What impacts you the most about the cooperative?
I believe the most significant impact of the cooperative has been sustaining our presence and promoting the social economy since 2006 in a territory as challenging as the city of L’Hospitalet de Llobregat, where, until now, there has been a lack of complicity from the local administration.
When and why did you start?
The cooperative was founded in 2006 as a tool to regulate our work and gain autonomy. The people who initiated the project came from a process of acculturation within the field of art through university studies. We were all children of families who had migrated from rural areas of the Spanish peninsula to Catalonia in the 1960s.
Hegemonic contemporary art is built by making an extractivist, classist, and colonial economy invisible and naturalized. At La Fundició, we wanted to rethink what contemporary art could look like if it served a feminist economy and the well-being of the territories we inhabit
How many members are part of the project?
Currently, we are 10 people.
What differentiates you from similar projects?
I suppose one of our singularities is that we are an artistic collective that has chosen the cooperative model to manage our work.
As I mentioned, in the art field, working conditions are neither discussed nor visible because they are seen as something trivial—something that disrupts the notion of art as a superior entity, which contemporary art often seeks to uphold.
Another important aspect is that we have tried to break away from the idea of a “project” and instead work through the creation of everyday spaces that remain open to our territory.
How do you see yourselves in the future?
This is a complex question and an internal debate where we have differing opinions. We would like to increase our political impact, but our very hands-on, informal way of working suffers if we expand the organization using conventional parameters. Our approach is to help grow and diversify the ecosystem of initiatives around us.
What support have you received from Seira Impuls Cooperatiu? What have you used it for?
We have received financial support, which we have allocated to Les Juntes, a scattered housing cooperative project in L’Hospitalet de Llobregat. This initiative supports people who face violence due to their origin, gender, race, and other factors.
