Son[i]a #466
blanca arias
Photo: Dani Cantó.
blanca arias is an artist and a researcher, curator, educator, mediator and archivist: interconnected, permeable aspects of a practice that springs from emotion and doing-with-others as gentler means of engaging with art and images. In her first book, Blandito blandito ¿Qué le hacemos les feministas al arte?, softness emerges as a primordial materiality through which to interact with the world; an accommodative form of knowledge capable of both shaping and being shaped. In pages steeped in a desire for genealogy, bodies, readings, guts, and organs come together and converse, celebrating artists and ways of doing that have often been left out of art history narratives. The book invites us to stop thinking of artworks solely in terms of representation, to attend to their presence and to what the material itself transmits and activates.
In this podcast, blanca arias draws on numerous friends and references to discuss guts, lungs, mishearings, and her fondness for pink. We talk about historical justice and the lack of feminist critical theory literature on the image, and we ask ourselves what it might mean to ‘tenderise’ an institution. We talk about proprioception, the inclination towards the other, and the material conditions that determine how far a body, a practice, or a book can go. From ekphrasis to listening, we touch on the senses and the politics of space, pausing before we interpret, lingering with things a little longer, and pondering the nature of what is before us.
Conversation: Albert Tarrats and Anna Ramos. Script and sound production: Albert Tarrats. Voice over: Isaac Sanjuan. Sounds: RWM sound library.
ATTRIBUTION/NON-COMMERCIAL/SHARE-ALIKE 4.0 INTERNATIONAL (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)
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