Gresol Art in Girona and La Bonne in Barcelona are collaborating to present a new performance and performance art workshop by Esther Ferrer as part of Intangible Environments. The performance is on 26 October 2019 at La Bonne. The workshop takes place 27-31 October 2019. I am contributing a session on writing about performance.  I last engaged with Gresol presenting a talk during the FEM 10 festival in 2010 and am delighted to be returning to present this workshop exploring how to develop writing as a way of documenting and investigating performance art in Girona on 31 October.

Esther Ferrer has been making performances since 1965 and is one of the pioneers of action art. She has worked as a solo artist and as a member of the ZAJ group (until 1996). Her work has been presented in major international art venues including Foundation Miro in Barcelona and Reina Sofia in Madrid. She represented Spain in the Venice Biennale in 1999. She examines the finite nature of life and the constant transformations of the body and has described her work as ‘rigorous absurdity’.

Me on writing on performance: Sitting on the floor, watching, a static recorder grounded, taking a line for a walk, doodling with words, flinging ink with gravity to the page. The artist describes in space, makes fleeting manifestation, articulates in air, holds forms in the flux, briefly carves and extricates expression. Thought embodied, enacted. What happened? What did I/we see? What did I/we experience? Words spin out defining, dedefining. The performer’s body rhythms and shudders. Mine, inhabited by its microfauna and flora twitches with empathy. Seeing becomes exploration. The weights of emotions and ideas are sensed. Voyeur, flaneur, botanising on the performance. And see my article ‘A Moving Meditation’ in Performance Research journal.