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The Enlightened Movement in Spain is widely known for its modernizing effort and its economic and social reform projects in Spain in the 18th and 19th centuries. In line with the European Enlightenment, the ideals of classical liberalism and utilitarianism began to spread hand in hand with the enlightened intellectuals as a paradigm towards the well-being of the people. The anthropocentric turn of the Enlightenment brought with it not only the struggle for the rights of man and the consequent evolution of European absolute monarchies towards enlightened despotism, but also the evolution of the very perception of wealth, well-being and happiness of the society. Thanks to the works of Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus or Jeremy Bentham, the roots of the Happiness Economics can be traced back to the 18th century through the association they made between the economic development of society and the level of happiness. This paper analyzes the project of the Royal Sevillian Economic Society of Friends of the Country for the salted meat trade with the province of Buenos Aires as a case study of the connection between economic development, well-being and happiness in the Spanish Enlightenment through the study of the transcripts of sessions collected in the Libro de Actas No. 1 (1775-1780) and the copies of letters collected in the Book of Correspondence of the Society, as well such as the loose papers available in the Municipal Archive of Seville.

This paper examines the correlation between the form and surface visual narrative of Han bamboo-carved stationery and painting, with the purpose of comprehending how bamboo carving articulates the material and cultural universe of the Han people. During the mid-Ming and Qing dynasties, the Han literati possessed a large number of exquisite bamboo-carved stationeries with landscape motifs. The relationship between bamboo carving landscape motifs and landscape painting is a manifestation of the fusion of Confucian religions in the Han literati culture. We combine a discussion of the decorative motifs in bamboo carving work together with the brushstrokes, techniques and composition of landscape painting in order to explore the expression of culture in bamboo carving. Although bamboo carving art mainly represents the interaction between bamboo carving artists and the material pursuit of literati, it also exhibits the development relationship between painting and craftsmanship. The landscape motif theme of bamboo carving is the representative of craftsmanship and innovation across materials. This is also a valid reason for investigating how Han craftsmanship gradually became professionalized and artistic. The paper argues that bamboo carvings as utensils created a new stage for Han literati culture and facilitated contact with the private market.

How the animal is represented in art is a topic that, given the ecological emergency, must be addressed in literary studies. This paper performs a comparative analysis of three poems by renowned authors from the Hispanic literature (Iriarte, Lorca and Neruda) whose protagonist is a lizard. This shows different ways of anthropomorphizing the same subject and how its poetic effect is reflected on to the lizard as an animal. Thus, this paper arises in which way the portrait of another living being can be faced, and which one is the most appropriate for a non-anthropocentric discourse.

The article analyses one of Japanese calligraphy’s (shodō 書道) particularities: the notion of “emptiness”, “nothingness”. This concept can be observed in different layers of the art: from the white of the paper, to the movement of the brush after it has been lifted from the paper to the interpretative process. In this way, there are instances of “emptiness” during several stages of creation and understanding of a calligraphic work. In order to illustrate this, our article will analyse two shodō 書道 works, pinpointing the use of “emptiness”, or “nothingness”, and the effect they create for the calligraphic work as a whole. We conclude that in order to grasp the transcendent meaning, one must take into account all elements present within a calligraphic work, including the instances of “emptiness”.

