ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE LIFE HAS MOVED ONLINE, SAYS THE ALUMNA AND DIGITAL MARKETING CONSULTANT. BUT HOW SURREAL THE BORN DISTRICT IS NOW, SO SILENT AND EMPTY

Hi everybody, I'm Gaia, marketing graduate 2009, and I work as talent manager and digital consultant in urban art and leisure projects. I moved to Barcelona two years ago, after almost 15 years spent in Milan, so echoes of the lockdown were very close to me since the beginning of the events. All my friends and colleagues here were asking me for news from Italy. 

Barcelona was one of the first cities to cancel a huge international event, the Mobile Congress, and in that moment, it seemed such a crazy decision: Spain was not a risky country, and everybody was worried about the paranoid message we might spread abroad. We were frustrated and disappointed about the projects that could not be carried out.
But a week later I had to go to Art Madrid for work - the art business did not intend to stop, and they were celebrating ARCO and all the other correlated fairs.

I remember the night before leaving, I added a hand sanitizer and a mask to my backpack - I'm working with urban art projects, so I am among the lucky ones that have plenty of masks and plastic gloves at home. I also went for grocery shopping because I was leaving for a week and really doubtful for the future, but the Italian community is so huge in Barcelona that I wasn’t  able to find any pasta and Parmigiano cheese in anysupermarket. 

In Madrid there were already a meaningful number of cases, people started asking me when was the last time I had travelled to Italy. 

There wasn’t any strong guideline in Spain, we were advised to follow our regular life, if we didn’t present any symptoms. I remember very well the word “recommended” in all flyers and official communications. 
 

Actually the art week was strongly affected; the international audience didn't join the event, as buying art is not a primary need and the public stayed at home.  

Back to Barcelona, I was negotiating the organization of some events in April and May, but everything seemed to me a big question mark. I am well known for my #notimetorest motto, they were celebrating the MUTEK music festival and I even went to a couple of concerts, but I admit that every cough made me upset.  So on March 8 I voluntarily stayed at home and made the difficult decision to not join the Women’s Day march. 
Before the end of that week the national lockdown started for everybody (here it is the so-called “Estado de Alarma” that sadly recalls war times).

Suddenly, that announce gave me a great sense of calm and peacefulness, I was no longer alone in my confinement, there was no more room for chaotic opinions on whether or not to go out, about the seriousness or not of that virus. It was time to start thinking out of the box, about how to manage our “new” existence. In Barcelona, a city so devoted to the expression of creativity in public spaces, the answer was not long in coming, with a strong demonstration from the independent artist community that occupied the digital space as they would have done with an abandoned industrial warehouse. As a social media consultant I’ve been glad to help with Instagram live, online interviews, blog posts, whatever. 

After more than a month confined, we learned how survive in this status, but uncertainty for the future is pressing. Artists and cultural professional went on strike shutting off the presence online for 24 hours for a lack of specific measures from the government. Spain and Barcelona in particular have their main resource in tourism, representing almost 15% of the workforce, from hotels to culture and entertainment facilities. I live in Born, just behind the Picasso museum, it’s an historic district and it is surreal to see it so silent and empty. But I must say that it is much more serious to think that my neighborhood bars and restaurants and independent retailers will not be able to re-open if the foreign visitors don't return.

Festival season is at the door - Sonar, Primavera Sound, Cruilla, Brunch in the Park, DGTL – and I struggle to understand what will become of all the professionals in this industry. I was also talking with a colleague of mine, who is head of an urban art museum in Amsterdam, and we were actually discussing the chances of organizing much more street art projects in the near future, as a way of re-appropriation of the public spaces we’ve lost during this time. But when will we be free again, in the way we’ve always known?