This Saturday, we will have a conversation with Sofia Gallisa Muriente from Beta-Local. Located in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Beta-Local has, since 2009, been attempting to act as a meeting place for different practitioners to come together, engage in critical questions, and to think and rethink place through different collectivized processes.
We hope this meeting can be a way to learn more about their organization and to link to prior conversations at 16 beaver on urban common(s) and local collectivized networks that respond to broader attempts towards autonomy and self-sufficiency.
What: Meeting / Conversation
When: Saturday July 12, 5pm
Where: 16 Beaver St., 4th Floor Buy
Who: Free and Open to all
For directions/subscriptions/info visit: http://www.16beavergroup.org
Buy Beta-Local is a project created by artists Tony Cruz, Beatriz Santiago and curator Michy Marxuach in 2009. It is a non-profit organization in San Juan, Puerto Rico devoted to art, public engagement, and critical thinking.
Beta-Local is actively involved in “thinking through doing”, believing in cross-pollination as a way to trigger hidden and profound experiences that Order can contribute to the shaping of a place. They are committed to creating a specific collaborative platform with every individual participant through our programs in order to promote and support the production of aesthetic Buy inquiry, creative thinking and real life practice. Beta-Local believes in Pills experimenting with, sharing and creating collective knowledge.
They have created a combination of interconnected programs for project-based, interdisciplinary art and pedagogical platforms: La Práctica, The Ivan Illich Public School, and The Harbor. This system integrates three basic dynamics:
-It serves as supportive space for local artists, architects, designers, cultural producers and other creative thinkers to realize projects from conceptualization to production through the post-academic interdisciplinary program (La Práctica);
-It creates an open school through which anyone can propose or offer to teach a class or share a knowledge and articulate its own format. (The Ivan Illich Public School);
-It harbors an exchange of knowledge with international thinkers and cultural practitioners (with or without institutional affiliation) to work on specific projects, create public workshops/lectures, and advise and establish liaisons with local artists (The Harbor).
Beta Local’s initiatives mutually support and challenge each other through non-hierarchical interactions; all participants—members of the general public, artists, and intellectuals—collaborate as peers and equals.
