Opening
September 11, 2015
Tabakalera
Duque de Mandas 52
20012 Donostia-San Sebastián
Spain
Tabakalera, the centre for creation of contemporary culture located in San Sebastian, will open its doors on September 11, with select spaces on view. Over the following months, the rest of the projects, institutions and initiatives that will be part of Tabakalera’s cultural ecosystem will gradually become active, with the aim of having the building fully operational by early 2016.
Tabakalera’s main goal is to promote the creation of contemporary culture in different creative fields and in all its stages (research, production, exhibition), as well as to generate and share knowledge. With this aim, it revolves around four lines of work that make up its programme: contemporary artistic practices, mediation, digital culture laboratories—Hirikilabs—and the creation library—Ubik.
For the opening weekend, there will be a special schedule of activities. The opening exhibition, Moving Image Contours: Points for a Surrounding Movement, curated by Soledad Gutiérrez and Anna Manubens, will include works by 25 national and international authors, some of whom will present new work. They include: Ibon Aranberri, Aimar Arriola, Herman Asselberghs, Itziar Barrio, Roger Bernat, Black Audio Film Collective, Eugeni Bonet, Manon de Boer, Analivia Cordeiro, Gonzalo De Pedro, Marguerite Duras, Patricia Esquivias, Dora García, Jean-Luc Godard, Los Hijos, Nader Koochaki, Nicolas Malevé, Pad.Ma, Neus Miró, Itziar Okariz, Uriel Orlow, Alex Reynolds, Fito Rodríguez, Oriol Vilapuig and Marc Vives. The exhibition reflects on the concept of the audiovisual from the outside, seeking references and relationships with other languages or situations where it is hybridised. This exhibition unfolds from the Apología/Antología project, developed in collaboration with the HAMACA media & video art distribution (Spain) and the University of the Basque Country, which will also be presented within the framework of the exhibition.
Also on view during the opening will be a project related to the building’s memory, developed by a work group formed by artists and ex-workers from the tobacco factory (Tabakalera). In September, Tabakalera will host one of the official sections of the San Sebastian Film Festival, as well as the EIECINE International Film Students Meeting, which is organised annually by Tabakalera, along with Zinemaldia and DSS2016, and focuses on the more experimental languages of the audiovisual sphere.
Hirikilabs will also be open to work within the framework of digital culture, technological experimentation and social and collaborative technologies.
Open call for residencies
In addition, Tabakalera has launched a residency programme of different modalities to support artists, curators and cultural agents on the development of artistic projects. These modalities include: curator residency, residencies for the production of artistic projects, and a residency for local and non-local agents for the development of a project. The residencies will be a key tool within the Tabakalera project, enriching the cultural programme developed within the centre, integrating external agents into the dynamics of the cultural programme, and promoting the internationalisation of the project by encouraging encounters between the international and the local contexts. Registration period is open until August 16.
Other institutions and projects contributing towards creating a cultural ecosystem will coexist in the remodelled building. They include: The San Sebastian Film Festival, the Etxepare Basque Institute, the Basque Film Archive and the Kutxa Foundation. Also included will be private initiatives developing their own projects. Thus, the building will house different uses, initiatives and agents, with the cultural project as the backbone.
