CONFLUÈNCIES, Artistic Interventions in the Rural Environment

CONFLUÈNCIES, artistic interventions in the rural environment, is a project of artistic interventions in the twenty-four smallest villages of the Valencian Community, within the context ofIVAM al territori.

Focusing on the dynamics of listening and respect for the environment, CONFLUÈNCIES is a process-based programme revolving around three elements: dialogue with the land, the creation of specific artistic works, and various mediation actions. In order to sequence the actions and interventions, the project has regrouped the populations in five phases according to cultural and geographical criteria, but at the same time considering those factors that allow for the weaving of associations and subplots. Phase I: Alto Mijares (Espadilla, Fuentes de Ayódar, Torralba del Pinar, Torrechiva, Vallat and Villamalur); phase II: Mancomunidad del Alto Palancia (Fuente la Reina, Higueras, Matet, Pavías, Sacañet and Villanueva de Viver); phase III: Province of Valencia (La Puebla de San Miguel, Carrícola and Sempere); phase IV: Els Ports (Castell de Cabres, Herbers, Palanques, Vallibona and Villores); and phase V: El Comtat (Benillup, Binimassot, Famorca and Tollos) *.

For the artistic interventions in each of these municipalities, a total of twelve artists have been invited to form a diverse team. They are individuals and collectives from different generations, practices and backgrounds, whose common interests include themes such as the periphery, habitation, processes and memory. The team is made up of Bleda y Rosa, Carlos Izquierdo, Fent Estudi, La cuarta piel, Laura Palau, Lola Zoido, LUCE, Makea tu vida, Pep Vidal, Pilar Beltrán, Rubén García and Sandra Mar. With the aim of favouring a more permeable and expanded sojourn, each artist has the opportunity to reside and intervene in two towns, allowing prolonged reflections and shared experiences.

Once the pieces have been installed, CONFLUÈNCIES develops mediation activities with the intention of maintaining the links generated in each town and allowing the processes that have arisen during the periods of residence and artistic creation to be monitored. To this end, two types of actions have been designed to question the inside and outside, the rural and the urban, the central and the peripheral. Firstly, through a mediation project in the classrooms of the rural grouped schools (CRA), together with the IVAM’s education department – in line with processes already initiated in previous years. Secondly, through visits to the towns that host the interventions and which, departing from the museum, allow citizens to get away from the city and share time and conversation with the artists and the people involved in the localities.

CONFLUÈNCIES would not be possible without the invaluable help – before, during and after the artist’s sojourns – of the town’s councils and local agents, as well as the neighbours who provide accommodation, encounters, conversations and negotiations in order to carry out the artistic activations in their municipalities.
* The twenty-four localities where the Confluències programme is being developed are the villages of the so-called Route 99, and their interventions are the result of the Generalitat Valenciana’s invitation to the IVAM to take part in this initiative. In addition to the villages of the Alto Mijares phase, the other municipalities that make up the route and in which Confluències proposes its intervention programme are, in the province of Castellón: Fuente la Reina, Villanueva de Viver, Matet, Sacañet, Higueras and Pavías (Mancomunidad Alto Palancia) Vallibona, Herbés, Palanques, Villores and Castell de Cabres (Els Ports); in the province of Valencia; and La Puebla de San Miguel; and Benillup, Benimassot, Famorca and Tollos (El Comtat), in the province of Alicante.