This workshop consists of a visit to Roba Amiga, the largest textile processing company in Southern Europe. Roba Amiga provides the used clothing recovery service for more than 200 municipalities in the provinces of Barcelona and Tarragona. It collects more than 17,500 tons of used clothing per year, which is processed and distributed from Roba Amiga’s headquarters in Sant Esteve Sesrovires.

Within this visit, the artist reintroduces a potential research vector for her exhibition at Fabra i Coats that was ultimately not formalized in Cable City Dance Cable City. From this premise of impossibility for other possibilities, we open a dialogue with Rossella to share methodologies for exploring historical and infrastructural issues specific to the territory. The idea is to delve into her practice interested in manifesting a subject’s constitution through its alliances and resistances against violent institutionalized structures – sensibly weaving together traces of lives, concepts and materials into new narratives.

By gathering information through the recording of oral stories, as from archival research and fieldwork, Rossella Biscotti‘s work is often a montage of various materials and formats, compositions of sculptures, video, performance and sound. Places, which have been tapped historically by forms of mining, exploitation, and confinement, are often the backdrop of her artistic explorations. By questioning the relevance of the information used from a contemporary perspective, she is interested in increasing links and networks to the present, empowering imagination and experience.

Image: Documentation of some of the donated clothes for Rossella Biscotti’s A shirt, blue pants, blue jeans, a towel, 2018