This fourth edition of El Berenar is proposed as a gathering in which the invited artists –Álvaro Porras (artista del Programa), Gema Quiles and Ana Císcar– organize a dialog based on their interests and some of the aspects that unite them.

El Berenar is an activity that is proposed as an informal encounter for presenting the projects of artists, authors and agents that have a Valencian context. In each edition, two invitees, along with one of the artists forming part of the Art and Context Program, will talk in turn about their projects and interests.

The event will take place on Thursday February 10, 2022 at 6 p.m.

Álvaro Porras displays his work thru the permutation of symbolic and somatic codes in line with experiential and emancipatory practices of art within an urban context. With the intention of creating a historiographical account, his work echoes thru painting and graphics, as a response to the process of writing, towards the concepts of minimal action and intervention.

Gema Quiles lives and works in Valencia. Focused on painting and sculpture, her work deals with the reinterpretation of reality and the creation of new spaces. These are individual and personal spaces relating to her development, which emerge from the escape from a hostile environment. As reference, she uses resources found in nature and in landscapes, creating a personal language through the use of repetition and synthesis.

Ana Císcar is a visual artist who works and lives in Valencia. Her art training focuses mostly on figurative painting in which she explores concepts related to the documentary image, the representation of violence and the politics of visibility. Thru montage work, the images she uses to recompose and juxtapose her work become blurred, using a distinctive deconstructive strategy which enables a rethinking of the images used by the artist.

From their research for the Programa d’Art i Context on speculative evolution and narrative fiction concepts, Diego Navarro and Dario Alva have created a collaboration with philosopher, dancer and choreographer Miguel Ballarín. This is a choreography and conversational proposal which provides the opportunity to expand on, study, and analyze certain aspects of Navarro and Alva’s research with the audience.

Coral, ‘un fómite’ has arisen from a synthesis of earlier collaborative processes between the three artists with artworks such as Cenotafio, on display at the Canal and Madrid Theatres in 2018, or Inventario, in development since 2019. In this case, the piece focuses on the development of a choreography language related to movement sonorities and languages known as “coral”: those which, according to Ballarín’s definition, are “exercises in caring for the body itself”, which are found “in technique as something similar to a home”, and which enable us to “accept ourselves while accepting this place”. The presentation has come from a concentrated sample in time of choreography elements, surrounded by sound and visual resources for the purpose of creating an atmosphere or a feeling of “place” in the audience, and in relation Navarro and Alva’s project aims to create immersion experiences in fictional environments. Once the piece has finished, there will be an opportunity for dialogue with the spectators and there will be an exchange of ideas and impressions on certain concepts that arise during the piece, with the help of texts and small visual artefacts (similar to picture cards) which will be distributed throughout the audience.

Miguel Ballarín (Madrid, 1993). Philosopher, dancer and researcher in contemporary body art. He works between the spheres of theoretical criticism, choreography practice, and poetic creation. Obtaining a doctorate with the project “Body and crisis: a criticism of the romantic time” under the supervision of José Manuel Cuesta Abad at the Department of Philosophy at the Autonomous University of Madrid. Member of the Complutense Seminary of Research on Dance History and Theory. Founder of the contemporary urban dance company Co-IApso, he has led artistic residency programs in national centers including Naves Matadero, Conde Duque as well as the Canal and international theatres such as B.Motion Festival 2018 (Venice) and Tanzkongress 2019 (Dresden). As a performer and poet, he works with Arca (Sonar Festival 2019) and incorporates the multidisciplinary group of experimental digital performing arts, Mitrilo, alongside artists such as Sergio Razorade, Valeria Baret and Sevi Iko Domochevsky. Dance and Urban Music Teacher at the María Dolores Pradera Municipal School, Madrid, he coordinated and redrafted the textbook Historia de la Danza III: Danzas Urbanas (Mahali publishing house). Among his most recent publications, it is worth mentioning A Cataphoric Withness, along with Victor Aguado, as part of Party Studies Vol.1 (Errant Bodies Press, Berlin) and Ocupares: desestar un mal como (“The names of fear” seminar, Matadero Madrid), a choreojuridic critique of the Desokupa business practices.

Jordi Teixidor (Valencia, 1941) has been one of the leading exponents of abstract painting in Academic Spain from the Real Academia de Bellas Artes (Royal Academy of Fine Arts) of San Fernando since 2000. In 2014, he received the National Award for Plastic Arts. IVAM has paid particular attention to this tireless, cult, rigorous and unclassifiable creator throughout his history: In addition to including his work in its collections and in important group exhibitions, in 1997, the museum dedicated a major retrospective exhibition and publication to him.

