FONS ÀUDIO #56
Fito Conesa
Fito Conesa inhabits many languages and disciplines, stretching the chewing gum of his practice to stick on different forms of knowledge, ways of doing, and conversations that are often found outside the white cube. Drawing on poetic strategies and gestures that move between the visual and sound realms, he explores other imaginaries of time and stimuli for change. And among the layers and layers of meanings, musicality, and synergies, the work of mediation, of listening, and of doing together that informs his work becomes almost transparent.
In FONS ÀUDIO #56, Fito Conesa takes us behind the scenes of the visually and sonically imposing video Helicon (2019), in which a seven-member brass band invokes the end of the world in an almost apocalyptic landscape, in which geological time, human time, and personal time collapse into one.
Eugènia Balcells
Eugènia Balcells (Barcelona, 1943) began her artistic career in the mid-seventies within the conceptual art scene. A pioneer of experimental film, video art, and video installation, she also works with visual scores, artist’s books, objects, performance art, photocopies, sounds, and photographs. Balcells considers herself an interdisciplinary researcher interested in the possibilities of physics, astronomy, mathematics, philosophy, sociology, music, and poetry. She brings these disciplines into the field of art, as an agora from which to reimagine and reinvent the world. In FONS AUDIO #54 we join Eugènia Balcells in looking back over a life dedicated to art, pausing to examine some of her works in the MACBA collection.
Núria Güell
Núria Güell’s artistic practice always starts with a contradiction or social conflict that she feels directly challenged or affected by. These give rise to long collaborative processes in which listening, legal research, negotiation, and confrontation—as well as affinities and affects—become essential creative tools. Her practice is part of her life, and it often involves taking legal, physical, and emotional risks. In FONS AUDIO #55, Núria Güell talks to us about the processes, conversations, research, and formalisation behind the making of Ayuda humanitaria (Humanitarian aid) (2008-2013), a piece she began during the years she spent in in Cuba, which became part of the MACBA Collection in 2021.