84 HISTORIA DUNHA CADEIRA

UN DÍA ATOPEI UNHA CADEIRA.

Era unha cadeira vella, de madeira, que fora lanzada nun contenedor á beira dunha casa que estaban a desaloxar. Enterradas xunto a ela xacían os corpos demolidos doutras tres cadeiras idénticas, que moi probablemente atoparían o seu final alí entre os entullos da casa á que sempre pertenceran. Do xogo de catro cadeiras, aquela estaba mutilada á altura do respaldo de modo que só lle restaba o asento. Polo seu aspecto, pensei que podería tratarse dun modelo reproducido en serie dos anos 50 que quizais pertencería ao comedor dunha familia de clase media nunha época en que a disposición das casas viraba ao redor dunha gran mesa central rodeada de catro ou seis cadeiras.

COA FAMILIA COMO NÚCLEO DA VIDA EN SOCIEDADE, Á HORA PARA COMER, a cada membro da familia asignábaselle unha cadeira. O aspecto relevante non era a cadeira en si, senón a posición que esta ocupaba ao redor da mesa. Con frecuencia, a cadeira rexentada polo pai atopábase nunha posición privilexiada para ver a televisión, mentres que a nai sentaba no lugar máis próximo á cociña. Pola súa banda os nenos, que ostentaban un status familaiar semellante, ocupaban indistintamente calquera das outras cadeiras.

NO PATRÓN SOCIAL DESTA ÉPOCA CONCRETA, AS CADEIRAS MARCABAN xeográficamente o correcto funcionamento dunha familia; aínda cando algún dos seus membros non estaba sentado, aquel seguía sendo o seu sitio. Así, “O sitio do pai”, representábao e, en certo xeito, substituíao. Quen usurpaba aquel asento apoderábase do seu rango e privilexios. Sentar na cadeira de alguén ou vestirse coa súa roupa era o máis parecido a sentirse como el. As nosas posesións represéntannos. Proxectamos consciente ou inconscientemente, pero sempre deliberadamente, certos trazos da nosa identidade sobre os obxectos.

NAS SÚAS DIVERSAS MANIFESTACIÓNS AO LONGO DA HISTORIA, A evolución da cadeira foi amplamente documentada por diversas disciplinas como a Historia do moble, o deseño industrial e de interiores ou a ergonomía. O ser humano ten a capacidade non só de manexar senón de crear obxectos materiais cos que mantén relacións emocionais. A comunicación entre suxeito e obxecto xera un intercambio de significados cun forte compoñente social.

AS CADEIRAS, POLA SÚA FUNCIÓN, DEMOSTRARON SER ESPECIALMENTE vulnerables a este proceso de significación; deseñadas para mimetizarse en contornas específicas, absorben as modas e empregan a tecnoloxía, os procesos de produción e materiais da súa época. Adáptanse ao status económico e reproducen como un molde as características psicofisiolóxicas do seu comprador. Representan situacións sociais diferentes segundo o seu estilo, número, ou xeito no que se agrupan ou a súa orientación. A configuración semántica de catro cadeiras enfrontadas na terraza dunha cafetería difire moito da súa posición nunha sala de espera ou nunha aula.

//IMAXES

A NOSA RELACIÓN COS OBXECTOS REPRESENTA UNHA ELECCIÓN DE identidade e foi e continúa sendo nos últimos tempos, obxecto de estudo por parte de teóricos do deseño e a comunicación como Klaus Krippendorf, Donald Norman ou da chamada ciencia proxémica que estuda o espazo físico entre as persoas. As súas teorías no campo do deseño emocional lanzan algo de luz sobre o que significan en realidade os obxectos para nós e poden resultar de aplicación en miras a un estudo antropolóxico e social da cadeira.

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PROFESSIONAL TEACHING OF PLASTIC ARTS AND DESIGN

06 A FRAGILE LOOK. THE PINHOLE PHOTOGRAPHY

Roi Cruz, Manuel Doval, Sofía Estévez, Uxía Fernández, Érika Gómez, Natalia Artunduaga, Miriam Matos, Alba Peña, Alba Chan, Lucía Sánchez and Paula Virulegio. Coordinated by:

Miguel Álvarez Fernández

WE PERFORATED ALUMINIUM FOIL WITH A PIN AND, AS WE LOOKED through it, we discovered a world of dreams: the first project of the photography students to merge into the dream world, and that is how we travelled through its fantasies, fears and memories.

