las races del agua

(The roots of water)

nria bitria

CONTENTS
35
5

0 _ procesual ART and nature

THE ROOTS OF WATER
LAS RACES DEL AGUA

45

61

1_ THE DRIFT
Selfportraits

77

2_ The gaze

Still Learnt Lessons

99

3_ The place 4_ water

All that is Solid Melts into Air1

Water and Dreams2

119

139

5_ the Installation

Its Time for Women to Hail3

149

A ppendix

The (Sculpural) Fabric

B ibliography

1 Title taken given from the Marshall Bermans homonym book, who also takes him from the Karl Marxs Communist Manifest 2 Title taken given from the Gaston Bachelards homonym essay, Leau et les rves. Essai sur limagination de la matire 3 Title taken given from the Chantal Maillards poem El granizo (The hail) from Blgica Editorial Pretextos, Valencia 2011. pg.174

procesual art and nature

In Asia often its saying that the miracle is not to walk on the waters but walk on the earth. The walk is an experience of the indefinite to the infinite. Advancing step by step, we receive the universe inside ourselves...To walk for a path... It is a rite of step where gives a flowed movement in three phases: Transition, Transformation and Opening

procesual art and nature

W e h a v e l a n d e d i n t h e e r a o f p r o c e s s e s . To d a y w e t a k e c o n s c i o u s n e s s t h a t the result does not exist, that never well arrive to a concluded and perfect version of something. The world that surrounds us, the natural, but also the technological one, is in constant movement, proof, investigation and transformation. In a wide sense, all creative work involves the development of a process. Often, this process identifies with the procedure or technology used to carry out it; in other cases, with the action that allows us concretise it. But the true sense of process includes more much things, from the temporality to the dynamic relations between entities and possibilities. Without pretending illustrate all the amplitude of this concept, the present work collects a process of creation that has followed the three natural phases as the oriental thought, transition, transformation and opening. Under the western perspective, said phases would have to understand in a linear a n d c o n s e c u t i v e d e v e l o p m e n t w h e n , i n r e a l i t y, t h e y a r e s i m u l t a n e o u s a n d c i r c u l a r p h a s e s t h a t f o l l o w a n o r g a n i c w a y. U n d e r s t a n d , e x p l a i n a n d a p p r e hend this simple experience has been the most important part of this creative process.

D a v i d N a s h , Wo o d e n B o u l d e r , 1 9 7 8

procesual art and nature

The idea of process, procession or progress developed by the procesual philosophy is a different way to explain the reality of the things that change; it is a branch of the philosophy that identifies process with reasoning, in front of the philosophy of the substance, and it pretends to explain the change, and what its evolving in it. This philosophical thought develops the idea of organism in a dynamic sense and no static, and it study the notion of time and evolution. From this perspective, the process is the opposite to the substance, b u t n o t h r o u g h t h e n e g a t i o n o f h e r. T h e i n t e r n a l p o l a r i t y o f t h e s u b s tance is activated by the process and, this is the what allows the movement, the change, the transformation, the growth of that. The procesualism tries to substitute the metaphysics of the substance by the metaphysics of the fluency and designate the radical individuality of each thing in his absolute concretion at the same time that treats to explain the transition (or transformation), taking into account always the macroscopic processes and the microscopic ones and the r e l a t i o n s b e t w e e n b o t h s p h e r e s . T h a t i s t o s a y, o n o n e h a n d t h e t r a n s i t i o n o f a n a c t u a l i t y r e a c h e d t o a n o t h e r ; a n d o n o t h e r, t h e c o n v e r s i o n o f t h e c o n d i t i o n s i n a d e t e r m i n a t e a c t u a l i t y. The metaphysics of the flowing is the one who develops the concept of process, in comparison to the material substance, and it includes several categories or flowed levels: _the temporary category of the finite things in the world that ha_the category of the activity of things itself, like dynamic orga_the category of the growth or the internal change, _the category of the change of state, the transformation, in reppen, the category of the things that occur; nisms, like entities with whole and own life

lationship to some surroundings and to the others things. The interdependence of some forms with regard to others; the possibility and the relation.

The limit is the division. The known comes always from the past. Through the knowledge of the new, we go back to work with the old. The total sum of the knowledge is the culture. The culture is the veil through which we describe the Nature. The process of the nature continues in spite of our analysis. Our analysis is a part of the natures process. The natures process has to include the actions of the man are or are not destructive. The man describes the nature like something separate - out of the city - when the division between nature and culture is an illusion. Nature and culture are the same thing. There is not division.1

1_ Chris Drury Found Moments in Time and Space. Harry N. Abrams Inc Publisher, New York 1998

T h e g e r m a n a r t i s t Wo l f g a n g L a i b c o l l e c t i n g p o l l e n o f D a n d e l i o n Under tools used to get the fine pollen of hazel

procesual art and nature

I n s u m m a r y, t h e P r o c e s u a l i s m P h i l o s o p h y t a c k l e s m a i n l y t h e c o n cepts of nature and time. This way to understand and explain the reality forms part of the western culture from always, but it could say that it has been displaced by the philosophy of the science of the finite and stable entities, under the mathematical inspiration. The notion of process, was incorporated to the contemporary art and it had changed radically how to understand the artistic creation, displacing the centre of attention from the object, the product from a creative action, to the own process of creation. The notion of process, joined to the desmaterialism one, is incorporated consciously by the avant-gardes of principles of the twenty century - and even before by the impressionist painters - and then has gone developing it under diverse interpretations and applications, fundamentally into two fields - one is the action and the other one is the relation with the place -. In general this notion has caused the change of what and how understand today by artistic creation. Although for these artists there is a clear difference between process and action and/or event.

