Cordobananza

Cordoba Heaven / Cordoba Hell

It still feels like living in a dream being here in Cordoba. This week we’ve had Feria. This basically means funfair but this is a funfair like no other. We watched the opening ceremony fireworks from the bridge, looking across the river whilst drinking cava and then walked through a tunnel of fairy lights to the entrance, a light encrusted recreation of the ‘Mesquita’, the famous Moorish mosque turned gothic cathedral in Cordoba.

There were women in flamenco dresses with flowers in their hair and beautiful lights and music everywhere. One side of the enormous park was lined with funfair rides and the rest contained casetas which (special to Cordoba) are all open to the public. The casetas are like nightclubs in marquees and there were streets and streets of them each with their own individual character. Some were full of families dancing to Spanish music, and many were seething with people dancing to thumping dance, rock, or drum & bass music.

It’s a dizzying and heady spectacle which I feel you have to submit to. In a group of people trying to navigate it together, it can be a little frustrating as you keep losing each other but I enjoyed getting lost in the moment and meeting new people and seeing friendly faces we recognised from other contexts in Cordoba. It’s one hell of a party!

Yesterday, however, was not my favourite day of the trip. I took the foolish decision to go to the bull fight. I was curious to discover what it was all about and felt that I wasn’t in a position to criticise an aspect of someone else’s culture without first understanding it. However, I know that murder is wrong without feeling the need to try that, so why I thought that a festival of animal cruelty would be a good thing to watch, now escapes me.

It was interesting and it certainly was a spectacle, with excited cries of Olé from the audience, but I feel that I have blood on my hands for being there. The six bulls suffered a slow, painful, and humiliating death. Apparently they save the bravest bulls occasionally but there was no sign of that yesterday, only cries from the audience that the matador should receive two ears or a tail from the bull for a particularly good kill. I didn’t actually want them to be saved in the end but to be put out of their misery more quickly, or never put through it in the first place of course! I quite enjoyed all the mincing about in pink socks and sequins and flapping the cloth around and dancing with the bull, it was all the unnecessary stabbings that got to me. They used the bull’s instincts against him. I think I would have preferred to have seen a gladiatorial fight to the death because at least that would have been fairer.

After the trauma of that, I thought that one final trip to Feria to go on the big scary ride was in order. I knew I’d regret it if I missed out on the Gigant XXL. Our host at the bull fight warned us that Feria was different on the last night with more people from further afield and a different atmosphere but I didn’t intend to go for long. Unfortunately, however, it sucked me in again and someone managed to steal my phone and money from my closed handbag strapped around me. Not a very good end to the day. Such a shame when Cordoba is usually such a safe and lovely place.

It’s just as well that Feria is over now since we only have two weeks of the placement remaining and are keen to crack on with our personal projects. Whilst we are expected to experience the culture and Feria was written on our timetable all week, including the two days off work that nearly everyone in Cordoba is given for Feria, we do have some more work to do!

The scary ride at Feria, taken on my phone before it was stolen.

Fiesta!

For the first couple of weeks, as the group were getting to know one another, we did lots of exploring together and went for drinks most nights. We’ve also had a couple of moon parties on the roof terrace of our apartment with drinks and singing. To me, this was a party. It turns out though, that we Brits had a thing or two to learn from the Spanish about fiestas.

Towards the end of our second week, we were told about a Spanish white wine festival being held in Cordoba and we decided to make this our cultural activity for Thursday evening. After a little confusion about the tickets, we gained entry to the festival with several drinks tickets attached to them, and were each given a glass. We took these tickets up to the many stalls for our free drinks. We all reassembled after making our selections and were surprised to discover that each of us had somehow selected sherry. It turns out that this typical local white wine is actually sherry! None of us had ever drunk sherry in such remarkable quantities before. We had a hilarious evening and got home at around 7am. Work the next day was a bit of a struggle! Whilst I still love the stuff, most of the group have vowed never to drink sherry again.

In Cordoba, there seems to be a party for everything. At the art school, we had a whole week of celebrations associated with International Book Week. This was before May kicked in…a whole month of parties in Cordoba.

Even towards the end of April, we went to a couple of brilliant warm up parties in courtyards to get us ready for May. More getting home at 6am and being informed that in May in Cordoba, you don’t sleep.

On the 1^st of May we went to see a small May Day protest march followed by The Battle of the Flowers. This involved a parade of floats festooned with flowers, and women and children wearing traditional dress. They threw carnations at the spectators who threw them back at the floats and a huge flower fight ensued. Completely bonkers and a lot of fun!

