PRESENTATION

ARBAR (Association for Biocultural and Artistic Research of Rodes) is an initiative founded in 2012 to offer the artistic community the opportunity to research and intervene in the natural environment of the Vall de Santa Creu through contemporary art projects.

THE SETTING

The Vall de Santa Creu is located in the Serra de Rodes geographical area, within the Cap de Creus Natural Park, specifically on the north-western edge of El Port de la Selva. Historically, the area was surrounded by olive groves and vineyards, most of which are no longer cultivated today.

Over the last few centuries, the Vall de Santa Creu has remained relatively protected from the transformations brought about by the development of the agricultural and tourism industries. The gradual abandonment of vine and olive cultivation resulted from an economic crisis that led, on the one hand, to a decline in production and the subsequent migration of part of the local population to towns and cities such as Llançà, Figueres, Girona and Barcelona, as well as abroad; and, on the other, to the loss of the former balance between agricultural sustainability and quality of life.

This sense of being suspended in time has, however, been one of the exceptional circumstances that has helped preserve the Vall. It has endowed the place with one of its most distinctive qualities: the evocative presence of dormant time in the walls of its houses and in streets built directly upon the rock. In recent decades, however, the Vall has gradually become a living place where restaurants and rural accommodation coexist with contemporary artistic practices developed in the natural environment.

ARTISTIC PROJECT

The main aim of this initiative is to explore the essence of the environment, concealed by the passage of time, through the imaginative perspectives of artists, thereby generating new contemporary cultural perceptions of the place, particularly through ARBAR’s disused rural spaces.

PERFORMATIVE PRACTICES AND SITUATIONAL ACTION ART

In recent years, a number of artists working with action art and performative processes have shown an increasing interest in developing proposals that allow them to explore methodologies capable of shaping and informing the outcome of their works.

Within this framework, the expressive axis of the project is based on a wide range of practices connected to the language of action art, ranging from sound and the moving body to poetry and happenings. These practices function as part of a creative ritual capable of generating visual, plastic and sonic outcomes in the form of video art, video dance, photography, theoretical texts and/or poetry.

The artists’ interventions in the environment are therefore conceived through a holistic relationship between human presence and the natural setting, seeking to generate a new understanding of landscape: a transition from agricultural culture to artistic culture.

The challenge of ARBAR’s projects is to strengthen art as a tool for intersubjective dialogue, encourage political and cultural decentralisation, and foster new forms of cooperation and new ways of understanding previously unexplored artistic contexts, thereby contributing to a redefinition of the conceptual map of contemporary art.

Thanks to the support of the Government of Catalonia, the Girona Provincial Council and the El Port de la Selva Town Council, together with the collaboration of the Sant Marçal Residents’ Association of the Vall de Santa Creu, ARBAR has been able to offer visitors the opportunity to participate in and/or experience contemporary art projects centred on building a balanced relationship between environment, art and culture, while highlighting the distinctive identity of the Vall de Santa Creu.