The inner life of Matadero

Two large agricultural irrigation devices have occupied the great interior plaza of Matadero for eight years.

It seems that they have been left stranded, eccentric and useless in that urban landscape, in the middle of the largest cultural complex in Madrid.

But it is enough to observe these structures for a while to realize the number of uses they have.

Playground for children, center for neighborhood assemblies and meetings of artistic groups, rehearsal space, meeting point.

They are so versatile that it is difficult to remember why and how they got there: it was in 2012 by the idea of ​​the architect Andrés Jaque, who placed them as an artistic installation and as a support for the summer activities of the center, from audiovisual projections to concerts, conferences and parties .

He named them Escaravox and covered them with greenhouse tarps to provide shade during the day.

Today those

tarps are

, but the

remain and it is difficult to imagine this square without them.

They are part of the Matadero imagination and are the perfect example of how this center works: there are many scheduled activities, but others happen spontaneously.

The secret is in contact: there is always so much variety of artists and citizens creating, thinking or doing things at the same time in this place, that most of the time something unexpected ends up arising.

From an exhibition a

can be born

A play can inspire an installation.

A movie can lead to a music session.

“This is a space for experimentation like few others.

Its management model is not very dogmatic, since the objective is to generate culture among all.

There is a part that radiates from above, but another very important part radiates from below.

Both from the artists and the citizens.

Children who come to workshops, families who come to exchange seeds or the local market, festivals, conferences, debates.

Everything ends up leaving its mark, ”explains Rosa Ferré, Matadero's artistic director.

It is the fantasy of any 21st century cultural manager.

Possibly so those who in 2005 decided to reconvert, at the initiative of the Madrid City Council, the warehouses of the old municipal slaughterhouse into a large cultural complex.

Huge open-plan pavilions designed a century ago for the slaughter and scrapping of animals transformed into spaces for exhibitions, performing arts, cinema, reading, games and walks.

The first ones were inaugurated in 2007 and some are still in the process of rehabilitation today.

In total there are 75,000 square meters in use for all kinds of disciplines of creation and thought.

Some are developed in a transversal manner and others are managed by specific entities or programs: the Casa del Lector, the Cineteca, Intermediae, the Naves del Español, the Central de Diseño and the Center for Artistic Residencies.

Taken together, all of this can be overwhelming.

But it is not necessary to cover everything.

There is a Slaughterhouse for each person.

An Asian couple from the neighboring neighborhood of Usera (the so-called Chinatown in Madrid) goes every morning to do taichi in the square with large fans that arouse admiration.

A group of elegant women meet there almost every day to dance together.

An old woman in a wheelchair regularly crosses the premises listening to music on an old cassette player, which she accompanies playing the castanets: it doesn't matter whether Elvis Presley sounds like reggaeton.

Artists of all kinds spend the day between ship and ship.

Groups of young people come and go.

Walkers from Madrid Río stop here from the entrance that directly connects the park with the center.

This is a normal day at Matadero.

Exhibitions

Nave 0. It is the first thing the visitor finds when entering Matadero through the reception hall and lockers.

It was the old cold room and it is practically preserved as when it was used.

A place that maintains the original hydraulic tile pavement and the traces of a fire that occurred in the nineties of the last century.

And magnetic: everyone who passes by pokes their head out and most of them end up entering, always with a kind of caution, as if entering a mysterious forest.

Since 2018, the

exhibition program has been held here

dedicated to the work of artists who work with audiovisual formats, which take on special prominence in this space dominated by darkness.

The mysterious forest transformed into a forest of images.

Right now you can see four pieces by the artist Eric Baudelaire, including one made in the streets of Paris during the confinement last spring.

Next to Nave 0 is the Design Center.

It is another Matadero space dedicated to exhibitions, in this case to show the work of designers from around the world, managed by the association that groups them in Madrid, Dimad.

The same fashion accessories are exhibited as furniture, practical objects, graphic works and industrial projects.

“Design encompasses everything and that's why a very diverse audience comes here.

And many people are surprised because they have an idea of ​​design as something sophisticated and distant ”, comments Isabel León, president of Fundación Dimad.

Until the end of January, the 7th Ibero-American Design Biennial takes place here, one of the major international events in the sector.

Inside the Central de Diseño there is a small space occupied by Associated Visual Artists of Madrid, where exhibitions open to the public are also held.

Music is playing outside the Design Center.

It comes from Intermediae, a space that can accommodate any artistic or thought project, as long as it has a social objective.

In other words, that promotes the participation of citizens or communities.

Now it houses the program

which includes

laboratories, workshops

and meetings around the social and cultural meaning of dance in today's society.

And a large installation by the artist Guillermo Santomà as a concrete tent with a huge ball of light inside invites you to dance.

This same Saturday, for example, the Madrid All Styles collective, in which dancers of different urban styles mix

hold a

that can be followed live by streaming to through the Matadero website.

Leaving Intermediae, on the other side of the square, is the other large Matadero exhibition space, which occupies a large part of Nave 16. The one that exists now is called

and shows the response of architects and artists to the following question: what is your ideal city like?

Performing arts

Halls 10 and 11, named Max Aub Hall and Fernando Arrabal Hall, respectively, are dedicated to the performing arts.

