Artist

Author

Title

Residency

Stella Rahola

Laura Ní Fhlaibhín, Clara Pereda, Stella Rahola Matutes, Sofia Uquillas

entangled practices

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2023-2025

entangled practices

by Laura Ní Fhlaibhín, Clara Pereda, Stella Rahola Matutes and Sofia Uquillas

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As if there was in the air relationships that only a change in state can bring closer, Stella’s work bonds me to materiality in ways otherwise ignored. That which for her embodies manual labour seems to extend in a long-lasting connection that stays with me far after leaving contact. A form of contact that goes beyond touch. If there is a sensitivity threshold, she has expanded it.
I discover that the proposal of a text that places value on an artistic and intellectual exchange between friends, a gesture that links us together in a stance for solidarity, does not take me by surprise. I think of the longing for this text to become that celebration.
There is a deep exercise of imagination in the terrain of that which cannot be seen but can be felt. To be pierced and a channel against an extractivist desire for knowledge. I realise how my relationship with memory has, until now, been limited to the very human experience. And I wonder what from that remains in this new threshold, in this traversed boundary.
Laura Ní Fhlaibhín / Clara Pereda / Stella Rahola Matutes / Sofia Uquillas

25th January 2024

I think we can start with the keywords that Stella uses to talk about her work. Materialism¹, and different kinds of materialisms that are conceptually happening right now, and then design, which I think is a very interesting topic to open up, space and architecture, relationality and cataloguing… -I did it like this but we can start adding to it.

When I was looking at your work, Stella, this just came to my mind. I saw some images of you, where you are on the floor classifying the glass pieces. That felt like the first stage of getting to recognise the material. But then I realised that in your last exhibition that was the piece in a way, as if those first stages of cataloguing became the piece itself, after organising the materials more thoughtfully. As if this gesture was coming across but in different moments. I found that really beautiful. There was this more personal relationship of you with the materials and suddenly it was presented. The organisation became the presentation somehow. It was a different relationship than when you presented it in the gallery…

So, you saw it differently, when she started working on it and then the presentation… the exhibition and display design as a research method in some way? A way of understanding the investigation and producing knowledge as the show was being installed…or in the making².

As if, at the beginning, cataloguing was a private intimate process for Stella, but suddenly this is shared as the piece in the exhibition, creating something different. I guess it is also the people encountering the work that changes it, since they have to be in the space with it. You, Stella, were telling me that they had to be careful with it being on the floor because it was very fragile and the space³ around it was very narrow so they had to go through it walking on the edges… I am not sure what it is, but there is something about this…

I remember when you said, Stella, that the audience needed to take care⁴ around the edges of the work, and I am reminded of the involvement of the non-human⁵ and human beings. There is something of that here, the non-human as the glass mass that is taking up more room and the human is asked to not to be in the centre, a switch in hierarchies….and that kind of fragility⁶ of the centre being made of glass feels quite poetic to me, like the glass focuses on harder, more precarious edges, maybe, with human involvement⁷. You both mentioned indexing, or cataloguing⁸ or the lexicon of how you organise matter, in how the glass is organised, the science, the empirical system; it could be one way or it could be another way kind of based on the knowledge of how things are catalogued, in a way—I think that is a nice link into the science that you were talking about, this connection between the craft and science⁹(I). There is something very intimate in seeing you being quite tender and close and touching and sourcing the glass and that makes me think of a laboratory and that everyday proximity to the materials in that kind of scientific laboratory sense as well…

(I) For me, this work exits the realm of science or the scientific in order to enter and build a whole other world, creating new joint languages with matter. The pieces are not useful, nor are they from a “perfect capitalist production line”. Thus, in some way, they are no longer indexical… They are remains of a possible action in a laboratory, but in the gallery ignite a multiplicity of ideas and connections outside the system/atic – the construct…

I feel a contradiction when you were saying that the room was for these pieces, acting as the main character, as something close to animistic, but at the same time it is a piece that is not a rock or glass or a piece of earth. These are pieces that are obviously made by humans. Therefore, even if I want to involve other things there, crafts¹⁰ always put humans at the centre somehow… This is kind of a difficulty that I have but at the same time I am interested in searching for a way that allows humans to take a different approach to matter. Making things on our own, crafts, allows us to be more empathic. The borosilicate glass¹¹, a material I constantly use, is designed for making laboratory components, and it can only be worked by hand. This means it cannot be industrialised, nor put in moulds or mechanised. And this very straight path, where you first need bodily capability¹² before any kind of knowledge that is more sophisticated or more rational or logical that comes from an intellectual side, it is automatically subordinated to a tacit expertise. Even in history, some of the chemical properties of some materials like metals have been discovered by artisans before scientists. The molecular structure of metals was known before science arrived(II). It is a relationship so intimate with materiality… because as a human is very difficult to put yourself in a position that you are not a human (or a human from the Western culture), and what I am trying to do is to think of a way to approach matter in a different way that allows us to be more equitable, to deeply understand that we are also part of this matter… To find a praxis that is already there and that allows us to understand other approaches to help renew our material culture.¹³

(II) I also read this in a quote of Jane Bennett in Vibrant Matter talking about the scientific historian Cyril Smith talking about the polyform structure of the metal’s molecules.

But also language; we are matter as well and it is a network in some way (connection failed, inaudible). We are creating meaning together. It is not that there is one thing or another, everything goes together, in parallel and even entangled with the history of all matter in the universe. I don’t think it is very difficult to put it together (matter and humans: does it have to be another binary? Not in quantum physics, as Karen Barad explains). I do not see it as separate… In Storied Matter¹⁴, which is a chapter of the Posthuman Glossary, this contradiction that you are talking about is acknowledged: “This means that matter’s stories emerge through humans, but at the same time humans themselves emerge through “material agencies”¹⁵ that leave their traces in lives as well as in stories” (Cohen 2014 b:1-2).

