Mercedes Azpilicueta + Decòrum, Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa + Carme Torrent and Mette Edvardsen Idiorhythmias

MERCEDES AZPILICUETA AND DECÒRUM, BESTIARE OF TONGUELETS (2018), PERFORMANCE
Bestiare of Tonguelets is a project produced by Villa Vassilieff / Pernod Ricard Fellowship 2017, Paris. Through a ‘dishonest investigation’ lasting nearly a year, several figures and movements in art history were reassessed from a transfeminist and decolonial perspective focusing on body politics, the reinvention of the senses and the deformation of language. The project’s references include the series of medieval tapestries, La Dame à la licorne; the action Dissolution dans l’eau (1978), by the conceptual artist Lea Lublin; the poem ‘Cadáveres’ (1981), by Néstor Perlongher, written in a Rioplatense, neo-Baroque literary style; the concept of anthropophagic subjectivity of Suely Rolnik; and the A.S.M.R. sensory techniques. This constellation of references inspired a series of ongoing works: a film, a script for a performance and a collection of objects-clothes suggesting a different way of making and being together.

Within the Idiorhythmias programme, Azpilicueta will work with Decòrum, an amateur choir based at MACBA, to activate part of the script of Bestiare of Tonguelets, inspired by the poem ‘Cadáveres’ (1981), by Néstor Perlongher. Through vocal exercises investigating the concepts of mistranslation, unison and, above all, dissonance, an attempt will be made to implement such investigations and inconsistencies as productive tools within a collective development.

Decòrum resulted from a project initiated at MACBA on the possibility of activating an amateur group, a permanent choir in the Museum willing to develop actions, under the direction of Jorge Dutor and Guillem Mont de Palol, with the aim of generating links with amateurs to exchange knowledge and practices. Taking part in this action are: Sissi Ayala, Itxaso Corral Arrieta, Sonia Escachuela, Beatriz Escudero, Meritxell Esteban Janot, Manuel Peguero, Pepón Prades, Alba Rihe i Josefina Rozenwasser.

NAUFUS RAMÍREZ-FIGUEROA, FINO FANTASMA (2015–17), PERFORMANCE
Fino Fantasma took place on 12 July 2017 at Casa do Povo, São Paulo. Ramírez-Figueroa laid out an arrangement of fluorescent lights. Concentrated around the illuminated bars, he also set up groupings of objects: candles, cigars, vases filled with white roses (freshly bought from the flower sellers at the city's cemetery) and bowls of water, rum, perfume and honey, all chosen for their role as accoutrements of Spiritism. Its founder, Allen Kardec (1804–1869), defined Spiritism as ‘a science dedicated to the relationship between incorporeal and human beings’. It is underpinned by the idea that immortal spirits travel from one body to another over several lifetimes to improve themselves both morally and intellectually. This migration of the spirit is always forward, inhabiting human bodies (distinguishing it from reincarnation, for example).

Naufus Rodríguez-Figueroa received an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2008 and was a postgraduate researcher at the Jan Van Eyck Academie, Maastricht. He has organised shows and exhibitions at numerous institutions, including Gasworks and Tate Modern, London; CAPC musée d'art contemporain, Bordeaux; Museum Haus Esters, Krefeld; and Kunsthalle Lissabon, Lisbon. He participated in the 10th Gwangju Biennale (2014); 13th Lyon Biennial (2015); 32nd São Paulo Biennial (2016); and 57th Venice Biennale (2017).

On this occasion, the activation of Fino Fantasma will be conducted by Carme Torrent and performed by Victoria Macarte, Pepón Prades and Dani Méndez Piña.

Carme Torrent studied architecture at the Universitat de Barcelona while working for different architectural firms, including the practice of Enric Miralles. At the same time, she developed a career in dance, working with other artists and as a performer for other choreographers, such as Min Tanaka, Carmelo Salazar and Xavier Le Roy. Her work focuses on the learning process, research and creation. She is interested in exploring the potential of places as choreographic devices.

MERCEDES AZPILICUETA, YE-GUA, YE-TA, YU-TA (2015–17), PERFORMANCE
In the form of a declamation, Mercedes Azpilicueta recites in Rioplatense slang over 400 insults addressed to women in Argentina. As in an anthropophagic exorcism, the pronunciation of each insult is so phonetically disfigured that it becomes an incantation. In this way their pejorative connotations are transformed vocally, acquiring new meanings. For the viewer, the script doesn’t sound like a collection of insults, whether because they are slang or in Lunfardo, or because the words are pronounced in such a disjointed way that it is impossible to connect them with their real meaning. This continuous performance fluctuates between script and improvisation. The public is confronted with an almost tragicomic vocal piece, inviting them to reflect on the grammar of inequality and how it can become a subtle accomplice of verbal aggression: invisible gender violence, yet present in everyday orality.

Mercedes Azpilicueta is a visual and performance artist based in the Netherlands. She has developed transdisciplinary projects exploring the affective qualities of language and the voice, the political dimension of female desire and the connections between performativity, glocalisation and resistance. She was artist-in-residence at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam (2015–16). She holds an MFA from the Dutch Art Institute/ArtEZ, Arnhem and a BFA from Universidad Nacional de las Artes, Buenos Aires, where she also joined the Artists Programme from Universidad Torcuato Di Tella. In 2017 she was awarded the Pernod Ricard Fellowship by Villa Vassilieff, Paris.

METTE EDVARDSEN, NO TITLE (2014), PERFORMANCE
No Title is an exploration of the connections between language, reality and space. It is about how memory and imagination blur. It is about things and how they can be there and gone at the same time, and how what defines this can vary. It is about things that are gone and about things that remain. No Title is about the awareness that nothing is permanent or lasts forever. It is about things that have gone before their time and things that never quite disappear. It is about what the piece and its making is, what a piece can do, what it is for, what its power and limit could be. It is about the gap between a world and our ideas of it, the invincible gap between thought and experience, between here and there. No Title is a writing in space that is both additive and subtractive, that traces and erases, that moves and halts, that looks at things that are not there and recovers that which is instead.

Mette Edvardsen. The work of Mette Edvardsen is situated within the performing arts field as a choreographer and performer. Although some of her works explore other media or other formats, such as video, books and writing, her interest always lies in their relationship to the performing arts as a practice and a situation. Based in Brussels since 1996, she has worked for several years as a dancer and performer for a number of companies and projects and has developed her own work since 2002. She presents her works internationally and continues to develop projects with other artists, both as a collaborator and as a performer. A retrospective of her work was presented at the Black Box theatre in Oslo in 2015. She is currently a research fellow at Oslo Arts Academy.