Manuela Pereira's research project, titled [Series improbábeis de encontros encontrados], will translate into an audiovisual series focused on conversations between Galician artists to explore their work and creative processes. Pereira highlights the scarcity of spaces for discussing artistic practices, particularly within institutions and academia, and seeks to foster encounters between individuals of different generations and disciplines.
The series aims to champion informal conversation as a source of knowledge and make contemporary art more accessible to the general public, with a focus on visual and plastic arts. The strategy involves creating dialogues between creators who might initially seem dissimilar, with the goal of sparking new questions and unexpected connections from their exchanges.
In this initial phase, Manuela Pereira is compiling a research notebook on conversation within culture and art history. During this process, she has engaged in dialogue with figures from the Galician cultural scene, including journalist and poet Xiana Arias, curator and art critic Natalia Poncela, and philologist Raquel F. Cobo.
The project delves into questions about the script versus intuition in interviews, the agency of the interviewee during the process, and the extent to which an encounter can be prepared without pre-determining its outcome. Pereira gathers historical references, episodes, and reflections on orality and interviews, citing Ursula K. Le Guin: “A good interview is like a good game of badminton; you quickly realize you can keep the shuttlecock in the air and all you have to do is watch it fly.”
The first recording, with David Silva behind the camera, is scheduled to begin in November. The project also benefits from the collaboration of artists Julia Huete and Begoña García Alén for the graphic design. Manuela Pereira hopes to secure further funding to complete the remaining episodes and distribute them via social media and a dedicated website that will serve as an archive for the conversations and accompanying materials.
