Open Walls Conference 2016: Barcelona's fourth edition

Barcelona’s Open Walls Conference wrapped up its fourth edition at the end of October 2016 with a strong case for being the city’s main meeting point for urban art. Most of the action took place at La Nau Bostik, a former factory in La Sagrera that had become a cultural space, where visitors packed in for new walls, a publishers’ fair, book launches, workshops, music and street food from the Eat Street market. A separate debate on conservation drew more than a hundred people to the CCCB, the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona.

A record wall to open

The festival began with what organisers described as the largest mural ever painted in Barcelona. Sixe Paredes, a founding figure of the city’s graffiti scene, covered a building at 424 Carrer de Lepanto in the Horta-Guinardó district with a new part of his series El espíritu de la montaña.

Ten artists at La Nau Bostik

Inside and around the factory, ten artists took on the walls. Fasim, one of Barcelona’s leading writers in the 1990s, painted a large piece in five parts across the outside of the building. Syrup, from Britain, painted with Hat and Aeec along the Ferran Turné side while launching Versus, their joint publishing project. Dumar, from New York, took the second entrance on Pont del Treball Digne with a piece from his series about the history of subway art.

The main corridor filled up with further work. Roc Blackblock painted a direct statement against violence towards women; Muretz added one of his familiar characters; SheOne took the longest stretch of the building. Sebastien Waknine, a Londoner living in Barcelona, and Sam3, who also painted a wall in Poblenou during the festival, completed the group.

Workshops and a fair for publishers

The four workshops were one of the successes of the year. Mohamed Lghacham ran a mural session in which participants painted directly on one of the factory’s walls. Makerkids had children building drawing robots, and a member of Flone Lot Amorós showed what drones can do when fitted with paint. The printers Monostereo taught the basics of screen printing over two sessions, and people went home with bags and T-shirts they had printed themselves.

Unlock, billed as the first fair given over to graffiti and urban art publishing, gave the growing number of specialist publishers a place to meet. More than fifty editors from Europe and the Americas shared the space at La Nau Bostik, and the public could attend over ten presentations.

Should street art be kept?

The discussion that got people talking was the conservation debate on Friday 28 October at the CCCB, attended by around 150 people. The question put to the panel was blunt: should urban art be preserved at all? Javier Abarca moderated, with the curator Christian Omodeo, the conservator Elena Gayo and the artist Jorge Rodríguez-Gerada.

Much of the time went on Omodeo. He had been one of the organisers behind Street Art: Banksy & Co., an exhibition in Bologna earlier that year for which several murals by Blu were removed from their walls. Blu had answered by painting out his remaining work in the city. The episode had split opinion across the scene, and it split the room.

Gayo, who coordinates a working group on the conservation of urban art within the Spanish group of the International Institute for Conservation, observed that conservators had never before faced a situation in which someone chooses to cover over a work that has been on a wall for fifty years. She made clear that her profession sides with the artist. Omodeo held that the real point was to open a proper discussion about what preserving urban art actually means. Rodríguez-Gerada, speaking as a painter, put the difficulty down to the law, noting that once he finishes a wall it no longer belongs to him.

No consensus emerged, and nobody expected one. What the evening did show was how far the field still has to go before it has settled answers on conservation, ownership and consent.