Spells and Potions

Spells and Potions (cast: Conjuros y Colocones) is an artistic research project developed in collaboration with Metzineres,harm-reduction and support spaces for women and gender-diverse people who use drugs and survive violent situations in Barcelona.

Process

The project unfolds through a series of hosted encounters within the space of Metzineres, developed in close dialogue with its community.

Through conversation, writing, and performative exercises, participants share lived experiences related to substance use, care, pleasure, dependency, and resistance. These exchanges give rise to a collective body of narratives that move between testimony, fiction, and ritual language.

Grounded in situated experience, the process constructs a space of proximity shaped by trust, shared conditions, and the specific environment of Metzineres.

In this context, hosting operates as a method: a way of structuring encounters through which voices emerge, circulate, and are transformed over time.

Rather than extracting stories, the work develops through sustained presence and shared conditions, allowing narratives to unfold and be re-articulated through different forms.

Forms

The research is translated into performative, narrative, and material forms:

Performance: Historias anarco-místicas stages fragments of the collective narratives through voice and performative narration

Oracles: a series of works including a deck of cards, The Drug Tarot, a posterperformative activations, and installation formats, conceived as tools for collective interpretation and the circulation of knowledge

Installation: three kiosks composed of drawings by the artist, informed by medieval imagery related to drug use, BDSM practices, and transcultural rituals, presented and activated through performative oracle readings at MACBA

Masks and performative activation: a series of masks developed in collaboration with Metzineres, accompanied by a participatory device inviting the audience to wear and activate them, extending the project’s exploration of identity, voice, and transformation

These forms do not document the process directly, but re-articulate it through symbolic, performative, and ritual structures, maintaining the multiplicity of voices from which they emerge.

Context

The project was developed in Barcelona in close collaboration with Metzineres, within its ongoing work around harm reduction, care, and community support.

It forms part of a broader inquiry into embodied knowledge, alternative epistemologies, and the ways in which marginalised experiences generate forms of resistance, collective imagination, and shared strategies of survival.

This investigation was supported by a research grant from the Catalan Government (OSIC, 2020), as well as by MACBA (Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona), and through artist residencies at Can Serrat and Escoles Velles (Palautordera), in addition to private funding.

Credits

Concept and direction: Christina Schultz

Developed in collaboration with: Metzineres

Participants and collaborators: Chiara, Daniela, Isa(bela, Ayse, Marcela, Aisha, Nina, Nicky, Fia, Cristina, Rebecca, Sara, Tania, Itzaskun, Coral, Laie, Noa