Hacer Agujeros

Fer Forats or Making holes in english is a cross-sectional, philosophical-poetic and artistic investigation on the capacity of transversal writing to create meaningful relationships and become a tool to engage into vindicative actions such as the dangerously overwhelming gentrification process in urban jewel towns. The process began during my longterm research residency at the Santa Monica Arts Centre, the geolocated heart of this project due to its position right at the Ramblas, Barcelonas most emblematic yet heavily gentrified alley. For a three session workshop, financed by a grant of the artist organised platform of Catalunya PAAC, a small group of women gathered to exercise in transversal writings about the physical and emotional condition of the Rambla and ourselves. La Rambla (from the Arabic word ramla, sandy area or hole of sand) was literally perforated or excavated with words following first gestures of human writing. These sessions set the ground for the following process.

Since February 2022 the writing sessions rooted in primarily abstract life concerning issues (love, pain and death) continued yet in private. Five persons were invited to form part of the research group, called Qalbi (mi heart in Arab): Mar Merino, Ricardo Cardenas, Carlos Clemente and Diego Ballestrini joined the experiment to relate to each other and the place that surrounds us through dramatised writing without prejudice.

During this first cycle of six transversal writing sessions we created a literary base and a philosophical tendency to give rise to the possibility of a philosophical debate based on the fictitious and collectivized writings. Each meeting proposed different exercises, or rather ‘proposals with shared limitations’, to write dramatized dialogues and monologues dealing more or less directly with one of the three suggested topics in order to generate a non-homogeneous constructive debate.

During a six weeks pause I contacted with a couple of the less than 60 neighbours living in permanent residency on the Rambla. Amongst them Itziar Gonzalez Vilaró and the neighbourhood association SOS Rambla asking them to join forces in the shared goal to make the Ramblas a more lovable and livable space. It was only at this point I remembered a small historical treasure I discovered around 2002 in front of the Santa Monica Art Centre which I had been dragging around during the last 20 years. A red suitcase filled with over 400 letters written in 1973 between an engaged young couple. ‘She’ living in a building which now is a hotel, Rambla 24 and ‘He’ stationed into Sahara desert for Spanish military service.

This treasure became the root for another writing cycle of the Qalbi group. These more then 10 sessions opened up to public and Aida Gonzalez joined the team. Angela Precht, Eduard Elias, Josep and Ana Montaner occasionally took part and added up their ideas and writings to the fictionalised squatted occupation of a residency building on the Ramblas. The building actually exists, it’s half empty and property in part of the regional government, longly reclaimed by SOS Rambla and located not only right in front of the Arts Centre but also next to the Rambla 24, the origins of our historical letter-treasure.

The collective idea of producing a somewhat heterotypic publication, in honour to Michel Foucault as the mental godfather of the project, was finally resumed in texts printed on white curtains for the crystal box from which I had been observing the Ramblas during a year as being the resident space of the Art Centre Santa Monica.

Last but not least the project is preparing a eight scene theatre piece Rambla 14, itinerant fragments in three times to be presented the 7th of july 2022. Check out the details here.