Today is Tàpies: Maria Josep Balsach – Ariadna Guiteras

Aquest event forma part de: Today It’s Tàpies

Organised by the Fundació Antoni Tàpies as part of the Tàpies Centenary Year, Today is Tàpies is a series of transgenerational and interdisciplinary conversations conducted and moderated by the cultural journalist Rita Roig (Terrassa, 1997). The aim is to interpret Tàpies’ texts as a starting point for reflecting on current issues such as ecology, the right to self-determination, interculturality and political commitment in art.

The words and ideas of the artist will be revisited during a series of thirteen sessions, with invited participants from different generations and diverse professional fields (culture, education, science, politics, environment, health and human sciences) helping to construct a polyphonic story that will be collected in the form of a podcast. Thanks to the collaboration of Catalunya Ràdio, the podcast will allow us to experience the generated knowledge in another format and in another context.

Chapter 11: Body and Memory: Readings of Skin and Layers

“I have sometimes joked that art applied to bodies can be a remedy for pain,” wrote Antoni Tàpies. In his texts, like many other artists, he referred to the healing nature of art. Art is often claimed to heal the body (and even the mind): is this ability still useful in our context? Art, which may seem like a contemplative, mental activity, always ends up passing through the body, whether in the form of shivers due to Stendhal syndrome or in interaction with a work of art we have before us. So, how is art related to corporeality? We will reflect on this with Maria Josep Balsach and Ariadna Guiteras.

PARTICIPANTS

Maria Josep Balsach is an art historian and poet specialising in contemporary art, specifically in Joan Miró. She has written numerous theoretical pieces on aesthetics and art in the 19th and 20th centuries from a multidisciplinary standpoint. She is currently director of the European Live Art Archive project and of the chair in contemporary art and culture at the University of Girona. She has worked as an art critic for the newspapers Avui, El País and La Vanguardia.

Ariadna Guiteras is a multidisciplinary artist who explores the limits of human and superhuman bodies and the relations of which they are constituted. She considers bodies as vulnerable, open matter that is always related to other things, whether the environment, energies or data. Her work revolves around the ideas of control and performance we associate with bodies, in relation to the social, political and emotional context that surrounds them. Throughout her artistic process she relates materiality and immateriality, gesture and memory, touch and affect, and her pieces therefore take the form of performances, sculptures and installations.

Today is Tàpies programme

Podcasts Today is Tàpies, by Catalunya Ràdio.