ABSTRACT
In this chapter we analyze the impact of one example, Konvent, a multi-faced cultural initiative in the ruins of an old nunnery at the heart of an abandoned industrial region in Central Catalonia. Konvent has become a unique example of practicing geocreativity in place as a source of social engagement against dereliction of local environment and as a cultural developer agency in the local-regional geography of Central Catalonia. Over twenty years, the Konvent project has transformed the old nunnery into a self-managed site-specific Contemporary Art Center. Its trajectory has been a work-in-progress initiative, with an organic social structure. Despite all kind of obstacles, Konvent has succeeded in presenting an alternative to traditional uses of industrial ruins. These alternative geographies of post-industrial ruins create the conditions for the emergence of new forms of imaginative appropriations in highly regulated spaces. In parallel, ruins could disrupt normative divisions of public and private space suggesting hybrid understandings of the entanglements of nature and culture and also could become a powerful critique of normative ideas about productive-unproductive space. The use of artistic actions in some ruins could create new meanings to place resilience, space production, and living memory.
