The Air We Share #9
A collaborative action with Isabel Leon, Carmen Porras, Mariano Lozano-P, Ricardo Arrescurrenaga and me
Initiated and organized by Ayran Oliveira, Vicky Gómez and Zhenxiang Zhao (Axel)
at the La Madraza university in Granada, Spain
March 28th 2025
Initiated and organized by Ayran Oliveira, Vicky Gómez and Zhenxiang Zhao (Axel)
at the La Madraza university in Granada, Spain
March 28th 2025
The second station of my "vuelta" was the beautiful ancient La Madraza University in Granada. La Madraza is one of the oldest universities of Europe, founded in the 12th century in times when muslims, jews and christians were inspiring each other to establish a rich culture of science, arts and architecture.
Ayran, Vicky and Axel, students at the Faculty of Arts, had organized things fantastically well.
The program started in the late morning with an open workshop. A very diverse group of people were interested to give it their best. For some performance art, or arte d'acción, was only something they had heard of, for others it was their outright profession. In short English sentences I gave suggestions to guide the process. All was translated in long meanderings in Spanish... Short experimentation with the exclamation of names; exchanges about what the names mean to the proprietors; letting the body find its movement; finding out what you can all do with a chair; sharing a one minute action: in the end there was so much possible in such a short time! Maybe it was also the impact of the incredible space we were in: a richly tiled room with wooden paneling in an old building on top of a hill, with a view on the Alhambra and half of Granada via three windowed walls.
In the evening we had a The Air We Share session in the inner yard of the same building. The yard was covered by a glass ceiling: did we shatter it? Not exactly, but even better: it gave us the possibility to let the fading daylight decide the length of our action. While Mariano filled the space with a soundscape juxtaposed by Ricardo's sound interventions, Carmen moved-danced her way with endless tapes and some inflatable cushions tied to her body that eased her falling over and over again. Isabel made her entrance via the stairs in various disguises, connecting and disconnecting with the other performers. I added to the noise with my saxophone-mouthpiece-on-a-garden-hose, tried to blow bubbles from a soap solution producing only some feeble blurbs. Like always in a The Air We Share session it is the total picture that tells the story. Strangely interwoven actions pop up and disappear, leaving an audience guessing, recognizing, expecting and in the end just realizing how rich life can be when it is shared with the unforeseen.
Some impressions of the gathering on:
youtu.be/ZQ1xfPEW-nA
Ayran, Vicky and Axel, students at the Faculty of Arts, had organized things fantastically well.
The program started in the late morning with an open workshop. A very diverse group of people were interested to give it their best. For some performance art, or arte d'acción, was only something they had heard of, for others it was their outright profession. In short English sentences I gave suggestions to guide the process. All was translated in long meanderings in Spanish... Short experimentation with the exclamation of names; exchanges about what the names mean to the proprietors; letting the body find its movement; finding out what you can all do with a chair; sharing a one minute action: in the end there was so much possible in such a short time! Maybe it was also the impact of the incredible space we were in: a richly tiled room with wooden paneling in an old building on top of a hill, with a view on the Alhambra and half of Granada via three windowed walls.
In the evening we had a The Air We Share session in the inner yard of the same building. The yard was covered by a glass ceiling: did we shatter it? Not exactly, but even better: it gave us the possibility to let the fading daylight decide the length of our action. While Mariano filled the space with a soundscape juxtaposed by Ricardo's sound interventions, Carmen moved-danced her way with endless tapes and some inflatable cushions tied to her body that eased her falling over and over again. Isabel made her entrance via the stairs in various disguises, connecting and disconnecting with the other performers. I added to the noise with my saxophone-mouthpiece-on-a-garden-hose, tried to blow bubbles from a soap solution producing only some feeble blurbs. Like always in a The Air We Share session it is the total picture that tells the story. Strangely interwoven actions pop up and disappear, leaving an audience guessing, recognizing, expecting and in the end just realizing how rich life can be when it is shared with the unforeseen.
Some impressions of the gathering on:
youtu.be/ZQ1xfPEW-nA
