Web of Scientific Journal

Since the end of the last century, people have been warning about the consequences of considering culture as a resource. With it, artistic production slips under the economic radar, preluding this sphere as just another plot of exploitation. Production and consumption, export and import, profitability; these are some of the concepts that emerge from the zones of contact between art and economy.

Among the metaphors used to visualise the conversion of the symbolic into a consumer good, that of the cultural monoculture has taken on a certain prominence. This parallel alludes to the production of a single species (i.e. one type of culture and, with it, one type of art), suitable for mass consumption (easily digestible languages and formats). However, the optimisation of the resources required for this type of exploitation, in pursuit of a higher yield, ends up wearing down the environment, resulting in the precariousness of the existing artistic fabric.

It is not surprising that, along with that of monoculture, multifaceted notions such as sustainability are also demanding greater attention. Thus, this monograph launched the challenge of thinking about sustainability from the diversity of ways of doing (from practice, research, education, management, mediation, etc.), related to the context and taking into account the qualities and needs of the organisations that make it up. For this reason, there are also multiple approaches to the proposed theme; this volume includes manuscripts that deal with experiences and case studies ranging from management (revision of obsolete models and the search for more balanced formulas), artistic practices linked to the territory (in terms of caring for the environment and its communities) and initiatives motivated by concern for the environment, to the analysis of the correlation between the exploitation of the planet and its resources and the weakening of the cultural ecosystem.

To begin with, in «Fragile contexts: Notes on the precariousness of the plastic artist», Esperanza Cobo Arnal situates us in ‘destitute habitats’, the result of the consequences of the reproduction of models that result in unsustainable artistic production. With this, Cobo urges artists, as producers of subjectivities, to delve into the search for practices that promote a friendlier ecosystem for the development of artistic activity. Nevertheless, Luis Manuel Mayo Vega warns us in «Paradoxes of alternative artistic production practices in the contemporary art paradigm» about the double standards that certain appellatives hide: Mayo proposes a revision of the mechanisms and schemes by which any practice understood as alternative, peripheral or marginal, is susceptible to being absorbed by the logic of the artistic monoculture. Meanwhile, the text «Creation and Basque music in the Basque National Orchestra» presents a space of possibility between the propositional attitude of the first text and the warning of the second. Elixabete Arabaolaza Elorza and Gotzon Ibarretxe Txakartegi offer an exhaustive review of the evolution of the cultural policies of and in the Basque Country. To do so, they analyse the impact of these policies in their specific field, musical creation, and reflect on the return of the Basque Orchestra to the cultural ecosystem.

Continuing with the return and impact of artistic activity on a given context, «Incidence of artistic practices in the social transformation of the territory: Case study- Hilarte Association, Guayaquil, Ecuador» Patricio Sánchez-Quinchuela outlines one of the many lines of action of the neoliberal drift, which passes through the weakening of the spheres of the social, the environmental and the cultural, confronting, in the case of the latter, the type of art that happens ´’behind closed doors’ (in the normativised spaces of the museum or gallery), and those practices and expressions that are developed in close relation to the context in which they arise and motivate them, leading them to be considered marginal, despite their repercussion on the development of the community and the social transformation of a territory.

The aforementioned titles coincide, therefore, in the identification of the existing relations between current cultural models and those considered minor. The following contributions go a step further by pointing out that this distance between the different formats could be due, once again, to a gender issue; the culmination of inequality and imbalance in the cultural ecosystem.

In the article «Ecofeminisms and contra-pedagogies of cruelty», Carla Álvarez-Barrio and José María Mesías-Lema highlight a series of artistic practices that, from the perspective of feminist activism, warn about the tandem of cultural monoculture and green capitalism. Just as at the end of the last century various authors revealed the connection between male domination and the exploitation of natural resources, nowadays, they point out those cultural models that prevail thanks to their proximity to the dominant group, while others are exploited in the name of values and goods considered universal (care for the environment, culture, etc.). But as Leyre Arraiza Sancho points out in «A garden, but not of flowers: Analysis of orientation, distance and body in a vacant lot», it is in these non-normatised spaces (outside the museum and the gallery) where the queer (the different, the strange) makes sense. In fact, the article «The kiss in the forest: Artistic queer ethnographic practices and relational identity» by Elena García-Oliveros Hedilla, makes visible queer communities that confront a type of art and corseted practices through, in this case, the vindication of marginal spaces. The forest functions as an analogy of those places where ambush is possible; that is to say, where, rather than hiding, difference and opposition to hegemonic formats are activated. Continuing with the marginal, peripheral or minor spaces advanced by Arraiza and the importance of the community and the collective to generate resistance to García-Oliveros' norm, the analysis proposed by Chiara Sgaramella and Estela López de Frutos in «A time for care: Ecofeminist artistic practices and collective learning in the project Agroversitat», stresses the advantage of the strategic position of certain territories (precisely because they are located in the shade) both for the creation of networks and for the generation of critical discourse. The authors take the vegetable garden as a physical space, but also a symbolic one (as a meeting place for local agents), from which to reflect and propose collective actions in the face of the effects of the crises caused by an extractivist dynamic, which has also left its mark on the artistic-cultural sphere. The vegetable garden is once again present in the experience described in the article «Vegetable calligraphy, a new reading of landscape through sculpture», Marta Linaza Iglesias describes the project ‘Vegetable calligraphy’, and at the same time serves to reflect on the vegetable garden as a place where time slows down (outside the accelerated rhythm of production that has imbued artistic practice) and where research and process come to the surface.This symbiosis between the care of the garden and artistic work, the fruit of the binomial between art and nature, gives rise to analyses such as that of Olga Marugan Oliva, in «Eco-art as a means of aesthetic, ethical and social transformation», Marugan explores the places of convergence between art, nature, science and ecology, while trying to define, through a series of examples, the complex and multifaceted figure of the eco-artist, the study of the relationship between humans and the environment being the cornerstone of this type of artistic production. Finally, we witness the proliferation of cultural facilities in which art and nature are hybridised, highlighting a series of practices centred on care and attention to the natural environment. The spaces presented by Sergi Quiñonero Ortuño in «Art and nature centers in Spain: Consciousness pedagogy», add to the network of artistic-cultural centres in Spain.

By way of conclusion, it is worth highlighting the relevance of the selected texts in terms of the visibility of contemporary formats and practices that delve into the intricate correspondences (whether of affinity or dissidence) between various fields.And which remind us that repairing the interconnection between different ecosystems (art and nature), models (of homogenisation or diversification), types of production (of subtraction or nutrition) and the practices that are prioritised, promoted or hindered, is indispensable for the preservation of these and the organisms that inhabit them.

Oihane Sánchez Duro

Monographic issue coordinator