CANCELLED - Saturday 31 October 2020
  • Denys Blacker. Infiltracions, 2020 (30’)
    Ways of communicating are not always obvious or clear. We understand each other in spite of the words. Infiltracions offers a conversation with the public that reveals the most intuitive and visceral layers of understanding.
  • Bartolomé Ferrando. Syntax, 1996/2020 (12’), and Cries, 2002/2020 (5’)
    Syntax is a piece based on the simultaneous crossing of two or three abstract discourses. Cries is a piece based on gestural writing.
  • Xavier Theros. Accidents polipoètics, 2020 (40’)
    Accidents polipoètics was a polypoetry duo active between 1991 and 2017, when one of the two members, Rafael Metlikovez, passed away. On this occasion we will listen to their classic poems, now recited in just one voice.

Denys Blacker. Infiltracions, 2020 (30’)
Ways of communicating are not always obvious or clear. We understand each other in spite of the words. Infiltracions offers a conversation with the public that reveals the most intuitive and visceral layers of understanding. Intersensual and interconnected knowledge leaves logical communication aside, to penetrate less conscious forms of knowledge. An installation of sculptural objects is effected by the artist linked to a series of proposals previously agreed upon with the public in a way that challenges the work’s authorship. The responsibility for giving the work meaning and interpreting it lies with everyone present.
Infiltracions questions the structures of power and knowledge that habitually become accommodated in art’s critical and theoretical practices, suggesting an organic process that gives each person the freedom to create contents and discover meanings.

Bartolomé Ferrando. Syntax, 1996/2020 (12’), and Cries, 2002/2020 (5’)
Syntax is a piece based on the simultaneous crossing of two or three abstract discourses. The interpretation that I am going to perform today is based on the overlapping of two discourses: the first of them will be pre-recorded and broadcast on the television above my head. The second discourse will be an open, live reading of a text close to the first, but with marked differences. The discourses will intertwine with each other, resulting in an amalgam of meanings produced by the crossing of a few words. The fabric produced between the two discourses will reveal a certain meaning close to the absurd, but only in part, as it will also reveal insinuations of meaning that the recipient of the piece will have to construct and complete in their mind. Thus, Syntax is a piece close to happening, in which another person's mental involvement is required in this amalgam between meaning and the absurd. Humour crops up everywhere.

Cries is a piece based on gestural writing. A cluster of sonorities with a starting point in painting-writing. I drew overlapping lines; meaningless, but that attempted to be a reflection of the essence of the physical language of my own writing, thus giving form to a score of strokes. To perform it, I go through this score of strokes from left to right, following the form they have taken, and I generate a discourse that is broken, pluralistic, sonorous, primitive and lacking in linguistic sense, but loaded with meaning. A random discourse ranging from cries to murmurs, a touch, insinuation, sobs, a mandate or an audible caress. The gestural line speaks with multiple voices, but what interests me most is delving into the primitivism of speech, generating sounds and noises that I had never made before, perhaps discovering a kind of uncodified proto-language that maintains its musicality and, paradoxically, its meaning.

Xavier Theros. Accidents polipoètics, 2020 (40’)
Accidents polipoètics was a polypoetry duo active between 1991 and 2017, when one of the two members, Rafael Metlikovez, passed away. During the years of their activity, they gave recitals in Catalonia, Spain, Italy, France, Germany, Portugal, the United States, Colombia and Mexico, as well as at the Georges Pompidou Centre in Paris and the Bowery Poets Club in New York. They premiered five performance pieces-talks at the Malic, Sala Beckett, Tantarantana, Mercat de les Flors and Espai Brossa-la Seca theatres, and published several books of poetry, some translated into German, Portuguese, Greek or English. In 1997 they won an Aplauso at the Sebastià Guasch Awards, and in 2007 they won the Roma Poetry Slam, held at the Teatro Palladium in Rome. They collaborated creating texts for La Fura dels Baus, Sol Picó, Carles Santos, Pascal Comelade and Frank T; and they shared the stage with poets such as Josep Palau i Fabre, Enric Casasses, John Giorno, Jesús Lizano, Jean Jacques Lebel and Joan Brossa, who said of them that they made “feast day poetry”. On this occasion we will listen to their classic poems, now recited in just one voice.