First, what Im looking for is to show the fact that we depend on the nature (..) Second, I pretend to reflect the nature in the breast of the time (..) The third reason is the intention to capture the moment. Many of my pieces are extremely ephemeral... ...My intention always has been to show what already existed and, simply, I have looked for a pretext to show it. Therefore I try to integrate myself of the most slight way, to be the less present was possible, to attain open a natural space and transform it softly in a work of art without hardly modify it or without modifying it at all. What I want too is to call the attention of the viewer on the natural phenomena situated in the frame of my art installation.2

2_Camille Jutant, Nils-Udo, Naturaleza viva. Minerva magazin 2.06 Crculo de Bellas Artes de Madrid, 2006 - pg 109-114

N i l s - U d o , b r e z o y r a m a s Va s s i v i r e e n L i m o u s i n , F r a n c i a , 1 9 8 7

procesual art and nature

Inside the artistic way that works the relation with the place, Im interested in artists who work with the nature - sometimes designated environmental - and who apply and develop the procesual art into the natural and openair surroundings. The process in the environmental artists, in addition to rediscovering the nature like the place where we perceive the time, has a character of continuously become, of open itin e r a r y, o f a c t i o n w i t h o u t c o n c l u d i n g , o f n o - e v e n t . T h e y a r e n e w w a y s to create incorporating the time, emphasizing the length of the realisation of works, their lifes period, the time sequence or the ephemeral character of the creations. The works of reference at the same time that remark the importance of the creative process as a process to work, keep a permanent dialogue over time in the nature, the metamorphosis and the macro natural processes. C o m p a r a t i v e l y, t h e i d e a o f p r o c e s s i n t h e A v a n t - G a r d e s , t h e D a d a i s m and even in the Conceptual Art in the seventys, is still a narrative and linear process, influenced by the theories of closed and totalitary speeches. For the artists in the global era, the process has given off the purpose, and off the load of the speech with full stop; for environmental artist now the process is dynamic, open, multilayered, superimposed, in permanent change and evolution. It does not treat to obtain answers, but to emerge the problems, the questions, the cycles, the diferent paths and itineraries and, in definite, the contradictions.

N i l s - U d o , A p p l e s - q u e v i l l e y, F r a n c e , 1 9 8 5

The notion that most interests us of process understand it like a reflexive method that allows to develop ideas at the sometime to observe ourselves creatively, becoming the purpose of the project precisely the analysis and the reflection about the method more than the achievement of a series of determinate steps for the realisation of an artistic object. This notion of process associates to the length, in such a way that all process, until the process endless, passes in a lapse of time In this direction, designated as a processual an artistic work will mean that the experience that has carried out, has emphasized the concepts the pass of the time and the transformation of the matter.3

3_Juan Loeck Hernndez. Lo procesual en la creacin artstica. Master Collection. Universidad de Santiago de Compostela, 1996

B o b Ve r s c h u e r e n , F e u , 1 9 8 3 . S t r a w b u r n i n g a n d g r a s s . B r a i n e - l e - C h a t e a u - B e l g i u m

procesual art and nature

In the artistic sphere of the global era, multiple and individual voices go adding and modifying continuously the whole - macroscopic - to the time that redirecting the self itinerary - microscopic. According to the cataloguing proposed by the professor J.A. Loeck, the process in contemporary art tackles in very diverse ways that share all or any of these five characteristic: 1.- Utilisation of the notion of sequence. 2 . - W h e n t h e w o r k s e m p h a s i z e s o m e h o w, w i t h h i n d s i g h t , t h e l e n g 3.- Utilisation of not usual or conventional materials for the tra-

th of the creative action. ditional art practice. They use with unholy intention rubbishes or ephemeral materials from the nature. 4.- When the only traces of the artistic action is a document. Pho5.- When the subject is focused in the own processes of creation, tography or witnesses narrative. emphasizing some times the researcher character of the procedure. I n s u m m a r y, t h e P r o c e s u a l A r t o p p o s i t e i t s e l f t o t h e s t a t i c a n d r e m a i n ded, incorporating the temporary appearances work. length - and the relational appearances - transformation - like the main matter of the art

B o b Ve r s c h u e r e n , 1 9 7 8 d u r i n a e p h e m e r a l w o r k , B e l g i u m

A cloud of colour forms between my fingers. A moment of intense perception of the thickness of the air and of the fugacity of time.
Bob Verschueren

P h o t o g r a p h y. R i c h a r d L o n g , A l a s k a , 1 9 7 7

procesual art and nature

Hamish Fulton, Dead Boats, 1973

time and matter

Mario Reis, N.lat. 7034, E. long. 2343, Norway 1984

Giuliano Mauri, working on one of his installations in the nature

M a r i o R e i s , s e v e r a l p l a c e s i n M e x i c a n S e r i e s , N a t u r e Wa t e r c o l o r s , 1 9 9 1

During the last fifteen years, artists from all the world have gone developing a totally new vision of the terrain and of the environment. ...It is incredible the variety of the answers that the artists can offer to the places... Few feel nostalgia of a romantic version of the nature. ...His art is an answer to the immediate physical surroundings that it made us comprise better that the nature is resistant and that it can provide a source of reflection, catarsis and regeneration... ...The geoespecific characteristics that were gived in any culture, now are being, in a global sense, erased by an excess of simplification and caricaturation of the culture. The materials - the fidelity to the materials - is an old axiom of the first times of the modernism. But this fidelity no longer is only applied to the objects, neither these have to be take appart from what surrounds them. Now they can interweave both and develop a dialogue with the terrain, the place, the materials and the existence. The artistic creation has an ethical, even if it only involves to decide the materials that go to use... The installation that situates to if same in some surroundings with sense of place, is thrilling. The essence resides in this sense of place, in participating in an alive history4.

