Fuegos de alto grado
11.12.2021 – 30.04.2022, Residencies
Idensitat, Barcelona
Held at: Various Locations Arga River + Centro Huarte
Artist(s): Sara Garcia
Curated by: Idensitat
Idensitat + Centro Huarte
In collaboration with: Who Cares?
transversal aesthetics • rio Arga • immunity-community
FUEGOS DE ALTO GRADO, BY SARA GARCIA
Fuegos de alto grado (High Temperature Fires) is a ceremony about caring for the Other that begins with a speculative poetic journey in the area surrounding the Arga River. The ceremony ends by sharing food which has been fermented, dehydrated, and impregnated with fungi and plants foraged near the river. This project represents an experiment in hospitality and cooperation, in order to reconsider the relationships between human and non-human beings and the land we inhabit.
During the first part of its residency, Sara has walked around the area in order to learn more about it, has collected organic material found along the river, and has visited associations and groups from the Pamplona region related to organic food production, with the aim of collecting materials and knowledge with which to develop the project, and in order to transform them for the ceremony.
The project is an experiment in hospitality and cooperation, reconsidering the relationships between human and non-human beings and the land we inhabit, approaching the commensalism between microorganisms and humans.
Second phase / Huarte, from April 8th to May 1st, 2022.
In this phase of the project, a number of activities took place with the collaboration of the educational sector, in addition to a public presentation of the process, during which the artist shared the fermented foods and a few of her ceramic artworks for the project.
As part of this project, students from the Instituto Sarriguren took part in a three-day workshop. After learning more about Sara's work by playing a number of related games, the students made bread masks that they later baked, as part of the Centro Huarte Proyecto A3. The Proyecto A3 is open to any educational level within the formal education sector in Navarra, aiming to generate an exchange of knowledge and experience between the educational sector and the local artistic community for their mutual enrichment.
Also, an in-person classroom talk was held with students from the higher degree course in Kitchen Management at the Centro Integrado de Burlada, where the artist discussed a number of influences on her practice, explained several techniques for making fermented foods, and showed a few ongoing processes, such as miso or bread dough. In a second session, the students shared a snack with Sara at the Centro Huarte.
These sessions were based on play and group-dynamics, making use of certain herbs, vegetables, fruits and spices suggested by Sara, ingredients which were selected and combined to make group recipes. Sara, and various colonies of bacteria and microorganisms, fermented these combinations
In the last session with Sara García as guest artist, participants rode by bike from the Centro Huarte to the Molino de San Andres (San Andrés Mill). Inside the mill, a discussion took place regarding the histories and origins of a number of foods, and the responsibility that consuming one or the other implies. The meeting ended with a snack outside the mill.
FUEGOS DE ALTO GRADO / OPEN ACTIVITY
30.04.2022 / 12 noon
A meeting at the Arga river to tune in, open up our senses, and approach our surroundings with close attention to the strangeness of the commonplace. This meeting starts with a short walk, to share afterwards some food that has been collected or grown in the vicinity of the Arga River.
During the last few months, Sara García has been producing pots made from clay gathered locally, and has launched various long-term fermentation processes using local cereals and legumes, which also incorporate edible flora and harvested foods. These processes arise from a desire to stage an active and participatory sensory experience between us and with other more-than-human beings in encounters where we mutually eat, ingest and digest in order to reciprocally assimilate each other, and thus perhaps reach a mutual understanding.
Some of the food presented had been in the process of fermentation since the project began in December 2021, and others since April 2022. Virtually all the food was harvested in Navarra, and much of it was collected by the artist around the Arga River. The peculiarities of these foods have given rise to unique and unrepeatable flavours and aromas. All the food was shared in ceramic vessels made with clay collected by Sara, and enamelled using debris left along the Arga River after the floods in December. These foods, and the vessels that contained them, granted access to a knowledge of the land that responds to a more intuitive and sensory approach, and not so much to a logic of reason.
Fuegos de alto grado was realised with the support and collaboration of microorganisms from the flora around the Arga River, such as lactic acid bacteria or acetic acid bacteria, such as the aspergillus oryzae mould, the bacillus subtilis bacteria and the rhyzopus oligosporus fungus; as well as with the Landare Consumers’ Association, the team at Terrabiota, the Mancomunidad de la comarca de Pamplona (Pamplona region), the Salinas de Oro salt producers, farmers from Huarte, botanical experts, and the artist Olmo Cuña. Thanks to the team from the Centro de Arte Contemporáneo de Huarte, Karmele Oteros Echeverria, Iñigo Gómez Eguíluz and Nerea de Diego; Idensitat and the Who Cares? project; as well as the support of the Fundación Cerezales Antonino y Cinia and the Diputación de León, who helped make this project possible.
Bio
Sara García explores the idea of still-life painting on a participatory basis, principally through the use of food. By means of a variety of activities, she attempts to generate intimate sensory experiences that grant a critical reflection on the idea of hospitality, and therefore on our relationship with the other, the unknown. She has studied Fine Arts at the Universidad de Vigo, and at Valencia’s Universidad Politécnica. She has completed the SOMA PES in Mexico City, and has been a resident at the Academia de España in Rome. Among the exhibitions in which she has taken part are: El sol y su sombra, CCEMX, Mexico City, Presencia lúcida, ESPAC, Mexico City, Una rosa tiene forma de rosa; Oficios e instintos, Casa del Lago, Mexico City. La Isla, Isleta del Lago Mayor, Bosque de Chapultepec, Mexico City, Universo vídeo; Geo-políticas, LABoral, Gijón.