Desidia Festival: murals and workshops in Argana Baja, 3 to 10 September

The Arrecife neighbourhood of Argana Baja hosts a new edition of the Desidia Festival from 3 to 10 September, built around the third Mural Circuit and the theme El aljibe. Memoria subterránea (The cistern. Underground memory). The project is supported by the Culture Department of the Cabildo de Lanzarote y La Graciosa, the Centros de Arte, Cultura y Turismo (CACT) and the Ayuntamiento de Arrecife.

Five artists from different backgrounds will work on the neighbourhood walls in live interventions: Cristina Reyes (Canary Islands), Keeenue (Japan), Luismi Sánchez (Venezuela-Canary Islands), NULO (Uruguay) and JUIN (Canary Islands). The curator is Elena García, of Espacio Lapanera in Tenerife, who has brought together deliberately contrasting visual languages.

The starting point is Lanzarote's historical relationship with water and with the structures that made the island liveable, from aljibes to maretas. That underground becomes a metaphor for whatever stays below the surface: collective memory, plural identities and experiences that have not always been given visible space. The murals are framed not as urban decoration but as surfaces where those identities, experiences and forms of neighbourhood resistance can surface.

The programme opens on Thursday 3 September at the Sala Buñuel in CIC El Almacén with the talk Patrimonio material e inmaterial: Pintura Urbana en Canarias, given by Paula Calavera. On Friday 4, Feo Flip leads the graffiti workshop Iniciación al aerosol at the CSC Argana Baja, and on Saturday 5 the session in the same venue is run by Iván T. Over the following days the neighbourhood remains the centre of the festival, with work in progress on the walls.

Seeing the circuit without getting in the way

The most rewarding part of this format is watching the murals take shape: sketches change once they meet the wall and the people who live beside it. Walk the circuit early in the morning or late in the afternoon, when the light suits photography and the heat is manageable. Argana Baja is a residential area, with homes and yards opening straight onto the street, so keep a distance from the working platforms and ask before photographing anyone. Murals from the two previous editions are still on the same streets, which makes it possible to read the whole thing as one continuous route rather than a set of isolated pieces.