Fer Forats

Fer Forats or Making holes in english is a cross-sectional, philosophical-poetic and artistic investigation on the capacity of transversal writing to create meaningful relationships. It became a tool to engage with the dangerously overwhelming gentrification process and dehumanization of the Rambla. The process began during my longterm research residency at the Santa Monica Art Center, the geolocated heart of this project due to its position right at the Ramblas, Barcelonas most emblematic yet heavily gentrified alley. A first workshop, financed by a grant of the artist organised platform of Catalunya PAAC, was offered to a small group of women to practise transversal writing about the physical and emotional condition of the Rambla and ourselves. La Rambla (from the Arabic word ramla, sandy area or hole of sand) was literally perforated or excavated with words following first gestures of human writing.

During spring of 2022 I invited five persons with diferent artistic backgrounds to form part of the second research group, called Qalbi (mi heart in Arab): Mar Merino, Ricardo Cardenas, Carlos Clemente and Diego Ballestrini joined the experiment to meet weekly during 3 months, write dialogs, relate to each other and get to know the place that surrounds us, the Ramblas.

During this first cycle of six transversal writing sessions we created a literary base and a philosophical tendency to give rise to the possibility of a philosophical debate based on the fictitious and collectivized writings. Each meeting proposed different exercises, or rather ‘proposals with shared limitations’, to write dramatized dialogues and monologues dealing more or less directly with one of the three suggested topics in order to generate a non-homogeneous constructive debate.

During a six weeks pause I contacted with a couple of the less than 60 neighbours living in permanent residency on the Rambla. Amongst them Itziar Gonzalez Vilaró and the neighbourhood association SOS Rambla asking them to join forces in the shared goal to make the Ramblas a more lovable and livable space through dramatized dialog writing.

It was only at this point I remembered a small historical treasure I discovered around 2000 in front of the Santa Monica Art Centre which I had been dragging around during the last 20 years. A red suitcase filled with over 400 letters written in 1973 between an engaged young couple. ‘She’ living in a building which now is a hotel, Rambla 24 and ‘He’ stationed into Sahara desert for Spanish military service.

This treasure became the root for another writing cycle of the Qalbi group. These more then 10 sessions opened up to public and Aida Gonzalez joined the team. Angela Precht, Eduard Elias, Josep S. and Ana Montaner occasionally took part and added up their ideas and writings to the fictionalised squatted occupation of a residency building on the Ramblas. The building actually exists, it’s half empty and property in part of the regional government, longly reclaimed by SOS Rambla and located not only right in front of the Arts Centre but also next to the Rambla 24, the origins of our historical letter-treasure.

The result was a eight scene theatre piece called Rambla 14, wandering fragments and was presented twice in and between the Santa Monica Arts Centre and the stairways of the building of Rambla 14 in july 2022. You can see a detailed description and fotos on my website.

The collective idea of producing a somewhat heterotypic publication, in honour to Michel Foucault as the mental godfather of the project, was finally resumed in texts printed on white curtains for the crystal box from which I had been observing the Ramblas during a year as being the resident space of the Art Centre Santa Monica in Barcelona 2021/2022.