We celebrate the birth of MAR, a platform for artistic mediation and new institutionalities

Promoting relevant actions for change in contemporary cultural institutions that allow for a more connected and empowering artistic practice with citizens is the main objective of MAR, an artistic mediation platform that arises from a desire shared by the Daniel and Nina Carasso Foundation, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (MNCARS) and hablarenarte. We are happy to promote the birth of this platform that begins to take its first steps with the launch of the call for research residencies entitled “Notar”.

We believe that cultural mediation is a key tool to bring about a paradigm shift that effectively involves all people in cultural life and in the public sphere, as it contributes to blurring the traditional boundaries between cultural institutions and civil society. Thus, with the aim of promoting the emergence of more democratic institutional forms that facilitate the involvement of citizens in the cultural field -new institutionalities-, we have partnered with the Reina Sofía Museum and the hablarenarte association to give shape to MAR, a long-term joint programme.

In MAR the concerns of three entities as different as a foundation, an association and a national museum converge. We want to generate plural meeting spaces in which the great diversity of agents that make up the ecosystem of cultural mediation in Spain can research, share and work together, consolidating mediation as an essential element of cultural policies.

MAR responds directly to this need and is an exercise in new institutionality in itself. The name chosen refers to its fluid and amoebic character, exemplified by the three nodes that compose it. A research programme, Notar, a mediation network, Alzar, and a digital archive, Caja, are the three interconnected nodes that form the backbone of the platform’s work and that will contribute to identifying new possible relationships between contemporary cultural institutions and citizens, seeking to generate new synergies through mediation.

The three nodes of MAR constitute a fluid structure where continuous exchanges will generate a plural, dynamic and changing ecosystem of knowledge and experiences on cultural mediation and new institutions.

While Notar will be a boost to research on critical pedagogies, experimental artistic mediation and alternative institutionality, Raising Your Voice Together and Sounding Board will seek to generate an open community to enhance joint work networks and generate a center of shared resources, respectively.

Supporting research to generate situated and collective thinking

One of the first actions of MAR is the launch of a call for six research residencies, framed in its Notar node. With an endowment of between €5,000 and €10,000, they are aimed at individual or collective research, lasting 3 to 6 months, betweenMarch 15 and September 30, 2022.

The objective of this call is to stimulate and consolidate research on critical pedagogies, experimental mediation and alternative institutionality. At the same time, the collective articulation of a research community will be promoted from which new knowledge and critical approaches can be produced and made visible. Reflection and thought on the complex intersections between mediation and cultural institutions will be nourished by the different lines of research proposed in the call: contemporary malaise, mediation policies/critical pedagogies, common, porous institutions, deviations, and archive and memory.

These residencies aim to promote artistic research, as well as the generation of collective processes of reflection through the bibliographic and documentary resources that will be available to researchers in residence both at the Museum’s Study Centre and at the Planta Alta de hablarenarte residency centre.

The call, open until 15 January 2022, is aimed at people who can accredit a professional profile in research, curatorship, cultural management, formal and non-formal education, cultural mediation or hybrid profiles that may be related to the lines of work proposed in the call.

To apply for the call, it is necessary to present an artistic research project to be developed during the residency in relation to one of the six lines of research proposed:

• Contemporary malaise: research on the conditions of the historical cycle that is taking place, in the midst of a strong crisis at many levels and scales.
• Mediation Policies/Critical Pedagogies: Critical Devices for Rethinking the Museum Institution and Interrogating New Forms of Institutionality that Affect the Ways in Which We Conceive Artistic Policies, the Ways of Organizing Work, and Interacting with Audiences.
• Commons: analysis of devices and tools linked to networks and collaborations between non-institutionalized and community organizations that address the notion of the common by exploring other ways of constructing heritage, property, and collective life.
• Porous institutions: the objective of this vector is to tension and open cracks in the social and institutional structures that promote the construction of an authentic cultural democracy through listening, dialogue and action.
• Detours: this axis addresses issues related to artistic activism and social movements, as well as the formation of networks of care, community solidarity, cooperative or self-managed forms that give birth to other ways of sustaining us.
• Archive and memory: review of histories and archives of art/education experiences and cultural mediation, with emphasis on the education departments of different cultural organizations in Spain.

The researchers participating in this programme will actively interact with the working groups of the Alzar mediation network and their productions will be part of the Caja digital archive. Likewise, public activations of the results of these investigations will be carried out, in order to involve the public as a whole.

This call is a decisive start for MAR, a platform that will empower as many agents as possible in the field of artistic mediation and generalise mediation practices as a driver of change towards a more cohesive society, a more present citizenry and a cultural sector committed to contemporary challenges.

You can consult the rules and submit a candidacy here.

Key data of the Notar call of the MAR platform:

• 6 research residencies on cultural mediation
• Support of between €5,000 and €10,000 for each beneficiary person or group
• Networking with other agents of MAR and the mediation sector to create enriching links.
• Aimed at people with a professional profile in research, curatorship, cultural management, formal and non-formal education, cultural mediation or hybrid profiles related to the call, who present a research project to be developed.
• Call open until January 15, 2022