MATERIAL VOICES 2: GUADALUPE ECHEVARRÍA & TOMAS MATAUKO, M. BENITO-PÍRIZ

The conversation between Guadalupe Echevarría and Tomas Matauko, scheduled for October 8, has been postponed until further notice.

The second session of Material Voices: Feminist genealogies of the work of making exhibitions is composed of a conversation between Guadalupe Echevarría and Tomas Matauko and Hype by M. Benito Píriz. The programme will take place in 2021-2022 and will consist in a series of encounters at Bulegoa z/b. In each encounter, two speakers will be invited to talk together about a particular exhibition, with a third guest presenting a work from a different context.

Material Voices: Feminist genealogies of the work of making exhibitions aims to investigate curatorial practices and women’s labour from the sixties until today. The programme uses dialogue as a tool for research. It explores the materiality of voices, exhibitions and artworks, and the intersections between them.

Opening hours for Hype by M. Benito Píriz: October 15, 16, 22 & 23 from 4:30 to 8:00 pm.

The Most Dramatic Panda EVER. Live recital by M. Benito Píriz on the closing day of the exhibition: October 28, 8:00 pm.

MATERIAL VOICES 2: GUADALUPE ECHEVARRÍA / TOMAS MATAUKO

Some months ago we extended an invitation to Guadalupe Echevarría to take part in the second session of Material Voices. Since the ‘eighties, Guadalupe’s career has taken her through different areas of the art world. We were hoping she would tell us her story in conversation with a third person; she suggested her son Thomas, who knows her and has lived through different experiences with her. Thomas is an artist and a member of the Lunik collective. In our first three-way encounters, it became obvious this would not be an easy task – two voices, two sometimes conflicting positions, discomfort, too much closeness -. But we could also see the potential of a conversation taking place in a framework that would consider the notion of “feminist genealogy”, which would focus on someone in whose history lived and professional experience would inevitably meet, and whose encounter with the second wave of feminism was to be a landmark in her constitution as a subject.

M. BENITO PÍRIZ: HYPE: THE MOST DRAMATIC PANDA EVER

Hype is a dispositif set up for the Bulegoa z/b space which will function as an exhibition, to be activated on its closing day with a spoken intervention, The Most Dramatic Panda EVER. Tarpaulins printed with a text, “If I had that body we wouldn’t argue”, which belong to the queerest part of my work.

The intervention is a live recital with autotune in which I look for a new sound for oral poetry. In it, I break away from the closed tradition of the poetry recital and search for a more enticing idea for this generation, who have lost our interest in recitals and readings out of pure boredom. Feelings of anxiety and depression arise, which I frequently see in my friendships, on TV, in the music I listen to, especially in people from my own generation, and on Internet. I’m more influenced by reality shows than by other poets. Electronic devices are fetishized and there’s a tendency towards self-destruction and a mockery of our own failures. All of this in the sad, nostalgic tone of autotune, which I see as the sound of my generation. Autotune has become a way of feeling ourselves.

BIOS

M. Benito Píriz (Durango, 1992), obtained their degree in Fine Arts at the Universidad del País Vasco (2014) and a Masters in Artistic Investigation and Creation (2015). They work with different disciplines, including sculpture, video, audio and writing. They were awarded first prize at Getxoarte 2019, have taken part in the Ertibil itinerant exhibition three times, were selected for Soplo: arnasketa saiakerak (2012), won third prize in the Muestra de Arte Joven, La Rioja (2017), and participated in Xena (Harriak programme by Eremuak). They have been the receiver of the Fundación Bilboarte grants, as well as the Bizkaia/Babestu Regional Government grants with Azkuna Zentroa and others at Horcasitas Jauregia (Balmaseda) and Matadero (Madrid).

Guadalupe Echevarría (1948, Bilbao). Her career has progressed through different areas in contemporary art. She has always worked in institutional contexts, exploring the limits of the institution and conceiving it as a space of possibility and encounter. She considers herself to be self-taught, which allows her to invent her own methodology. Significant points in her career are her work as director of the Ecole d’enseignement supérieur d’art, Bordeaux (1991-2013), director of the San Sebastian Video Festival (1982-1984), and curator at Centro Nacional de Exposiciones, Palacio de Velázquez, Palacio de Cristal, Madrid (1985-1986), where she curated exhibitions by John Baldessari, Dan Graham, Antoni Muntadas and Marcel Odenbach. She contributed to ERE magazine from 1979-1980 and is the author of La jeune bâtarde et la modernité: Goya et La Laitière de Bordeaux (2008). In 2012 she was awarded the French National Order of Merit. She has recently curated La ciudad vacía (2021) by Antoni Muntadas at the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum.

Tomas Matauko is an artist who works with different disciplines and is the cofounder of the Lunik collective. His work focuses on observing and investigating social mechanisms between different species and recognising the capacity of these to engender visual forms. His aim is to propitiate diplomatic relationships between different species through compositional processes and to generate a new sensibility of cohabitation.
Matauko studied for a Diploma with the École Nationale Supérieure d’Arts, Paris-Cergy and the Institut National Supérieur des Arts du Spectacle, Brussels; and a Masters in Artistic and Political experimentation (SciencesPo), Paris. He has collaborated in the creation of the following research and experimental projects: “Mécanismes pour une entente” (“Mechanisms for agreement”, 2012-2014), “L’École qui marche” (“The walking school”, 2015-2018) and “Elles aveyronnent” (“They aveyron”, 2020-ongoing).

This event is supported by the Foundation for Arts Initiatives (FFAI), New York.