Este paper visual da cuenta del proyecto Jababacoa del colectivo artístico C.A.S.I.T.A (Loreto Alonso, Eduardo Galvagni y Diego del Pozo) + Luis Gárciga. El proyecto comenzó con la instalación de un taller de confección textil en el Museo Histórico de Guanabacoa (La Habana, Cuba). Con máquinas de coser modernas y todos los materiales necesarios, se convocó a las antiguas trabajadoras de los talleres textiles que hasta los años noventa podían encontrarse en el municipio de Guanabacoa. Se trataba de la creación de un espacio, pero también de una reconstrucción de la historia oral de estas mujeres, así como de la oportunidad para compartir posiciones y preguntas sobre modos de producción y nuevos imaginarios. Con los materiales documentales y las ideas que surgieron en la colaboración, realizamos una instalación audiovisual con proyecciones de videomapping que se presentó en el Centro de Desarrollo de las Artes Visuales para la XIII Bienal de La Habana en 2019. Recordar colectivamente las prácticas de mujeres de estos antiguos talleres de costura es el punto de partida desde el cual desplegamos muy distintos ejes de reflexión y creación, como lo industrial y lo artesanal, y sus implicaciones en los modelos productivos, la identidad local y el patrimonio, la producción afectiva ligada a las condiciones de trabajo, y las formas de conciliar vida privada y laboral, especialmente la manera en la que las mujeres consiguen ser trabajadoras, amas de casa, madres, hijas, etc. Se trata de reactivar una memoria colectiva que queremos inscribir en el contexto de un museo de historia, para lo que convertimos una de sus salas en taller de confección. Las jabas o bolsas que confeccionamos son objetos-relatos de un proceso de transmisión oral de fragmentos de la memoria colectiva, que comparten una perspectiva feminista y que orbitan alrededor de experiencias de vida en los años 90´s, momento en que los talleres textiles semi-industriales empezaron a cerrar o transformarse como consecuencia relativa a la caída del bloque de países socialistas en Europa del Este. Los materiales producidos y la documentación de la experiencia se presentaron en el Museo Histórico de Guanabacoa, en el que también organizamos una charla con especialistas de patrimonio industrial e historia del municipio, como parte del programa de actividades públicas de la Bienal. Como elementos simbólicos, hemos tenido muy en cuenta la necesidad de transmitir no solo los contenidos de una historia de trabajo y producción, sino los afectos que la experiencia de los talleres dejó en sus trabajadoras, así como la huella de su desmantelamiento en términos económicos, pero sobre todo humanos. La instalación refleja algunos elementos simbólicos y da cuenta de un constante cambio de las escalas entre lo individual y lo global, o de lo local y lo universal. Jababacoa propone añadir a la identidad histórico-cultural de Guanabacoa, frecuentemente relacionada con las prácticas religiosas afrocubanas, su pasado obrero como centro de producción industrial. A través de conversaciones entre las participantes y de la creación de situaciones, tratamos el concepto de trabajo más allá de su dimensión remunerada, para visibilizar sus implicaciones sobre lo identitario y lo afectivo, y los procesos de subjetivación e interrelacionalidad. Trabajamos públicamente con estos asuntos para poder, a partir de esta identificación, conseguir referencias comunes para futuros posibles. This visual paper provides an account of Jababacoa, a project by the artist collective C.A.S.I.T.A (Loreto Alonso, Eduardo Galvagni and Diego del Pozo) + Luis Gárciga. The project started with the mounting of a textile manufacturing workshop in the History Museum of Guanabacoa in Havana, Cuba. With modern sewing machines and every necessary material, former workers of the textile workshop, who could be found in Guanabacoa until the 90s, were convened. It was about the creation of a space, but also about the reconstruction of these women’s oral history. Additionally, it was an opportunity to share standpoints and questions about production methods and new imaginaries. With documentary material and the ideas that came up during the collaboration, we created an audiovisual installation with video mapping projections that was exhibited in the Visual Arts Development Center for the 13th Havana Biennial in 2019. Collectively remembering women’s practices in these former sewing workshops is the starting point from which we unfolded very different paths of analysis and creation, such as theindustrial and the handcrafted, their implications in production models, local identity and patrimony, the emotional production linked to the working conditions, and the ways to reconcile private and work life, especially how women manage to be workers, housekeepers, mothers, daughters, etc. It is about reactivating a collective memory that we want to inscribe in the context of a history museum. To do that, we transformed one of its rooms into a textile workshop. The jabas or bags we manufactured are both objects and tales of an oral transmission process of collective memory fragments that share a feminist perspective and orbit around life experiences in the 90s, when semi industrial textile workshops began to close or to be transformed as a consequence of the fall of the socialist bloc in Eastern Europe. The resulting materials and the documentation of the experience were introduced in the History Museum of Guanabacoa, where we also organized a talk with specialists in industrial patrimony and the town’s history as part of the Biennial’s public activities program. Regarding symbolic elements, we have kept in mind the need to transmit not only the contents of a history of labor and production, but also the emotional footprint that the workshop experience left on its workers, as well as the mark left by the workshop dismantling from an economic and, more importantly, a human perspective. The installation reflects some symbolic elements and highlights the constant change in the scale between the individual and the global, or the local and the universal. Jababacoa sets out to add Guanabacoa’s laboring past as an industrial production center to its historical and cultural identity, which is frequently associated with Afro-Cuban religious practices. Through conversations among the participants and the creation of situations, we addressed the concept of labor beyond its monetary side, raising awareness about its implications on identity and emotions, and the processes of subjectification and interrelationality. With this identification as a starting point, we worked on these issues together with the public to be able to get common reference points for possible futures.