PROJECT
With the complicit desire to bring to light possible spaces of African realities in Europe, Leve has joined forces with Top Manta. A Barcelona community from Senegal, an Africa built from afar, created by the 'manters.' Informal street vendors who, singularized by institutional racism, are forced to sell sneakers and accessories on sheets (the “manta”) spread out on the city streets. In 2015 they founded the Union of Barcelona Street Vendors, and in 2017 they created the Top Manta cooperative in order to produce ethical fashion. This meeting of architecture and the African diaspora has encouraged the creation of alternate stories and architectures to the hegemonic ones, challenging us to think about the city in different ways. Following the Fish is the rehearsal of this joint effort.
FOLLOWING THE FISH
As in an African tale, the fish emerges as the narrator of the 'manter' life trajectory. It is fish that Europe extracts on a massive scale from the coasts of West Africa to feed the salmon farms in the North and steal a basic source of food from local communities. It is fish that slice through the currents that carry the diaspora caused by such pillaging, arriving in Barcelona and uncovering a hostile city life that pursues those who have no other option but to work the ‘manta.’ A racism the 'manters' are bringing to light with the creation of the Union. These are political and creative struggles that, furthermore, have been able to suggest different ways of living, of repairing that which has been damaged by the cities that have made them so unwelcome. It is at this point that the project, voicing a call to action to architecture students, becomes a laboratory of the future.
THE REPARATION ATELIER: SMALL-SCALE STRATEGIES
Following the Fish has invited around a hundred students from six international schools of architecture to help give shape to the dreams of the ‘manters’. Together with the critical, purposeful eye of the migrant community, the reparation Atelier has aimed to be an approximation in the form of a rehearsal, a small-scale test of strategies that are both implementable and replicable inside the same system. Here and now, the students are proposing previsualising a more sustainable future in real places: unused ground-floors that Barcelona City Council have acquired so that they can be used in projects involving social and cultural dynamization. The outlined proposals, which are of great potential and have reparative capabilities, are formed around three challenges: an anti-racist restaurant (Ceebu Jeen), a space for welcoming and training migrants (Teranga) and multipurpose, small-scale social facilities at street level (Sutura).
If architecture is to be a part of contemporary sociopolitical changes, it must use creative practises and collaboration, overcome all pre-conditioned aprioristic differences and situate itself a space of mutual recognition and shared struggles. A communal work that makes architecture leave its 'own spaces' and ask itself about its own transformative capabilities. 'Manters', syndicalists and young students articulate the stories that form part of our laboratory of the future. WEBSITE OF THE PROJECT.
If architecture is to be a part of contemporary sociopolitical changes, it must use creative practises and collaboration, overcome all pre-conditioned aprioristic differences and situate itself a space of mutual recognition and shared struggles. A communal work that makes architecture leave its 'own spaces' and ask itself about its own transformative capabilities. 'Manters', syndicalists and young students articulate the stories that form part of our laboratory of the future. WEBSITE OF THE PROJECT.