The separation, what separation is Stella talking about? The Artisans figuring out the properties or the alchemy¹⁶ of metals and glass…

I mean the basis of everything is matter, we as humans go through different processes to be what we are—the embodiment that we have—and we have parallel histories/stories that are interlocked in a network. It is absolutely relational¹⁷.

I understand what you mean, in an entangled¹⁸ sense—the metal within us and we’ve got all this within us and we need some of these materials within us and we absorb them. Just like today, when I was driving in Ireland, I heard that Irish water is way above European levels because there is so much metal in it, so I kind of enjoyed that kind of entanglement feeling that you describe, Sofía, but I also enjoy listening to Stella switching around the hierarchy of knowledge¹⁹ gathering or the science of discovery in a sense of that empirical knowledge, subverting it in a way by placing the crafts person with their tacit knowledge.

Yes, but I think those are different things, right?

Yeah, those are different things for sure, but I guess to comment on what Stella said as well, I think there is a lot in that tacit knowledge²⁰ formation rather than through the hierarchy of scientific knowledge.

Absolutely(III).

(III) Western culture’s constant references to academic or scientific knowledge systems, therefore its hierarchies, imply putting embodied knowledge at the bottom of the pyramid.
Those biological memories, that we–a complex assemblage of species with only 10% human in us–have carried somatically through centuries of evolution/mutations, permanent learning processes and, of course, epigenetics: how new behaviours and the environment can cause changes in our genetic expressions. Every species has a “bio-memory”. I cannot remember where, sorry for this… but once I read that we carry the whole history of design in our cells (I think it probably was in Paul B. Preciado’s Architecture PhD thesis Pornotopia). However, scientific, or a chemist’s knowledge, to be more precise in the case of borosilicate glass, seems to take the lead in our “culture” compared to an artisan’s biological or tacit (following Laura) memories. Knowledge passed through generations of working with, observing, analysing, sensing, smelling and altering the material in order to transform it to its very limits from a rough version to a useful/beautiful form (doesn’t this description seem familiar to the scientist’s routine in the lab? -that is also creating!-). For the naked eye, without scientific apparatuses that can verify our quantum sameness, two types of matter thinking, expanding, becoming and co-creating meaning together in the most horizontal way…

There is… I hope I am not taking it in a different direction. When I was listening to you and also when reading Stella’s writing, I was thinking how I could understand this from my artistic experience of dancing and embodiment, not only in relationship to other materials but thinking of ourselves as materiality. There is something that happened to me that really changed how I enter an experience with my body in performance. I was listening to this dancer talking about the relationship with her body and the space, and how in this relationship she was not thinking of herself as above the space, or as above the material. When dancing with something, like dancing with the floor, there was this shift that I had in which I was not getting closer to the floor with my body anymore, but rather I was meeting with the floor, in a relationship with it. Instead of me going down to the floor it was more like coming together, like a mutual encounter. The same with other elements like the wall; it was not me going there or embodying something.

Become with it, think with it, move with it; it is kind of something that becomes a single thing, not separate.

And then when I think about it, we are not talking about materiality as separate, as if saying ‘we are artists and work with materials’. We are also thinking about the relationship, it is about the relationship. It is about materiality as well, but the relationships are what creates a difference(IV).

(IV) As a body that lays down with its back on the floor, and in the impossibility of a total contact with it searches in the gaps of the void. As a poem which, in its difficulty to express feelings, expresses them in more complexity. The attention to the unsaid, or the spaces between words as the vitality that permeates what is said. The dedication of a dance where the ability is not in the mastering, but rather in generating a kind of intimacy where what others feel matter as much as what one feels. Sweating as the consequence of providing.

Those are the ethics; how should we relate to the materials? Realising that we should take it into consideration and always think of this encounter as a collaboration…

That is in the approach to it… there is a concern in the ethics behind it. But then a concern is also immaterial, there is something key in immateriality…

I am interested in exploring the kind of functionality of it and its need, that it is used in laboratory experiments, that it could only be made by hand and that whole kind of world, its own world. I’m interested in tackling that as well and through it something related to its functionality and the language of that, whether that is a laboratory or a construction site…

And also, a very important thing is that they are discarded²¹ pieces, right? They are not “functional”²² anymore, I think, until Stella picks them up and decontextualizes them and places them in another setting to start another kind of relation – interaction with other beings, which unfolds several meanings…

It feels really important to acknowledge the discarded context of the glass pieces. Do you get them from a glass blowing factory, Stella? Could you tell us a bit more about that please, Stella?

Where do they come from?

All: Yeah!

For years, I have been picking up discarded glasses from Catalan workshops, and basically the production places are very craft-based and very specialised in terms of functionality. As I mentioned, there are laboratory components but it is also a material that has migrated to design in recent decades and is used for lighting and also for cookware. There is a guy I have been working with, who plays with the material a lot. Basically, I had all this range of morphologies that come from everything from a very disciplined practice (because it is a material that needs to be very precise for making these laboratory tools) to this other world that starts merging with forms that are unrecognisable. It is also a material that is very precarious, it is very hard to find a place that produces this material. That is why there is not a plan to recycle²³ (melt) this material- there are countries such as Germany, the main producer of this material, where this is possible(V).

