Open Call – BAR TOOL #7

Open Call for BAR TOOL #7. Practice-based Training Program 2024-2025

BAR project is thrilled to announce the open call for the seventh edition of its practice-based training program for research in the arts, BAR TOOL, taking place in Barcelona from November 19th, 2024, to April 2025.

BAR TOOL is a six-month training program focused on practice-based research in the arts, with a strong emphasis on interdisciplinary thought and action. The program welcomes participants from diverse fields—both artistic and non-artistic—who are eager to explore and develop projects connected to the visual arts. It is grounded in collective knowledge exchange, where learning occurs through conversation, action, and collaboration.

Throughout the program, participants will engage in practical debates, theoretical workshops, and receive mentoring from dedicated tutors and guest experts. Visits, talks, and encounters will be tailored to the participants’ interests and needs, fostering a dynamic environment for critical practice.

Theme for the seventh edition:
This edition invites participants to explore writing as a shared practice, weaving together memory, silence, and possibility. Through collective exercises, discussions, and personal exploration, participants will deeply engage with the written word as a tool for connection and political imagination.

In the words of Marta Echaves: “The practice of writing is a state of listening and a ritual of memory. Writing is a conversation with those who are no longer here; it is giving breath to rumors and kept secrets. It is a political desire to restore silenced legacies and to articulate possibilities for telling stories that have left no trace in official accounts. Writing is seen as a choreography of contact, an effort to draw closer to others and to be traversed by the desires and languages of others. As if words could become a nest, writing invites us to discover a way of being together.”

Who can apply:
We welcome practitioners from all backgrounds who are interested in experimenting with writing and beyond as forms of community, dialogue, and critical thinking.

Program structure:
Duration: November 19th, 2024 – April 2025
Format: In-person sessions in Barcelona
Public Outcome Presentation: End of April 2025 at HAUS in Poble Nou, Barcelona
Lead Tutors: The program will feature meetings with artist and writer Claudia Pagès, artist Guillermo Faivovich, curator Joseph Del Pesco, and philosopher and writer Marta Echaves. Alongside program directors Andrea Rodriguez Novoa and Veronica Valentini, they will provide ongoing mentorship and support to help participants refine their ideas and shape their collective projects.

Application Materials:
To apply, please email hello@barproject.net by Tuesday, November 12th, at midnight. Attach a single PDF (max 5MB) containing a portfolio featuring your last five projects, along with a statement of intent explaining how your practice aligns with the program’s theme and expectations. Candidates will be notified about their participation by Wednesday, November 13th. Tuition for the entire program is €500, to be paid prior to 18th November.

Join us for an enriching experience that emphasizes shared knowledge, critical exploration, and meaningful collaboration. We look forward to receiving your applications!

…

Marta Echaves (Madrid, 1990) studied Philosophy and specialized in the Independent Studies Program at MACBA. She coordinates activities for the editorial Caja Negra, and is a researcher, writer, and cultural programmer. Her long-term projects are developed in various formats, focusing on domestic archives, anecdotal accounts, and oral history, using metaphors associated with specific eras to create poetic devices of memory. Some key themes that have informed her research include state repression and violence, mourning and its rituals, the body, work and its neurochemistry, as well as fire and memory. Notable projects include La contrarrevolución de los caballos (Can Felipa, Radio Web MACBA, MNCARS), De las Acechanzas (Domingo Festival at La Casa Encendida), Ese zumbido azul (CA2M), and Tres veces dije fuego (La Capella, PEEPA Matadero). She co-edited Working Dead. Escenarios del Postrabajo (Virreina Centro de la Imagen, 2019) with María Ruido and Antonio Gómez Villar, where she wrote her essay “Trust in Chemical Piety,” which serves as the starting point for the book she will publish with Cielo Santo in 2025.

Guillermo Faivovich (Buenos Aires, 1977) is a research artist. For nearly two decades, alongside Nicolás Goldberg, he has been developing a polymathic exploration of Campo del Cielo, a border region in northern Argentina that has been showered by meteorites during the Holocene. His practice blurs the boundaries between visual arts, historiography, bureaucracy, and civic-astronomical detective work, challenging the limits of epistemic construction around a single object. Some of his notable projects include Otumpa (Museum of Modern Art of Buenos Aires, 2023); Mesón de Fierro: Towards the XXII Century (United Nations, Vienna, 2019); Decomiso (ASU Art Museum, Arizona, 2018); numero (XI Gwangju Biennale, Korea, 2016); the weight of uncertainty (documenta 13, Kassel, 2012); Meteorit “El Taco” (Portikus, Frankfurt, 2010); and Retrato de La Sorpresa y los meteoritos que ya no están en Campo del Cielo (Piguem N’ Onaxá Provincial Park, Chaco, 2006).

Joseph del Pesco is a peripatetic writer, curator and perennial collaborator. For more than a decade he’s been Director, and starting in 2016 became International Director of KADIST—a network-driven contemporary art organization with headquarters in Paris. He’s known for creating the first international residency for art magazines, reimagining an historic artist contract to support a charity chosen by the artist, and establishing a free-school aggregating events across the city. Working with Kadist and independently, he’s organized numerous exhibitions, screenings and projects at institutions such as Centre Pompidou, MACO Oaxaca, MACBA, moCa Cleveland, The Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The Center for Contemporary Art Tel Aviv, CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (PAFA). He’s also been a guest of various residency programs including Fogo Island Arts, SOMA, Beta-Local, The Luminary, ArtPort, and Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo. His writing has been published in dozens of catalogs, magazines, and books. His sold-out collection of short stories about imaginary museums, “The Museum Took a Few Minutes To Collect Itself,” was published by Art Metropole (Toronto) in 2018. His website: www.pleaseteleport.me

Claudia Pagès Rabal lives and works in Barcelona. Some of her exhibitions include: Manifesta 15, Barcelona, 2024; Escena I. Making Landscape, IVAM, Valencia, 2024; Typo-Topo-Time, Aljibe, Sculpture Center, New York, 2023; Uno, CA2M, Madrid, 2023; Banditry, Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona, 2023; Gerundi Circular, Tabakalera, Donostia, 2022; Some of It Falls from the Belt and Lands on the Walkway Beside the Conveyor, Vleeshal, Middelburg, 2022; Panorama, MACBA, Barcelona, 2022; Rats and Roaches, CAPC, Bordeaux, 2022; The Living House, Kunstverein Braunschweig, Braunschweig, 2021; and March Meetings, Sharjah Art Foundation, UAE, 2018. She published her book su pelo in 2020 with Onomatopee, her first novel Més de dues aigües in 2024 with Empúries Narrativa, and will launch a new book with Wendy’s Subway in 2025. Pagès was awarded the Ojo Crítico Prize for Visual Arts in 2022 and has been an artist-in-residence at Gasworks, London, in 2017 and Triangle France, Marseille, in 2020.