16th session of the cycle Presentes Densos. Around the arts of living on a damaged planet, coordinated by Miguel Ángel Martínez (curator of the series).

About this session, the curator himself wrote: “In this meeting, I talked about the portrait of the stones that Rubén Montesinos painted in Open Letter. The stones of Iceland. I also talked about Derek Jarman’s garden, his Modern Nature and Blue. From the final sequence of Blue I took the title of the presentation: “Like sparks through the stubble”. I also talked about Julià Guillamon’s Winter butterflies, the performance Beyond my mind, by the artist Miguel Guzmán, the book My body, too, by Raquel Taranilla, and the The ashes action, by Act-Up.

What I wanted to talk about was illness and time. I would say: of the experience of temporality that the illness evokes in these texts, in these images, in these works.

Miguel Ángel Martínez is a researcher, writer and curator. In 2021 he has published the book Bios. Literature, illness, ways of life (Tirant Lo Blanch-PUV).