(V) Ionaid ghloine agus misin tarrthala
Táim ag smaoineamh ar Stella agus í ag tíomáint trí Catalonia faoin teas, ag samhlú na bealaí clúdaithe le deannach agus gainneamh agus í ag tíomáint léi isteach faoin tír ag fágáil slán le mórbhealaí i dtreo fobhóithre corracha neamhshocair.
B’fhéidir go bhfuil Níl beag i dteannta léí go socair ina shúiochán fein agus sceitimíní air ag súil leis an turas…ag déanamh cruthanna ar an ngloine lena méara fliucha.
Is cúis áthais agus gliondair é ag cuardach ionad ghloine san taobh istigh. Láimhseálann sí giotaí gloine caite faoi mar a láimhseálann sí a leanbh féin, le haird iomlán, le grá, le díogras agus cúram. Fógraíodh an tráthnóna ina mhisean tarrthála.. mar atá i Paw Patrol. B’iad féin na madraí chuardaigh, mamaí- madra, buachaill – madra agus iad ag crochadh leo an lá agus na gloiní caillte go deo.
Samhlaím an bheirt acu ag cruthú spáise sa charr dos na giotaí gloine, na píosaí gloine borosileacáit caite i leataobh ó na monarchain agus na ceardlanna.
B’fhéidir go bhfuil a bhreagáin agus a leabhair agus a hata Paw Patrol bailithe le chéile ag Níl chun spás a fhágáil do chursaí ghloine.
Anois tá sé ag súgradh sa salachar ag déanamh cairn láibe, ag croitheadh roinnt braonnta d’uisce mianraí óna bhuidéal féin isteach sna poill chré fághta ag an carr.
Ansin cuireann sé cré sa bhúidéal, cruthaítear dríodar, agus sraith anuas ar shraith agus píosaí charbóin istigh ann freisin. Tá an bosca de giotaí gloine borosileacáit clúdaithe go maith le grá agus cúram agus díogras ag Stella á leagadh anois aici isteach i gcúl an chairr taobh le Níl. Beidh sé ina chosantóir ar an ngloine agus é breá sásta agus bródúil spás a dhéanamh dó.
Fágann siad scamaill deannaigh donn-oráiste ar foluain san aer ar feadh tamaillín ghearr, scamaill bheaga ríbíneacha mar gur thiomáin siad go haireach agus go cúramach. Ar ndóigh is misean tarrthála a bhí ar bun acu.
—
Glass centres and rescue missions…
I’m thinking of Stella driving through Catalonia in the heat, imagining dust trails in sandy ground as she drives inland, exiting highways to more rickety secondary roads. Maybe little Nil is with her, strapped into his car-seat and excited for the ride, making shapes in the glass with his wet fingers.
It’s a thrill, searching for glass centres, in the interior.
She handles these discards as she handles her child, with full attention and warmth and commitment and care. The afternoon is declared a rescue mission, like the kind in Paw Patrol; they are search dogs, a mamma dog and a boy dog and they are saving the day and the lost glasses forever. It’s a new story.
I can see in my mind the two of them make room in the car for the shards, the borosilicate glass discard-rejects ejected from the factories and workshops. Perhaps Nil has gathered his Paw Patrol toys and books and hat all together to make space for glass matters. Now he is playing in the dirt, making mud piles, shaking some mineral water drops from his bottle into clay earth potholes left by their car. Then he adds clay to the bottle, sediments form, strata layers pile up, and there are carbon bits there too. Stella is gently placing the box, cushioned borosilicate shards wrapped with her love and care and devotion, into the back of the car, next to Nil. He will be the glass guardian, and he is proud and happy to make space.
They leave orange-brown dust clouds in the air for a moment, but only little wispy clouds because they drive so carefully; it’s a rescue mission.

Thank you. I was wondering if is it being replaced by plastics for use in laboratory experiments or have researchers developed a different type of material which means that this glass is going to be eventually redundant —technologies are changing and I’m imagining that being used in a laboratory, with all of the 3D printing and bioplastic and everything now, somehow the borosilicate feels like from another time, so I was curious about that.

I’m also reminded of Jane Bennett as you were describing these weekly journeys, through Catalonia, in how Bennett talks of the potential for more empathetic relationships to emerge from more sensitive and non-hierarchical ways of relating materially²⁴, “more attentive encounters between people-materialities and thing-materialities”²⁵. I’m imagining the care you take with the glass-thing-materialities, in all manner of ways; collecting²⁶ them, gathering them, attending to them, cataloguing, placing them at the centre, and in turn the space (or lack of) that is opened up for the human-viewer²⁷, at the edges of glass centres.

I see all that, some of these pieces are also offered in plastic, but I imagine that they need to be used for sterilisation reasons and also depending on the temperature…

There is also something very elemental about it that there is only this material that can hold this combustion.

It is very pure and does not contaminate/leaves traces in the content while being exposed to heat.

I think there is so much in that for me with the hermetic sealing that happens with this glass in such an old practice. Feels kind of wild that nothing has replaced it…

I was thinking about what other materials or what other ideas do you think are important when we address materiality in your work, because you started working also on La Cronometradora, which contains many different materials and seems to change the direction of your research in some way.

Yes, I didn’t want to say anything because I was feeling that this was starting to get a bit deeper, but I am not only working with glass and some of my work doesn’t have to do with glass. So, for example, the last project that I did in the Mies Pavilion with my students. We were working with the discarded travertine slabs of the building, inoculating them with moss. Even the tools that we were using for hygienic reasons were made of glass, but the aim of the project didn’t have to do with glass. And La Cronometradora is an artefact that filters and makes water potable through a physical and a chemical process using… well, I was looking at these YouTube tutorials in these places with natural catastrophes where people do that. These tutorials are sometimes done by military people teaching people how to get clean water. Basically, they use the materials that they have around: rocks, stones, gravel and sand together with carbon which acts as a chemical filter. All these materials are put in order of size. What I did was use sand and stones from my memory places, places linked to my biography, using the carbon to separate my father’s territories from my mum’s, which are close to the floor. The work manifests itself on the floor with a container of water that has come out of the tap, and which has gone through all these successions of filters to make it potable. The process is slow, it measures an invented temporality: how long does it take for the water to filter into this mechanism or how long will it take until the resources have disappeared? Here the materiality of the glass and its translucency allows a glimpse of the water²⁸, but also adds sonority and rhythm to the piece, by dropping, clack, clack, clack… becoming a living agent²⁹ in the room. Offering and totem, it is an artefact³⁰ connected to the structure and flows³¹ of the building. A sequence of discarded pieces of glass from artisan workshops unfolds from a vertical metal structure. These are the final fragments of borosilicate glass production that, due to their type and composition, cannot be recycled in our country. They are pieces that are on the threshold, which here function as funnel/containers.

