This week we bring you the diary blog of Bhavesh Jadva one of our artists taking part in the Under25Routes project as the 12 artists enter their first real week of residency at La Rambleta in Valencia.
After frolicking around Valencia for the weekend, including a sweltering trip to the beach and a sweltering trip to town sightseeing and church spotting, it was time to get down to business.
Monday swung by and La Rambleta’s breakfast bar was not yet open. A motion was swiftly carried to delay the day by half an hour from then on to cater to the bar’s opening times.
Apparent from the beginning was a sense of trepidation that we had been in Valencia for a week - one fifth of our time here - and we were no closer to the ultimate creation than when we arrived here. We reassured ourselves with the knowledge that a remaining month is a long time and that rushing never results in good ideas.
Monday
We had breakfast and were taken up to a barren, white room with a stellar view of a more rural Valencia. This was to be a space for roundtable discussion and where things that needed to be written down were written down. Twelve people, twelve chairs, two tables. Jaumé took us through some logistics including the purpose of the space we were in, the structure of the first day and some special dates throughout the month to watch out for. He then left us to our own devices.
The major thing to come from this discussion was to get to know each other’s work. We were all for the idea of a showcase in which we could get a taste for each other’s work so that our ideas could incorporate each other’s strengths as well as something new. As a starting point, we described what we did verbally and what we wanted to bring to the project. Before he left, Jaumé told us to make our way to La Rambleta’s theatre at 12 and after our short discussion, we did so. A very impressive and comfortable 300-seat theatre and large stage/screen area. This was to be our creative space where we did exercises, threw around ideas and used the space as we saw fit. Some people had exercises they wanted to try out to get us warmed up and more comfortable with each other so we tried these out. This included a big game of Hide and Seek.
Tuesday
Showcase day. The purpose was to take artists who inspire and influence us their work, and our work to a 10-minute presentation of ourselves. I took the short film I production designed in my last year of uni, Cargo, my favourite photographer Christophe Agou, and a spiel about why I love films and television and why I write the stories I write. Others shared examples of choreography, set building, animation, live art, visual art, and theatre that they’d done and, although the process was long, it was necessary to establish people’s strengths and passions. Everyone certainly thought that people were more talented than they expected, in general.
We decided that our task for the next day was to bring something like an idea or a reference - original or by an artist who influences us - which we would like to use as a source of direction.
At home, the Brits went on a walk to get to know our neighbourhood. We stumbled across the Valencia Joaquin Sorolla train station, which acted as a welcome dose of superficial, Western capitalism. On this walk, I told my Britons about an idea I had had with the intention to bring to the group tomorrow about getting to know strangers and their stories and fictionalising them. This came from the social media pages like Humans of New York. More on that below.
Wednesday
Instead of all sharing the idea or reference, we, once again, took some turns doing some exercises. We discussed, after the showcase, what was common between what we had just seen. A lot of us expressed an interest in addressed social anthropological issues and wanting to express ‘quotidian’ issues faced by people. Carolina led a comprehensive exercise in which we were all sent out of the theatre as she set up. She used objects, big and small, from our belongings and around the stage and scattered them across the stage. We had to be ‘in scene’ as we all looked for a pile of instructions. Each of us were given a slip with 4 instructions on that had us interact with each other, our own bodies, and with the objects. It was a good exercise in using your imagination. After it, Rita and Fabio wanted to regale us with the tale of them trying to get lost in our local neighbourhood when they encountered Paco, a famed local homeless man who was beloved among the Valencians of Patraix. They said they took this encounter with Paco with what they’d read on social media pages like Humans of New York and wanted to explore this idea of the narratives of strangers. Sound familiar?
The group were happy with the potential structure and the aspect of narratives of strangers. Rita, Fabio, and I were firmly on the same wavelength and the group had the first semblance of direction.
Portugal played Wales in a semi-final match of Euro 2016 - we watched together in Spain bringing the dimension of our three countries together in a different way.
Thursday
On Thursday we went to the IVAM - Institut Valenciana d’Art Modern to look at the exhibits and see what we could take from them. There was a moving exhibition from Boltanski surrounding death and deaths of people we do not hear about as well as the idea that actions of people are remembered after they are gone, not the people themselves. Also, there was an exhibition called Lost In The City that addressed the history and developed of cities across the world, including Valencia.
After the trip to the museum, we came back and had lunch - although the last thing any of us wanted to do was work at that point. When we got back into our white room of discussion, however, we managed to reflect on our visit and not only decided it needed to be re-visited by us but also that we can take certain aspects from what we saw and put them into our thing. It fed well into the idea of the narratives of strangers. We finished with some exercises around manufacturing realities and fictions.
On our way out, we were invited the events being put on by an organisation called Balloona Matata at La Rambleta. Balloona Matata is a socially aware theatre company who, on that night, put on a conference for the audience to talk to a midwife at a refugee camp for displaced Syrians and a volunteer at the camps as well as numerous refugees themselves. The Portuguese and Spanish went but we wouldn’t have understood well enough to warrant us going. Noel and Cristina interviewed the volunteer who told them some harrowing tales about her time at the camp. The task for the next day was to manufacture two statements or stories, one a lie, on true and the group had to tell which was which.
Friday
The Portuguese and Spanish reported back about the conference and we discussed immigration, war, and the refugee crisis. Matthew led an exercise to get us on our feet. After this we shared our one truth, one lie stories and that was a nice way to get each other thinking. Fay and Carolina then led exercises that played with language and the differences we have between our own, and more on how to use our bodies.
Throughout the week we managed to find time to go to bars and restaurants as well as into the city centre in order to spend leisurely time together to get to know each other!
Follow Bhavesh on his Under25Routes blog: http://bhaveshunder25.tumblr.com
Follow updates on the Under25Routes project on Instagram: Under 25 Instagram page.
