[NO-RES]: A Film In Progress By Metromuster
[NO-RES]: A Film In Progress By Metromuster
Screening @ No-Space, May 5, 7:30 – 9:30 pm
With Xavi Artigas
[NO-RES] is a chronicle of life during the last days of Colònia Castells, one of the last remaining workers’ quarters in Barcelona. The destruction of its small houses and alleys will bury a unique relational microcosm and obliterate its inhabitants’ very human way of under- standing city space. Film collective METROMUSTER presents this videographic chronicle in two different levels: as a finished work (which they call “the film”) and as a Work in Progress.
The film shows three moments in this space which depict the destruction of patterns of daily life that have existed for generations. These moments are:1. LIFE: A evocation of life in Colònia Castells through the interactions of its residents on the streets.
2. TAXIDERMY: We watch as this life is frozen and dissected in the face of the imminent demolition of this picturesque space.
3. DEATH: We intensely experience the trauma of the demolition of the houses in this quarter.NO-RES describes a paradigm of town-planning that is being implemented in many cities throughout the West. In the middle of the district of Les Corts, the tiny quarter is completely surrounded by big buildings and avenues, like Entença Street. The documentary shows, in a very visual way, how the horizontal city becomes a vertical one. Unavoidably, [NO-RES] also tells of the exodus of its main characters, who will be evicted at the beggining of 2011 and forced to adapt to an almost opposite environment. The story ends with the demolition of the houses where many of the neighbors were born.The documentary is tied together by the space itself and the way of life within it: many hours of sun, absence of traffic, life in the streets, contact with neighbors, old people going for a walk, children playing with a ball, etc. In comparison to this space of life, we’ll find the latent presence of the unlivable-space which grows little by little in the city. This non-space is exemplified by Entença Street, the four-lane street which crosses the quarter with its intense traffic and its absence of life. This sort of space is what we call [NO-RES].[NO-RES], in Catalan: [NOTHING].
2. TAXIDERMY: We watch as this life is frozen and dissected in the face of the imminent demolition of this picturesque space.
3. DEATH: We intensely experience the trauma of the demolition of the houses in this quarter.NO-RES describes a paradigm of town-planning that is being implemented in many cities throughout the West. In the middle of the district of Les Corts, the tiny quarter is completely surrounded by big buildings and avenues, like Entença Street. The documentary shows, in a very visual way, how the horizontal city becomes a vertical one. Unavoidably, [NO-RES] also tells of the exodus of its main characters, who will be evicted at the beggining of 2011 and forced to adapt to an almost opposite environment. The story ends with the demolition of the houses where many of the neighbors were born.The documentary is tied together by the space itself and the way of life within it: many hours of sun, absence of traffic, life in the streets, contact with neighbors, old people going for a walk, children playing with a ball, etc. In comparison to this space of life, we’ll find the latent presence of the unlivable-space which grows little by little in the city. This non-space is exemplified by Entença Street, the four-lane street which crosses the quarter with its intense traffic and its absence of life. This sort of space is what we call [NO-RES].[NO-RES], in Catalan: [NOTHING].
ABOUT THE FILM
NO-RES, which means “nothing” in Catalan, is a work in progress documentary film about gentrification in Barcelona, Spain. METROMUSTER has been working for a year in a working-class neighborhood that is being destroyed in order to build luxury buildings. The film focuses on the change in the way of life that gentrification brings in any context. NO-RES has a universal approach on gentrification and the different realities affected by the same problem.
NO-RES, which means “nothing” in Catalan, is a work in progress documentary film about gentrification in Barcelona, Spain. METROMUSTER has been working for a year in a working-class neighborhood that is being destroyed in order to build luxury buildings. The film focuses on the change in the way of life that gentrification brings in any context. NO-RES has a universal approach on gentrification and the different realities affected by the same problem.
NO-RES is a film without voice-over, which means that pictures speak for themselves. Since the film is not finished, METROMUSTER in interested in screening sequences that lead to discussion within their presentations. In these conversations they exchange opinions about the artistic approach of the social problem. The debates are meant to influence the final cut of the film.
ABOUT METROMUSTER
METROMUSTER is an independent production company that has been experimenting with art, sociology and politics since 2003. Our goals are:
__Provide more resources to non-commercial projects
__Take advantage of public resources for cultural productions to make good quality works that are free for everybody
__Advocate for social change related to ways of understanding urban space, social participation and access to new technologies
__Give documentaries and non-fiction films the same status as fictional cinema.
__Contribute actively to the Free Culture Movement inspired by Laurence Lessig i Richard Stallman.
BIO
Xavi Artigas is a Catalan sociologist, filmmaker and artivist. He studied in Germany, where he specialized in Social Change at the University of Münster (WWUM). In 2003 he started to work as an artist in Paris, France by making interventions on advertising panels in the subway. Some years later he would be known under the name METROMUSTER, which is nowadays a collective for Visual Activism. Back in Barcelona, he majored in Creative Documentary Filmmaking at the Pompeu Fabra University (UPF) and directed a series of short documentaries about obsolete ways of life for TV3—Catalan TV, one of which won the prize “Docs&Kids” at the 2011 edition of DocsBarcelona.
Together with the artist Leo Martín, Xavi directed one of the chapters of the Spanish Art TV-show, called Metropolis (TVE—Spanish TV), about Art and Activism. Other independent visual productions made by Xavi are —among others—: “Terra Roja—Red Land”, about the Coffee Industry in Vietnam, or “TanzAmRand”, a video-art project about Contact Dance in Freiburg, Germany. Xavi currently works as an assistant for first class Spanish documentary directors like Ricardo Iscar or Mercedes Álvarez and since 2009 he has been the official Filmmaker of the Culture Institute of Barcelona (ICUB). He’s a member of the political art association “ENMEDIO.info”.
Date
May 5, 2011
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