In a previous studio session that we did together, we discussed my next show where I am going to show La Cronometradora again together with a projection installation. I am going to work with analogical 16 mm film treated with all this sand and gravel using cyanotypes(VI). Somehow these crafty processes that are related with alchemy and the chemical³² are always involved in my work…

(VI) Stella speaks about images from her family, about the spaces they transit, and I think about how their relationship with them is unknown for me but not for that less felt. Maybe archives are not just an accumulation of facts, they are also containers of people’s internal worlds even if we often don’t have access to them. Are those non-official archives? Informal archives? Something similar seems to happen with materiality’s memory – as if there was a kind of trust in the existence of bonds. We participate in them, but their presence is an intuition. The intuition that there has been a change in perspective, and that this situates us in another place.

(Laura had to leave)

I didn’t know that your work had all those parts that are so personal, normally you seem a bit more detached from what you do. I think it is so beautiful that you are starting to relate it to other things even if it is not absolutely evident, which I also love about your work. You cannot see it all at once, but it is more something that you have to discover, perceive, analyse in many different ways. Not only at the visual level, but also the concepts and processes and so on behind each thing. I think this is so rich, as those are the pieces that really stay with you and keep evolving, those are the works that generally endure over time, from my point of view.

Well, it is like a personal anchor. In the end, you’re relating the other to yourself… The story that is more intimate clearly stays, in my case, in a discrete plane.

Also, in your work where there is that concern for giving space to the materials, for them to transform on their own and not only through you, it makes sense that you are discrete… I think of how when we relate to a place, we can break the hierarchy through the personal because we enable a different kind of relationship, but when the relationship is with materiality itself, it is as if there were two dimensions… like to some extent the personal breaks the hierarchy but also giving space does as well(VII).

(VII) I leave a classroom and enter a dance floor with the realisation that safeguarding is a physical process. Stella’s ways of working with materiality require a care that is physical too —a delicate balance of intervention and autonomy. The embracing of materiality’s own potential to be and follow its vital cycles. The discarded recovering worth. As in parenting or teaching, an excess of support might be limiting, while nourishing the favoring of independency. One’s physicality vanishing boundaries from within through a deep way of listening.

La Cronometradora, 2023.

It shows two things in a parallel way, doesn’t it? A coevolution that is geological³³, all the earth and materiality with which she is working plus the personal story, is like they are in lockstep. In lockstep, somehow, with the deep time that earth has, which is very heavy, but with all that is chemical and physical inside ourselves as well…

We all work with that which is close to us, right? In the end, it is an act that is totally natural. These elements from the earth can’t come from anywhere else… The people who are in a critical situation don’t go searching for them kilometres away, they look in their surroundings. It’s a bit like a peasant attitude, of self-sufficiency.

Yes, it is a bit like the situated knowledge approach of Donna Haraway, which we could look at and open up from there… something like being anchored in the space and you can go from there to the universal and get closer to anyone from where you are speaking from. It doesn’t mean that you need to be there. I think this is so beautiful.

There is also Karen Barad, within materialism we can talk about people who are amazing… I was looking at some of them and there was like ‘Storied Matter’, ‘Transcorporeality’, ‘Material Feminisms’… material feminisms seemed very beautiful to me because it’s when it starts a conversation about the ethics of materiality/mattering, like you are not only using it, but instead it is a co creator³⁴ with you (not separate from you), which I feel is so incredible because I think it is there where there is that flux, not only a flow of information but also how each of us are mutually transformed³⁵, you with the material and the material with you, as if we were both mutually traversed to create a different text, which then at the same time is also a material in itself. I really love this!

There was also this part in your writing, Stella, that says ‘the kinships that emerge from the associations³⁶, discurren por sus fuerzas y afectividades [flow through their strengths and affections]³⁷(X), which made me think about ‘associating’ in relation to science, maybe because lately I have been delving into psychology and there is this dilemma between the sciences about how to approach the study of psychology. There are sciences that have understood relationships in terms of linear causality, but then there are elements such as the existence of the unconscious and our creative capacity that suggest our behaviour cannot always be measured in terms of cause and effect. It has to do with a perception³⁸ that is less deterministic. There is something about the unconscious which is also related to memory³⁹, and all that kind of flow in associating which maybe cannot only be explained within those parameters.

Which is not exclusive to human beings because materials also have memory, creative capacity, in some way consciousness… and materially generates itself, auto generates itself, the agency we talked about earlier. So that’s very beautiful because there is no hierarchy in the end, the hierarchy cancels itself when you start to look closer at each behaviour (VIII).

(VIII) In the space I occupy, memory has been a different concern, and I wished I could concentrate in this difference and emerge from it with more perceptive. I think of Stella as a mother, perhaps going through this concern – or as an educator or a facilitator, and I think as well about my background in this realm. Memory has a concrete nuance when connected to emotion, as what we remember, or we are capable of remembering is altered by what we feel about our experiences.
This creates variation in what we retain from them. And I wonder: how is affect translated to materiality’s memory? To that channel of materiality that we are part of.

This analogy is very beautiful.

In a way there are ideologies or issues that start filtering… different ways of approaching the same thing. Seems like there is still a world that has to do with the associative which sometimes escapes us… and cannot be understood in the same way as when we only think about how the brain works.

Even in the hard sciences in the laboratories there is always a huge subjective side. You can read the same data in very different ways, like an interpretation or final use that… in the end is a kind of story… like how we edit all of this (complexity?) to create all this cultural construct within where we are living. So, I think in the end there is never anything that is exact, perfect or measurable… in the end, all of that is going through a brain and through certain experiences which are ultimately filters to read how we experiment/experience the world. Generally, I think everything ends up being an interpretation.

