<i>Mínimas residencias</i>: habitar lo doméstico para subvertir las relaciones ciudadanas y artísticas

Abstract

In 2012, the groups El Ombligo del Mundo and Gatos en la Barriga worked together on the first of the two editions (the second one took place in 2015) of ‘Mínimas Residencias’, a festival/meeting of experimental arts. Their goal was to call for artists from different backgrounds to inhabit, during a certain period of time, in apartments and houses in different neighborhoods in Quito in order for them to activate those places as scenic devices. In that way, without excluding the fact that those places were there to be inhabited in the first place, the possibility for new meanings was opened. In this interview with Esteban Donoso (Gatos en la Barriga) and Melissa Proaño (El Ombligo del Mundo), it’s possible to become aware of how, during its implementation, the original idea of this festival triggered a multiplicity of essential questions to them as artists/researchers, as well as it posed several questions--eventhough it was not its intention--to the field of art and the public practice it could propiciate in the Ecuadorian context. Among others, to the artistic circuit and production; to the recovery of the neighborhood life, every time less present due to the rampant growth of the city, as well as to the real access to contemporary artistic proposals.