The first week of May also sees The Festival of the Crosses. Each parish has their own large flower-covered cross with an associated bar selling drinks and tapas. There is music and everybody dances. It’s wonderful to see how everyone here enjoys Flamenco dancing. We’ve had a go at imitating it but I’m sure we’re getting it extremely wrong! Nobody seems to mind though as it’s all about having fun. It was fun wandering around Cordoba and finding more and more of these Cross parties. You basically couldn’t avoid them. Wherever you turned, there was another party. They all had their own individual character, some seething with people, some mostly populated by young girls in hot pants, some with stages and a band, and some that were relatively gentile (we avoided the two extremes).

We’re now into The Festival of the Patios! This is rather more interesting than it sounds since a patio here is a beautiful courtyard full of flowers. Families and businesses work hard all year to make their patios as beautiful as possible for May when they open them up to the public. Each official patio site is marked with a couple of little fir trees in red velvet pots either side of the door which gives you full permission to go in and have a snoop. It’s an insight into all the oases scattered across the city. Many of the patios also have bars and tapas, and Flamenco music or dancing performances.

The main party is at the end of May when Feria hits town. The site is already going up and seems to be an enormous fun fair party that goes on all week. I’ll let you know how it goes!

Work

We’ve been in Cordoba for three weeks now and it still doesn’t seem quite real. I find myself drifting from one magical occurrence to another, a shower of pine needles in an ancient square while sipping on mojitos, then being drawn into an exquisite courtyard and watching an informal flamenco performance by candlelight.

The daytimes are pretty amazing too. At the art college, our daily routine is to arrive at 9.30am to start work. At 11.30 we have a half hour break in a local bar and drink freshly-squeezed-orange-juice and sometimes eat a second breakfast. We then work again from 12 until 2 when our working day is over! Then off to lunch which is cooked for us just a few doors away. This may sound like a rather utopian working life (and in many ways it is because the people can spend time with their children, have siestas and such) but when you’re trying to get something done, it can be a little frustrating.

The art school is very traditional and we’re all learning new skills. This, combined with communication difficulties makes for rather slow progress at times. I wish I could spend more time there but the college closes completely at 3pm each day so we wouldn’t make it back after lunch. We also have random distractions like being sent off to watch a film and not really knowing why. I think it was a treat in connection with book week. At least it probably improved my Spanish a little…

For my project, I decided to make a geodesic dome that you could climb inside, made from ceramics, using bush-craft techniques i.e. entirely held together with string! This is inspired by our sustainability theme, my love of dens, being in the ceramics department, and all the incredible geometry which dominates the aesthetic of the city, ancient and modern. I want this sculpture to look anachronistic, appearing to strangely fit into any time frame.

I initially planned to make the structure from branches but these are apparently impossible to get here at this time of year as all the pruning is done in very early Spring.

I was therefore encouraged to make the wooden structure from ceramics also. I decide after a bit of thought to embrace this idea since it enhances the terrifyingly delicate appearance of the piece. After I had started work on my final ceramic maquette I was told that I couldn’t make the piece from ceramics after all due to the scale I was planning on and budget constraints. I felt terrible about this as I was expecting to pay for my materials anyway having studied art in the British system. I felt embarrassed that I’d inadvertently asked for too much.

When an interpreter from Academia Cordoba came to the art school I managed to negotiate that I would pay for the clay needed for this rather ambitious project and was relieved that this would be fine.

I’m really enjoying making the maquette having manufactured hundreds of little bone looking pieces and hundreds of tiles to be delicately tied into the framework. Whilst my plan was to make a large one to leave here in the grounds of the school, as a gift, I’m now having second thoughts. I know I can make the structure from wood anywhere, and it would be much easier to allocate at home. The ceramic tiles would be much more difficult to make at home without all the wonderful facilities though.

However, having been walking around Cordoba and soaking it in, another idea has come to me which would really make better use of the facilities and the knowledge of my wonderful mentor Valle (pronounced Badgay). I’m going to continue giving it some thought…

The overwhelming things I notice about Cordoba are the beautiful aromas of orange blossom, the labyrinthine streets, geometric patterns everywhere both ancient and modern, and the sense of contentment of the people.