That’s true… like belief systems.

Exactly. Within the response of materiality in general there is an ethics⁴⁰… like in those quantum experiments, when particles behave differently when they are observed. Then is there consciousness or not? There needs to be consciousness, as there is an intelligence inherent in all matter⁴¹.

Firstly, we would need to define what intelligence is, because the natural order of things without intervention of human beings is also an incredible logical order.

That is mind-blowing!

So then how can we explain that? Without a thinking brain… So, in the end I believe that every being has agency. But this is also under a context… that’s it, things are altered and modified, go through processes⁴², but this is because they are in touch with other entities. And this generates such a huge network⁴³(IX) that you cannot think of yourself as a separate, free-standing piece, because you are also inside that system. Changes of matter are the result of, on one side its own dynamic, physical, chemical reactions, and also its interactions with other organisms (plant organisms, human, etc.). Ultimately, there is an interweaving of everything⁴⁴ to such a scale that isolating a person is something partial (something strange), a partiality that doesn’t sustain itself(X).

(IX) We share not only the space and time where/when we become aware of our connections/relations in the “larger network”. For example, when different types of sand, carbon, gravel, stones, cotton, exchange and collaborate to transform water into another purer/drinkable kind of the precious liquid that comes from the gallery’s restroom sink in La Cronometradora. The spectator, who is also “slowly filtering its own body” can see the layers of substrate as a deep vertical cut into the earth’s history and the universe itself through the imperfect/discarded glass containers. That is in parallel with our material history. The water within us is the same water that we are seeing and hearing run through the hose and then fall through the borosilicate containers, and then later drinking… We become one with the piece, ethically, sensibly “mattering” with a large part our own body, regarding our embodiment.
(X) The continuous use of borosilicate glass in my installations permeates the division between craft and science, intervening with other things and species. The kinships unfolded from these associations, flow through their strengths and affections and expand possibilities that involve an ecological contingency.

(session expired)

27th February 2024

Could I ask you a question about the piece in the cave on the Balearic island…Ufana? Can I ask you about the pieces, they look black in the photos, what are they?

They are blown mirrored glass…they are kind of leftovers. It’s a site-specific installation in Majorca, where I had this commission on a large site, the hillside of Puig de Maria in Pollença, Mallorca. Kind of a mystical site.

I remember you talked about this when we were in Kassel…

Ah yes, it’s true….

Situació Google Maps (31 S 501621 4413556). Als peus de la finca, on una de les parets dona forma a un bancal, hi ha una mina d’aigua àrab feta de pedra seca d’uns 4 metres de llargària i secció parabòlica d’altura decreixent (uns 0,70 x 1,40 metres a la boca). A l’interior hi ha diversos brolls i filtracions d’aigua que formen una bassa que queda així guardada i protegida. Va ser aquest, el lloc que vaig triar per treballar. Ufana és una proposta que indaga sobre els estats de la matèria i els seus cicles, a partir d’un assaig on la transformació i el canvi, l’error i el fracàs, es situen de manera liminar entre la ciència i el mite, la realitat i allò ignot. Un vidre de mides 100x39x25 cm reposa erràticament vertical sobre les roques, deixant que la seva superfície irregular emergeixi sobre l’aigua negra. El nivell variant d’aquest líquid fa variar el tram visible d’aquesta mena de tronc incrustat de vidre. En la mateixa aigua suren unes altres peces, tocades per les lleis físiques i l’atzar: tres dispositius de superfície irregular també de vidre però en aquest cas bufat i emmirallat. Els miralls juguen i ballen en la penombra perseguint els moviments suaus d’entrada d’aigua dolça subaqüífera. Dins d’aquesta caverna se sent Beautiful Failures, una peça sonora que vam desplegar amb Roger Paez i els estudiants del màster d’Elisava. A partir d’experimentar i enregistrar sons fets amb vidre, l’àudio ressona sobre el cicle vital de la matèria, amb els seus trànsits d’inicis i finals, funcionant de manera cíclica, com l’aigua i la vida mateixa (XI).

(XI) Ah yes, it’s true…. Google Maps location: (31 S 501621 4413556). Where one of land’s walls gives shape to a terrace, there is an Arabic water mine made of dry stone with a length of 4 meters and a parabolic section of decreasing height (about 0.70 x 1 .40 meters at the mouth). Inside there are various streams and water leaks that form a basin that is kept and protected. This is the place I decided to work with. Ufana is a proposal that investigates the states of matter and its cycles, based on the idea of transformation and change, error and failure, situated liminally between science and myth, reality and the unknown. A glass measuring 100x39x25 cm rests erratically vertical on the rocks, its irregular surface emerging out of the black water. The fluctuating level of this liquid changes the visible section of this kind of glass-encrusted log. Some other pieces are floating in the same water, touched by the laws of physics and chance: three devices with an irregular surface also made of glass, but in this case blown and mirrored. The mirrors play and dance in the semi-darkness, chasing the gentle movements of the subaquifer fresh water as it enters the mine. Inside this cavern, the Beautiful Failures track is playing, a sound piece created by Roger Paez and Elisava’s master’s students. From experimenting and recording sounds made with glass, the audio resonates over the life cycle of matter, with its transitions of beginnings and endings, functioning in a cyclical way, like water and life itself.

Ufana, 2022.

And people can look at them from this overture?

You need to go in, it’s not obvious from outside.

Thank you.

Stella mar aimsitheoir uisce ag streacailt thar na carraigeacha agus na creaga at thóir fliche, tobar, coimeádán, bearna, póirse. Ag dreapadóireach agus ag streacailt léi thar na clocha leis an fuíollach, na cinn caite i leataobh fós ag preabarnach leis an solas orthu nuair a ailíníonn na cuinsí.

