Saturday, 27/1/2024
From 10 a.m. to 1.30 p.m
At ACVIC Centre d'Arts Contemporànies
Round Tables:
10 a.m. - 11 a.m. DEATH AND CHILDHOOD
11.15 - 12.15 h. DEATH AND CARE
12.30 - 1.30 pm DEATH AND OBJECTS
17 - 18 pm – GUIDED VISIT with the curators Albert Potrony, Roser Sanjuan and Maite Palomo.
As part of the exhibition Mortals (prelude), curated by Maite Palomo, Roser Sanjuan, and Albert Potrony, we are organising this meeting in order to expand, supported by specialists, upon some aspects of the three sections in which the exhibition is structured: the first section around childhood and death, the second about care, ageing and dependency, and the third about loss, remembrance and memory, conveying these concepts through objects.
Thus, we will approach death and loss from childhood, care in the last part of life and mourning, or objects as vehicles between past and present, attempting to retain some persistence of memory into the future.
MORTALS (Prelude), is an exhibition of artworks by Albert Potrony, together with artworks created in collaboration with various groups and in dialogue with the artworks of other contemporary artists: Rosa Amorós, Susana Casares, Democracia, Alex Gifreu, Albert Potrony, Alicia Santamaria, Anna Vilamú Bosch with Associació Abilis and Adriana Wallis, regarding formally and conceptually the three themes of the exhibition.
This exhibition is the first since the start, of the MORTALS project in 2020, an artistic research project on death and life, which seeks to create spaces to reflect collectively, on ageing, the end-of-life processes, palliative care, support, death and bereavement, through the activation of working groups for sharing knowledge and experiences.
10 a.m. - 11 a.m. DEATH AND CHILDHOOD
Round table on how children perceive death and loss, on questions such as:
How do we learn to face the loss of what we love? How do we remember someone we didn't know? How do we make space for those beloved family members who died before we were born? Can the youngest of us show us how to accept and survive what we lose? Can cemeteries be a learning space?
All these issues will be explored through the experience surrounding the making of two new artworks to mark the exhibition, conceived by Albert Potrony with a group of 4th graders from the Escola Vic Centre, with the mediation of ACVIC and the centre’s educational team, as well as the new publication by Ellen Duthie and Anna Juan Cantavella with illustrations by Andrea Antinori, Is this how death is like? 38 deadly questions from boys and girls. (and their answers).
Moderator:
Bruna Dinarés ACVIC Education Manager.
Speakers:
Anna Juan Cantavella. PhD in Social and Cultural Anthropology, teacher and researcher in the field of didactics of literature, editorial collaborator of visual philosophy Wonder Ponder.
Miquel Rosell and Dolors Ausió. Primary School teachers Escola Vic Centre
Albert Potrony Visual artist.
*Image Albert Potrony, Perdre.i retrobar, 2023
11.15 - 12.15 h. DEATH AND CARE
Round table addressing issues such as: who takes care of us in our last stage of life? how does dependency affect family relationships? What if friends, rather than family, were to take care of us in our final stage of life? How can we understand mourning as healing? Should we, or should we not pathologised grief? And if not, why not? How can we adopt a more caring ritualisation of goodbyes and death?
These and other issues will be addressed by three speakers based upon their professional experience on caring practices in death and mourning; and their experience developed by the project's steering group.
Dying Queer in Mallorca and Barcelona, focusing on the knowledge which emerged among the people who lived through the first generation of the HIV outbreak during the 80s and 90s: what it meant to experience the deaths of so many friends and partners from of the repressive and rejecting silence of the families themselves, including the denial of the right to mourn and fear for the own survival? What lessons can we reclaim in the present from the first generation that experienced the onset of AIDS? Why are there no public memorials for all the people who have been, and who are still affected by HIV? Can we connect this knowledge with what we experienced from the COVID pandemic?
Moderator:
Maite Palomo. Manager of ACVIC and curator of Mortals (prelude)
Speakers:
Júlia Sánchez Cid (Associació Som provisionals). Activist for sovereignty in goodbyes and dying.
Raquel Rodríguez. General health psychologist with experience in support processes of advanced illness, death and bereavement.
Sonia Justo General health psychologist with experience in support processes of advanced illness, death and bereavement.
*Image Albert Potrony, Flors, 2023
12.30 - 1.30 pm DEATH AND OBJECTS
Round table on memory and remembrance through objects, memorials and by extension works of art. With Caterina Almirall, who developed at La Capella her curatorial project "Esdevenir immortal i després morir" (2021), which explored artistic practice as a possible means of achieving permanence, through a dialogue between temporalities, or, in other words, a way of "talking to the dead".
Albert Potrony also explores the fragility of memory, and the ability of objects to help us look back in order to reconstruct a shared biography with "Caravan" (2009) in which the artist brought us fragments from the life of a ninety-one year old woman, and of the life of her sister, through the stories related to the objects and ornaments they have deposited inside their caravan.
The artist will also introduce us to the possibility of bringing back those who are absent by invoking their objects through the artwork "The Gift" (2018).
Objects and the will to permanence, past and present, are explored in "Perdre i retrobar" (2023), a collective investigation with ten-year-old children about loss, remembrance and memory, which has as its guiding thread the research and reconstruction of the objects, people, and animals which the students from the Escola Vic Centre have lost, or loved; a reconstruction of significant objects that the artist Alicia Santamaria also shares in her project "Per Amor" (2021 -2023). In later project she relates with domestic objects through ceramics in order to reflect upon care.
Moderator:
Roser Sanjuan. La Panera public programmes manager and Mortals (prelude) curator.
Speakers:
Caterina Admiral Director of ACVIC, curator, teacher and researcher.
Alicia Santamaria Visual artist.
Albert Potrony Visual artist.
*Image Alicia Santamaria, Per Amor, 2021