The Fundació Antoni Tąpies creates a new area entitled Combined Arts, thanks to the financial support received from the Plan Avanza
Press release
Press Departament:
Alexandra Laudo (t) +34 934 870 315 / (f) +34 934 870 009 /
e-mail
Last autumn, the Fundació Antoni Tąpies initiated a project that has led to the creation of a new area entitled Combined Arts (A Place for Education, Exhibition and Research). It will include material and digitalised documentation of our publications, the Collection and the institution’s archive – with special emphasis on the work of Antoni Tąpies and all related documentation –, with the aim of making them available to all interested users and of promoting research on the artistic and cultural contents of the Fundació. The digitalised contents included in Combined Arts will be mostly texts, images and audio-video archives, as well as digitalisations of specialised material such as the artist books created by Antoni Tąpies. In Combined Arts we will also develop educational proposals and exhibition projects that will complement the museum’s programme.
Combined Arts will be articulated through a web 2.0 site with a free program, and an infrastructure of 219 m2 located in the part of the building previously devoted to office space. The area of Combined Arts will also include the Library of the Fundació Antoni Tąpies.
The project will be developed over a period of three years, from 2009 to 2011, in collaboration with the Universitat Politčcnica de Catalunya and the Universitat Politčcnica de Valčncia. Already in its initial stages, the area is presently developing a series of researches related to the implementation of the project, such as the concept of archive and the idiosyncrasy of archival practices, the use of Information Communications Technology (ICT) in the cultural sphere, and the legal parameters of copyright and the application of free licences. During these initial stages, and coinciding with the project of architectural renovation of the building, the Fundació is remodelling the old offices of the museum and converting them, together with the Library, into the site for the area of Combined Arts, where smaller exhibition and educational projects, seminars and conferences will take place. Also during these initial stages, the process of digitalisation of the materials has begun and will continue throughout the later stages of the development of the project. During a second stage, a computer program will be developed for the administration and consultation of the digitalised contents. During a third and final stage, the web site will be implemented and activated for public use. The Combined Arts area will open to the public (albeit partially) at the moment of the reopening of the Fundació Antoni Tąpies.
During the process of development and implementation of Combined Arts, the area will house symposia, conferences and working sessions, which will be open to the public in order to create a context of analysis and reflection around the conceptual and thematic basis of the project. Other events will also be organised that will make public the results of the different investigations carried out throughout the project.
The Fundació Antoni Tąpies will develop the Combined Arts area thanks to the financial support of the Ministry for Industry, Tourism and Commerce through the Plan Avanza 2. This plan renews the course of action established by the Plan Avanza – approved in 2005 – to contribute to the strategic development of the Information Society. The Fundació applied to the Plan Avanza 2009 (within the line of funding for Centres of Knowledge of the sub-programme Avanza Contents, corresponding to a course of action of this strategic plan entitled Digital Citizenship) with a project to develop a Space for Knowledge under the name of Combined Arts. 517 projects applied for funding to the sub-programme of Avanza Contents within the course of action Digital Citizenship of the Plan Avanza. The project of the Fundació Antoni Tąpies was among the 55 selected for financial support.
The financial support received by the Fundació Antoni Tąpies consists of a grant of 172,190.10 euros and a loan of 1,393,197 euros. Part of this amount will be destined to the work of the collaborating bodies – Universitat Politčcnica de Catalunya and Universitat Politčcnica de Valčncia. To carry out the project, firms and bodies of the ICT sector will be subcontracted.
Combined Arts wishes to be a platform for collective work and for interrelation with the visitors, researchers and other collaborators of the Fundació, that will allow us to share, disseminate and actualise the vision of culture and contemporary art that the Fundació has held from 1990 to the present, as well as its programme and future projects. It also seeks to be a project of reference for the development of digital platforms for access to cultural contents through the processes of direct participation by the users.
The project is witness to the Fundacio’s desire to use the new technologies in order to create new forms of relationships with the cultural contents, and to allow for an articulation of a transversal, critical and participatory discourse, in line with the social commitment of the institution. Moreover, the project Combined Arts reinforces the line of research around the archive, memory and register that the institution has developed over the years through projects as diverse as the working session Active Archive (Museu Picasso, Barcelona, 4/5 December 2008) and the online project Archive-Thesaurus (web.ftapies.com/thesaurus), as well as exhibition projects such as F.X. Archive: The Empty City. A Project by Pedro G. Romero (Fundació Antoni Tąpies, January – April 2006), Enthusiasm. A Project by Neil Cummings and Marysia Lewandowska (Fundació Antoni Tąpies, October 2005 – January 2006), Come and Go by Valcįrcel Medina (Fundació Antoni Tąpies, October – December 2002), Archive Cultures, by Jorge Blasco Gallardo (Fundació Antoni Tąpies, September – November 2000) and The End(s) of the Museum (March – June 1995).
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