[PROJECT] ISABEL DE NAVERÁN. “THE WAVE IN THE MIND”

Taking over, de Naverán describes her hypothesis as follows:  

"I wonder whether writing might be a way of creating a place on several levels, such as spatial, mental, identity, and time; and whether it might be a way of connecting to what has impacted us, likewise a way of making a world from the nearest point. La ola en la mente is an attempt to put somatic writing into practice, which is different from the so-called performative writing insofar as it doesn’t (or not only) act on the body of the person reading it. Somatic writing shows how History is etched on bodies via learnt, inherited or imitated gestures. It also shows the forms of perception physically incorporated, the way we look, feel and see, and the ways of narrating, speaking and talking. In this sense, it assumes language as something material capable of seeing and revealing the different strata comprising the relationships with that which addresses us in art research. Furthermore, it is a corporal thinking practice which questions the concept of body as anatomy, i.e. a physical space that delimits and contains individual non-transferable subjectivity". 

“The wave in the mind” continues Isabel de Naverán‘s previous investigations about the place occupied by bodies and gestures in a reconfiguration of relationships with the world. 

 Thus, her first year as an Azkuna Zentroa associated researcher coincides with the publication of her first two books as an author. On the one hand, “Wrap, history and syncope” (Caniche, 2021), a long research project that sets the death of dancer Antonia Mercé and Luque, “La Argentina”, in dialogue with the abrupt collapse of the Second Republic in July 1936. This is a research where the body is presented as the place from where the story emerges, interweaving images and texts in a writing likewise affected by the attempt to narrate. On the other hand,  Ritual de duelo (consonni, 2022), a writing that runs like a mental voice endeavouring to recover the physical sensations experienced during the collective accompaniment of her own mother’s death.  

According to the researcher, both the writing process and subsequent publication “go hand-in-hand, and we could say they generate the desire that moves “The Wave in the Mind” to become a place of reflection which places writing at the centre of the action while seeking to explain how any writing inevitably always occurs during conversation and in contact with other voices.”  

In methodology terms, “The Wave in the Mind” takes the form of a correspondence letter format, which is understood to be more than an exchange of letters. Correspondence is also a way of replying, detecting concordance and equivalences, including tensions, frictions together with momentary transitory readjustments among different voices.   

Starting from this premise, since 2021 de Naverán has maintained four-way correspondences with Lorea Alfaro, María García Ruiz, Raquel G. Ibáñez and Andrea Soto Calderón. From different spheres –art, architecture, design, philosophy– the work of the four guests' challenges and interferes with some of the questions that sustain and feed the research contents of The wave in the mind. 

Between 2021 and 2023, this proposal has had different phases and formats open to the public: a meeting, a reading group, a podcast series, a seminar and finally a polyphonic book of the same name, which will be published by Azkuna Zentroa in the fall of 2023. 

• Lorea Alfaro is an artist who launched LA. Una marca hueca, LA (3l3a) in 2014 to create a protected environment aimed at generating image. The hallmark of her work is allowing a peaceful, naked and direct beauty to appear.
• María García Ruiz is an artist and researcher with an architectural background. Her projects delve into the production of territory via the articulation of hybrid narratives between image, action and writing. She is currently developing her work as a resident at Hangar (Barcelona).
• Raquel G. Ibáñez is an artist and curator whose work focuses on the study of thresholds, preliminary spaces and experiences of the indescribable via the exploration of sound, word and graph image.
• Andrea Soto Calderón holds a PhD in Philosophy and her research is focused on the transformations of aesthetical experiences, the study of images and media, as well as the relationship between aesthetics and politics. She is currently undertaking a research project at La Virreina Centre de la Imatge (Barcelona). Her research focuses on the transformations of the aesthetic experience, the study of the image and the media, as well as the relationship between aesthetics and politics.