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Arts & Communication Urban expressions festival: The resignification

over time. This is how the festival has maintained a close a reflection of the importance that innovation, creativity,
link and communication with the different media with and improvisation acquire in the current times, where
which it interacts. the use of technology and the recycling of waste materials
The first editions of the Callegenera Festival were held constitute important elements in today’s society.
inside a closed space in the Parque Fundidora Generators In a society where the ephemeral also impacts
Warehouse, which was configured due to the relationships knowledge, teaching is resignified as an act to transgress
and links with other institutions that have been formed the forbidden. The instruction in this festival was a way
over time. This is how the festival has maintained a close to promote the creative search with new motifs, new
link and communication with the different media with explorations and with this to counteract the daily influence
which it interacts. as a challenge to the social pressures that see urban and
This practice, in its beginnings, was treated as a street art close to violence.
laboratory for experimentation and discovery where a Another important turning point is that these spaces
system of relationships such as the one that happened in give way to dialog, allow processes to be shown, and learn
galleries has been developed, breaking to a great extent first-hand about the experiences of those involved. Urban
with the evolutionary line or the art production system. and street art, being an art that is elucidated in anonymity
Urban murals and streets limit its consumption, and in most of the time, being of rapid execution, does not allow
this particular case, its exhibition is very fleeting, as the that contact with its creator, and oftentimes questions are
walls are dismantled for new exhibitions since it lasts for a conceived without corresponding answers. Somehow, the
duration of approximately 10 – 30 days. festivals give away this information, which is not only
Callegenera, said Mr. Alejandro Rodríguez, Director of in the interest of the population but also of the artists
Development and Cultural Heritage, is a space in which themselves.
respect for creators, and their proposals have been a primary In this way, “Callegenera is about collective and
factor for over a decade. “We have been very respectful in collaborative urban art. All the events that take place
institutional terms; in these 10 years, we have never marked are around an artistic expression that arises and is fed
a thematic line, or we have never said “this expression is by what is seen and felt in the streets of our city. It also
better than the other;” I think they have passed through allows us to approach other demonstrations and have an
the streets or the galleries of the Nave Generadores from audience in the Nave Generadores that is not necessarily
tags, urban art, bombs. So, in Callegenera, it has earned with us the rest of the year.” In general terms, what was
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respect in that sense because it has been very open not only relevant about the festival was that it became a space that
to one type of urban expression.” 3 socialized the currents and postures of the performers,
It is important to underline that the artistic pieces and where the participating community consumed a product
walls exhibited in the Nave Generadores are the result of the characterized more by free intentions than by market
creative processes that took place at the festival, and they criteria. This logic is visualized in the press when he
are the expressions of collegiate ideas that materialized not referred to the freedom of creation that took place within
only in forms and esthetic representations but also in the a closed space “so that with complete freedom they can
evidence of abilities and skills of the artists; therefore, the create what they normally do in the streets, only now from
magic of revealing the authorship of the pieces or works is a space such as the Nave Generadores, a unique setting for
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lost, the hegemony of the organization is patent, and the this type of activity” as a way of normalizing the belief in
privilege diminishes. the vandalistic nature of this type of expression. Or when
he mentioned that “to the amazement of the spectators,
However, it must be recognized that the activities carried the skaters showed off their skateboarding skills, zipping
out at the festival help to understand and comprehend the through space. Meanwhile, the graffiti artists captured
evolution of urban and mural art typography, allowing their imagination on the walls of this enclosure.” 5
the identification of its greatest exponents, revealing the
practices, the mastery of the different techniques, as well 4. Callegenera, undoing borders
as the styles, themes, and size of the production of the The city is a symbolic construction, a system of
participants, at the local, national, and international levels.
representations and imaginaries that are constantly being
The creations presented in the Nave Generadores are in re-elaborated and that have a notable impact on the very
most cases more complex works or pieces than those found configuration of the physical space, on the political-
in the streets. They are the product of the experimentation administrative dynamics, both on the schemes of belonging
process that the Festival encourages. This process became and on the valuation of the city and the urban. 6

Volume 3 Issue 2 (2025) 3 doi: 10.36922/ac.2864