There we meet Natalia Menéndez, head of the Spanish Theater in Madrid, who also manages these two modern spaces, which can be adapted to any format or arrangement of the stage and are equipped with innovative stage technologies.

Just this Thursday, Menéndez premiered her new work as stage director,

Salto

by the French-Uruguayan playwright Sergio Blanco,

in one of these rooms

, but two other productions can be seen simultaneously,

by José Ramón Fernández, and

intended for family audiences.

“Everything fits here.

From avant-garde works to classics, dance and contemporary theater.

The idea is that any group of tastes or age comes here, ”says Menéndez.

Actors, set designers, illuminators, technicians and spectators mingle at any time with artists who work in other warehouses and visitors at the Café Naves, adjacent to the Fernando Arrabal room, where there is also a stage for cabarets, small-format works or recitals.

Along with the square, this is the great meeting point of the center, where the artistic and citizen friction takes place.

In one of its corners there is an old caravan that was used in a theater play and which has now been converted into an installation called

Natalia Menéndez found it ramshackle among other ancient scenography elements and decided to rehabilitate it to fill it with answers to the following question: what makes you happy?

You can read those already given by the workers of the Spanish Theater and he intends to collect more from the public.

Another example of how Matadero absorbs and recycles.

Cinema

The cinema also has its space.

In front of the buildings dedicated to the theater is the Cineteca Madrid: three projection rooms, an archive and a canteen with an open-air patio.

Another small town within Matadero.

It was inaugurated in 2011 with a program exclusively dedicated to the documentary genre, but over time it has been extended to fiction.

Here you can see titles that are not released in commercial theaters and it is also one of the few spaces that has a special projector for 16 mm films.

“It is important to see each work in its original format, as it was conceived by its creator.

In each conversion nuances are lost ”, warns Gonzalo de Pedro, artistic director of Cineteca.

De Pedro says that not only spectators but also creators have been forged here.

Avid audiences and directors who have thrown themselves into making risky films thanks to the fact that they knew they could show them in this space.

“In a short time this place has become a kind of home for movie lovers.

We not only exhibit, but we accompany creators in their projects and organize many activities for the audience ”.

Until this Sunday, Documenta Madrid, a documentary film festival of international reference, will be held in its three rooms, with an

extension

that will last until December 20.

It is the great festival of the genre in Spain.

Artistic residencies

We return to Nave 16, where we previously visited the

exhibition

.

Through another door, you can access another space within the same building for artistic residencies.

Every year Matadero launches several calls for creators of all disciplines to present projects to develop within this venue.

So here they can be found at work.

For example, Pablo Durango is working on the development of Onyx, an avatar that he defines as “transdimensional”, with a human body, blue skin, elf ears and very long heels.

Durango adopts this personality in artistic interventions,

or exhibitions to question the logic of binary identity.

The funny thing is that, despite his strange appearance, no one is surprised when Onyx goes for a walk through the Matadero square.

Very close to Onyx the Liwai collective works.

A group of Chinese women that develops cultural projects to connect their community with Spanish society and break the cliché of “businessmen” that is usually attributed to them.

They meet in this space periodically and also use it as a rehearsal and workshop space, since theatrical creators and artists from different disciplines are integrated into the group.

Sometimes they perform functions with the public and collaborate with other Matadero collectives.

Reading

La Casa del Lector is not a place dedicated to books, but to reading.

Luis González, director of the Germán Sánchez Ruipérez Foundation, which manages this space, insists on this.

Nor is it a library: there are no books, but places to read them.

With the pandemic they have limited activities and access to their public rooms, but before there was always someone reading, in addition to students, members of reading clubs, young people, adolescents and school children.

Their star space is the Cloud, where they carry out workshops for children and families with the most innovative techniques in this field.

Much of the work carried out by the Casa del Lector is not visible to the visitor.

Programs for the modernization of libraries or research in the reading or publishing sector.

However, its location within Matadero gives it a different personality than any other center of this type.

An example: part of the two halls that host it is occupied by a high-performance electronic sports center, which has resulted in a collaboration that may at first seem extravagant but has worked well with young people: they are attracted by the video games and end up reading a book.

Nothing is fancy at Matadero.

Virtual slaughterhouse

Like most cultural institutions, Matadero launched a program of online activities during the spring lockdown that is maintained over time.

But this circumstance has also accelerated the launch of digital projects that were already on the minds of many creators before the pandemic.

For example, the development of artistic augmented reality applications that any citizen can download from their website.

One of them, called 'Uramado AR', must be activated within the enclosure itself: it is about looking for the 'tanukis', digital beings that are hidden in different parts of the center and that come to life when the visitor finds them, asking questions and reacting to their responses.

Another is 'MOA (My Own Assistant)', an interactive fiction based on the novel 'Les furtifs', by Alain Damasio, which offers the possibility of exploring the dystopian environment in which the book takes place and participating in its narration.

Finally, 'Entes celestiales' is a virtual sculpture inspired by 'The Fallen Angel' of the Retiro Park that can be viewed wherever you are.

• Credits

• Coordination: Brenda Valverde and Alberto Quero

• Art direction: Fernando Hernández

• Design: Ana Fernández

• Layout: Alejandro Gallardo

• Infographic: Luis Sevillano Pires

• Video: Carlos Martínez and Luis Manuel Rivas