“We want to invite you to a new social and cultural space in Madrid, a space open to discovery, participation and dialogue. A living center for the 21st century”. These were the words that presided over the brochure with which La Casa Encendida became known when it opened its doors in 2002 in the Madrid neighborhood of Lavapiés. A cover letter that the project a prepared piano has rescued as part of the activities with which the institution is celebrating its 20th anniversary. In his case, analyzing his file with an artistic look. The team that laid the foundations of the center was already Lucía Casani, today the director of La Casa, who remembers its start-up as “a very exciting moment.”
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Further
“The beautiful thing is that we started almost as with a blank sheet of paper. We could think what we longed for could be a cultural center in the Community of Madrid. Inventing from scratch something that we really wanted to exist”, recalls Casani. In addition, they had “enough budget”. “It was the perfect combination”, he affirms about a stage in which, after leaving the university, a few years passed in which he “practically” lived there.
The cultural manager and former Minister of Culture José Guirao, who died last year, was its first leader, until he handed over his position to Casani in 2014. “He marked out ways of doing things that we have continued and changed at the same time. That’s what’s nice. There are some pillars that are a well-matched family that gives a lot of security. You know where you want to go and at the same time there are the needs that are given on a day-to-day basis, ”he says.
The four areas of action to which it refers and which were outlined from the beginning are culture, solidarity, environment and education. “It was a model of a pioneering center in many things”, he comments on how precursor it was to have addressed, already at that time, issues that today “are so fashionable” such as “climate change”, “the visibility of women in the art” or “care”. “It is heroic to have started a model and that it has been able to be maintained,” claims the directive. La Casa Encendida has also been a mainstay for programming electronic and experimental music.
In addition, he defends that his work is closely linked to the contemporary: “We are always trying to respond to the problems of the present.” Along the way, they have had to face the changes given at the political, social and cultural level of the country, from the economic crisis of 2008 to the pandemic.
The first directly affected the structure of La Casa Encendida itself. Until 2008 it functioned, in the words of the director, as the “flagship” of Obra Social de Caja Madrid. After the merger of the bank with six other savings banks to form a new bank, Bankia, “social work was left in no man’s land and in that period we did not know where it was going to be.” Finally, in 2013, the Law on Savings Banks and Banking Foundations allowed them to “configure themselves as non-profit foundations”. Reason why they became Fundación Montemadrid.
Beyond the process, Casani defends: “We are lucky not to have any political ties. I find it very problematic that culture has political influences.” In this line, he postulates in favor of “culture having professional managers who did not have to depend on anything political.” “In La Casa Encendida it has been like that and it shows that we have been consistent with a job that we have been able to maintain,” he adds.
a year of celebration
La Casa Encendida has decided to celebrate its 20th anniversary with a special program that has already started and will continue throughout the year. “We have ordered the themes that we have seen fit to highlight,” explains Casani about an agenda that includes exhibitions such as a prepared piano o Picasso. No title. The second, which can be visited between May 19 and January 7, 2024, will present 50 works from the painter’s last period (1963–1973) through the eyes of 50 national and international contemporary artists.
“We have asked them to title each of Picasso’s works and to make the cartouche,” describes the center’s director, who indicates that the first thing they did was ask themselves: “How do we think of Picasso from the 21st century and La Casa Encendida ? We wanted to start a conversation with him, bring up certain issues and controversies that are on the table”, he explains about an exhibition that opens during the year of commemoration of the half century of the death of the painter from Malaga, some splendors that were precisely designed by José Guirao .
A prepared piano, For its part, it has already opened its doors. It is a project curated by the architects Lluís Alexandre Casanovas and Isabella Lenzi that seeks to understand, through artistic practices related to La Casa Encendida and its context, what is the long-term impact of cultural institutions on the communities in which they are inserted. To do this, they will be deploying various elements and activities throughout the year with which they seek to narrate the 20-year history of the center.
The first “activation” was inaugurated last week through a mobile exhibition that will show part of the archive and that includes the lighting of about twenty lights belonging to defunct businesses in the neighborhood, and the audiovisual installation by Claudia Claremi The memory of fruits (diaspora). An exhibition that revolves around forgotten fruits and the fabric of affections that surround them. For this, it has a film shot in 16mm, in black and white and without sound, revealed by hand.