Tá splancanna le feiceáil ó am go ham agus iad ag druidim leis an áit fé mar a bheadh an charraig ag fáiltiú roimh na daoine nua-tagtha, mar a bheadh na dríodair agus na sraitheanna agus an t-ábhar sa tírdhreach in ann braith agus mothú agus i gcomhbhá agus spás oscailte le haghaidh tuilleadh. Éiríonn na splacanna níos láidre agus níos gile mar go bhfuil na cuinsí ailínithe.

Brúnn siad iad féin trí spás sleamhain idir sceamhanna carraige isteach i mbroinn tais.

Cuireann Stella ar maos iad in uisce an locha, ag tumadh, ag bogadh agus ar snámh. Loch aonarach le faoiseamh a thabhairt dos na giotaí gloine a thit de phlab, a mbriseadh ina smidiríní, agus anois ina áit chaointe dóibh(XII) (XIII).

(XII) Stella as water diviner, clambering over rocks and crags searching out wetness, well, container, opening, vestibule. Clambering and climbing the stones with the remnants, the discarded ones, that still flicker and catch the light when conditions align.
There are intermittent flashes as they near the place, it is as if the rock is welcoming these new arrivals, as if the sediments and stratas and matter of this landscape sense and feel and empathise and open space for more. Flashes get stronger and longer and brighter because conditions have aligned.
They squeeze through slippery space between wet rock crusts into damp womb, little lake. Stella soaks them in the little lake waters, dipping and bobbing and floating. Hermit lake for resting shards that have crashed and splintered and need a mourning place.
(XIII) cuddled scraps of dust
falling from carbonate rocks
from waters high and low
heated by the Earth’s core
scars, breaks, cracks
in white, tan, rusty skin
fleshy locked, breathing still
exhaling subterranean gasps
piling up in fitful lumps
let there be light

(session expired)

8th March 2024

At the Mies Pavilion you were saying that you had musgo [moss]. Why?

Yes. Inviting Life (2021-2023) proposed a re-reading of Lilly Reich and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s Pavilion based on the premise that matter is never stable⁴⁵. It is a temporary intervention in a space comprising several actions to reveal life and, quite literally, further invite it into the Pavilion by working with travertine and moss.

(Stella shares the catalogue through the Zoom shared screen)

The work flowed organically, like life itself, and was organised a fortiori in eight sequential acts that help tell a story, at least one of several that were possible. (01) A fragment of travertine slab, testimony to the Beautiful Failures project, serves as the starting point for a material exploration through 132 litho polyester iterations of a single fragment that (02) are arranged on the floor to substitute the Pavilion’s carpet. (03) Sixteen spots in and around the Pavilion are chosen to explore micro-ecologies including natural and human-made elements. These are subsequently studied using biological quadrats and are carefully hand drawn. The Pavilion’s broken slabs are removed from storage and placed in the forest around it for them to grow moss. (04) A set of tools are used to gather local moss, culture it, and actively inoculate it into the slab’s cracks and crevices; the moss is subsequently nurtured for 175 days, watered and protected during an exceptionally hot and dry year. A comprehensive log is kept (05), detailing the evolution of the moss, which appears five months after the first inoculation, and, alas, dries out just before the intervention opens. The large pool is left untreated 10 days before the opening and is monitored daily to document its evolution (06). Twenty-eight travertine slabs from the Pavilion’s pavement are removed and carefully laid on the garden side of the long wall (07). Finally, (08), the resulting gap is partially filled with 31 fragments of the 15 broken slabs that have been inoculated with moss and carefully tended. This crack is the direct result of laying only the largest piece of each broken slab in order, from north to south. The tools used to invite life are placed in the space underneath the crack.

Therefore, the final intervention was explaining our process. In Inviting Life, we explored the changes that transformed materials through natural effects by studying travertine slabs. The growth of mosses and lichens on the Pavilion’s stones is interrupted by maintenance tasks that seek to give the Pavilion an aspect of invariability that corresponds to its mythical and prefixed historical image. The effect of the garden’s biotope on the Pavilion’s materials and the links with other organic agents create an imbalance, a tension, which can produce a change because matter is never stable.

The first movement was to work with the travertine slab fragment which was directly related to the intervention we did two years before. The previous intervention was a reflection on the vulnerability and fragility of the materiality of the Pavilion. Like a telluric omen, one of the slabs broke during installation. That chunk of stone, which had the same measurement as the trunk of our car, went to the university. And this project started with that move. The students had to work with lithography techniques and speculate with the fragment. We drew up documents which, on the one hand, were able to map in detail our piece of travertine, while accepting the superposition of other graphic layers on the other. The aim was to analytically describe the stone but also to venture insights into its transformation process, related to the passage of time. Lithography has to do with this process of layering as a sedimentation, and with water and time… the students were working wet because of the technique, and time was also implicit since it took a long time (a couple of weeks) to get our first document. Drawing on the experience and reflection, time and water became the basis of the project.

The lithographies are from the broken piece?

Yes. And the idea of the water is not only involved in the geological creation of the travertine, but also, we start reflecting on the behaviour of the Pavilion’s architecture with this liquid. At night, this construction absorbs the atmospheric humidity. When the sun rises, it starts sweating. Like it is breathing… it is like a ‘mirage’. You can see the evaporation. This was important for understanding this architecture as a kind of organism⁴⁶.

As a body.

Exactly, as a body. Given that we focused on the vital aspect of the Pavilion, the aim of the course was to attend to those entities related to time and water, agents that are able to activate the physical transformation of the Pavilion. This meant working with a biologic agent that generates a symbiotic relationship⁴⁷ with the travertine floor. For this reason, we started looking at the biota that currently thrived in the cavities of the slabs of the Pavilion. We asked the Mies Foundation to stop with their ongoing maintenance of the travertine. Then moss start appearing in the building. Consequently, we took it to inoculate all of the broken slabs that were kept in the basement.

