18 Apr Juliana Espana Keller
Residency Programs: June 2015
El sonido de las Atrevidas
(The sound of the bold)
Sound performance
Participants: Matilde Cano Miñano 74 years old, Encarnita Hita Miñano 62, Piedad Cano Miñano 70, Rosario Jover Cano 72, Leonor Lopez Parrillas 71, Mª Carmen Martínez Toledo 65.
The proposal of Juliana ́s project is located within the fields of sound performance, critical theory, visual art, and community practices. The aim of the research is to develop a practice-based creative analysis of identity, power, and place, through the immersive environment of the kitchen. In particular, her aim is to create a strategic laboratory for collective engagement, informed by critical perspectives and artmaking processes, by exploring principles of participation and relationality.
Juliana wishes to investigate what sounds mean and how they affect a listener and how this might change over time. J. E. Keller seeks to question what one would want sound to evoke in the listener: what provokes a person into feeling, thinking, experiencing, and knowing.
During the first month of residency at Centro Negra, Juliana worked with a very active collective from Blanca ́s community – the theatre group “Las Atrevidas” (The daring ones). Women over 65, who are – as their name indicates – daring in everything. Juliana proposes an exercise in empowerment which subverts the daily activity of feeding the family.
She invites the participants to make their kitchen utilities into musical instruments. Provoking these women into showing us their routine, their worries and dedication through the sound of their tools.
As they pointed out at the end of the sessions with Juliana, they discovered “how out of something simple one can make something extraordinary”
With this exercise, she gives central voice to what was invisibilized in our society - all those women who have dedicated their lives to caring for others. At the same time, widening the imaginations of the participants, giving new sense to their labour and creating understanding about the process of meaning-making in contemporary art.