4_John K. Grande. Dialogues Art and Nature. Fundacin Csar Manrique, Lanzarote. Spain, 2005

B o b Ve r s c h u e r e n , I n s t a l l a t i o n X I I / 9 3 c h o s e n a c c o r d i n g t o t h e c u r v a t u r e a n d t h e l e n g t h . G a l r i e d a r t d e M a t a n e . 1 9 9 3

procesual art and nature

D a v i d N a s h , Wo o d e n B o u l d e r , 1 9 7 8 . D r a w i n g 1 5 0 x 2 0 0 c m .

sequence

Giuliano Mauri, Cdice 1980-1981.

Wo o d o f e l m a n d w i r e . 1 7 1 x 1 2 1 x 6 c m

water gets the possibility to portray its being it it it it it it it it it it it it it it it it it takes it on the cloth soaks the cloth transports the cloth envelops the cloth underflows the cloth penetrates the cloth floods the cloth carries the cloth squeezes the cloth brushes the cloth whirls the cloth tumbles the cloth rocks the cloth feels the cloth veils the cloth unites the cloth transforms the cloth

it gives the cloth a part of itself Mario Reis, Paris june 1977
5

5_Mario Reis, Naturaquarelle Nordamerika Projekt, 19911994 GELSENKIRCHEN STIFTUNG - pg.35

M a r i o R e i s , N a t u r e Wa t e r c o l o r s , U . S . S e r i e s 1 9 9 1 - 1 9 9 4 . 5 0 i m a g e s o f 2 4 x 2 4 i n c h - T h e s e d i m e n t s o f t h e w a t e r o f t h e respective rivers have impregnated the cloth of cotton that is subject to a wooden frame. On each frame is written the date, the name of the river and the geographic place - state or country - in which the work has been realised.

procesual art and nature

The process is like the sedimentation. To measure that the time happens, accumulates a layer after another in the cloth of cotton. So what occurs on a large scale in the nature is also what occurs in the small frames that contain my works.
Mario Reis

sequence

_The treks are like the clouds, come and go _I am an artist that walks, not a walker that does art _The texts of the way are done for the walkerman and fiction for any another _Walk is the constant, the world of the art is the variable _All my treks are related from principle to end _The words written in a work of art, can describe the verbal silence of a trek _A work of art can not re-present the experience of a trek _They change the perceptions no the landscape _The landscape like place no rude material _My artistic work = control _My treks = freedom _Each trek marks the flow of the time between birth and death. 6

6_Hamish Fulton, Walking Artist, Ed. Richter, 2001

H a m i s h F u l t o n , D i s t a n c e a n d Ti m e , 1 9 9 8

procesual art and nature

no conventional materials

H a m i s h F u l t o n , 3 1 a u g u s t - 1 6 o c t o b e r, 1 9 7 3

In the past it existed in all the primary cultures a strong relation with the earth, and a basic inventiveness tied to the use of the material that was essential for the cultural survival... The contemporary culture boosts a consumptioness attitude in front of the materials and products, but in the last resort all the materials proceed and have his origin in the nature.

In diverse degrees, the materials are spiritualiced by the artists, it means of our work with them. Unconsciously we are creating a language that another human being can attract. We connect us with this spiritual quality that has put in the material. This does not do by ritual, does simply by common sense 7

7_ David Nash, in John K. Grande Dialogues Art and Nature. Fundacin Cesar Manrique. Lanzarote, Spain. 2005

Giuliano Mauri, Scala del Paradiso, 1982

procesual art and nature

no conventional materials

B o b Ve r s c h u e r e n , I n s t a l l a t i o n V / 8 7 , H a i r. Atelier 340, Bruxelles - Belgium 1987

B o b Ve r s c h u e r e n , S D r i e d o n e t o o n e , t h e o r a n g e b a r k s h a v e h i s o w n s a t u r a t e d c o l o u r, h i s p e r f u m e . F i r s t s t a g e b e f o r e t h e p r o p e r l y s a i d i n s t a l l a t i o n . i n B o b Ve r s c h u e r e n : W i n d P a i n t i n g s e t i n s t a l l a t i o n s v g t a l e s , A t e l i e r 3 4 0 , B r u x e l l e s , 1 9 9 7

All these materials are full of symbols and however have his own existence are those they are Besides, what I think of them is not too important. It is more his participation that a creation, for all the world, no only for my. These materials contain incredible strengths and a power that I never would have been able to create. ...The rice and the milk are the basic elements for the rudimentary life of the poor countries. I have been very impressed and very influenced by the life in an Indian village, so elementary, so simple and out of the time. Truly we have to meditate on this after all our confusion... ...I was fascinated by what is the pollen itself. The pollen has incredible colours, that I could never paint, but is not a pigment and his colour is not only a quality between others, the same that...the blood is red but is not a red liquid, and the milk is white, but the milk is not a white liquid. The important is what is the pollen, is a lot of things, things that perhaps I do not know and you do not know. It would be very disappointed if the people saw it only like an aesthetic experience, visual. The pollen has an incredible colour but is not a pigment. The milk and the pollen are very beautiful as the sun or the sky are. And why it is necessary to have fear of the beauty? Recently, numerous artists have seemed to have it... It was precise that all was so horrifying and brutal as it was possible. The beauty was bourgeois, What contrives so extraordinary!...8

