- New alliances
Fields. Depopulation, rural schools and critical spatial practice proposes an exploration of the areas of Las Merindades (Burgos) and Omaña (León) that starts out with their rural schools. From there it moves on towards the social reality of the two areas, to the people who live there and their special circumstances, focusing on their memory but also their present as well as their (use and symbolic) potential for the future.
The chosen case studies, paradigmatic for their singularity, are structured around three interrelated typologies: the school infrastructure in the area; people and affects; and, educational policies applied in each area. As the team of the Fields project argue, these three axes reveal the flexibility of the school space, which facilitates their re-appropriation and reprogramming. In short, their critical situation at the moment and their survival.
Thanks to a specific spatial design, the exhibition hall calls to mind a school-like environment in order to showcase without distinction the both found and produced working materials: scale models of the different types of architecture under study; objects that speak to the historical memory of rural schools; documents of the give-back actions and activities undertaken; and the photographic documentation of Ricardo Suárez, in the form of an atlas, which offers an open-ended reading.
BLIND SPOT: Aurora Rodríguez, a teacher in the former school of Salce (Riello, León), used the corners from the inside of the building to place two blackboards at an angle to one another, thus splitting her lessons into two different levels for a single class of children.
Fields. Exhibition Laboratorio 987 (MUSAC, León).
DIAGRAMS: re-appropriation and reprogramming of old rural schools.
SPECIFIC MATERIALS: A selection of materials on loan from Luis Ruiz, a member of ACEYAM (Cultural, Ethnographic and Artisan Association of Las Merindades) are on display on a noticeboard. Also on view are a number of scale models of the most paradigmatic school spaces from among all those under study, abstractions of historical, traditional and/or popular architectural types, created using 3D printing, which nevertheless preserve their idiosyncrasy and precision.