We’re now well into week 2 of our residency and time is already playing strange games. Before we left, 10 weeks away felt like an incredibly long time to organise stepping away from our ‘normal’ lives for. Before we left, our host organisation in Spain, Academia Cordoba, sent us a full timetable of activities for the first week, and we now have another jam packed schedule this week too. We’ve been treated to more tours of the city, visits to museums and Spanish lessons, on top of our structured meal times. We do still manage to fit the odd tapas in here and there though!

Our experience here is pretty incredible and I do wonder what I’ve done to deserve this. It’s struck me though, that everyone here is very motivated and driven and I suppose that’s how we got here, but perhaps it’s also why we could all do with it. The pace of life here is completely different from being back in the UK. I first felt like a Londoner when I found myself running up an escalator whilst eating my dinner, whereas here, working until 3pm is staying late at the office. This gives people more time for friends and family, eating together, and the weather brings people to socialise in the squares and cafes, unrestricted by having dogs or children to look after. Everyone joins in.

Despite this, with our work placements in the morning, and personal projects to do in our spare time, and so much to see and do here, we’re all wondering how we can get it all done in time. This sense of urgency seems odd in such a relaxed place, but it will probably mean that we get the most we possibly can out of the experience. We might need to start having siestas to fully experience the culture though! It is great that we’re all really grateful for the experience and are really enjoying our time together.

Communicating in Spanish is my biggest challenge. Before coming away, I did a term of Spanish lessons, listened to podcasts, played learn Spanish apps on my phone and did interactive online lessons. I still wish I could’ve learned more and feel a little embarrassed that I can’t communicate better. Being in a situation where we have to use Spanish is helping me to improve though and our lessons are teaching me some of the grammar I desperately need. The lessons can be pretty hilarious what with things like Laura answering a question about food with a response about firemen in chocolate, and a rather distracting bird call outside the window that sounds like bedsprings! I feel rather terrible that our teacher in the art school is currently improving her English where we’re supposed to be improving our Spanish!

The other salient factor here is the weather. With our dreadful British winter and wintery spring, I couldn’t wait to get away to what I thought would be a much more bearable climate. It was still jacket weather when we arrived but it’s suddenly now up in the mid to high thirties each day! Apparently this is normal and the locals are still wearing cardigans and scarves! I’m now told that Cordoba is Europe’s hottest city and last year they had a week when it was 52 degrees centigrade every day! Whilst I’m worried I might never want to leave this place, it’s probably just as well our return flight is booked for mid-June.

I arrived in Spain on Sunday among a group of 14 artists and architects about to embark on a 10 week adventure. We flew into Seville airport and seven of the participants were whisked into the city to their apartments and the other seven (including me) were taken by minibus to Cordoba, an hour or so drive away.

We’re here as part of the Orange and Green II project – Skills for Sustainable Futures managed by Beam in Wakefield, and partner organisations here in Spain. It’s all funded by the Leonardo Da Vinci Mobility Programme.

For us, it all started with an application back in October last year, followed by interviews in Wakefield in November and a two day induction in January. Spain seemed so far away!

Since then I’ve been trying my best to learn Spanish and researching Cordoba and sustainabily in order to work on my personal project.

In the mornings we do work placements, and work on our personal projects in the afternoons and weekends. We are also expected to experience the culture. It’s a hardship!

During our first week we’ve been shown around the city, introduced to our host work placement organisations, had a couple of Spanish lessons, and been taken on cultural trips. We even have all our meals provided and we use this as a chance to meet up with the whole group and more exchange participants from other countries.

Apart from getting to know Cordoba, we’ve been getting to know each other. The seven of us are staying in a couple of apartments close to Academia Cordoba who are organising our meals, trips, and activities. I feel incredibly lucky to be a part of a really lovely group of people. We’ve had an awful lot of laughter already and have a surprising bond after only 6 days!

We all seem to be Instagram addicts and are enjoying our #cordobananza hashtag. It’s a fun way to capture our experience of the place.

Whilst not expected to collaborate, we’ve already generated a couple of pages of collaboration ideas and below is a video of our first playful little intervention whist visiting the Alcazar. I’m sure there are many more to come!

My work placement is at the Cordoba School of Art “Dionisio Ortiz” in the Ceramics department. I have a lovely mentor who is helping me to realise my project and teaching me loads about ceramics.

I have been asked to create and album of photographs for the School, of the workshops, final pieces, and documentation of trips we take around the region, visiting ceramics workshops.

The sun is shining, the cervesas are flowing and it’s time to get out and do some more exploring!

#cordobonanza numero uno