Lali Alvarez
After 10 years of developing participatory projects I realize that it is a field in which everything remains to be done, to think, to define and to write. But there are a series of principles, we could almost call them philosophical or ethical principles, that run through our work when, as artists, we work beyond our studio, when our practices go beyond our individual desire (or our need) to express ourselves, to commit ourselves, to search for beauty or to influence the culture and society that is contemporary to us.
Somehow the participation of "the other" is part of all the artistic processes I develop, from when I write a text to be staged, to when I lead a collective creation project with a community in a given territory. From when I think of a staging where the audience is not a mere spectator who observes from a dark stalls what happens on stage (indifferent to their presence), to when I devise projects where people will be the ones to decide the individual artistic path I will have to take.
I alone would not have arrived at the same place when writing "Ragazzo" or "Barcelona (against the wall)", to give an example, without the participation of people and associations who told me their stories, or guided me in the research, or offered me revealing data and information that cried out to be shared, the work would have been totally different, and incomplete, in a certain way. Thus, my writing of fictions to be brought to the stage is nourished by reality at the moment when, as an author, I leave the studio, I interview, I share, I listen to "the other", and I incorporate these voices into the narrative I am weaving.
And it's not about being a vampire and using "the other" as an object but offering them a subject space. And this is a very fine line, which is not always easy to detect when you are immersed in a creative process, and that's why I think it's very important to define a priori how to approach the participation of "the other", and to understand if this participation of "the other" will turn him/her into an object, an addressee, or a subject of the artistic fact.
In some way we are all addressees when it comes to artistic creation. When we are "the audience" , the relationship with the product of the artistic act transforms us, it is an offering. But when we participate in the process of creation (whether we are the driving force behind a project as professional artists or we are non-professional participants) we are also always, in some way, recipients of what happens in the evolution of this relationship. I don't share the idea that it is the artist who offers and the participant who receives, and although it may seem obvious, I believe that the benefit is always mutual.I write about all this because my artistic practice has focused in recent years on what we call "community creation". Artistic projects in which my company designs creative processes shared with non-professionals for the generation of scenic experiences that will later be shared with an audience.
And it is in this practice that we have gradually come to understand the principles I was talking about earlier.
The first is the conviction that all participants (professional or not) must be subjects of the artistic event.
The second is the commitment to the territory and its community, a commitment that does not allow us to dissociate the processes we carry out from the legacy they leave both in the community and in its territory. This inheritance may be tangible and quantifiable or it may be immaterial, subjective and even blurred. But something has to remain, beyond artistic production, when we leave.
And how do we apply these principles in our work? Well, each project is different and requires specific practices, but there are also some types of actions that we always carry out whatever the peculiarity of the project.
The first actions we take when we face the beginning of a participatory creative process are aimed not at a simple group cohesion, but at a real desire to generate a community among all those involved. From the non-professional participants, to the artists, but also the production people, the programmers, or the accomplices we have in the territory who act as a link with the participants.
It's not just about building a community, it's about achieving a sense of community, it's about feeling that you are part of something that transcends you, that you belong to a group that needs you to exist and to achieve its objectives. It is about awakening the desire to be part of it and to stop feeling that we need an external agent to describe us as a community in order to feel that we are one.
These actions are important because they leave a mark, they generate things that will be part of that emotional or relational inheritance that we leave behind when we leave. But theyare also important because they help to relax the tension that can exist as a result of the hierarchical relationship that can occur when an artist suddenly arrives to a certain non-professional group, or to an environment that doesn't know him/her at all, to lead a process of artistic creation. Releasing this tension is paramount if we want our first principle to have a level playing field and all participants to feel that they are subjects of the process.
Other important actions for us are all those that refer to the documentation of the process.
For this reason, it is desirable to have a physical space during the process that acts as a laboratory, data center, even a museum, and that this space can be visited by the inhabitants who do not participate directly in the process. This involves them in some way, makes them participants and can also, why not, awaken in them the desire to participate as an audience.
And it is also desirable for us to generate material with which we can create a Making Of.
And it is not about having an alibi to say that our work is important if the result has not "turned out well". We will always defend that participatory arts have to tend towards that excellence that we demand from all the arts, understanding "excellence" as that capacity to generate beauty, or to have a deep meaning, or to offer pertinent questions, or to be a mirror of a reality, or to be a hammer to transform it.
Documenting and sharing the process is a way of placing value on everything that goes beyond the mercantile logic that only values artistic processes for their product and the capacity of that product to be inserted into a market.
Many of the stage experiences that we design as the final product of the processes that we share with a community and its territory are not exportable, they are often not even reproducible, and if we do not value the process to reach them, their scope, their transforming capacity, is dented.
As I shared at the beginning, it's all to be said. Here are just a few small notes to keep us questioning ourselves and our work with 'the other'.
Lali Álvarez Garriga
Riga, August 2023.