8_ Clare Farrow in Wolfgang Laib. A Journey . Ed CANTZ Verlag, 1996 Germany

Wo l f g a n g L a i b , W i t h o u t Ti m e , w i t h o u t B o d y , 2 0 0 6 . 1 0 0 8 r i c e m o u n t a i n s , 3 p o l l e n o f h a z e m o u n t a i n s .

procesual art and nature

no conventional materials

Wo l f g a n g L a i b M i l k s t o n e , I n s t a l l a t i o n , B e y e l e r F u n d a t i o n , R i e h e n , G e r m a n y 2 0 0 6 - M i l k a n d m a r b l e s t o n e .

Dessiner avec des fleurs. Peindre avec des nuages. Ecrire avec de leau. Enregistrer le vent de mai, la course dune feulle tombante. Travailler pour un orage. Anticiper un glacier. Courber le vent. Orienter leau et la lumire. Lappel verdoyant du coucou, le dessin invisible de son vol. Lespace. La plainte dun animal, le got amer du daphn. Enterrer ltang et la libellule. Illuminer le brouillard et lodeur de la jaune pine-vinette. Enumrer une fort et une prairie.
Nils-Udo, Sylt, North Sea 1986

Nils-Udo

procesual art and nature

ephemeral creation

N i l s - U d o , I n s t a l l a t i o n , Va s s i v i r e e n L i m o u s i n , F r a n c i a , 1 9 8 7 ( t w o p h o t o g r a p h i e s )

It likes me think that when I have finished an installation, this modifies itself to its will, to its rhythm. I have preference by what is not immutable. I have real fascination by the demonstrations of the life. For my, life is a matter in perpetual mutation. When proposing determinate balances in some installations, the ephemeral character has exacerbated . It likes me suggest an imminent catastrophe. Leave a part at random is for my a vital element. Not dominating the things entirely is to award the extra luck to be surprised. At all of what surrounds us is truly stable. Art and chance do a good mix, because the one and the another unstabilase, and prevent the inertia. The best that can happen me in my work is to be surprised by the results.9

9_ Bob Verschueren Wind Paintings et Installations Vgtales . Atelier 340, Bruxelles, 1997. Notes parses pg 210-222.

B o b Ve r s c h u e r e n , W i n d P a i n t i n g V I I , ( 4 f a s e s ) 1 9 7 8 . O x i d e o f r e d i r o n . H e t Z o u t e , B l g i c a

procesual art and nature

ephemeral creation

C h r i s D r u r y, Wa v e C h a m b e r s . D r e s s w h a t s e e s i n s i d e t h e r o o m - s h e l t e r p r o j e c t e d o n t h e f l o o r.

My Clouds Chambers work like a dark camera or a camera of hole of giant pin. By means of a small opening or a lens can project an image of the outside in a white screen situated in the dark interior. The external frame of the camera fits well with the surroundings and is an object or building in the space. Inside the camera, one can experience ghostly images of clouds that wander by the floor. If the place is not protected, use a opening of two centimetres of diameter done of aluminium so that it was not object of vandalism. It works well but to the eyes carries them a time accustom to the scarce light. Usually the images are in black and white because of the little light, but the advantage is that it achieves a projection in the walls in addition to on the floor. When it uses a lens it is necessary to have a fixed approach by what the most next things are a bit blurred. But with a lens achieve a greater hole and more light, so you attain colour although the image only has a determinate size. In Wave Chamber (Camera of waves) incorporate to the top of the camera a small mirror with a periscope oriented to the lake. The mirror collects the image of the waves. These happen, to continuation, by a small ordinary lens and project on the inner floor.10

10_.John K. Grande. Dialogues Art and Nature. Fundacin Cesar Manrique. Lanzarote, Spain. 2005. Chap. 22. Chris Drury. The heart of matter . pg. 395-412.

C h r i s D r u r y, E a r t h C h a m b e r F o r T h e

o d e n s t i c k s c o v e r e d w i t h e a r t h . Ty r e Aberdeenshire, Scotland. 1994

Tr e e s A n d S k y. Wa l l s o f s t o n e a n d w o -

bagger Forest Project, Kirkhill Forest,

procesual art and nature

The idea of Medicine Wheel occurred me while I bent me to collect two feathers of a bird in the field in the month of August. I realised that it would be wonderful to do this, collect a natural object, all the days during a year. By means of this simple system, the casuality of my life and the natural world would be interwoven.
Chris Drury

Procedure

Chris Drury, MEDICINE WHEEL, 1985

The process is the big remedy of the nature.

