“Las Patatas y Las Cosas. Lurpeko istorioak” / Potatoes and Things. Underground Stories. Seminar

“There is not ‘a’ potato,” Emmánuel Lizcano would say. How to explain forms that marvel us, that capture our attention independently of our own intellectual criteria, tastes or definitions? The images, stories, myths and traditions relating to potatoes make up a strange cocktail of expertises and flavours, errors and illusions, fancies and histories. The seminar Las Patatas y Las Cosas. Lurpeko istorioak is a collection of scraps, artifices and conjectures positioned somewhere between the notions of ‘natural sculpture’ and ‘social sculpture’. The point of departure for all of these is a single assumption: the lack of an ordered one in the potato tuber.

Las Patatas y Las Cosas. Lurpeko istorioak is a project curated by Oier Etxebarria, produced by the Fundación Cristina-enea, based on the figure of the potato and its representations. Begun in 2011, it has taken different forms, such as an exhibition comprised of works by Isaías Griñolo and Asa Sonjasdotter, talks, recitals, a publication, or this seminar.

To take part in the seminar, please write to bulegoa@bulegoa.org

The seminar can be seen in TV-tron. ( http://www.tea-tron.com/teatron/TVTRON.do )

To download the publication:
http://www.cristinaenea.org/Gestor/nodos/nodo_dok_din/Lurpeko_Istorioak.pdf
http://www.cristinaenea.org/Gestor/nodos/nodo_dok_din/Las_Patatas_y_las_Cosas.pdf

PROGRAM

11:00 – 14:00: Emmánuel Lizcano. La guerra de las patatas / The Potato War
Even the most ordinary, humble or apparently insignificant things -like potatoes- have the whole world, the whole of history tied into them: the National History we were told and think needs no unexplaining, the many stories of the many peoples, the medula of the thousand battles between the light of scientific knowledge and the buried -like the potato- popular ways of doing things and forms of expertise, the ways in which living, more or less human beings relate to others, more or less potato.

14:00 – 15:00: Lunchbreak

15:00: Oier Etxeberria. Presentation of Las Patatas y Las Cosas. Lurpeko istorioak; screening of the documentary El escarabajo de la patata (The Potato Beetle) (1945) by Marqués de Villa-Alcázar.

16:00: Isaías Griñolo. Ahí, donde van esas torres, mi padre plantaba patatas… (Over there, where those houses are being built my father used to plant potatoes…)

A new chapter of Las fatigas de la muerte (la lógica cultural del capitalismo químico), focusing in this case on the manoeuvres of the fertilizer industry in its hunger to appropriate what is common: earth, air and water. Griñolo takes a vegetable garden in Barakaldo where Serapio Goikoetxea planted potatoes as a case study. Goikoetxea lost the garden in 1941 for reasons of ‘general interest’. A legal ruse led to the expropriation of his land and the building of a chemical company, Sefanitro, on the plot. Today it is a wasteland overflowing with poisonous toxic residues. Two huge symbols of capitalism are planned for the same land once it is decontaminated: two concrete and glass skyscrapers. The historical memory of the plot is a perfect example of what has happened to vegetable gardens near urban areas.

17:30: Conversations with Javier Vázquez (Ekologistak Martxan)

19:00: Jon Andoni Goikoetxea. “Oda a todas las patatas más algún que otro pintxo de degustación poética” (Ode to all potatoes plus a couple of pintxos for your poetic delight) Poetry recital.

BIOGRAPHIES

Ekologistak Martxan are an association of people who share a similar view on the environmental problems we experience in Euskal Herria. We are part of social environmentalism, that is, environmentalism which considers that the root of environmental problems is to be found in forms of production and consumption, which are increasingly globalized and which lead to other social problems: North-South relations, social inequality in our society, etc.
( http://www.ekologistakmartxan.org )

Oier Etxeberria Bereziartua. Studied Fine Arts at the Universidad del País Vasco (1991-1997). Currently works at Fundación Cristina Enea (Donostia-San Sebastián) in charge of its cultural section. Solo exhibitions as an artist include: Pure Data as part of Tratado de Paz, curated by Pedro G. Romero (Donostia-San Sebastián, 2013); Lalana, Centro Cultural Montehermoso Kulturunea (Vitoria-Gasteiz, 2011); kontzertu ekonomikoa, Casa de cultura, Egia (Donostia-San Sebastián, 2008); Espacio abisal (Bilbao 2006); K:E, Casa de cultura de Bera de Bidasoa (Nafarroa, 2004); Pancho Fierro gallery (Lima, 2002).

Jon Andoni Goikoetxea is a poet from Barakaldo. His father had a vegetable garden there which was stolen by the Franco regime. He went to school there, and it was there that he came into contact with experimental literature in literary debates. He is a man marked by the working class, anti-Franco feeling in Barakaldo, and also by his father’s stolen garden. His book Tres en uno: el camión de la poesía (2008) was published by La Bienal de Poesía Experimental de Euskadi. “I am an art worker; I present myself and I behave as I dress. I was born in the least infinite year; I am passing towards the most infinite, and I belong to no generation just like the universe of which I am an infinitesmal part. My work is, above all, the work of a worker.”

Isaías Griñolo (Bonares, 1963) is an artist, who lives and works in Seville, Huelva and Badajoz. He is a member of PRPC (Plataforma de Reflexión de Políticas Culturales), and develops projects relating to memory, ecology, economics, poetry and art, such as Asuntos Internos. La Cultura como cortina de humo; Desmemoria. 14 documentos sobre un lugar de olvido y Escombros: imágenes, relatos y discursos de las prácticas ecologistas on the relationships between financial flows and territory. Since 2006, he has collaborated with Sobre capital y territorio (UNIA, arteypensamiento, Sevilla).

Emmánuel Lizcano. Studied Mathematical Sciences (Univ. Complutense), Doctor in Philosophy (Univ. Autónoma de Madrid); professor of Sociology of Knowledge (UNED). In addition to different contributions in books and magazines he has written Imaginario colectivo y creación matemática. La construcción social del número, el espacio y lo imposible en China y en Grecia, Gedisa (1993) and Metáforas que nos piensan. Sobre ciencia, democracia y otras poderosas ficciones, Traficantes de Sueños (2006).