PERFORMATIVE TALK WITH SYNTAX ARTIST IN RESIDENCY BEATRIZ OLABARRIETA & LAUNCH OF THE 1ST ISSUE OF LEONORANA MAGAZINE!!!! ------------ LET ME NOT-PRETEND I KNOW is a talk, rant, drawing or scan through the (dis)associative visual processes of Syntax artist in residency Beatriz Olabarrieta in order to explore the possibility of accessing the `the private mind´ of the artist in front of an audience. Beatriz Olabarrieta (Bilbao, SP) is an artist living and working in London. She graduated from Wimbledon School of Art in 2004 and the Royal College of Art in 2007. Olabarrieta constructs sculptural installations that combine objects made of lo-fi building materials with short looped video sequences. Her exhibitions are sites for examining and generating performance and writing; each configuration is a stage for open-ended scenarios to unfold. Recent solo shows include: Clever to follow goat, Antoine Levi, Paris; Book! Dont tell me what to do, Parallel Oaxaca, Mexico City (2017); Dumb Bells, Saturdays Live, Serpentine Galleries (2016); Cosmic Clap, MOT International, London (2015); Plot Bunny, Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art, Sunderland (2015). Recent group shows include Assorted Paper, The Sunday Painter, London (2017); All Over, Studio Leigh, London (2016) and The boys the girls and the political, Lisson Gallery, London (2015). In 2016, Olabarrieta completed the Platform residency at Site Gallery in Sheffield and has recently been awarded the Joanna Drew Travel Bursary towards a research trip to Japan. The residency of Beatriz Olabarrieta is organised in collaboration with Emma. Emma is a self-organised collaborative and curatorial organisation for artistic and cultural practices that encourages dialogue and exploration in the arts by creating learning and residential opportunities for artists and other cultural producers through diverse forms of presence such collective gatherings and presentations. Beatriz Olabarrieta is Emma’s artist fellow 2017. ---------- LEONORANA is a bilingual cross-disciplinary magazine that is published on an irregular basis. Its main goal is studying the relation of conflict and complicity between verbal and visual languages, presenting essays as the preferred genre for the development of speculative thinking. LEONORANA – the title of the magazine – comes from Ana Hatherly’s “Livro III – LEONORANA (1965-70): Trinta e uma variações temáticas sobre o mote de um vilancete de Luís de Camões”, published in the book “Um calculador de Improbabilidades” (Quimera, 2001). This project is a direct tribute to the author. It resumes and updates the central focus of her work, namely concerning the study and experimental practice of the complementarity between verbal and visual languages and the combinatory game and ludic aspects of knowledge, as well as its dissemination. Due to her vast visual, literary and academic art experience, Hatherly symbolises the relevance research has in terms of artistic practice and the way it is perceived as knowledge (e.g., historical research on the poetry developed by the author). Although the validity of this approach may seem obvious in certain contexts, it is still vital to reinforce the connection between research and art and the understanding of the latter as a form of knowledge; more specifically, research that bases itself on creativity and the desire to learn, as well as its dissemination among the artistic and civil community. Hence, this magazine aims to present forms of research carried out by artists (and creative individuals in general, since they apply creativity in their fields of work) who, according to their experience and path, reinforce the presence of research and assume artistic expression as a specific form of knowledge. Accordingly, one can safely perceive this magazine as an open space for discussion, where ideas, practices and strategies for teaching and learning can be debated.