Alfred North Whitehead, 1919

las races del agua

(The roots of water)

Analogical photography
by

nria bitria

(...)lTo need to establish a method...: (...)To go back, without insistence, to brush, to pass, simply, without things notice my presence, allow them its command. But, especially, to go. To go before the place became familiar. Not giving time the footprints to form for a new recognition.... To go back from the exile, from a life of exile, to the place of the infancy... A look can be condensed when nothing at all it pretends, when nothing it whis. Recover oneself.11

11_ Chantal Maillard, Blgica Editorial Pretextos, pg. 2930, Valencia, Spain. 2011

N r i a B i t r i a . F o t o g r a f a A n a l g i c a . L o s M o n e g r o s , f e b r e r o 2 0 11

The roots of water

This photographic serie starts walking around the Natural Park of Garraf, incorporating the chance in the process of taking images, like a way to relat e m e w i t h t h e s u r r o u n d i n g s . To w a l k a d r i f t i s t h e m o v e m e n t t h a t I a d o p t t o c o n c e n t r a t e m e o n t h e w a y, a n d t o w a l k j u s t f o r w a l k i n g , n o t t o a r r v e , I c o u l d get photographic images that speak of the landscape but also of my interior distance, and reveal my personal way to look at, sequential, juxtaposed, without clear-cut limits, multiple and not-finished. These photographies relate the experience to look again the things as if I saw its for the first time. My gaze strolls curing months on the surface and the textures until to find the very far away place of the emotions, crossing the threshold of the geographic surroundings. Little by little it opens in my the possibility to look at what is near to me, the intimate, the emotionally important. T h e n I b e g i n t o w a l k a l w a y s b y t h e s a m e i t i n e r a r y, a c y c l e d p a t h i n t h e p l a c e where my roots are. Each step like a stitch on an arid and hard terrain where the nature is simply fields. I photograph like Iwas stitching pieces of what I see and I perceive in these t r e k s ; f e m i n i n e w a l k s , e x p l o r i n g t h e a l r e d y k n o w n m o r e a n d m o r e d e e p l y, r e flecting the random of my attention, my impatience, my need to agglomerate the general frame with the detail.

(up) Detail of the crowbars of the eight shafts handloom used to weave the fabric for the installation.

The roots of water

S i m u l t a n e o u s l y, a n d a g a i n s t c u r r e n t , I b e g i n t o p r e p a r e t h e w a r p f o r a n e w f a b r i c . To w a r p i s s l o w a n d m e t h o d i c a l , e a c h p h a s e o f t h e p r o c e s s r e q u i r e s a thorough attention. I choose two vegetal fibres that in another moment were a rush or a tree. Four hundred sixty threads, four hundred sixty times the t h r e a d w a l k i n g t h e s a m e i t i n e r a r y. I s e a t m e t o w e a v e . To w e a v e i s s l o w a n d methodical, with the manual repetition of the mental rhythms I could unify these two so distant spheres, hands and mind. I propose me produce myself a three-dimensional textil surface that could collect or reflect the nuances and variations of the light, to built with threads a small kind and delicate place. How to join the external land, the one of the steps and the fields with the interior space of the hands and the threads? That was my first question, and then, it was seeming me impossibly to get it. It was time to develop the other fundamental part of the path, to read the words of others, the others that explain me what Ive been doing, what Ive been looking for and what was transforming inside me and in my around. My lost trodden allow me to re-discover a residual and hybrid space, isolated a n d c a l m , u n d e r t h e f a s t e s t p a t h , a b r i d g e o f t h e h i g h s p e e d r a i l w a y. To g e ther in the same place, two opposite times and simultaneous too. This place - t h e Va l c a b r e r a s m a r s h ( P e a l b a ) s o m e k i l o m e t e r s s o u t h f r o m t h e P y r e n e e s - where in other years we bathed us, now receives the excess water of the i r r i g a t i o n o f t h e f i e l d s , c h e m i c a l l y f e r t i l i z e d w a t e r. A b i t m o r e f a r, t h e w a t e r travels by the sky on the channel, framing the fields, the paths and the clouds.

The marsh - its waters and its bank - turned into an intimate place with invisible folds and textures that allowed me to imagine new ephemeral landscapes and observe the lightness of the roots on water. Nria Bitria, Valcabrera (Huesca) May 2012

N r i a B i t r i a . S e r i e s E l a g u a y l o s s u e o s - ( Wa t e r a n d D r e a m s ) Va l c a b r e r a ( P e a l b a ) S p a i n . a p r i l 2 0 1 2 . A n a l o g i c p h o t o g r a p h i e .

The roots of water

( u p ) I n s t a l l a t i o n a n d a n a l o g i c a l p h o t o g r a p h i e . I t s Ti m e f o r Wo m e n t o H a i l , N r i a B i t r i a Va l c a b r e r a s m a r s h ( H u e s c a ) S p a i n A g o . 2 0 1 2 . Handwoven linen and paper textile on the sticks

The roots of water

I chose this marsh like an oasis, an oasis of contradictions, abandonment a n d b a n a l i t y, I c h o s e i t b e c a u s e i t a l w a y s h a d b e e n t h e r e a n d t h i s m e a n s that it took part of my unaware landscape. I planned to return cyclically to visit his bank, to observe it, to give me the time to look the unstable surface of the water and to live its different lights. The place had to choose me also because it began to give me some images through which I could discover what I was not seeing with my eyes. On a natural time, my gaze walked from the solid to the flowed. From the branches and the stones to the reflection and to the evanescent. The negative film saved the calm and the intensity of the stagnated waters. Only once Id got the image from the no immutable, it was possible to me to imagine that the fabric I was building could go out my workshop and to float on the waters. So the handweave fabric of paper and linen threads had to resemble the clouds, to be suspended, to be light, ethereal, to look as waves, to be unstable, changing, adaptable... I installed the three screens - natural textile surface with the proportion of sequences of analogic film - in five different moments using sticks col l e c t e d i n t h e b a n k o f t h e m a r s h a s u n e x p e c t e d s u p p o r t s . To f i n d t h e b a lance of both elements carried me many hours. Then Ive shoot pictures of these five installations to document the only and unique moment, but especially I wanted to collect how the textiles surfaces originated a new ephemeral landscape around them and how t h e y h a d b e e n i n d i a l o g u e w i t h w a t e r, t h e e v o l u t i o n a r y c l o u d s , t h e a l i v e branches, the changing reflections, the powerfull bridge, and in short they relation with the open and banal space for which they had been woven and constructed.

la deriva

(the drift)

Autorretratos

(Self-portraits) Analogical photography by Nria Bitria.

