Part of Sowing Archives, conceived and curated by Sara Alberani and Chiara Siravo (LOCALES)

Workshop with Adelita Husni-Bey & Sitesize 
Tuesday, 15 October, 16:30-18:45
Espai 4. Free admission with reservation. 

As part of Adelita Husni-Bey’s most recent and ongoing research into water infrastructures in Libya, from colonialism to the present day, the artist will join Sitesize, a Barcelona based collective whose current research is focused on the historical layers of water use and abstraction. Together, they will propose two exercises with the goal of exchanging methodologies, knowledge and experiences of water custody, on the colonial continuum and hydro-extractivist practices. Through their respective case studies, their exercises will address how water is understood as a resource, how it is experienced somatically, how water is remembered and how the, at times slippery, dynamic between oppressor and oppressed can be understood through the lens of infrastructure.

The workshop will be held in English and Spanish with informal translations. To attend the workshop, registration is required.

Experimental performative lecture, conversation, informal dialogue 
Tuesday, 15 October, 19:00-20:30h
Espai 4. Free admission

The workshop is followed by an informal experimental lecture which will include brief screenings of archival material, followed by a presentation and a conversation with Sitesize, moderated by Barcelona-based collective Espectros De Lo Urbano (Nancy Garín & Antoine Silvestre). This part of the event is dedicated to deepening the research developed by the artists. 

Adelita Husni-Bey will present on material from her recent research in the archives of the Italian Institute for Africa and the Orient (ISIAO ) as well as the archives of fascist television channel, Istituto Luce in Rome, drawing parallels between infrastructure building and infrastructure destruction in the context of imperialist and colonial ventures. Sitesize will discuss their latest work, Besòs mirall interior (Besòs interior mirror), which explores the extensive aquifer of the River Besòs close to Barcelona, focusing on identifying the active dimension of the groundwater in this fragmented and altered territory. The work focuses on aspects of the river's natural salubrity, the historical layers of water use and abstraction, as well as the levels of accumulated symbolic meanings and their actualisation in the current climate scenario. The project is part of the current exhibition “Després del vendaval" at the Santa Mònica Arts Center in Barcelona.

Adelita Husni-Bey is an artist and an expert in pedagogy, interested in topics ranging from anarcho-collectivism to theater, from jurisprudence to urban development studies. She is also
involved in organizing workshops, producing publications, curating radio broadcasts, archives, and exhibitions, using non-competitive pedagogical models through the framework of contemporary art. Involving activists, architects, jurists, schoolchildren, spoken-word poets, actors, urbanists, physical therapists, students, and teachers, her work consists of making sites in which to practice collectively. 

Sitesize
Sitesize is an artistic initiative, based in Barcelona, that activates the connection with places and with the transformative imagination. It calls for collective action to relocate the creative experience in environments of reciprocity. Elvira Pujol Masip and Joan Vila-Puig Morera are the people behind Sitesize. 

LOCALES is a curatorial platform founded in Rome that aims to inspire a reflection on the public sphere through artistic practices. It is directed and curated by Sara Alberani, Marta Federici and Chiara Siravo. Through a series of site-specific programmes involving commissions of new artworks, explorations of public spaces, educational activities and performances, LOCALES addresses the complexity of contemporary urgencies starting from the political and social history of symbolic places in the city and their local communities. 

The Italian Cultural Institute of Barcelona presents the second edition of IT Out OFF, a program conceived by the Directorate General for Contemporary Creativity of the Italian Ministry of Culture in collaboration with the Directorate General for Public and Cultural Diplomacy of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, for the internationalization of Italian art.

The 2024 edition features Sowing Archives, a public program conceived and curated by Sara Alberani and Chiara Siravo of the Rome based collective LOCALES, is presented at La Virreina Centre de la Imatge, a contemporary art space run by the Barcelona City Council. The title of the programme refers to the importance of the archive as a visual, imaginative and knowledge-building medium within marginalized and invisibilized contexts. The project is based on the belief that artistic practices have the capacity to locate and gather traces of the past and plant the necessary seeds for the recognition of histories and experiences whose memory is at risk of being lost. Just as there are potential histories, there are also potential archives that can take root through the sowing and irrigation of their subterranean substances, which often only appear to be hidden. 

Through the work of the international artists involved in the program, Adelita Husni-Bey, Muna Mussie and Daniela Ortiz, Sowing Archives recognizes and celebrates the importance of counter-narratives, particularly in the context of Europe’s colonial past. The project initiates a dialogue between Italy and Spain, where multiple artistic practices are searching for and bringing to light a critical perspective towards the persistent aesthetic and ideological reverberations of colonialism, also through alternative pedagogy geared towards reformulating collective memory.

Composed of performances, video projections, workshops and a series of editorial releases, Sowing Archives consists of three main events hosted by La Virreina Centre de la Imatge in Barcelona from 1 October to the end of November 2024.

Sowing Archives is a public programme conceived and curated by Sara Alberani and Chiara Siravo (LOCALES) and promoted by the Directorate General for Contemporary Creativity of the Ministry of Culture and by the Italian Cultural Institute of Barcelona in conjunction with the 15th edition of Manifesta. 

The project is supported by La Virreina Centre de la Imatge, àngels Barcelona, Laveronica Arte Contemporanea, and with the collaboration of Calafou and Nero Editions.