in march 2007 a promising space dedicated to the
interplay of art, science, technology and industrial creation
opened in Gijón, northern Spain. Anyone who’s been there
would tell you that LABoral is big. Very big. The exhibition
rooms alone comprise more than 4,000 square metres.
As LABoral has also set itself the role of becoming a centre
for research, production and training in the field of visual arts
and industrial creation, an area of almost 700 square metres
will soon be allocated to workshops and laboratories. If I had
to imagine the dream centre for media arts, LABoral would
tick all the right boxes: the local government is unambiguously
supportive, there is generous funding from big players in the
tech and communication world, the director, Rosina Gómez-
Baeza (who used to head Madrid’s ARCO art fair), is as
charismatic as she is strong-willed, the people working there
are definitely having fun and the exhibitions are an ambitious
and masterfully curated mix of crowd-pleasing interactive
installations and shows catering to a more highbrow audience.
There’s just one tiny snag: LABoral is off the artworld map.
Gijón is a coastal municipality of roughly 280,000
inhabitants, its coalmining and steel industries are in decline,
the nearest airport is remarkably quiet and tourists are not
exactly flocking to the area. Besides, Gijón belongs to the
Principado de Asturias, a region surrounded by mountains
and boasting the highest number of Internet connections in
the country, very probably a result of its isolation.
I’ve lived in Asturias in the past, and although no one
will ever convince me that there can be a more gorgeous
region on earth, it is the last place in Europe where I would
expect to see emerge a mega-centre for art and technology.
Goats in the spectacular Picos de Europa national park? Yes.
Gigantic squid frolicking close to the seashore? Yes. Eating
your own weight in fabada, a traditional bean and sausage
stew? Yes. Fishermen still fishing in tiny red and white boats?
Yep! But a new-media art centre?
According to Gómez-Baeza, that’s precisely the point.
Though the region is not poor in cultural events, Asturias
has long been secluded from the contemporary art scene.
But the nearby city of Bilbao proved that the opening of a
museum like the Guggenheim was enough to put a decaying
city on the artworld map. Gijón, however, decided to forgo
the let’s-copy-and-paste-Bilbao model adopted by several
cities around the world; instead it rolled the dice and went
straight to turning an ex-orphanage for miners’ children into a
home for what some people regard as the art of the future.
Whether LABoral will meet with the same outstanding
success as its neighbour from the Basque Country is
anybody’s guess. All I can advance is that the quality of its
curating programme will very probably leave an imprint
on the international art scene. The latest show, Emergentes,
demonstrates with just ten artworks the broad spectrum
of Latin American media art. The robotic pieces, interactive
installations, sound interfaces and immersive environments
are on view until 12 May in Gijón, a city that will hopefully
soon be more than just a smallish city somewhere in
northern Spain.
97 Artreview
Mixed Media_Digital.indd 97 29/11/07 11:15:04
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