With Endgame, the museum takes another look at Teixidor’s work, shaping a project that distances itself from a retrospective of use. This exhibition stages new conversation spaces to establish stimulating dialogues which take into account the coherence of Teixidor’s plastic language, in addition to his personal attitude to the challenge of creation: “Devoting yourself to art means choosing a reality to settle into”.

The project by Guillermo Ros An exercise in violence links several narrative and conceptual lines: the issue of the artist’s institutional integration, the issue of violence, present in the project as an indicator of the possibility of movement and change, and the allusions to certain historic events that appear vaguely but persistently in the design of the exhibition. In her talk, Natalya Serkova will seek to identify and discover these connections, in order to speculate how a project can bring together such seemingly different issues like the French Revolution, the phenomenology of artistic production, the behavior of rats and love.

Introduction by Julia Castelló (Barcelona, 1992), art historian and independent curator. Together with Ali A. Maderuelo, she has been the co-founder of the self-managed space A10 (Valencia) since 2019. She was the associate curator and publications officer at Bombas Gens Centre d’Art (Valencia, 2017-2021). She has co-curated, also with Maderuelo, the exhibitions «Can’t Speak for Itself» at La Casa Encendida (Madrid, 2018), “Hoy puede ser tu día” (Espai Tactel Toormix, Barcelona, 2021), “Fauna de las Cuatro Torres” by Amalia Ulman (Centre del Carme de Cultura Contemporània, Valencia, 2021) and “Una cruzada de pasiones” (House of Chappaz, Valencia, 2021). Currently, they form part of the curatorial team of IVAM’s Art and Context Program.

Natalya Serkova (1988, Rusia). Philosopher and art theorist, currently living in Moscow. She graduated in Philosophy at the RSUH in Moscow. She is the co-founder of TZVETNIK, a platform that explores and promotes contemporary art from all over the world. Her book, What can be given (“То, что может быть дано”), written in the genre of “fiction theory”, was published for the first time in 2017 in Russian. She is a contributor of Moscow Art Magazine, e-flux magazine, RevistaArta, isthisit?, OFluxo and other media focused on contemporary art. Currently, her research focuses on the fields of the aesthetics of objects, the latest perspectives of the phenomenology and philosophy of art.

PRESENTATION OF THE PUBLICATION An exercise in violence, with texts by Natalya Serkova and Julia Castelló.

* Natalya Serkova will connect with IVAM online, where those present in the auditorium may raise other issues in addition to those raised by the artist, Guillermo Ros, and the moderator, Julia Castelló. It will be simultaneously interpreted in English – Spanish.

This third edition of El Berenar will take the form of an encounter as part of which the guest artists –Claudia Dyboski (Program artist), Alejandro Ocaña and Bella Báguena– will present a dialogue based on their work and interests. A conversation in which attendees will be invited to participate and be part of the activity.

El Berenar constitutes an informal meeting place whereby artists, authors or other cultural practitioners working in Valencia can present their ideas and projects. In each edition, two guests together with one of the artists from the Art and Context Program will discuss their projects or interests.

The activity will be on Wednesday, 26th January 2022, at 6:00 p.m.

Claudia Dyboski is a Valencian sculptor. Populated by hybrid beasts and rudimentary artifacts, her imaginary proposes a world slowly recovering from a dystopian era – a resurgence of intelligent life in a new biological age. These nascent beings have human features; some of them contain parts of the machines left behind by man in their bodies. They speak another language, and hide in forests and the ruins of ancient civilizations. Dyboski sculpts a world of rubbish and silicone, foam and wire, where life regenerates and transforms: it is a world without words, a life still in its conceptual stages, tentatively trying out its new body on an aged planet.

Alejandro Ocaña is an artist based in Valencia. His work is based on collective events and parties, giving rise to an artistic production whose main objectives are the participation of others and the use of humor, and involving a succession of group actions that aim to be considered as “nonsense” and /or “irrelevant”.

Bella Báguena is a Valencian transfeminine artist who works with different disciplines such as music, performance, jewelry and other media. Her artistic production is generated via an intuitive and emotional process, using voice and body movement, as well as objects, spaces and technologies to create sound, video, sculptural or performative pieces, in which emotional expression and thought are key.