The need for artists to use spaces appropriate to their individual needs and professional practice has always existed. The dematerialization of art, since the conceptual practices of the 60s, freed artists from personal involvement in the process of creating artistic objects and the concept of “studio”, traditionally considered as the place of learning the most artisanal aspects of artistic work or the space where the artist experiences the genesis of creation alone, changed to become a laboratory of ideas in which the creator conceptualizes but does not necessarily formalize or objectualize his projects.
Large spaces, non-rehabilitated buildings or industrial buildings have traditionally adapted to these needs of creators, giving rise to clichés when the cinema has wanted to represent the figure of the artist or to jokes that caricature them (“Why do artists need such large studios? Because they have so much ego that it does not fit in smaller spaces”).
The use of old factories as laboratory spaces for multidisciplinary artistic experimentation is not new and occurs in many countries, but the way in which it arises or is managed is different. While in Germany and England they tend to be private spaces, managed by associations or entities, in France, as in Spain, they are managed by the public administration. This type of cultural policy fulfills a double function (once the corresponding museums, auditoriums and libraries have been built and inaugurated), since on the one hand it recovers the industrial heritage and, on the other hand, it supports the creators, offering them public facilities dedicated to artistic research, where hybrid projects can emerge from the collaboration between creators of different disciplines.
But what does an artist really need to work? Space? Square meters? Not always. Often a table, a computer, a mobile phone and above all an Internet connection are the essential requirements for being able to work, when the role of the artist is closer to that of a researcher who at certain moments in the production of his projects does need a large space or collaborators from other fields or, directly, from industrial services and suppliers. When the work of an artist is more similar to that of a film director (more independent than Hollywood) who must investigate, explore other fields, conduct interviews, travel, read, write, film or have other collaborators, rather than large spaces and square meters, he will surely need resources, time, mobility, meetings, exchanges, visibility and projection.
Spaces and places are important, but more important are resources and, above all, vision. Andy Warhol’s Factory has not gone down in art history for the type of space it was (a loft on East 47th Street in New York), but for the dynamic it generated, for its doors being open to numerous collaborators and characters and its character as a meeting place where things happened: films were shot, painting was done, series of works were produced and talks or meetings took place, both intellectual and sexual. Warhol’s Factory is a good example of the need to emphasise the content rather than the container, although we must not forget that it was an independent, private and commercial space.
It is always positive that public administrations support artists, solving the problem of high rents and offering facilities in which the appropriate conditions are created to be able to develop a creative task in the most independent way possible, facilitating resources, time, mobility, meetings, exchanges and visibility. It is these dynamics and not others that would give meaning right now to the management of old factories destined for creation.
[Article published in Bonart, 2013]