There is so much about the discarded, coming back again.

También me he dado cuenta que en este texto aparecen muchas preguntas que incluyen la palabra escala⁴⁸ y la palabra arquitectura⁴⁹ se menciona brevemente el primer día, pero con este proyecto se vuelve más importante.

En el proyecto de Mallorca hablas mucho del nacimiento, el geológico y el del cristal… también está la escala operando.

Si, la escala es importante.

En todos, porque tú siempre juegas muchísimo con esta. Mira la que instalaste en la sala del segundo piso de Goldsmiths. La pieza que tienes sobre una “mesa”. Las patas están mucho más altas con respecto a la escala de tu cuerpo, casi correspondiendo a la escala del edificio mismo; se halla como a mitad entre el techo y el suelo, muy armónico con el espacio. Pero una persona apenas alcanza a ver… esa es de la idea que yo tengo de las fotos de la obra, que me parece muy interesante. Y se le ve una intención mucho más sólida con las piezas de vidrio.

¿Y dices que la visibilidad también está afectada?

Es un recurso que aprendí cuando estudiaba arquitectura: la escala de la maqueta y cómo se muestra. Es muy distinto situarla en el suelo, sobre una mesa o verla a la altura de los ojos. Cuando está a la altura de tus ojos, la visión circula por los inter-espacios entre las piezas. Ahí jugué con ese recurso. En una exposición clásica los cuadros se cuelgan a 1,5 m… Mies Van der Rohe usa 2,85 m, la altura del suelo hasta sus ojos multiplicado por dos. El cono de visión percibe los planos horizontales del suelo y del techo de manera equitativa y la relación con el espacio exterior se intensifica.

Estas cuestiones, relativas a la percepción del espacio, las integro como arquitecta y se despliegan de manera más o menos consciente en mis instalaciones. Para mí, el espacio es un material integrado⁵⁰.

Si, personalmente esa instalación en Goldsmiths es significativa. Es donde estas ideas de escala y percepción empiezan a trasladarse al artefacto⁵¹, lo que me permite entender la cosa como cosa y también que la cosa está hecha de cosas.

Hmmm… y esto aparece en el Pabellón también cuando utilizáis la unidad como de la piedra y la sacas, que es también como la individualidad.

Claro, es esta idea de entender la singularidad y el agrupamiento para generar otra cosa distinta, pero manteniendo esa individualidad, como la emancipación⁵² de las piezas. No considerarlas como partes o fragmentos de un cuerpo. El juego de las escalas está ahí operando. Depende de cómo te acerques o qué relación corporal⁵³ tengas con la pieza, puedes atender a una cosa u otra. En La Biblioteca vuelve a suceder: el rectángulo acaba, de alguna manera, construyendo una unidad, pero en realidad cada pieza es distinta, reivindica su propia agencia⁵⁴ poor diferencia de la que tiene al lado.

Es curioso porque, en las piezas del Pabellón, es esa singularidad un poco la que permite apreciar su carácter vivo, de alguna manera, porque los poros son los que permiten el surgimiento de esa vida ahí que se está como intentando ocultar y es ese acercamiento a lo micro lo que permite apreciar eso.

Por ejemplo, en el curso anterior estuvimos haciendo moldes de las cavidades del travertino, para entender las distintas formas que podían tener esos poros. Esta porosidad tiene la misma estructura que una cueva. Tienen estalactitas y estalagmitas, la formación geológica se da a partir de ese goteo cálcico(XIV).

(XIV) Escala, individualización, tiempo. Todo ello para mí retorna a la empatía como lugar de convergencia. En una relación terapéutica, poder dedicar suficiente tiempo de escucha permite que se sostenga. Por el contrario, la falta de tiempo dedicado a esa escucha la dificulta en ciertos contextos educativos o de consulta médica. Les estudiantes acuden a mantener el moss ; cuidar requiere tiempo. Como requiere tiempo vislumbrar las cavidades de una cueva, el interior de las piezas de travertino, apreciar las diferencias en el cristal, o en un conflicto; acercarse a una historia personal.

Hay una cosa que también pienso en relación con las grietas y los descartes: hay taras que son oportunidades de crecimiento⁵⁵ o de vida, pues también comentas que empiezas a trabajar con tus propios errores, que ya no son solo piezas con errores… Y realmente el error, en la práctica artística, está vinculado a una oportunidad enriquecedora⁵⁶ que tiene que ver con la experimentación y con el valor de la incertidumbre que trae.

¡Mmm…! La grieta como oportunidad… dos semanas antes de presentar la intervención al público, pedimos a la fundación que dejara de clorar el agua de la pool principal. Tomamos muestras diarias para controlar el nivel del cloro, alcalinidad, ph… El agua enverdeció, brotó el primer nenúfar, aparecieron libélulas que pusieron sus huevas en los orificios de travertino, y las gaviotas venían a refrescarse y beber agua… durante esos días, empezó a crearse todo un ecosistema.

Me ha impresionado mucho la pieza de arquitectura y lo que puede simbolizar la relación de lo singular. El agua en este trabajo se utiliza tanto para limpiar las piezas como para preservar históricamente el edificio, es casi como negar la transformación, el curso de la vida y la historia, e intentar que permanezca en un momento que ya pasó, negar que sigue habiendo cambio, transformación, es como…

Es curioso, se sostiene esa tensión entre preservar y también revisar hasta cierto punto cada cosa.

Es increíble, porque no es solo el comportamiento humano lo que la arquitectura va modificando, a través del diseño y la escala. Sino también las plantas y otras especies, lo que puede crecer alrededor de este lugar. Como las camas, sillas, mesas, que están diseñadas para generar cierto tipo de comportamiento en las personas… una especie de construcción cultural que está hecha para guiar nuestro cuerpo-comportamiento de alguna manera…

Eso de que también empiece por el pond casi me lo imagino como el comienzo para pensar espacios que son más inamovibles..

