INTRODUCTION

INTRODUCTION

Can Mules Cross the Waters?

The Archivo Caminante or Walking Archive is a visual archive in progress that explores the connections, both real and imaginable, between art, history and politics. Walking as an artistic practice, experimentation with artistic methods and interdisciplinarity lie at the heart of its task, as do the founding of an aesthetics and the construction of thought that prove critical in the processes of mummification of social memory.

‘Can Mules Cross the Waters?’ is the title of the theoretical-practical seminar offered by Archivo Caminante for Narratives in Fugue III which hopes to encourage, through reflection and individual and group actions, the creation of visual poetics and narratives freed from chronology and from the bunkerising conceptions of history.

The utopian image of crossing the oceans by mules -animals that are particularly gifted for transporting heavy and/or valuable loads through difficult and dangerous lands- hopes to highlight a key objective of the seminar: the historical experiences of the past (remote or recent) and the historicity of our current everyday experiences shall be taken as starting points for a series of material and immaterial journeys, paths through the threads that link our doubts and uncertainties, that allow us to share intuitions and dreams when it comes to facing the conflicts and questions that today’s global semio-capitalism imposes on our future.

A skeleton is a set of articulated solid pieces that supports and organises our movements. However, we are more than just a ‘pile of bones’, and one day we will no doubt require an embodiment that will trigger our senses. And yet the simple connection between hard and soft areas, between mechanics and sensitivity will not suffice to create a living body vulnerable to others.

What forces trigger our movements? What energies from the past and the present organise our vectors, those that draw us towards certain places and people and distance us from others? How can we create spatial and temporal forms that will enable us to experience ‘our history’ instead of ‘my history’ or ‘your history’?

Through a programme based on readings, conversations and other activities the seminar poses two general objectives:  

- To create a space for reflection and action, both individual and collective, around the current links between art, history and politics.

- To rethink the modes of constructing spatial and temporal categories and the narratives that explain the social experiences we consider valuable.

- To reflect on the present connections between images and words and the links between bodies, ideas and ideals.

- To explore through a range of walks different spatial and temporal qualities.

- To create a small series of visual productions that will account for the concerns of the seminar.  

SEMINAR-WORKSHOP

SEMINAR-WORKSHOP

Pre-booking necessary
14th - 20th May 2010
Former Santa María de los Reyes Convent, c/Santiago 33, Seville
Director: Eduardo Molinari

Friday_14th May 2010

11.00 a.m. - 2.00 p.m.
The Mules
Presentation of the seminar-workshop, an approximation to general contents and concepts (the dynamics of a visual archive, source codes, connections between art history and politics, photographic images, documents, transportation) and the presentation of speakers and students.

Monday_17th May 2010

10.00 a.m. - 8.00 p.m.
The Compass
A theoretical/practical conference that focuses on spatial categories and the figure of the traveller. Space, territory, landscape. The existential abode. Travels and travellers. Walking as an artistic practice. Movement and choreography. Lorries. Tollbooths. Five visual keys.

10.00 - 11.30 a.m.
Reading, conversation, questions. An artistic research project. Presentation of five visual keys.

11.30 a.m. - 2.00 p.m.
Activities. Design sketches for the actual compass. Hints of possible paths.

5.00 - 6.30 p.m.
Reading, images, conversation, questions. Session conducted by Azul Blaseotto.

6.30 - 8.00 p.m.
Reading, images, conversation, questions. Session conducted by Carlos Masotta.

10.00 a.m. - 7:00 p.m.
The Constellations
Theoretical/practical conference that focuses on the temporal categories and narrative forms that explain the spatio-temporal relations of walking. Word and image. Research with artistic methods. Poetics and narratives of social and cultural memory. Holes. Clinging to chronology. Memory of the present. Grasping and getting one’s bearings. The river. The red thread. The quipu. The time factory.

10.00 - 11.30 a.m.
Reading, conversation, questions. Reflection on personal narratives and arguments. Colloquial language. Documents.

11.30 a.m. - 2.00 p.m.
Activities. Construction of a group constellation. Rear-view mirror.

5.00 - 7.00 p.m.
Activities. Continuation, concerns.

Wednesday_19th May 2010

10.00 a.m. - 7.00 p.m.
The Ethersurfer
Theoretical/practical conference that focuses on the notions of vibratile body and embodiments. Identities, subjectivities, othernesses. Embodiments, bodies, ideas and ideals. Splendours. Presences and absences. Mediums or ventriloquists. Anaesthesia and vulnerability.

10.00 - 11.30 a.m.
The vibratile body. Embodiments. Examples: men of maize and children of soya.

11.30 a.m. - 2.00 p.m.
Activity. The body.

5.00 - 7.00 p.m.
Conversation between students and speakers.

Thursday_20th May 2010

10.00 a.m. - 8.00 p.m.
The Folds
What consequences could our artistic practice and our construction of thought suffer if instead of travelling through urban/suburban limits and borders we decided to inhabit their folds?

10.00 a.m. - 2.00 p.m.
Walk through the city.

5.00 - 8.00 p.m.
Final reflections. Conversation, questions.

LECTURES

LECTURES

Free attendance
18th and 19th May 2010
Former Santa María de los Reyes Convent, c/Santiago 33, Seville

Tuesday_18th May 2010

7.30 p.m.
Agujereando la máquina de lavar [Making Holes in the Washing Machine], by Eduardo Molinari.
Description of the origin, sources and evolution of the experience of the configuration of the Archivo Caminante, a visual archive that explores the possible and imaginable connections between art, history and politics. Reflections on the powers of art within semio-capitalism.

