The Rehabilitation of La Casa Invisible_Chapter 1
A collaborative and community-scale undertaking, where art, architecture and activism go in tandem in a strategy countering the last eviction process against La Casa Invisible.
Initiator(s)
Libia Castro & Ólafur Ólafsson in collaboration with La Casa Invisible, Gemma Medina and José Manuel López Osorio.
Description
Founded in 2007, La Casa Invisible is a citizen-managed cultural centre in a municipal nineteenth-century building, initially squatted and still sustained as commons against Málaga’s touristification.
TRoLCI is a collaborative community project in which art and activism responded to the City Council’s early 2022 eviction threat against La Casa Invisible, based on claims that the building required renovation.
In its first stage, the project combined artistic production, architectural mediation, and a municipal negotiation while expanding national and international support networks.
Through a video artwork, performances, artivist interventions, workshops, and an exhibition, the project reactivated a 2016 rehabilitation plan designed by architect López Osorio and his students with La Casa Invisible –that preserved the building’s character and common use–, while presenting La Casa Invisible’s history, past and present.
Workshops with architecture schools in Málaga and Seville implemented initial works of rehabilitation through practical interventions, including restored windows and a flooring prototype.
The artists also joined La Invi’s strategic commission, taking part in City Council negotiations and communicating each milestone through press actions.
Context
In March 2007, a large network of citizen collectives, neighbours, and creators decided to turn a 19th-century Neo-Arabic municipally owned building into a social and cultural center of citizen collective management. La Casa Invisible was created to protest how the city government was excluding its inhabitants from the extreme gentrification that had been happening since the millennium, feeding the construction and tourism industries. Since then, this experimental community center has been in a constant state of "cre-action," critical resistance, and negotiation to evade eviction threatened by the City Council. Over the years, there have been several turning points and phases, initial negotiation and breakups with the City Council. During these times, the Municipality has opened judicial procedures against the centre, or asked for particular legal requirements as condition to move forward with the complete concession of the public property. In response to one such request, architect López Osorio and his master students collaborated with the cultural centre to develop a Rehabilitation Plan in 2016. Although the plan was approved by the city's Urban Planning Management, the Council refused to grant it. In early 2022, La Invi contacted artist Libia Castro and Ólafur Olafsson, trusted collaborators and friends of La Invisible, to propose an artistic project in response to the most recent eviction process initiated by Malaga's council. Before that, they had already curated and organised the series of exhibitions “Snowball” (Bola de Nieve) with local and international artists to raised awareness and supported La Casa Invisible against the Municipality's previous threads.
Goals
To defend La Invisible as a civic cultural commons, affirm the right to the city against commodification and touristification, foreground glocal culture as a tool for collective urban resistance, activate art’s potential to imagine alternative paths towards a possible rehabilitation, and mobilise national and international support through art and media.
Beneficial outcomes
Overall, the project advanced the architectural proposal, attracted media attention, helped suspend legal proceedings, and strengthened negotiations.
Support from the Mondrian Foundation and CBK helped stall legal action and reopened municipal talks. Later, backing from Van Abbemuseum, Museo Reina Sofía, L’Internationale, and AC/E funding paused renewed eviction threats, culminating in a supportive visit from Spain’s Minister of Culture.
The project continues to build international alliances between art institutions and local movements defending the right to the city.
Location
Spain
Field
Gentrification, Activism, Civic Action, Commons, Turistification
Strategy
Extraterritorial Reciprocity, Artworlds (art-sustaining environtments), specific visibility
Users
La Casa Invisible, inhabitants of the city and anyone that wants to collaborate or participate with the activities and use La Casa Invisible.
Maintained by
Castro & Olafson & La Casa Invisible. Made possible with the generous support of the Mondriaan Fund (NL), CBK- Center for the Visual Arts Rotterdam (NL) and Artists ́Salary Grant (IS).
Duration
2022-ongoing
Category
Scientific
Pedagogical
Politics
Urban Development
Economy
Environment
Social
