working conditions

In this podcast, we sit with Laura Benítez Valero under a glass ceiling that never quite cracks, to talk about its unshakeable foundations, the question of class, and the scaffold of the meritocracy. Anger and shame are the emotions provoked by the emergence of this perverse and oppressive system, which reproduces inequalities generation after generation, until they become ingrained. From the same perspective, Laura Benítez Valero proudly recounts the legacy of a community-based education in the struggle of women who support families and children. She also talks about music and dance as catalysts and points of escape; and about research projects that take place outside of academia, in the form of erratic, intuitive and affective methodologies in which enjoyment plays a central role. 

In this podcast, we talk with Peruvian Wynnie Mynerva about painting and the body—about flesh, skin, and weight. We look back at her formative memories in Villa El Salvador, living on the fringes: we invoke friends, affects and support networks, and revisit her first home-studio and the parks where she used to sell copies of the great Western masters. We also discuss the role of medicine and body modifications in her work, and the outrage in response to bodies that are transformed in the name of self-determination, rather than to conform to conventional beauty standards.

In this podcast, we talk to artist and feral economist Kate Rich about administration, entrepreneurship and feral vocabularies. We consider the cycles of learning and unlearning required to open up the imaginary of cooperation and business, and access their enduring emotional content. We recap experiences of shared bank accounts, economic abstractions as temporary hiding places, greyness as camouflage or cover, and acknowledge administrative practice as the inevitable soundtrack of our lives that is waiting to be reimagined. 

David Bestué’s practice sits at the intersection of sculpture, architecture, and language, although it also extends to other forms such as curating and essay writing. In A FONS ÀUDIO #64, we focus on his works in the MACBA Collection, taking us back to the beginnings of his career, to contextualize his collaboration with the artist and performer Marc Vives, under the alias Bestué/Vives—a key phase that precedes his later research into architecture, memory, and materiality. Over the course of a decade, the duo developed a body of work marked by constant experimentation, in which sculpture and performance merge with narrative fiction. After the dissolution of the shared project, Bestué directed his research toward the relationships between architecture, memory, and materiality, a line of inquiry materialized in works such as Uralitas, also documented here.