Paratext #83 with Xavier Michel, Luca Calderó and Maguette Dieng

This name, Paratext, hides a monthly program of performances by artists in residence at Hangar as well as artists on exchange grants. They present, in different formats, specific projects or parts of their work. The sessions are always open to the public with the purpose of enabling interaction with the artists themselves.

The next Paratext session will take place on Tuesday, June 17, at 7 p.m. in Hangar’s Sala Ricson.

Projects will be presented by:

Xavier Michel (Medium-term residency)

Soft, non-erectile, and non-long-lasting shapes, added to the behind-the-scene actions for preparing a show or setting technical elements (TV set or concert stage) as well as language and its ambivalence, and music, are all materials that compose Xavier Michel’s performances.

In the studio he builds sculpture/tools or systems whose functions are not predetermined, for example, transparent tape coffee cup, soft drumstick, mini-grand-pianos-peanut- dispenser, stilts of his own feet in flexion or poorly automated body prostheses. As an experimental approach he looks for the different meanings they adopt function to the use. In this process, objects induce body postures, and both influence each other, generating lot of surprises. The use of these sculpture-tools explores original narratives that bring together, in an unexpected way, different semantic fields producing new fictions.

In these stories the body of the performer deals with systems that escape his control, where the expected result of an action is very uncertain, where making mistakes generates shapes, looking for the right balance between fragility and clumsiness, absurdity and melancholy.

Luca Calderó (Medium-term residency)

Luca Calderó (they) is an artist-researcher. Their practice brings together and establishes relationships between distant or contradictory elements, creating possibilities in places of tension or desertification. Using disengagement as a tool for artistic research, he proposes to occupy spaces where his identity is simultaneously questioned and affirmed, such as a monastery or a surf camp.

They start from their own trans*planted corporeality to engage with the politicisation of the sick body in relation to queer identity and disability. Through embodied research, born out of corporeality and incorporating somatic processes, their work explores the intersections between dissidence and chronic illness, hospital architecture and the politicisation of parts of the body where the light does not reach, proposing affective and transfeminist connections to organs.

Drawing on previous research into anti-capacity and transfeminist approaches to the sick body as a theoretical framework, they are currently engaged in an extended writing exercise that takes as its starting point Simone Weil’s idea of the ulcer as a concept that harbours the fragility and impermanence of the physical body and the depths it reveals within us. This work explores a personal, dissident and transdisciplinary approach to mysticism. Their processes are materialised in moving image, text, performance and installation.

Maguette Dieng (Exchange Residency between RAW Material Company and Hangar)

Maguette Dieng is a DJ, producer, and music programmer based in Barcelona, dedicated to the research and dissemination of sound and music. She performs under the name Mbodj, with a practice that seeks to transform the Western perspective on electronic and advanced music, as well as to foster communities and possibilities through sound.

She is co-founder and coordinator of Jokkoo, an Afro-descendant music collective made up of six members from the African diaspora in Barcelona. Founded seven years ago, Jokkoo is dedicated to researching and promoting the most contemporary electronic sounds and the experimental and alternative scene of the African continent and its diaspora. The lack of representation of these sounds in European events and clubs led the collective to create connections and spaces where non-hegemonic musical aesthetics take center stage.

Jokkoo has performed at international festivals such as Nyege Nyege, Dour Festival, and Sónar+D. They have also collaborated with cultural institutions like MACBA (Barcelona), the Reina Sofía Museum (Madrid), La Casa Encendida (Madrid), and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Bordeaux, developing cultural programs and presenting their music.

In addition to her work with Jokkoo, Maguette co-manages FOC, an alternative cultural space in Barcelona that hosts events, workshops, and exhibitions, becoming a key platform for musical and artistic experimentation.

Practical information
Day: June 17
Time: 7 pm
Place: Sala Ricson, Hangar
Free entrance

 

   

Image: Luca Calderó