Fer Forats

Fer Forats or Making holes is a collaborative artistic research project developed through transversal writing processes in relation to La Rambla in Barcelona.

The project engages with the Rambla as a contested and transformed space—marked by tourism, displacement, and the gradual disappearance of its residents. Through writing, it seeks to reopen the Rambla as a lived environment and a shared space of imagination.

Process

The project unfolds through a series of collective writing encounters, initially developed during a residency at the Santa Monica Art Center and later expanded through workshops and public sessions.

Participants engage in dramatized and fictional writing exercises based on interviews with the neighbourhood association of La Rambla, as well as a found body of 300 letters written in 1972 by a local resident. Structured through shared constraints, these exercises generate dialogues and monologues around themes such as grief, love, and death.

In spring 2022, a second research group titled Qalbi (“my heart” in Arabic) was formed, bringing together participants from different artistic backgrounds. Over the course of three months, the group met weekly to develop dialogues, engage in shared writing, and situate their work in relation to La Rambla and its surrounding context.

Over time, the sessions form a relational body of texts rooted in lived experience and shaped by the specific social and spatial conditions of La Rambla.

The process extends into exchanges with local residents and neighbourhood initiatives, including collaborations with SOS Rambla, addressing the transformation of the area and imagining alternative ways of inhabiting the space.

At a later stage, the project expands into a documentary investigation conceived as a detective narrative, tracing the possible authors of the letters. Following the theatrical score developed in the writing process, this work remains ongoing and unresolved.

Forms

The research is translated into performative, textual, and spatial forms:

The research is translated into performative, textual, spatial, and filmic forms:

Performance: Rambla 14, wandering fragments

Heterotopic publication: seven site-specific curtains composed of fictitious dialogues by participants and neighbours, presented at the Santa Mònica Arts Centre

Text: a body of fictionalised and collective writings developed through the sessions

Documentary (ongoing): a filmic investigation conceived as a detective narrative tracing the possible authors of the letters written in 1972, following the theatrical score developed in the writing process

These works re-articulate the writing processes through distinct narrative and performative structures.

Context

The project was developed in Barcelona in dialogue with local institutions and independent initiatives, and presented through workshops, performances, and public programmes.