Natural Park of Garraf (Barcelona) Los Monegros (Huesca) Spain / Oct 2010- Jan 2011

Stroll walking To walk in a line, the line, the line of the mountains, the line of the paths, the line of the exposed roots, the line of the striped stones the line of the ropes found on the path. Integrate the outside, that it forms part of us but it has come of the exterior line. To stitch the line. Up and down. To stitch the path with my feet The step, the stitch, the toneless point that joins only temporarily, The stitch like a root, appears, disappears; it goes up and drop. The full map of stitches. Nria Bitria, Garraf (Barcelona) oct 2010.

The method, to walk around. the way to comunicat me with the place My analogic images are the result of treks and individual routes. Although, still around and around, I went back my gaze towards the near, the familiar things that are integrated on my skyn, To walk and to look at. Two simultaneous exercises. To walk I go in in contact with the earth, I leave my footprint as light as possible. Walking, the conscious attention relaxes, the low perception to the feet emerge and, only then, the gaze remains free of my wishes, my doubts, my longings, my researches... In this moment I can try see again, abandon the surface and the noise of the words and I can glide myself to the emptyness. I dont want to discover anything new, only to look what already is. Nria Bitria, Garraf (Barcelona), Jan 2011

la mirada

(the gaze)

Lecciones Aprendidas

(Still Learnt Lessons) Analogical photography by Nria Bitria

Los Monegros (Huesca) La Mina, Poble Sec and Ciutat Vella districts (Barcelona) Spain. Nov 2010 - May 2012

I use the photographic camera to arrive until what surrounds me and to put in doubt what I had given by seen and by known. I use analogic film because I need to feel the traces on the phisical surface. The analogic film allow the images emerge and show me what Im not seeing. To keep intact what escapes to my eyes was the form to preserve the punctual and fleeting relation that gives in the moment of the shot, to impregnate of the direct experience of the place. The multilayered impressions in the negative film reinforce the presence of the chance and the nomadism of the gaze. Nria Bitria, La Mina (Barcelona), nov. 2011

The order of factors does

not alter the product

The surface of water

is always horizontal

Energy does not create neither

destroys, only transforms

The experience of the place is joined to the memory of weve look at, but also depends on all the others senses. We inhabit, we use, cross trough, brush, occupy, by a time, the space. We treat to learn it, meansuring, drawing, photographing, but the place escapes, although if it seems static. It resulted me very difficult look closely the territory of the infancy. I tried to hold the earth and the roots to feel me safe but the clouds and the wind pushed my nostalgia. Go back to taca is to go back to an inner place that we identify with the origin. Go back to the spaces that give us fear is to go back to a place and to a time circulate similar to dreams.

Nria Bitria, Los Monegros (Huesca), dec. 2011

el lugar

(the place)

Todo lo slido se desvanece en el aire

(All that is solid melts into air) Analogical photography by Nria Bitria.
Los Monegros (Huesca) Spain. Nov 2011-may 2012

...The ephemeral is always promise of lightness, of transparency... As if the time of the forms left place to the forms of time, to time like the fourth dimension of art. ...The metamorphosis of the surfaces does not detain here. As we assist to a true mutation of the concept of landscape, that can be so much audible like visual and that puts in crisis a historical opposition between Occident (the window, the perspectivism) and Asia (the infinite landscape, without frame, like crossing of layers of light and shadows, of emptyness and fullness) ...The ephemeral is not something done, a present informatinal indifferent, but rather an art of the time that attracts and contracts his step. ... This art of the step defines a wisdom of exposed existence to his fragility. Here, the precarity under all his forms produces sense, like a cultural resistance and a human affirmation of go in-plural worlds in front of the disorders of the existent..12

12_ Christine Buci-Gluksmann, Esttica de lo efmero (Aesthetics of the Ephemeral). Arena Libros. Madrid 2006

My gaze, sequential, fragmented and imprecise has treated to go through the stable surface of the Nria Bitria solid and the certainty.

A wave does not in itself exists, it is a movement of water made by wind Wind does not in itself exists, it is a movement of air Mind itself does not exists, it is a movement of thought When there is no wind, there are no waves on the lake, which becomes a mirror reflecting land and sky When thought dies away, the mind is a mirror of the universe.13

13_ Chris Drury - Found Moments in Time and Space Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers, New York, 1998 pg 96

I return to see again the waters of the marsh each month There is not exploit, neither peak. There is not battle against the big elements of the nature. The battle is local and intimate, against the domesticated time. Time stolen. Affirmation of the useless time in some surroundings where each gram of energy harvests . Treks time trial and against the rapidity of the sun that does not remain still. Walk escaping of questions. -What do you do in the marsh? Shoot secretly _Nothing at all. I do photos...in solitude and in silence. Nria Bitria, Pealba (Huesca) aug 2012

el agua

(water)

El agua y los sueos Water and Dreams

Analogical photography by Nria Bitria.