BIOGRAPHIES

DENYS BLACKER (London, 1961)
Transdisciplinary visual artist who brings together performance art, drawing, sculpture and video. She has lived and worked in Catalonia since 1987. She is a member of the international performance groups Wolf in the Winter and Ocells al Cap, and is one of the founders of the ELAA (European Live Art Archive) project. She is the founder of the Corpologia action artists' collective and the magazine with the same name. Since 2002 she has run Gresol, a non-profit cultural association. She has organised more than twenty festivals and international performance art gatherings. Outstanding among them is FEM, an international festival held annually focused on action art by women, which has reached its 16th edition.
Master in Fine Arts at the Chelsea School of Art (London, England) and PhD at Northumbria University (Newcastle, England) with her quest for interconnection, synchrony and awareness in the practices of improvised performance art. She works in collaboration with the Francesca Bonnemaison Women’s Culture Center (Barcelona), where she coordinates the program “Cara a cara” (“Face to Face”): Performance art series, interviews and residencies to promote the work of women artists. She also collaborates with other organisations to program performance events, such as the Cicle d’Art el Bòlit (Contemporary Art Centre of Girona) and FLARE (Forum for Live Art Research and Education) at the University of Northumbria (England). She has recently launched SYNC, an editorial project of monographs on performance artists.

BARTOLOMÉ FERRANDO (Valencia, 1951)
Performer and visual poet. Full professor of performance art and intermedia art at the Faculty of Fine Arts of Valencia. Coordinates the journal Texto Poético. As a performance artist he participates in festivals and events held in Europe, Canada, Mexico, USA, Ecuador, Dominican Republic, Argentina, Chile, Venezuela, Japan, Korea, Singapore, Vietnam and Israel. He exhibits his visual and concrete poetry in several cities in Spain, Italy and France. He is part of the groups Flatus Vocis Trio, Mundana Music Workshop, Rojo, SIC, JOP, Dosentredos and Trio Poesia Acció, dedicated to the development of creative practices located at the point where music, poetry and action art meet. He is an editor at the magazines Doc(k)s, Inter, Boca de incendio and Texturas. In addition to Texto Poético, he has published books of poetry: Trazos, Propuestas poéticas, Jocs, Latidos, Valencia, En la frontera de la voz, Nudos de viento, Soledad magnética and In-significancias poéticas, as well as essays: Hacia una poesía del hacer; El arte intermedia; La mirada móvil; El arte de la performance, elementos de creación; Arte y cotidianeidad: hacia la transformación de la vida en arte; and De la poesía visual al arte de acción. He has also made several recordings on MC, LP and CD, and performance art videos and DVDs. The French magazine Doc(k)s dedicated its number 25/26/27/28 4éme série to him.

XAVIER THEROS (Barcelona, 1963)
He has been giving poetry recitals for 45 years. With Xavier Sabater he founded the first polypoetry group in Catalonia: Poliphonetica Dinámica. And with Rafael Metlikovez he created Accidents Polipoètics. For many years he was a collaborator and chronicler of Barcelona in the Diari de Barcelona, El País and the ARA, as well as on several radio and television programs. He has authored essays, such as Burla, escarnio y otras diversiones on humour in the Middle Ages, and also books of city chronicles such as Barcelona a cau d’orella, Diumenges a Barcelona, Vida i miracles de la plaça Reial and La Sisena Flota a Barcelona, for which he won the 2010 Huertas Clavería Prize for journalism. He also published the novel La fada negra, for which he received the Josep Pla Award for literature in 2017.

Free MACBA Saturday thanks to Uniqlo:
Dissabtes MACBA
Uniqlo
Co-organised by
L'Internationale. Our many europes

Our Many Europes is a programme by the European museum confederation "L'Internationale" and co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union. The members of L'Internationale (Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst Antwerpen, Moderna Galerija (MG+msum), Ljubljana, Van Abbemuseum, The Netherlands, MACBA, Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona, Muzeum Sztuki Nowoczesnej w Warszawie, SALT Research and programs Istanbul and Ankara, and Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid) and its partners National College of Art and Design (NCAD), Dublin and HDK- Valand (Gothenburg University) are presenting more than 40 public activities (conferences, exhibitions,workshops) from now and until May 2022.

Bartolomé Ferrando. Sintaxis, 1996/2020

If you have any question, feel free to contact us on 93 481 33 68 or by email at macba [at] macba [dot] cat.