LET US GO BACK TO THE PHOTOGRAPHY’S EARLY DAYS, TO THE “camera obscura”, where the absence of a lens forces us to move in a world out of focus. We take a technical limitation and turn it into an aesthetic advantage. Now you can see a sample of what we discovered.

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08 STORM AT SEA

Isabel Santos Martínez

SINCE I WAS BORN, I HAVE ALWAYS HAD A VERY CLOSE RELATIONSHIP with the sea. I am from a fishing village, with a sailor father as well as my grandfather, my uncles and my neighbours. The fishing trips, long months where the wait was always present.

THE SEA WAS OUR POINT OF CONTACT EVEN IF WE WERE ON THE OTHER side of the world. It seemed that I could hear him as the waves went up and down, like when we bring a seashell close to our ear: you close your eyes and you hear the sea.

LIVING WHERE THERE IS NO SEA MAKES ME MISS IT. WAKING UP, opening the window and not seeing it, its smell... It's as if I needed it, without it I feel suffocated, I lack air, and I can't stay long without seeing it, without hearing it, without feeling it, knowing that it's there.

I ENTER INTO A STATE OF ANXIETY THAT WHEN I TAKE PHOTOGRAPHS

I see the sea everywhere, in every tree, in the sky, in a bottle or in the lights of a street lamp.

Pg Descr 10 Anna

Tamar Fernández Pereira

ANNA ARISES FROM THE COMMERCIAL COLLABORATION WITH THE COMPANY Ana Mosquera S.L., which has a shop in the old town of Ourense. They work with multi-brand fashion products, and also with their own Brand: Anna Milittia. This project is related to the festive clothing campaign for Christmas.

THE CLIENT SHOWED GREAT INTEREST IN BOOSTING E-COMMERCE. We focused on the image they were projecting on their website, as it did not adequately represent their brand values. For this, we looked for a set of photographs that would be evocative, rather than merely descriptive, highlighting the product through contrast with the setting. Thus, we began to give shape to what would be a first step towards the renewal of its brand concept, by embracing exclusivity and quality and distancing it from terms such as quantity and volatility.

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12 ACKNOWLEDGING MYSELF. TIDYING UP THE ROOM

Nerea Fiuza

ACKNOWLEDGING MYSELF. TIDYING UP THE ROOM IS A PERSONAL PROJECT born from the need to break with the silence, with the obscurantism that surrounds mental health, to talk about the evident inheritance of depressive states. The project begins with my mother's depression from my perspective, and ends up becoming a loop of revelations that make me aware of how her daily life affects mine, of the reality of my mental state, of my own obsessions and of my possibilities of existing in resistance.

THE PHOTOS, THE TEXT, THE SOUNDS, THE MOVING IMAGES COME together to elaborate a message, a call for attention, an alert; to give an explanation of what is happening inside me.

THIS MESSAGE IS ADDRESSED TO THE GENERAL PUBLIC, WITH THE AIM of trying to express the experience of a person whose life revolves around the inheritance of a mental health rejected by the system. To loved ones, to whom one does not dare to reveal her secret. To oneself, to alert her of what is about to happen inside her and to look for the necessary tools to overcome, survive and resist. It is addressed to my mother, to make her even more aware and to tell her that we are fighting the monster together.

IT IS A MESSAGE TO BE ABLE TO BE.

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14 DIGNITY

Maider Pumariño Riguera

THE DIGNITY PROJECT WAS BORN AS A TRIBUTE TO MY DECEASED grandparents, and to the mixture of feelings that they conveyed to me when I shared time with them: my respect, a certain depth of anguish and pain, the sacrifice, the hardness, the resignation, the silence...

THUS, THE PROJECT BECOMES A TRIBUTE THAT EXTENDS TO A whole generation for whom I feel great admiration and which I think deserves to be honoured.

THEY ARE THOSE WHO GREW UP IN POVERTY AND DIFFICULTIES, LIVED through the war and the post-war period from the eyes of a boy or a girl, lost their parents and their siblings, and grew up amidst fame, pain and fear. As adults they tried to adapt to the system, keeping their heads down and working hard, an example of resignation and sacrifice, and each one making the best of what they could. And now, in the final stretch of their lives, I feel that they are the most forgotten, just as silent and just as resigned, resisting in the middle of an increasingly superficial society. And for all these reasons, for me it is a distinguished and admirable generation.

DIGNITY IS A SERIES OF 10 PORTRAITS OF ELDERLY PEOPLE FROM the town where I live. The health circumstances caused by the appearance of Covid-19, and them, as one of the sectors of the population most affected during the pandemic, made me decide to choose the users of the O teu Fogar nursing home and day centre in Foz as the models to be photographed in this tribute.

