Since 2013. Residency programme to create a public experiment in consonni, Bilbao

HPC, A Shared Room of One’s Own is a residency programme that takes place by invitation, involving the temporary immersion of an artist in consonni’s work space and also in the city of Bilbao. Some six months of work are required, although the length of the stay in the city varies in each case and is shorter than that. Participation by artists in this programme often means that they have to travel from the place where they usually work and live, and also experience a period of coexistence and exchange with artists and other professional agents from the locality. When local artists are invited, efforts centre on broadening the collaborations with different city spaces to reach wider publics and set off synergies. 

HPC, is a pilot programme in consonni. The purpose of the residency programme is to create a public experiment.  It is a stop on the way for artists in their process of creation and investigation, energized by what the specific context of Bilbao has to offer. It’s not about making new productions, or creating a new piece. The idea is to accompany artists in their work process and contribute ideas, dialogue, listening, resources, time and space for experimentation. Setting up communication for trial and error.

HPC is a toast to Virginia Woolf. A championing of that space of one’s own (public and private) that we need to work, reflect and create. A way of referring to our usual work space which is also a place for relating, for life. It is a way of experimenting with the notion of programming, of inviting artists to intervene in consonni’s space, and to use it as a place to operate from.

HPC is a conceptual chain. No topic or format is specified, but rather each artist adapts the proposal in line with what they are working on, their interests, and inclinations. As a road map that is both good fun and poetic, the point where an intervention leaves one is taken up by the next in line, etc.

HPC Gau irekia is an interference in the programming chain and focuses on involvement with the neighbourhood. It happens on a Saturday in December when consonni participates in the Gau Irekia activities organized by the neighbourhood network Sarean, which consonni belongs to. Gau Irekia takes in more than fifty activities in some forty venues in San Francisco, Bilbao La Vieja and Zabala. For HPC Gau Irekia, invitations are made, in the main, to local artists who work at the intersection between the visual and the performing arts.

Blog of the HPC programme

Gau Irekia HPC @Sahatsa Jauregui  // 16 of December 2017

From the 40th to 1st   sounds as a pachanga´s radio music show. On the 40th of Cortes Street the artist lives and on the 1st of the same street it is her studio. Her studio or Room of One´s Own is exactly in front of consonni. We have also been doing radio shows, but not pachanga´s radio shows. The geographical space that divides these two points was her working area, an spatial interval which will prolonged from Cortes Street to San Francisco Street. She worked with the aesthetic that is shown in the most charismatic locals of this stretch and she elaborated some sculptures based on the existing memories.  Full program

Gau Irekia HPC @MoonShakers   // 17 de diciembre 2016

To celebrate our 20th aniversary and Gau Irekia  we wanted to subvert our work space transforming the office into a small concert hall. A space that we have shared with the neighborhood. The activity took place inside and outside of the office thanks to the loudspeakers installed in the street with the intention to influence the activity of Cortes and Conde Mirasol streets. In addition, the MoonShakers made a song that recounts the 20 years of trajectory of the art producer, filmed by TwoBaskos.

Gau Irekia HPC @Macarena Recuerda Shephered @Iñigo Egido // Saturday 12th December 2015

The Ganzfeld Experiment The technique is employed in the field of parapsychology to test extra-sensorial human perception. This state facilitates the acquisition of information concerning the thoughts, feelings and activities of another person. This anomalous cognition is known as telepathy. Certain big interests have taken care to consign the science of parapsychology to obscurity.

HPC @Diego del Pozo // July 2015 - February 2016

Touch, don’t dominate. Think about how one can place oneself in the place of another, how one sees from another’s position. Making "the visible caress the eyes ", touch, feel other positions, that of an astronaut, a micro-organism, an elephant, a Quaternary fossil... "Touch, don’t dominate" suggests a series of readings, encounters and experiments that aim to shift away from our usual viewing positions. A politically situated vision unleashes a cluster of potentialities to activate the body and imagination in other directions: what’s the view from the prosthesis of a paraplegic dancing girl in the year 2073?...
>> Here you have the pictures: <<

You can listen the talk:

Gau Irekia HPC @Sra Polaroiska// 13 of december 2014

La habitación suena de otra manera. We share a room. It’s a blind date. We know one another and, perhaps without knowing it, we recognize each other. With no shapes, no clear contours, without artifice, (pre)conceptions are deactivated. The perceptive state changes, the perspective is altered. I want you to listen to me. The space is modified. The room becomes an extension of our bodies and the shadows are in charge. Some senses are turned off and others light up. I don’t know who you are but it doesn’t matter to me. Fantasy floods the room and other ways of relating and socializing are triggered off. We’re making neighbourhood. Ms Polaroiska: “One of our methods for work, play, reflection... Displacement, so we can look at ourselves, see ourselves, relate in another way.” Full program

HPC @Mabi Revuelta // october 2014-january 2015

C’mon, baby, do the Ipsilamba with me! Follows on from Ultramarino, the proposal made by Fermín Jiménez Landa for consonni’s HPC programme about the immensity of the ocean and the epic that peaked with ranchera-type tales and a whale-spotting voyage. From that journey, Mabi Revuelta rescues the story, trace or record through a logbook, bitácora in Spanish, –a word deriving from the French bitacle, for habitacle, the latter coming from the Latin habitaculum (in English, room; in Spanish, habitación). 

HPC @Black Tulip // november-december 2013

Festa konspirazioa. From the idea of forming a group, getting together, learning, scheming,conspiring, celebrating. Popular fiestas are a strong connection with a tradition, with roots, but at the same time they are also something built from the present and in constant mutation. Within them, folklore, customs and history are actualised and even deformed for a narrative of the past that conditions our ways of doing through action and omission, through memory or forgetting.

HPC @Johanna Gustafsson Fürst // June-July 2013

Johanna Gustafsson Fürst's work for consonni falls into two parts. The first is called I Believe I’m/it’s fake, I Believe I’m/it’s for Real -in Memory we Trust, and the second, in collaboration with artist Lisa Torell, Outlined Clearly/Clean Out. A renegotiation of space through two performances, an installation monologue and a conversation- act. Full program The performance is part of Johanna Gustafsson Fürst‘s residency at consonni with support from IASPIS, The Swedish Art Grant Committee’s International Program for Visual Artists.

HPC @Pablo Marte // March-April 2013

With “The problem lies in the medium”, Pablo Marte’s project for HPC, sets out to rethink categories such as imitation, copy, remake, reproduction, repetition, plagiarism, fake or falsification, interpretation or inspiration, simulacrum, parody, pastiche, burlesque, satire… Words that point to a particular link between one cultural product and another that preceded it; a lengthy citation alluding to subjects within a historic relation, or a rethinking of the relationship itself, which amounts to the same thing. It is very fitting to kick off with this theme, given that consonni’s programming for this venue is inspired precisely by a previous cultural product (i.e. Woolf’s novel). Full program