Would we ask ourselves in this Open Conversation how an ideal space for learning should be, we would most likely think of a place where we would not be sitting, where we would not be all staring at the same point of the space but where teachers and pupils would be mixed up, blurred, transubstantiated.
Would we ask ourselves about what a pedagogical handbook should include, we would not be able to list it all, since it would certainly include very different and ever-changing topics; since we would know for sure that one does not learn from topics but from the desires of the one who shares them.
We believe that allowing ourselves to pose these questions may help us train in the exercise of life, in which theoretical knowledge cannot be cut loose from affects and artistic practices. Therefore, we have planned an open talk, open to the participation of the attendants and yet with the key contributions of a group of guests that are related to and concerned with the production of contexts for sharing knowledge, throughout the most diverse array of approaches.
This conversation is part of a program that opens a reflection on the notion of transmission and critical thinking about practices and knowledges in performing arts today. A four-day program activated in different spaces of the Mercat dels Flors.
Xavier Bassas: After many years of de(formation) in Paris, I work as a professor of French Studies at the University of Barcelona, also as a philosopher, publisher and translator of French (possibly Italian). Full time father. Crossed by language, academically and extra-academically, in all its forms: especially, philosophical writing, essay and literature, language politics, poetry and performance. I have published several books: Genealogías curatoriales, in conversation with 26 curators; an essay on Jacques Rancière, Ensayar la igualdad (also in Catalan) and, among many translations, El litigio de las palabras, a dialogue with Rancière himself. This year 2021 also Pandémik, a collective volume on post-foundational political thought and the pandemic.
Carolina Campos: I come from Brazil and live in Barcelona. I work in the field of performing arts and the relation between image and presence is common to all my practices. I am interested in collaborative processes and in all the opportunities that emerge during the research and production of the works. I hold a Bachelor’s degree in Communication, having majored in Photography. I have coursed the Independent Studies Programme at the MACBA. In 2021 I cocurated the PACAP5 2021/ 2022 - Fórum Dança formation programme in Lisbon. I am part of VAGAR and Atelier Real in Portugal. I am an artist-in-residence at La Escocesa (Barcelona).
Foc is a space shared by three different projects: the space for arts Cordova, the Jokkoo collective and Choro: a work environment shaped after the friction existing between self-motivation and collective practices, aiming to question the given roles that structure the relations between teaching and learning. Foc collaborates with other projects as well to help them develop their approaches.
Miguel Ángel Martínez: He is a professor and postdoc researcher at the University of Valencia (Spain). He has also curated the programme Dense Presents. Around the Arts of Living in a Hurt Planet at the IVAM (Valencia). In the framework of the IVAM (and together with a working group formed by Sofía Asencio, Tomás Aragay, Vicente Arlandis, Paula Miralles and Laura Vallés) he is organizing an independent studies programme kicking off the course 2022-23. He has recently published the book Bios. Literatura, enfermedad, formas de vida (Tirant lo Blanch publishers).
Aimar Pérez Galí: I carry out my artistic practice within the field of dance and performing arts as a dancer, choreographer, researcher, professor and writer. I understand the body as my reference place and dance not as an end in itself but as a tool for critical transformation. I studied Contemporary Dance at the Arts Superior School in Amsterdam and I hold the Master’s degree in Critical Theory and Museum Studies at the Independent Studies Programme of the MACBA (Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona) and the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB). I co-founded and directed Espacio Práctico from 2010 to 2018. In 2014 I became part of the professor board of the Dance High Conservatory at Barcelona’s Institut del Teatre, and since the course 19/20 I am part of its management team. My artistic practice revolves around the research on the relations between dance, pedagogy, history and the envisagement of new methodologies towards performative dance.
Víctor Ramírez: I hold a PhD in Art History from the University of Barcelona. I am actively trying to turn “discipline” into a more habitable and welcoming territory, either through university teaching at the University of Barcelona and the Autonomous University of Barcelona or through mediation and education projects in collaboration with art institutions. After submitting too much of a macho man thesis, I focus on the relations between performances, abjection and religiosity, as well as on the embodiment of the affective turn in contemporary performing practices linked to vulnerability and touch. I am a member of the collective Que no salga de aquí, from which we have been working for the last five years on intersexual experiences and worldviews.
Idoia Zabaleta: Choreographer. At the Faculty of Biology, she majored in ecosystems and population dynamics. She studied new dance and improvisation in the nineties. Since 2000 she develops her own work and collaborates with many artists and researchers. In 2008 builds the production and residency space AZALA, in the same town where she lives.
