communicate with the plants of the future, telling them what is happening in the present, warning them of climate changes, water scarcity, and other potential situations they will have to face, as well as encouraging them to stay alive, accompanying and taking care of us because we couldn't live without them.

​The photographs are part of the project's archive, authored by the teachers and the artist.
 ​

​“Cueva de sombras, plantas de luz” es un proyecto colaborativo entre la artista cántabra Seila Fernández Arconada y el grupo de 5º del colegio CEIP Cuevas del Castillo en Vargas (Cantabria). El proyecto se enmarca en la propuesta “Pedagogías del mañana: educación ecosocial, escenarios de futuro y arte”, el cual propone lo siguiente: “ante situaciones de emergencia ecológica y social necesitamos desplegar de forma acelerada una educación integral capaz de prevenir la catástrofe, anticipar alternativas y alentar la esperanza ante futuros llenos de incertidumbre”.
  
Organizado por el Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Reina Sofía y la cooperativa Garúa, esta propuesta ha seleccionado a tres artistas y tres colegios de todo el país. Durante algo más de tres meses, el profesorado ha participado en una formación sobre la temática además de involucrarse en un proceso artístico junto al alumnado y la artista Seila Fernández Arconada, en el caso del colegio Cuevas del Castillo.
 
El proceso de “Cueva de sombras, plantas de luz” se ha desarrollado en el colegio Cuevas del Castillo donde Seila Fernández Arconada ha estado guiando un proceso artístico en el que ha planteado un viaje a través de las plantas desde las épocas prehistóricas pasando por el presente y llegando hacia el futuro.
 
Esta intervención artística, como dice Seila “parte de los sentires y los cuidados y su objetivo es repensarnos en nuestro hábitat y buscar qué puede ofrecernos encontrar otras formas de entendernos en naturaleza, y a fin de cuentas buscar ser más plantas.” Ese verde de la “Cantabria verde” que habitamos, son ellas, la diversidad de plantas que nos acompañan. En estos tiempos de incertidumbres climáticas se puede ver el cambio de tono, dependiente de sus relaciones con otros seres vivos y en particular el agua.
 
¿Dónde están las plantas representadas en las cuevas prehistóricas? Esta pregunta fue la primera de las reflexiones que Seila planteó en el proceso, puesto que no existen representaciones de plantas reconocidas entre las cuevas estudiadas.
 
“El proceso compartido ha sido muy intenso y las experiencias artísticas nos han aportado otras formas de experimentar y acercarnos a la naturaleza a la que pertenecemos” comenta el profesorado. Las y los alumnos de 5º curso han participado de diferentes actividades entre ellas: el mapeo del territorio que habitan, la creación de un “herbario vivo” con historias con plantas identificadas y dibujadas, la representación de sí mismos como semillas, la creación de imaginarios futuros buscando ”ser más plantas”, entre otras muchas.
 
La imaginación y el pensamiento crítico han sido elementos vitales en el proceso y es ahí donde este viaje ha llevado al grupo a crear una película a través de la acción de proyectar una serie de plantas sobre una de las paredes de la cueva del Castillo en Puente Viesgo, utilizando la luz proyectada como pigmento o grabado. Además, la banda sonora de esta película es una creación sonora colectiva donde el grupo ha representado a través de sonidos un ecosistema imaginario.
 
El proyecto culmina el día 6 de junio con un encuentro-exposición de los trabajos realizados en el Museo Reina Sofía en el que el alumnado y profesorado, además de la artista, estarán presentes en Madrid. Allí presentarán todos los materiales creados como instalación multidisciplinar que también será escenario para el “ritual colectivo” inventado por el grupo de alumnos y alumnas. Una performance colectiva a modo de agradecimiento hacia las plantas, mientras de manera simbólica, buscan comunicarse con las plantas del futuro, contándoles qué sucede en el presente, avisándolas de cambios en el clima, de la escasez de agua y otras posibles situaciones que tendrán que afrontar, además de animarlas a seguir vivas, acompañándonos y cuidándonos porque sin ellas no podríamos vivir.
 
Las fotografías son parte del archivo del proyecto: autorías del profesorado y artista.