Pantano de Valcabrera, Los Monegros (Huesca) Spain. Feb - Aug 2012

I find always the same melancholy ahead in the slept waters, a very special melancholy that has the color of a sea in a humid forest, a melancholy without oppression, dreamy, slow, in calmness.14

14_ Gaston Bachelard, Leau et les rves. Librairie Jose Corti, Paris 1942. pg 10

la instalacin

(the

installation)

Es tiempo de que las mujeres granicen

Its Time for Women to Hail Installation and Analogical photography by Nria Bitria.
Valcabrera, Pealba (Huesca) Spain. Mar- Ago 2012

The shuttle, with his sway, balances the universe. Every pass, account. Every step, account. Weaving is slow, is revolucionary slowly. Weaving is handcrafted, manual and feminine. It is anachronistic. To sit down, and to weave. To stop the time, to do the hours slow, to produce litle and small. To reduce the step, to reduce the density. To lighten, to concentrate, to repeat. Nria Bitria, Barcelona. Jun 2012

B o t h p a g e s , s o m e d e t a i l s o f t h e f a b r i c i n s t a l l a t i o n u n d e r t h e Va l c a b r e r a s m a r s h w a t e r, P e a l b a ( H u e s c a ) 2 0 1 2

Es tiempo de que las mujeres granicen

(Its Time for Women to Hail) Valcabrera (Huesca) Spain Apr-Aug 2012 This installation is made by a series of three double layered fabrics, constructed with linen and paper yarns, with an average density of twenty yarns per centimeter. The spatial interventions were realized in Valcabreras marsh, in five different moments. The structure of the fabric makes possible that the screens could be sustained in sticks and they could adapt itself to the diferents forms and wides of the branches, rushes and sticks found at random in the bank of the marsh.

At the beginning it was important to turn my look from the utilitarian gaze towards the ephemeral things, from the solid to the fluid... At the same time, it was decisive to find the technical solution to construct, it means, to be able to weave a fabric self-sustainble. To manage to install a fabric done for myself, in a natural and openair place it seems to me like to plant a flag on the moon. After it is how I was feeling while it was trying to plant the sticks onto the rocky bottom of the waters of Valcabreras marsh, meanwhile the high-speed train and the croak of the ducks were the only sounds that were interrupting my thoughts and my silence.

Nria Bitria, Pealba (Huesca) sep 2012

P h o t o g r a p h y o f s o m e s t i c k s w i t h o u t t h e f a b r i c , o n t o t h e w a t e r s o f Va l c a b r e r a M a r s h , u s e d d u r i n g t h e i n s t a l l a t i o n s I t s t i m e for women to hail,

Boots of water and sport shoes, two fundamental instruments used during the whole process.

pndice

(Appendix)

The (Sculptural) Fabric

100% handmade natural fabric Linen and paper yarns Nria Bitria Oct 2011-Jul 2012

The fabric
In general terms, to get the three-dimensional volume in a fabric is an historical chimera. Since Ive decided to realize a phisically intervention in an opened-air in my native place Ive also decided Ill want to use a textile solution made by myself. I also knew that it wanted to uses (hand)weave technique to create the surface spent by spent. The first challenge was obtained that the fabric could be self-supported, without losing certain inflexibility at the time that the fragility and delicate aspect. The solution arrived by the one paper and linen yarns and the way to construct it. The self-structure of the fabric makes possible that the screens could be adapted to diferents supports not foreseen, adopting different final forms, never the definitive one.

(Up) Detail of the process of construction of the double weave fabric, may 2012.

Process of assembly the linen threads of the warp in the handloom (460 threads) may 2012.

Detail while the shuttle pass acros the dobby weave in the handloom, may 2012.

Measures of the three textile screens 23x62, 23x101 and 23x160 cm.

ibliografa
graphy)

(biblio-

bibliography books
_BECKER, Wolfgang (Hrsg). Nils-Udo, Kunst mit Natur , Kln: Wienand, 1999 _BEX, Florent y FONC, Jan. David Nash. A Survey . Muhka Museum Van Hedendaagse Kunst, Antwerpen 1996 _BOURRIAUD, Nicolas. Esttica Relacional, Los sentidos/artes visuales. AH Adriana Hidalgo editora. Buenos Aires, 2008 _BUCI-GLUKSMANN, Christine. Esttica de lo efmero. Arena Libros. Madrid 2006 _DEAN, Tacita y MILLAR, Jeremy. Lieu Thames&Hudson Paris, 2005 _DRAGUET, Michel. Variations entre la feuille et larbre Nils-Udo et Bob Verschueren en el catlogo Nils-Udo Bob Verschueren. Avec Arbres et Feuilles, Atelier 340, Bruxelles, 1992 _FARROW, Clare. Beyond the Imagination entrevista en Wolfgang Laib. A Journey . Ed Cantz Verlag, 1996 Germany _GARRAUD, Colette. Lide de nature dans lart contemporain. Flammarion, Paris, 1994 _GARRAUD, Colette. Arte y naturaleza: aspectos del tiempo en Actas Arte y Naturaleza 1, CDAN, Huesca 1995. _GOODING, Mel. Song of the earth. Thames & Hudson, London 2002. Entrevistas de William Furlong _GOETHE, Johann Wolfgang von. Teora de la naturaleza Ed. Tecnos, Madrid 1997. _GRAHAM W.J. Beal David Nash. Voyages And Vessels. Joslyn Art Museum. Omaha Nebraska, 1994 _GUATTARI, Flix. Las Tres ecologas, Pre-Textos, Valencia 1996. _GUERRA, Carles and others. Bruno Serralongue. Foc Divers. Intitut de Cultura. Ajuntament de Barcelona, 2010 _HUTCHINSON, John. The bees of the Invisible en Wolfgang Laib, The Douglas Hyde Gallery. Trinity College, Dublin, 1992 _JUTANT, Camille Nils-Udo naturaleza viva, en Minerva 2.06, Revista del Crculo de Bellas Artes de Madrid, 2006 _K. GRANDE, John. Dilogos Arte Naturaleza, Fundacin Cesar Manrique, Teguise, Lanzarote, 2005 _MAILLARD, Chantal. Blgica Editorial Pretextos, Valencia 2011