In it appear, as the author declared to elDiario.es, “images of the hands of people describing fruits, how they open, how they are eaten, holding them. At the time of recording they had to think that they had the fruit in their hand”. These are accompanied by texts that belong to the conversations she had with various people from the Hispanic island communities of the Caribbean who live in Madrid. In this exercise of “collective memory” a dimension related to “more structural causes, problems that can affect both fruits and people” emerges.
Later, other artists such as Cecilia Barriga, Patricia Esquivias, Estefanía Santiago, Miriam Martín and the Boya, Poesía o Barbarie, La Parcería and the Lavapiés Film Festival will be exhibited. For the commissioners of a prepared piano, its objective was to “map the evolution” of La Casa Encendida, “to integrate people’s memories and at the same time be able to talk about concepts such as gentrification or the effects of tourism.” During their investigation process they have made findings such as that the name initially thought for the center was ‘Pawn Shop’. As Isabella Lenzi explains to this newspaper, “a survey was carried out and they realized that this name was closely associated with a time of crisis, of a poorer Spain after the Civil War.”
His colleague Lluís Alexandre Casanovas adds that it was then that they decided to entrust it to Fernando Beltrán, author of The name of things owner of the company with the same title that creates new names, as it has recently done with the Gallery of the Royal Collections. He is owed designations of brands such as Amena, Faunia, Vodafone or Aliada. For the Madrid center it was chosen because it was related to Spanish literature. “He made three proposals: La busca by Pio Baroja, La forja by Arturo Barea and La Casa Encendida by the poem by Luis Rosales”.
The curators consider that the center had “quite powerful intuitions”, and cite as an example the coffee and cinema sessions for the elderly that they have organized since its inception. “That they kept different audiences in mind is quite interesting,” they value.
This artistic duet is worth the director of the center to highlight the relevance it has for the institution, when it comes to finding the talent with which to build its activities, “calls such as Generations, Unpublished or the Puchi Awards”, the latter in collaboration with the publishing house Fulgencio Pimentel. “They are very important, a lot of people show up. I always tell young artists to do it because even if they don’t win, they will be seen. They allow us to keep an eye out for people we can turn to later.”
It is the example of the artificers of a prepared pianowhich were presented at a previous edition of unpublished, its program aimed at curators up to 35 years of age to carry out exhibition projects. So they did not win, but their idea was interesting and that is why they have decided to give them space in the commemoration of their 20-year career.
illuminate the future
Lucía Casani fondly remembers visits to La Casa by figures such as Abbas Kiarostami, Angela Davis or Jonas Mekas. Within her areas, she states that they will continue betting on one of their identity traits: non-regulated training.
“When we opened, we did not want to compete with universities or other centers that provide training of this type. The idea was to generate a type of programming that was a support to the regulated one, which at the same time allowed us to do much more experimental things. La Casa Encendida is not a place where you go to do a very long master’s degree. It has much more to do with the meeting, generating a group”, she affirms, “in our courses we do not demand anything to do them, simply that you feel like it; and that creates some very nice mixes of people of different ages and educational levels.”
With his sights set on reaching another 20 years of history, Casani highlights the importance of “the project continuing on its way. The lines are drawn.” Thus, he cites as objectives “continue supporting young creation and discover new talent” and “provide space for experimentation”. They also have in their sights that their programming is “as accessible as possible.”
“The challenge is to work with contemporary languages, which can often be more experimental, more critical and more contemporary; and that they are equally accessible to everyone”. To do this, when planning their activities they take “the neighborhood” as a reference. They ask themselves: “How can we make all the people of Lavapiés feel comfortable coming to see our programming?”.
The director shares that the area in which they have lost the most audience is in the cinema. “It’s more difficult to engage in the physical”, she comments, indicating that for this reason they always work to offer something “special”. “That the event is unique and that there is a reason why people want to attend physically,” she says.
At the same time, they have developed their own virtual platform, La Casa On, with which they seek to continue connecting and expanding with the public beyond their physical space. Of course, he ensures that the concerts and performing arts “continue to work.” Taking into account the four different areas that make up his program, he assesses as a “success” that “someone who comes for something related to cooperation ends up being interested in a contemporary art exhibition”.
Another aspect on which they have reflected is “how to connect with the young public”, for which they always try to work with people of this profile that allows them to be up to date with all the trends, such as the successful Puwerty festival, dedicated to culture Teen. And above all, continue to honor its name, as “house”. “We try to remove all possible barriers, so that people can inhabit the spaces, that it is alive and that everyone mixes.”