THE PROJECT REVOLVES AROUND THREE MAIN IDEAS, COMMON TO those portrayed. These are aspects that symbolise what this generation represents for me and what I want to transmit about them: the knowledge of what really matters, the acceptance of reality and its skin as the map of a life journey.

DIGNITY HAS AN ARTISTIC PURPOSE AND A SINGLE PURPOSE: a performance in and for the community. The aim is to give visibility and recognition to 12 specific people who symbolise a whole generation. In order to achieve this goal, I propose two successive and complementary phases, through two tools.

THE FIRST, A MORE TRADITIONAL TOOL, IS A JOINT EXHIBITION of the images in an exhibition hall. On the face of each image there is a card with lines of text telling who the person in the portrait is.

THE SECOND TOOL, WHICH I THINK IS MORE CONCEPTUAL AND innovative, is an action that consists in showing the same images in places of relevance, places that are kept for official portraits in almost any institution. Thus, the place formerly destined to the photograph of the King will now be occupied for a time by the portrait of an elderly person of the town. The important thing here is where the image is placed and why, to invite reflection.

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18

The Leap Into Nature

Miguel Mosquera Conde

OCCASIONALLY, THE ARTISTIC PROCESS IS BORN UNDER THE AEGIS OR derives towards the intimate exercise of putting things in order and cleaning up. Too much noise, too much concept, tide, life. Acquired thing, which clouds self-understanding.

“THE BRUSH SERVES TO SAVE THINGS FROM CHAOS.” - SHITAO. Chinese landscape painter, century: XVIII

MIGUEL MOSQUERA CONDE'S FINAL PROJECT, THE LEAP INTO NATURE, for the Higher Level Training Course in Photography, strongly links his discourse with the need, as he explains in the project report, to question and cure certain attitudes or working practices inherited from his professional, vital work. Crossroads.

HE OFTEN GOES FOR LONG WALKS IN THE FOREST THAT STIMULATE reflection. This is a new way of relating to his work which, with the passage of time, leads to a modus operandi in which he finds a sense of meaning and fulfilment that is closer to his own.

AS A RESULT OF THIS NEW WAY OF THINKING COMES THE PROPOSAL THE Leap into Nature, in which Mosquera uses the excuse of a final degree project to reason out the game board. He thus incorporates fiction, in the form of a new literary publishing house (Glifo), which professionally commissions him to take several photographs for the covers of five titles that they intend to launch on the market, translated into Galician and added to the nature-writing genre.

IT IS FROM THIS MAGNIFICENT PLAYFUL PREMISE THAT THE PROJECT takes on a dimension of uncommon depth. Beginning with the readings and conversations with the chosen books, the frequent visits to Tronceda's place, where perhaps the idea of photographic portraits to give new life to the titles comes from or, in that meeting that he always has with some artists for whom he feels a special affection and that Mosquera places in the sphere of “inspiration” / “visual and conceptual debts” and that are: Pierre Gonnord, Daniel Spoerri, Miguel Mosquera (his father), Hamish Fulton and Gilbert Garcín.

THE DIMENSION OF DEPTH THAT I MENTIONED EARLIER IS PROVIDED BY the traces of richness of conceptual and formal thought that the project gradually acquires. The artist's own lines of meaning and implications appear in a palimpsest where, for me, the story collects its truest value. I am talking about the meticulousness and taste when it comes to sustaining the whole fiction field; the editor's invention, the name and design of the brand. The multiplicity of functions, being at the same time photographer, designer, editor, hired artist, printer or, woodwork artisan, when it offers towards the end of the product, that magnificent case of collection and thought to the last detail to contain the edited books. The project is accompanied by a delightful documentation that, once again, goes beyond the framework of the academic essence. In addition to the conventional study plans for each photograph, there are sketches and conceptual maps, itineraries (with a list of kilometres and costs), and a series of technical details, that Mosquera records together with the relationship he maintains with the models of the photographs.

IT IS ALSO REMARKABLE THE FACT THAT HE COMMISSIONED SOMEONE else to write these lines, or, the conceptual and photographic detail that closes the books and, like a mirror, creates a relationship of proximity where play, irony and critical thought take place, opening the way for another story within the story.

AND EVERYTHING SPINS!

(TEXT BY: PABLO OTERO)

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22 THE FISH BOWL

Stephanie López Anchisi