Inhabiting the Common or Forms of Being a Community was a research project by Dianelis Diéguez initiated in 2020 at El Graner, focusing on the notion of community and exploring the power of the relationships between space and context from the perspective of the living arts. In this sense, space was not understood solely as a physical place, nor context merely as a geographical territory. A space could be a body, just as a context could be the forms, scope, or temporalities of these bodies within a map, a plan, a city, or a neighborhood.
In its approach to El Graner, Inhabiting the Common observed and sought to understand. It examined the narratives that had shaped and continued to shape El Graner as a cultural institution situated in a specific artistic domain (dance and the living arts) and in a particular location (Barcelona, 2012–2020). The project aimed to understand the language used to articulate these narratives. It became a reflection that inhabited language as a symbolic drift of what El Graner was constructing as an experience and, specifically, as a community.
The goal of this journey was to build a narrative that would unveil El Graner’s stories in its most intimate space (creators, artists, and teams working there at that time or who had worked there previously) as well as in its broader social space (neighbors, institutions, public opinion, and the professional sector). The aspiration was to transcend individual experience to observe the kind of experience El Graner was constructing as an idea of connection, proximity, public space, or common space, beyond its role as an institution. We might say it was an exercise for El Graner to see itself from a perspective that went beyond its immediate scope.
As a research project, Inhabiting the Common gave rise to the relational device The Infinite Conversation of Images, which El Graner supported during 2021–22. Before solidifying as a device, it underwent a creation phase during which Dianelis Diéguez collaborated with the 2020–21 associate artist Núria Guiu under the title Casa Oracle.
- Casa Oracle was a relational and playful device that, through a set of collected cards, allowed participants to explore the shared and everyday experiences that emerge while being together. It served as a tool to activate conversations among creators, residents, and visiting neighbors of El Graner.
- The Infinite Conversation of Images is a relational device born from Inhabiting the Common, a research project by Dianelis Diéguez conducted at El Graner, which has since been further developed in other contexts in collaboration with Vulnus, Association of Living Arts and Research. This device proposes opening a conversation while simultaneously engaging in it. It is a game of image composition that recreates infinite scores of specific moments in time and space at El Graner. Everything hinges on the curiosity with which we navigate the memories of other eyes and other bodies. The game seeks to discover spaces of encounter, points of contact, and moments where objects, people, and places touch and intersect. It is in the instant when this intersection happens that the act of speaking ceases to be individual and becomes a shared act. This device took shape as part of Boombeta 2021.
- Cartography of Contact was a one-off action applying The Infinite Conversation of Images during Boombeta 2022, aimed at creating a meeting point among guests from the neighborhood, El Graner’s team, and some artists to reflect on their collective understanding of the facility.
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