Wednesday_19th May 2010

7.30 p.m.
Efecto de archivo: entre los estantes y la memoria trashumante [Archive Effect: Between the Shelf and Migrating Memory], by Carlos Masotta.
Analysis of the connections between archive, memory and art. The archive as document, guardian and metaphor. Accumulation and social memory. Artistic interventions and archive theories.

8.30 p.m.
Incidental critic. El cómic expandido hacia el documento [Incidental Critic. Comic Expanded into Document], by Azul Blaseotto.
Critical observation in situation. Drawing in context as documentary tool. The making of one’s own documents and heterogeneity of personal histories.

SPEAKERS

SPEAKERS

Azul Blaseotto
Visual artist, photographer and lecturer. She studied at the Prilidiano Pueyrredón National School of Fine Arts (Buenos Aires) and was awarded the Master’s degree Arts in Context by the Berlin University of the Arts. In 2007 she took part in Documenta XII with an art education project. In 2009 she was distinguished with the Szenario Prize at the International Comic Festival in Lucerne and in 2010 she became a founding member of Usina de Narrativas Gráfico-Documentales (UNAGDO). Her artistic practice is an example of biodiversity based on interdisciplinary research and co-operation projects with individuals and/or groups foreign to the art world. The themes she deals with are the world of labour, migration and language, institutional criticism and cultural and ecological production. Her work is produced in a variety of supports and techniques including drawing and comic, photography, installations, video and performance.

Carlos Masotta
Anthropologist, university lecturer and researcher in Buenos Aires. A number of his projects have involved applying an anthropological approach to the social use of images, and he has made several videos in various aboriginal communities. He has recently published Álbum postal, a book on the circulation of postcards in Argentina from 1900 to 1930, and has taken part in a number of seminars on social memory held at the University of Buenos Aires. Since 2008 he has been supervising the research project Fotografía, memoria y archivos. Políticas y poéticas de la mirada nacionalitaria (Photography, Memory and Archives. Politics and Poetics of the Nationalitarian Gaze), that assembles the work of different visual artists taking as a leitmotif the consequences of the State terrorism exercised by Argentina’s last military dictatorship.

Eduardo Molinari
Visual artist and lecturer at the National University Institute of Art (IUNA). He lives and works in Buenos Aires. Walking as an aesthetic practice, the use of artistic methods in research and interdisciplinary and collective action lie at the core of his work, which is made up of drawings, collages, photographs, installations, actions and interventions in public space, films and publications. In 2001 he founded Archivo Caminante. His recent exhibitions include Los niños de la soja, an installation and publication for the Principio Potosí project (MNCARS, Madrid, 2010); Tertulia, a nocturnal sound and visual intervention in collaboration with Nicolás Varchausky at Mirogoj cemetery (Eurokaz International Theatre and Performance Festival, Zagreb, 2009); Don’t talk about the past!, installation for In 7 Feldern, (Akademie der Künste, Berlin, 2008); Tras los pasos de los Hombres de Maíz, installation, film and publication in the framework of Trans-aktion, Esculturas de la transición (Weltecho gallery, Chemnitz, 2008); KMK, action and intervention at the monument to Karl Marx, and a film made in collaboration with Christian Doehler (Chemnitz, 2008) and Casa Matriz, an installation made with Azul Blaseotto for Vida Pública (Fondo Nacional de las Artes, Buenos Aires, 2007).

PROGRAMME

PROGRAMME

14th - 20th May 2010
Former Santa María de los Reyes Convent, c/Santiago 33, Seville
Sessions marked with an asterisk (*) are open to the general public. Pre-booking is required for all other sessions.

Friday_14th May 2010

11.00 a.m. - 2.00 p.m. The Mules. Presentation of the seminar-workshop.

Monday_17th May 2010

Tuesday_18th May 2010

*7.30 p.m. Lecture Agujereando la máquina de lavar, [Making Holes in the Washing Machine], by Eduardo Molinari

Wednesday_19th May 2010

* 7.30 p.m. Lecture Efecto de archivo: Entre los estantes y la memoria trashumante [Archive Effect: Between the Shelf and Migrating Memory], by Carlos Masotta.

* 8.30 p.m. Lecture by Azul Blaseotto and projection Incidental critic. El cómic expandido hacia el documento [Incidental Critic. Comic Expanded into Document].

Thursday_20th May 2010

ENROLMENT

ENROLMENT

This seminar-workshop is addressed at artists, cultural managers, historians and the general public, the only requisite being that they be prepared to make a few simple visual productions. The methodology of the seminar-workshop will include the construction of a small corpus of work starting from the preparation of sketches, drawings and texts; the presentation and selection of images; mapping the city and travelling through it; and recording and documenting the walk.

Maximum number of participants: 25.
Number of hours: 29 h.
REGISTRATION FREE.

Applications should be made by filling in this form available on-line or else by sending an e-mail to Esta dirección de correo electrónico está protegida contra los robots de spam, necesita tener Javascript activado para poder verla before 2.00 p.m. on 6 May 2010, stating personal details and the reasons for wishing to participate in the seminar-workshop. Decisions regarding admission will be communicated to accepted applicants individually. Selected applicants who are working on these themes at an artistic, academic or self-taught level will have the opportunity of presenting their work to speakers and other participants, should they wish to do so.

Certificates
Those students registered in the seminar-workshop who can prove they have attended at least 80% of the workshop and have successfully passed the assessment test foreseen in the course will receive an attendance certificate reflecting the total number of hours of the course (29).