_MONTANER, Josep Maria. Las formas del siglo XX. Gustavo Gili Barcelona, 2002
_PAG, Suzanne, Entrevista a Wolfgang Laib. in Wolfgang Laib, Fundaci Joan Mir, Barcelona, 1989 _PICAZO, Gloria. El Instante eterno : arte y espiritualidad en el cambio de milenio, Generalitat Valenciana, Valencia 2001. _PIRSON, Jean-Franois, Entre le monde et soi. Practiques exploratoires de lespace. La Lettre Vole, Communaut franaise de Belgique, 2008 _ TUFNELL, Ben. Hamish Fulton : walking journey Tate Publishing, London 2002. _WHITEHEAD, A.N. El concepto de Naturaleza. Editorial Gredos, Madrid 1968.

bibliography catalogues
_BOB VERSCHUEREN. WIND PAINTINGS ET INSTALLATIONS VGTALES. Atelier 340, Bruxelles, 1997 _CHRIS DRURY : SILENT SPACES. Thames and Hudson, London 1998. _ CHRIS DRURY - FOUND MOMENTS IN TIME AND SPACE. Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers, New York, 1998 _CHRISTIANE LHR, ESCULTURAS, DIBUJOS E INSTALACIONES, CDAN, Huesca _TRENATURE Fondation Cartier pour lart contemporaine Actes Sud, Paris, 1998. Prface Herv Chands _GIULIANO MAURI. Fundacin Cesar Manrique. Teguise, Lanzarote, 2005 _HAMISH FULTON. WALKING ARTIST. Richter, 2001 _HAMISH FULTON : KEEP MOVING CHARTA, cop. Milano 2005. Textos de Reinhold Messner, Andreas Hapkemeyer, Angela Vettese. _MARIO REIS - NATURAQUARELLE. Nordamerika Projekt 1991-1994. Gelsenkirchen Stiftung _NILS-UDO, HUELLAS EN LA NATURALEZA, Crculo Bellas Artes, Madrid. _RICHARD LONG : WALKING THE LINE Thames & Hudson, cop. London 2002. textos de Paul Moorhouse, Denise Hooker _THE HELSINKI SCHOOL. Photography by Taik. Ostfildern-Ruit-Hatje Cantz, Verlag 2005 _THE UNPAINTED LANDSCAPE. Graeme Murray Gallery, Coracle, Edinburgh London 1987. Textos de Simon Cutts et al. _WOLFGANG LAIB, SIN PRINCIPIO N FIN, MNCARS, Madrid, 2007 _WOLFGANG LAIB : SOMEWHERE ELSE. Ed. Cantz. Wien 1999. _WOLFGANG LAIB. WITHOUT PLACE WITHOUT TIME WITHOUT BODY. Actes Sud & Muse de Grenoble, 2008

websites
_www.artenaturaypaisaje.com _www.cdan.es _www.chrisdrury.co.uk/ _www.fcmanrique.org _www.helsinkischool.fi _www.versbrussel.be/index.php?q=a_propos_de_vers_bruxelles

Conferences
_Marti Pern. Estilo Indirecto: nuevas temporalidades de resistencia e imaginacin (Reported speech: new temporalities of resistance and imagination). Fundaci Foto Colectania, 27/01/2012. Barcelona _Jean Franois Pirson, Facultat de Belles Arts 20/10/2011 Barcelona

In the light of emptiness, everything is everything else, we inter-are, everyone is responsible for everything that happens in life. When you produce peace and happiness in yourself, you begin to realize peace for the whole world... When you practice sitting meditation, if you enyoy even one moment of your sitting, if you stablish serenity and hapiness inside yourself, you provide the world with a solid base of peace. To sit, to smile, to look things and really see them, these are the basis of work for peace and balance in the world.
Thich Nhat Hanh15

15_ The Heart of Understanding edt by Peter Levitt, Full Circle Publishing, New Delhi, India pg 51-52

Tractaments de lentorn Treatments of the surroundings

CREACI ARTSTICA REALISMES I ENTORNS MSTER UNIVERSITARI

FACULTAT DE BELLES ART S UNI V ERSI TAT DE BARCELONA

F r o n t p a g e a n d c o u n t e r f r o n t p a g e , T h e R o o t s o f t h e Wa t e r , N r i a B i t r i a Va l c a b r e r a ( H u e s c a ) 2 0 1 2 . A n a l o g i c a l p h o t o g r a p h y.