Valentina Desideri and Florencia Portocarrero – A study practice to explore inappropriate feelings: RAGE
Saturday April 16, Practical Space*
15:00-18:00: Studio Practice
18:00-20:00: Andrea Francke in conversation with Florencia Portocarrero
Study practice is a fiction (or a bet perhaps?) that there is no outside of the learning process. If we get together to read a text, if we talk, if we cook, if we fight on the floor, if we sleep together; we are studying. In general, when we study, we pretend that we do it for later. We intend that we will use that knowledge at some point. But in this study there is no further, there is only practice. And this study practice consists of testing possible beginnings, exchanging partial ideas, more or less interesting exercises, texts, emotions, distractions, boredom and so on.
What if we embrace the capabilities of this simulated space and meet in the studio to practice and study together? Or what if we use it to share and study uncomfortable or inappropriate feelings? Or even what if we start by reflecting about anger as a legitimate category for the production of knowledge and even for political analysis?
In the context of the curatorial program of the BAR project, which this year investigates the control policies of human behavior, Valentina Desideri and Florencia Portocarrero revisit the feminist vindication of the personal as political, and propose an exploration of the role of inappropriate feelings both in oppression as in political transformation.
Between 3pm and 6pm we invite you to come with your own knowledge and experience about rabies. Perhaps texts, exercises, practices, jokes or stories that relate to this or similar affects. You can join us for as long as you want, and participate as actively or passively as you like.
At 6:00 p.m., the artist Andrea Francke and the curator Florencia Portocarrero will talk about the potential and dangers of anger in artistic practice and in politics. Francke will make a short presentation on her work focusing on her experience as a mother and her relationship with anger as a starting point for her political engagement. What are the differences between an artistic practice that reaffirms its roots in rage instead of generosity? What happens when anger turns to hate? What does it take for anger to turn into action in politics? This and other topics will be discussed during this conversation.
More inappropriate feelings will be explored in the following weeks…
Andrea Francke (1978) is a Peruvian artist currently based in London. Her long-term projects include: Invisible Spaces of Parenthood, a collaboration with Kim Dhillon, which explores the legacy of second wave feminism and its implications for art, its infrastructure, work and care; Wish You’d Been Here, a reflection with Eva Rowson on welcoming as an artistic practice and a feminist method; and finally, FOTL with Ross Jardine, which focuses on the idea of management. Francke is a PhD student in Latin American Studies at the University of Manchester. Her doctoral research seeks to develop an alternative and decolonial genealogy for social artistic practice in Peruvian art.
*Tarros Street 3, 08003 Barcelona