Review, download and distribute the pedagogical materials elaborated in the framework of our “Mutant Art Digital Notebook”. Free culture is collaboration!

The Cuaderno digital de arte mutante: herramientas pedagógicas para virtualizar la cultura is a product of the concerns of the team at Fundación Casa Cultural La Chispa about the kind of responses offered by artists, creative collectives and independent cultural spaces to adapt and resist the new scenarios caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus produced by Covid-19.

And we rightly say “mutant” because we want to zoom in on those processes of cultural transformation within the virtual environments and ecosystems promoted by the expansion of the internet in our lives. The mutant mixes identitary, popular and digital elements in the understanding of the cultural fact of today.

The Notebook is an x-ray of the strategies implemented to persist in the creation and dissemination of cultural content by different experiences in the country and, at the same time, a starting point for reflecting on what free culture means and its capacity to strengthen the artistic practices of the cultural sector in the increasingly complex ecosystem of virtuality.

We hope that this booklet, as well as the memories of the process of its elaboration, will be an open book not only for copying and distribution, but also to inspire unpublished forms of free appropriation of mutant capacities and tools. The aim is to consolidate good artistic and cultural practices that are resistant to the abrupt changes of the market and cultural industries, or in other words, to support ways of practicing culture on creativity, collaboration, experience and knowledge sharing among peers for the creation of conscious digital communities.

Consequently, it is a commitment to strengthen the cultural sector and move towards projects that integrate the creation of collaborative agendas and content to the generation and interaction of active digital audiences that, in turn, are economically sustainable.

Mutant Art Conversation Circle

Our circle took place on Tuesday, September 8th with the participation of two projects coming from the musical field: the collective Bulla and Producciones Pseudo. In both cases they are organizations oriented to the diffusion and promotion of emerging artists in Medellín, the rest of the Aburrá Valley and Bogotá. How did the measures taken by the pandemic impact the platforms of creation and circulation of culture? Bulla and Pseudo tell us.

Mutant Art Meetings

  • Resistant cultural spaces: we talked with the Redvuelta Casa Popular from San Antonio de Prado, El Hormiguero Casa Cultural from Medellín, the Café Literario Puntos Suspensivos from Neiva and the Taller Sur art school from Bogotá about the adaptations, learning and challenges that these times have left in independent spaces.
  • Art, communication and technology: a rich encounter between a developer, an architect and cultural manager, and a community manager focused on the publishing field. Will it be possible to find positive results from all this? What do three people oriented to creation on the Internet think? Andrés Felipe Fernández, software developer and cultural mediator; Felipe Moreno, community manager of La Fogata Editorial; and Daniel Miranda, architect, cultural manager and member of the Corporación Centro Plazarte spoke.
  • Communicating culture – virtual environments, popular environments: what has happened in times of pandemic to the processes and organizations that communicate culture? Far from being a second-order issue, a large part of cultural communication is currently taking place on wild and centralized platforms that dose content according to market criteria. Four guests: Andrés Camilo De La Ossa, political scientist and member of the Corporación Social Semilla Urbana and Ciudad en Movimiento; María Paula Murcia, editor of Comunidad en Mutante; RED Entre Montañas, alternative communication media of the mountains of Palencia; and Periferia Prensa Alternativa, alternative and popular communication project.

Mutant Art Digital Notebook

Finally, we leave at your disposal our Digital Notebook of Mutant Art: pedagogical tools to virtualize culture. Pending new and more complete readings about the present and future of the cultural sector, we know that there are absences in terms of cultural spaces, co-labotatories and hackerspaces that have left their mark on the practices of free culture in Colombia. To give just a few local examples, the valuable experiences of Platohedro or Casa Tres Patios could be highlighted. For the time being, we invite new projects to take over this important work. Just click and download!

Download, copy and distribute freely