Envoltura, historia y síncope

Isabel de Naverán researches at the intersection of art, contemporary choreography and performance through curatorial projects, editing and writing. The concern with the passage and use of time is at the backbone of her research, which focuses on bodily transmission and the examination of the concept of historical time by way of ephemeral and fugitive practices. 

She holds a PhD in Art from the University of the Basque Country. She is part of the research group Artea, in Madrid. 

In 2010 she founded, together with Beatriz Cavia, Miren Jaio and Leire Vergara, Bulegoa Zenbaki Barik – Office of art and knowledge – in Bilbao, a project in which she was involved until 2018.  Between 2017 and 2023 she has worked as a curator of dance and performance in the Department of Public Activities of the Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid, a position she combines this work with her tenure as an associate researcher at Azkuna Zentroa, Bilbao, where she is developing La ola en la mente (2021-2023) a proposal focused on somatic writing as a form of curation. 

In 2022 she published her first books: Envoltura, historia y síncope (Caniche editorial) and Ritual de duelo (editorial consonni), which represents a strong emphasis on her writing practice. Ritual de duelo was a finalist on the longlist for the Finestres de Narrativa Award in Spanish in 2022 and recently was a finalist for the Euskadi Literature Prize in the novel section in Spanish 2023.

Envoltura, historia y síncope (Wrap, history and syncope) is the name of the long term research zone that Isabel de Naverán develops since 2016 around the relationship of bodies with History and the so-called minor histories of gestures and movements in dance.

Envoltura, historia y síncope (Wrap, history and syncope) is a book as well –published by Editorial Caniche, in the collection Letra Caniche–, that takes the form of a lecture performance in which the materials that are part of the project, and that are present in the book as well, are displayed allowing for a situation of live composition of images, words and gestures.

The lecture performance offers an insight into the research from the practice of the sensitive bindings of the documentary material, of the anecdotes, observations, unions and ruptures of the bodies and images subject to study. It is a lecture that entwines content and form, revealing how the production of knowledge always occurs in a place inevitably situated and conditioned by its intellectual and sensitive materialities.

Andrea Rodrigo about Envoltura, historia y síncope (Wrap, history and syncope):

“Envoltura, historia y síncope is an affective journey and a work of composition based on choreography understood as an experimental practice, which is to say anchored in experience. This approach is not limited to dance. Rather, it thinks choreography as a device that modulates attention and, therefore, as the power to reveal other ways of relating to each other and to what surrounds us. Isabel’s research method appeals to the concrete, to a closeness to things, situating them, seeking a complicity with materials and references, a way of feeling and making sense of correspondences. When Isabel makes the gesture of delivering an image, she does so with the awareness that this image speaks of a concrete situation. And she allows enough time to pass to feel the tone of the bodies, read their texture, understand their gestures and sometimes even imagine other possibilities. At times she has made me think that she was offering History an experience of itself.”

Creation: Isabel de Naverán / With the support of: Azkuna Zentroa.

After the presentation of Wrap, history and syncope, Isabel de Naverán will have a conversation with María García Ruiz in which they will delve into the references and intuitions that have informed the performative conference and the dialogue that brings them together since De Naverán participated in the proposal ALLURE #3 (by allusions): Police, politics and poetics of bodies in movement in the framework of the public program carried out by García Ruiz within the V Artistic Research Grant Fundación Banco Sabadell – Hangar.

The book of Envoltura, historia y síncope published by Editorial Caniche will be available and there will be the possibility to get a copy signed by the author after the conversation. The English edition is available through the Editorial Caniche website.

María García Ruiz is visual artist and independent researcher investigating the physical and symbolic production of territory through the articulation of hybrid narratives between image, writing and action. She holds a degree in architecture, master’s degree in research in art and design and a PhD in philosophy. She is currently developing her artistic practice as a resident artist at Hangar (2022-2024). 

She has been a selected artist in the Biennal d’Art Diputació de Tarragona (2021) and in Fotonoviembre, International Photography Festival of Tenerife (2021). In 2020, she received the Artistic Research Grant Fundación Banco Sabadell – Hangar. Together with Pedro G. Romero, she curated the project Machines for Living. Flamenco and Architecture in the Occupation and Vacating of Spaces (2017-2018) and co-authored the book of the same name (Puente Editores, 2020). She was coordinator of the platform Topographies of urban discrepancy at La Virreina Centre de la Imatge in Barcelona (2016-2017) and researcher in residence at the Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid (2015-2016).

Her work has been shown in spaces such as the Secession in Vienna, the Kunstverein in Stuttgart, the Museum of Reus, the MUSAC in León, Fabra i Coats in Barcelona, the TEA in Tenerife and the Museum of Modern Art in Tarragona