MÒNICA PLANES: PILA

Presentation of Mònica Planes at the start of her residency in Bulegoa z/b, and a call for participants in her workshop, which will consist of three sessions. Her proposal Hacia con el brazo (MURO) [Towards, with the arm (WALL)] was selected together with Sara Cattin’s Maintenance of What? A place, a thing, an idea. Part III in the 2022 call for residencies. The jury was formed of Isabel de Naverán (researcher, curator, editor and writer), Jorge Satorre (artist) and the members of Bulegoa z/b.

PRESENTATION
7 September 2023, 19:00

WORKSHOP
Dates: 8, 12 and 21 September 2023
Time: 17:30-20:30
Number of participants: maximum of 12

MÒNICA PLANES: PILA
I think about the body’s possibilities of movement and what they depend on. What sets the body in motion? Which is the first part that moves? Where is it headed and how does it change as it moves? To try and answer these questions I want to transfer the way a motor works to the body.

During the residency at Bulegoa z/b I will choose a motor and appropriate its movement; I will reproduce this in my body and repeat it in the form of exercises so as to store it in the memory of my muscles. I want to incorporate the mechanism of the workings of that device which has the capacity to transform energy into movement. In the second place, I will carry out a search for fuel materials in which to affix these embodied motors. Thus, it is a question of embodying the movement of a motor in order to then affix it in fuel materials that have the capacity to store and transform energy, such as straw, wood or fat.

If the sculptural form appears as a result of the relation between the material and the body’s movement, the sculptures can become energy in themselves. Like a fuel, they could have the possibility of releasing that energy and transform themselves, generating more movement: they would be containers that store the potential for action, like a battery or cell. “Pila [Battery] is the search for a motor in the body, not only in a mechanical sense but also in a systemic, contingent and emotional sense.”

WORKSHOP
During my residency at Bulegoa z/b I would like to share this work process in the form of a workshop that will consist in understanding how the motor functions, collectively embodying this, and then materialising it in the group. The workshop will be divided into three sessions:

08/09/2023: Definition of movements
On the first day we will try to understand how the motor functions and we will extend its working to the body to give a corporeal form to the device. We will define some movements based on what we learn about its workings in order to integrate its capacity to transform fuel into energy.

12/09/2023: Experimentation with fuel materials
In the second session, we will carry out a process of experimentation with fuel materials. A fuel is a material that is used to produce energy by means of its transformation. That is, these are materials that contain energy that can be stored, transformed or transported. That is why they were needed for the industrial and technological revolution. We will focus on agrofuels.  In this session we will start to see the possibilities of these materials in relation to the movement of the body.

21/09/2023: Sculptural formalisation
In this final session we will work in different groups to materialise the movements that were defined in the earlier sessions and with the fuel materials that we experimented with previously. We will try to give form to some pieces in relation to the internal structure of the motor to develop a sculptural language related to the movement of the body.

To take part in the workshop, write to bulegoa@bulegoa.org explaining in 4-5 lines who you are, what you do, where you come from, and why you would like to take part in the workshop.

Mònica Planes is interested in the relationship that the body establishes with architecture and the objects that it inhabits and analyses how these elements determine us, affecting our daily behaviour and the relationship we can have with our surroundings. She thinks about how to make sculpture as the materialisation of this relationship, as the fusion of the body in movement with the objects and architectonic structures it comes into contact with.  For that reason, she develops a practice that gives visibility to that relationship between the habitat and the body’s possibilities of movement. The sculpture is an event.

She has presented her work individually in such places as Fundación Suñol, Barcelona (2017); Fundación Arranz-Bravo, L’Hospitalet de Llobregat (2018) together with Alejandro Palacín; Centro Cívico Can Felipa, Barcelona (2020); Galería àngels barcelona, Barcelona (2021, Art Nou 2017); Pipistrello, Vulpellac (2021); Gelateria Sognio di Gicchio, Bolonia (2022). She has also taken part in group shows in Halfhouse, Barcelona (2019); Artiatx, Bilbao (2022); Can Felipa Arts Visuals, Barcelona (2022); Sala de Arte Joven, Madrid (2022); TEA, Tenerife (2023) and TBA21 in C3A, Centro de Creación Contemporánea de Andalucía, Córdoba (2023) and has participated in fairs such as ARCO Madrid.