Faro Santander Art Grants

For the Second Call of the Faro Santander Art Grants programme, Faro hosts two days of activities that share the creative process of the four artists selected in the first edition, opening up their working processes and connecting them with the community. 
 

On Friday 23 October, the programme opens with a conversation involving the four artists: Amaia Bregel, Casapalma, Iribarren & de la Riva and Salón de Belleza, moderated by the programme's coordinator, Ane Aguirre. The event will highlight the research and working processes behind each proposal, sharing the questions, collaborations, and methodologies that have run through the projects through screenings, conversations, and live actions. 
 

The event also invites the public to get to know the selected artists and to share in the conversations and exchanges that have guided their projects. Through films, publications, performances, texts, music and sculpture, their work imagines possible visions of the institution and of the Faro Santander Art Grants programme. 
 

What can we learn from the resonances between the funded projects, their institutional surroundings and the wider socio-cultural context? Together, we will reflect on how the selected projects can guide artists, citizens, individuals, families, artistic scenes and wider contexts to imagine new ways of embedding the role of art within society. 
 

6 pm - Welcome and conversation between the artists and Ane Rodríguez Armendariz. 
 

6:45 pm - Screening of Suite de los Riconchos, with a short introduction by Irene Atienza and Yoel Molina (Casapalma). 
 

Suite de los Riconchos is an audiovisual piece by Casapalma, made in collaboration with Jorge Rojas and the collective Brañaflor, as part of their research into baile a lo suelto and its forms of learning and transmission. The screening will be preceded by a short introduction from Irene Atienza and Yoel Molina, who will share some insights into the working process and the context behind the piece. The film approaches the oral and bodily knowledge bound up with dance, rhythm and movement, looking at how these are passed down, transformed and kept alive across generations. 
 

Casapalma is a Cantabrian duo working with Cantabria's musical heritage, bringing oral tradition into dialogue with contemporary arts. Their practice helps renew the languages of folklore through a close connection with the territory. 
 

7:15 pm - Una forma minúscula, a performative reading by Salón de Belleza.
 

The project developed by Salón de Belleza under the grant, Una forma minúscula, takes Manderley (1981), a film by Jesús Garay, as its starting point to explore how moving images tied to a particular territory can function as tools for research and help develop ways of approaching the contexts of cultural production in Cantabria. As part of this process, Cristina Somavilla and Manuela Gutiérrez Arrieta have set up a working and research group to share materials, open conversations, and test collective ways of engaging with the film and the context in which it was made. For this public event, they propose a performative talk to bring together the different materials that have emerged and shaped the research. 
 

Salón de Belleza is a collective formed by Cristina Somavilla and Manuela Gutiérrez Arrieta, dedicated to creating spaces for thought and exchange around the circulation of images and their invisible, peripheral movements. The project explores image and pedagogy, as well as the possibilities for visual artists' programming in Cantabria. 
 

7:45 pm - Ludarquías, a conversation with Amaia Bregel. 
 

Ludarquías, the project developed by Amaia Bregel, explores painting as a system of rules, play and spatial construction, and traces its shift towards volume and the playground as a structure that calls the body into play. Amaia will present the process and the references that have accompanied this research, and will talk with the artist Juan López about some of the questions raised by her work. The conversation will open up a wider view of their respective practices and of the context in which two generations of Cantabrian visual artists have trained and developed. 
 

Amaia Bregel is a visual artist. Her practice centres on pictorial research and explores the possibilities of unsupported matter, through work on materials, tension and balance that emphasises the object-like nature of painting. Having taken part in various residency programmes, she has exhibited both solo and in groups at venues including Galería Juan Silió. 
 

8:15 pm - Flesh & Films / Pieles y pantallas, a performative action by Iribarren & De la Riva. 
 

Flesh & Films / Pieles y pantallas is a project that approaches touch and contact between bodies as a driving force in creating images. It draws on a family archive of pedagogical materials on sex education from what was once Santander's Centro de Psicología de la Conducta, a behavioural psychology centre in Santander. In this event, Itsaso Iribarren and Germán de la Riva will present a performative talk that brings these materials into relation with their own bodies, carrying their images, gestures and forms of transmission into the present. 
 

Itsaso Iribarren and Germán de la Riva are artists and researchers with PhDs in Fine Art, who have worked together since 2006. Their work revolves around the moving body and the bodily systems that make it up, exploring its relationships with other bodies, technologies, and the urban environments they inhabit. 
 

8:45 pm - Questions, a conversation about the second edition of these Art Grants, and an informal gathering with the local artistic community. 
 

Duration: 160 minutes.

Audience: All ages; children aged 7 and over must be accompanied by an adult.