PRACTICABLE_2. Una secreta correspondencia: Jon Mikel Euba presents Vulnerario

On Monday, October 10th at 7 pm, within the framework of the Practicable research line, Jon Mikel Euba will give the lecture Una secreta correspondencia. The lecture takes as its starting point the presentation of his book Vulnerario, and also functions as a kind of “notes from the natural” or “liquid notes” in which a dissection of the different factors that have configured Vulnerario in its relationship with the structure that shapes it will be carried out. Those who attend will be invited to take notes that, in the second part of the proposal, will be reactivated, exploring the very gesture of opening this structure in a situated way. Vulnerario, the second book published by the artist, is part of a broader project focused on writing that the author has developed over the last decade, whose aim is to define a praxis that becomes technical theory.

Jon Mikel Euba writes: “When I was a child, I was told that the system used to open passable paths on a mountain consisted of carrying a heavy donkey and releasing it towards the summit. The donkey, an animal that is a masterful economizer of energy, will always describe slopes as horizontal as possible, which, in zigzag, will take him to the summit. Once the path was defined by the animal, it was later translated for human use by widening it into what they called tracks. We could see that “shape” – the resulting path – as the result of an equation that includes: 1. a pre-existing obstacle: the slope; 2. a desire or a goal: to climb the slope; 3. an instrument of measurement and calculation: the donkey, which carries within itself the premise “energy saving”; and, 4. something extra needs to be added to the equation: the load. In the artistic process, similarly, for a form to finally appear – be it the zigzag or the slope of which we know neither the slope nor the height until we reach the top – we only know intuitively that we must load a structure to the maximum, with a large amount of materials (real, ideal, and vital) that make the relationship between the weight of all of them and the animal premise of saving energy, generate the path. A path that, when walked, gives us the measurements of the width of the slope, and that when we reach the end (if we do it) shows us the shape -the zigzag and the altitude of the mountain-. As the donkey does, we will have to create subterfuges by putting in front of us any kind of carrots, lures that direct the animal that we are in a certain direction. The specificity of the artistic process is that we are ourselves donkey, hillside, load, track, and carrot. Having accomplished the above, a structure, or strategy can give us a form, but no form by itself assures us the meaning, since this will always be somewhere else and will depend on the complexity of the unknown and the motivation, and on the way in which the factors that intervene in relation to the genuine need of our action are conjugated”. Vulnerario will be used as the representation of the itinerary to achieve this meaning.

Jon Mikel Euba (Amorebieta, 1967) is an artist whose practice has led him to delve into projects that combine the performative with the didactic. His work has been widely exhibited and is part of collections and art institutions both nationally and internationally. In 2010 along with other artists he created the experimental pedagogical project Primer Proforma at MUSAC and the Kalostra school in San Sebastián in 2015. Between 2014 and 2017 he directed the master’s degree Action Unites, Words Divide (On praxis, an unstated theory) at the Dutch Art Institute, whose sessions are collected in the book Writing Out Loud. In 2021, he published Vulnerario.

Practical information
Date: Monday, October 10, 2022
Time: 7 pm
Place: Sala Ricson, Hangar
Free admission