Conversation with Francisco Baena occasion of the exhibition “Artificial breathing. Performance. Dark echo” of Dora García

Artificial Breathing. Performance. Dark Echo is the triple title of the specific project proposed for the IVAM by Dora García in collaboration with Peio Aguirre. It is the result of a long conversation between Aguirre and García which began in 2009, about the nature of performance and acting, of doubles, multiple personalities, daemons, phantoms and voices and of representation, and about the transmission of knowledge and experience.

Artificial Breathing will be a performance presented in collaboration with students of UPV’s Faculty of Fine Arts. Working from a text created in a workshop on collective experience of drifting in the city of Valencia, they will construct the script of the performance that will take place at the IVAM during the days of the exhibition.

Performance is a collaboration between Dora García and Peio Aguirre, a script in which there are various characters. It can be understood as a permanent experiment and as a play that takes place in real time. It is presented on a table with as many copies as there are characters in the text; periodically, a series of actors activate the text.

And Dark Echo (Eco Oscuro) is a novel by Francisco Baena, written in 2015 and not yet published, which reflects on the possibility of the modification of reality by fiction and which is also a study of various works by Dora García.

Francisco Baena (Madrid, 1967) graduated in Fine Arts from the University of Granada and completed a doctorate in Philosophy and Letters by the Autonomous University of Madrid. He has participated in workshops of contemporary art with Jose Guerrero, Marcelo Exposito Antonio Murado, Marina Núñez and Carmen Navarrete. Wors at José Guerrero Art center of Granada.