Matadero Madrid presents ‘Clima Fitness’, a place to reflect on the planetary crisis and climate change

Matadero Madrid, space of the Department of Culture, Tourism and Sports of the Madrid City Council, presents Climate Fitnessa new intervention in Nave 17, which will remain open to the public until July 2024. This new proposal is an exhibition, a gym, a performancea device, a meeting place that invites us to reflect on the planetary crisis and the ability to adapt to the effects of climate change.

With this project, Intermediae continues to generate proposals that explore the role of architecture in the field of social art, and this time it does so by reformulating the concept of fitnessthe idea of ​​training as a way of adaptation in terms of postmodern ecology, eco-feminist theories, biology or speculative fabrication, to provoke a critical reflection about the world and the relationships between species that compose it.

Organized by Intermediae Matadero, the project Climate Fitness It is curated by Maite Borjabad and designed and conceptualized by Igor Bragado and Miles Gertler (Common Accounts), a tandem of architects based on their essay Planet Fitness (2019) to shape this facility capable of hosting an exhibition with works by Faysal Altunbozar, Itziar Barrio, Ibiye Camp, Irati Inoriza and Mary Maggic, as well as hosting a program of activities that includes a critical studies seminar, a call for works of video art and another second call for research projects.

He fitness as an exchange agency

Climate Fitness is part of this shared research framework with an urgent and complex reflection within the context of the current social and environmental crisis, seeking to generate alternative narratives or imaginaries through adaptation. For this, part of the term climate fitnesswhich in biology defines the capacity of a species to adjust to the environment with which it is related, and which can also allude to the physical and mental preparation necessary to face the consequences of an environmental collapse.

The result is a device to configure new rituals of critical adaptability and to address issues such as biopower and its relationship with the body and work; the construction of toxic masculinity and its materialization through fitness; training as a disciplining mechanism of the collective body; or the ambition to control the body together with the desire to dominate the natural environment.

In the words of Maite Borjabad, “Climate Fitness It is a meeting in constant evolution that invites us to decode ourselves, to think collectively, to think of ourselves as an individual, to situate ourselves in the contemporary moment, and reposition ourselves to find agency, agency of change and planetary affection. Understand the limits and inexorable flows between our body and the planet we inhabit and redefine them from mutuality.”

An architecture for knowledge

Symbiosis and the search for contact zones between architecture and art, between architects and artists, continues to be one of the keys to the work of Intermediae, the Matadero Madrid program in charge of activating Warehouse 17. The protagonists are those projects that expand the role of architecture understood as a bridge, an alibi and a refuge to accommodate art of a social and relational nature, offering unique spaces for reflection in the city, both for its content and for its constant challenge to the logic of speculation and spectacle.

Climate Fitness goes hand in hand with other projects previously installed in Nave 17, such as ticket to the game (Aberrant Architecture, 2019), endless theater (Leonor Serrano Rivas, 2019-20), Dance floor (Guillermo Santomá, 2020-21) or The sheet (FAHR 021.3, 2022), among others.

More information: www.intermediae.es and www.mataderomadrid.org