Exhibitions
Borja Zabala: slowness as an act of resistance
'ASMR Performance': poetry, presence and action in the same space of thought.
The voice as matter, the body as territory and poetry as a way of activating reality. With ASMR Performance. A slow reading of 8 poems and a final sentence , Borja Zabala proposes an experience that is situated on the border between poetic reading, performance and spatial intervention. The action, programmed by Marta Pol Rigau, starts from a reflection on the inseparable relationship between poetry and space: a same field of action where thought, word and place are mutually constructed within the cycle Dijous de veu i paraula Santa Mònica de Barcelona.
The proposal on Thursday 11th at 7pm, unfolds from minimal gestures but loaded with meaning. Zabala reads the poems slowly out loud while repeating wandering, almost imperceptible movements. From this economy of resources emerges a language of great intensity, sober and lucid, that explores essential tensions: freedom and containment, silence and voice, immobility and displacement. Far from representing the world, his actions seek to activate it, generate spaces of presence and question dominant discourses.
Considered one of the fundamental figures of action art in Spain during the 1990s, Borja Zabala understood performance art from the beginning as a space for critical debate. His career evolved from forms close to expressive ritual towards an austere and deliberately anti-theatrical post-conceptual discourse, often crossed by a critical humor aimed at both artistic institutions and the dynamics of the cultural market.
After moving away from the public sphere from 1996, Zabala resumed his activity in the 2000s through networks and new creative formats. He currently develops hybrid projects in which the poetic dimension occupies a central place. Throughout his career he has participated in initiatives such as Viva Veu and Club 7, and has presented his work in reference spaces such as La Virreina, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, the MACBA, the Museu Tàpies, ARBAR or Santa Mònica.
In ASMR Performance , this trajectory converges in a practice that claims slowness as a form of attention and the word as a gesture capable of opening new spaces of perception. An invitation to listen, inhabit time and let poetry act.
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