Barcelona (ES)

As part of Dancing Museums, Quim Bigas was artist in residence with Mercat de les Flors, working at Fundació Joan Miró (Barcelona). Focusing on the notion of inside and outside, the artist tackled different modes of collaboration and working with structures of a museum. Quim was interested in creating the right conditions for dancers and giving them space within the project as well as collaborating with different museum departments. He also facilitated encounters between people and gave lectures on project insights and the role of the artist as a resource for the institution.

At the beginning of the residency, Quim spent time observing and writing in the museum. He was interested in observing both the staff and visitor movement already taking place within the museum. This gave the artist an opportunity to talk to, and reflect with, some of the staff in the museum to get a sense of the place and the people working there.

Throughout this process, Quim invited people to inhabit, witness and experience the museum from different perspectives. These invitees included: Anabella Pareja Robinson, Carme Torrent, Francesc Cuéllar, Joana Ellen Öhlschläger, Georgia Vardarou, Anabella Pareja Robinson, Junyi Sun, Dante Murillo, Karol Galindo, Sonia Sánchez Martínez, Vivian Friedrich, Rosa Muñoz, Paul Guenot, Kotomi Nishiwaki, Iver Zapata, Clara Tena, Laura Ramírez, Rosalía Zanon, Mijdies d’art (Escola del bosc), Clementine Télesfort, Lucía Jaén, Iris Medeiros, Martí Sales, Jordi Joan Clavero, Noemí Tomàs, Mercé Jarqué or Sónia Fernández. At the same, the artist kept an ongoing conversation with the museum staff, specifically Véronique Dupas, Jordi Joan Clavero and Teresa Muntaner of Fundació Joan Miró; and Mara Maso and Marc Olivé of Mercat de les Flors.

In December 2019, inspired by Joan Miró’s triptych Painting on White Background for the Cell of a Recluse (I, II, III), Quim worked on a continuous line extending from one end of the building to the other, all the while listening to the rhythm of the artist’s own heart beat, as well as those of visitors or the people who joined in. This action explored the constant movement within the building and its limits. It also put the dynamic presence in Miró’s painting into practice.

From the beginning of 2020, the pandemic created a different situation to consider. Lockdown necessitated the reformulation of some of the questions that the artist had been working on. Even though the notion of inside and outside was obviously still present, the artist now felt drawn to reflect on, and generate movements from, the (now) empty museum spaces.

In July 2020, Quim invited artists Carme Torrent and Anabella Pareja Robinson to take part in a weeklong laboratory. The starting point was to ask all the staff from Fundació Joan Miró and Mercat de les Flors the following question: “When do you sense you are entering into a building even if you are not there yet?” From the conversations about their arrival into the workplace, Quim and the participants created a map and a set of practices that took place over five days as the staff arrived. The actions provided a frame for the movement around the buildings, even though it was closed to visitors. Inhabiting the public spaces around the buildings seemed like a relevant place to be as it also created an ordinary sense of practice and being engaged with movement within pandemic times.

In November 2020, Quim gave a performative lecture Moving in/out of the Museum, which considered the different layers taking place within the residency. The lecture took place in Copenhagen in an attempt to bring certain aspects of the work at Fundació Joan Miró into a different context. The lecture was shared with a small live audience and also streamed. The audience also ate with him, so they had additional time to reflect and talk about the project. During this process, dancer Joana Ellen Öhlschläger was an intern and participated in the lecture, as well as Martina Millà, curator of Fundació Joan Miró.

During 2021, Quim wanted to keep working with correspondence and conversation and created several encounters with people. In January he was part of a conversation with museum staff about a possible new distribution of art-works. The conversation brought up the question of subjective distribution as well as creating ways of being in a museum that held multiple directions. Through these lenses, Quim invited some people to spend time in the museum together. This developed into a one-to-one guided sensing tour.

From March to July 2021, Quim invited a series of dancers to dance in the empty museum. The museum, when closed, created an opportunity to reflect, with other dancers, on its emptiness. By sharing the question “how does the museum move you?” the artists were invited to inhabit and dance in the empty museum for a morning. After this session, the artists all kept up a correspondence with each other to reflect on the thinking and sensations around that question. Quim then wrote a text to try and sum up and share some of the insights. The dance artists involved were: Georgia Vardarou, Anabella Pareja Robinson, Junyi Sun, Dante Murillo, Karol Galindo, Sonia Sánchez Martínez, Vivian Friedrich and Rosa Muñoz. The group met in July to record parts of their practices, which in turn became part of an installation at Fundació Joan Miró. The opening of the installation took place in October 2021 and can still be visited.

From March to June 2021, Quim collaborated with the education department (Noemí Tomàs and Mercé Jarqué) of Fundació Joan Miró to create a frame for Migdies d’art, an initiative by families and the Escola del Bosc and the museum. Within this frame (Tinc un pas/I have a step), tools were given to a group of children in order to explore the movements of a place. The video tutorial gave space for children to generate movements within the museum. Having gathered all the material, Quim created two movement sequences, and used a song of their choice. After several weeks, they practiced and learnt the sequence and it will be performed in small groups in their school.

In October 2021, Quim invited seven dance artists to take part in a workshop that aimed to be a transmission of different movements that had taken place during the Dancing Museum residencies. The dance artists were: Paul Guenon, Kombi Nish Iwaki, Ivor Zapata, Clara Tina, Laura Ramirez, Rosalie Anon and Clementine Télesfort. They created an itinerary performance between Mercat de les Flors and Fundació Joan Miró.

In December 2021, a group of people who had been involved in aspects of the residency was invited to spend a day with the artist in order to reflect, practice and close the project. At the end, there was a final conference for a general audience that shared some of the thoughts and movements of the past three years. The artists invited were: Lucía Jaén, Iris Medeiros, Rosalía Zanon, Dante Murillo, Anabella Pareja Robinson, Francesc Cuéllar, Jordi Joan Clavero and Sónia Fernández.

This was a research project suspended in time, happening in changing circumstances and therefore from different points of departure. The three years opened up a myriad of movement possibilities for the museum. With it came conversation, attention and reflection. Each movement action unfolded a new system of being within the organization and brought different ways of collaborating and of being connected, all through the lense of dance and choreography within the museum.