Es muy contradictorio, ¿no? Que resulte algo inamovible…Pero eso es muy “cool” porque además, de alguna manera, la vida en la tierra —las primeras células a través de la simbiogénesis (Lynn Margulis) — se da en el agua…creo que es la idea perfecta del comienzo de la evolución (y del edificio), que es lo más rizomático y múltiple⁵⁷, si se quiere…

Es curioso que en el Pavilion el agua es como el elemento de limpieza o de purificación y también permite que crezca lo contrario…

Y lo del suelo, Stella, ¿cómo es que podías levantar las losas y está ese hueco en la mitad? ¿Por qué existe eso y no es tierra directamente?

Existen diferencias entre el pabellón original y la réplica de los ochenta y son cambios muy interesantes…

Lilly y Ludwig pusieron las losas directamente en el suelo, no tenían el problema de la rotura de la losa porque toda ella se apoyaba en el terreno. En la réplica, se decide hacer un sótano que ocupa la misma superficie de todo el pabellón, esos 1000 metros cuadrados. Ese espacio subterráneo no es más que un almacén para guardar el material de mantenimiento: desde la kärcher para limpiar el travertino, el cloro para la pool, las piezas de repuesto de las distintas piedras, como también todo el material de descarte, las losas rotas o el terciopelo de las cortinas quemado por el sol.

¿Entonces qué pasa? Que el suelo del pabellón no es más que una cubierta, el pabellón se convierte en el techo de su almacén(XV). Y ahí hay una relación simbiótica extraña.

(XV) Como en las demás obras de Stella, existe un arraigo fundamental en la materialidad e, inevitablemente, en el hacer… El diseño, a fin de cuentas, es una cocreación con lo más-que-humano (more than human), que evidencia una reflexiva e imperfecta humanidad. En este proyecto, no solo se invita a la vida codificada, domesticada y artificialmente “separada” de lo que hemos inventado sistemáticamente como “naturaleza”: el musgo, the water lily, the dragonflies… También ha habido una colaboración con el mármol, el ónix, el travertino… Es un trabajo de care/cuidado, generosidad y atención que implica resignificar el valor de cada microcomponente de esta icónica estructura. Es un cuerpo vivo que goes through una vivisección y que, durante la intervención, se nos reveló de maneras multitemporales, sutiles, críticas y contundentes.

Entonces, el propio sistema de mantenimiento es lo que vuelve más frágiles las piezas, es lo que a la vez hace que sean más susceptibles de romperse(XVI).

(XVI) El agua dejando ser, dejando crecer lo que puede ser, tornando la rigidez en flujo —una solidez que respira —. Presenta ciclos en vez de lo único y fijo. El momento de reconocimiento de las características y el momento de clasificación parecen tomar la misma postura en el cuerpo, pero no internamente. La existencia de un lugar de mantenimiento forma también parte de un proceso, tal vez imprevisto —el mismo techo diseñado para proteger y cobijar somete a los materiales del pabellón a la fragilidad y a la ruptura, prolongando la necesidad de ese sistema —. La ruptura requiriendo de mantenimiento, el mantenimiento requiriendo de ruptura. Los ciclos registrados a través del sonido —el nacimiento de las piezas de cristal, el agua filtrándose a través de la cronometradora —. Su presencia cayendo junto a mí, distinta a la experiencia de una grabación.

Eso es… entonces, cuando dejas la brecha abierta y lo enseñas… bueno, es todo técnicamente bastante cutre. Las piezas de travertino se apoyan sobre cuatro soportes en las esquinas para mantenerse a nivel, debajo están las pendientes de desagüe… pero como el travertino se trabaja pésimamente en sentido contrabeta, flecha y fractura. Con el tiempo han aparecido otras soluciones sumadas a estos apoyos que evidencian que no está bien resuelto. Cuando dejamos todas esas soluciones abiertas y a la vista, se reafirma la réplica y no el original

Es interesantísimo.

Sí… es como todo un sistema de valor.

¿Como ir destapando por trocitos, no? tun tun tun tun…

llevar lo que está escondido a la superficie, revelar⁵⁸… mostrar dónde estás(XVII)

(XVII) La sensibilidad hacia una escala que no es la propia genera el desplazamiento de una perspectiva, otorga autonomía. El agua baja y sube de nivel afectando lo que podemos ver o no. Hace flotar y desplaza las piezas. Ceder autonomía transforma lo que puede ser percibido, pero lejos de perder acceso supone adquirir una nueva consciencia. En la práctica de Stella parece darse la repetición de revelar lo que hay debajo, incluso si no es a través de la visibilidad. En la cueva, las aguas subterráneas nos acompañan latentes, en el pabellón descubrimos la abertura del suelo. Mostrar “dónde estamos”, porque no siempre es evidente. Recordar que un mismo lugar conocido puede ser, de pronto, otro, y que nosotras tal vez tampoco pasaremos por él siendo las mismas.

¿Y es de las pocas réplicas que usa materiales que son originales, no? Es extraño… porque por lo general las réplicas usan materiales que son mucho más ordinarios, ¿no? Pero aquí se va hasta las fuentes originales de los materiales para hacer algo que al final no está hecho exactamente como una réplica, es como… un free styling para adaptarlo a las necesidades contemporáneas del edificio.

Estaba pensando también, Stella, que en el pabellón te permitieron hacer esa intervención… Decías que podíais ser messy pero que tenía que quedar oculto al visitante, al principio, y luego era muy temporal… como está permitido abrirlo al público, pero temporalmente… permitido ligado a unos límites…

…a unas reglas y a una estructura de poder.

Los momentos de resistencia tienen una duración concreta.

Se convierten en un ensayo.

(session expired)