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ACTIONS AND LOCATIONS

Pere Noguera's idea revolved around the Maternitat site, where Les Corts secondary school is located. After studying the artist's language and performances over the course of his career, the group agreed to visit the different spaces, taking a fresh look at them and generating dialogues with their history. 
One of the first actions involved moving the stools from the art classroom to arrange them in different places, thereby altering their function. 

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GAMES IN THE GARDEN

Another performance was to re-enact some of the games that children used to play in the playgrounds at the Maternitat site. 
The performance, entitled “5 metres - saltar a corda” or “mà-pilota, ma-pa”, entailed inviting the pupils to recreate these games.

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SOUND CHAIRS OR “PLEASE SHUT THE DOOR”

A sign reading “Silence please”, located at the entrance to the school dining room was the starting point for the sound performance “Please shut the door”. In it, one by one, the pupils got up from their chairs, dragged it behind them noisily and closed the door. The entire sound sequence was recorded.

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LA MATERNITAT. ASSISTING THE INVALID: TWO PERFORMANCES IN THE GARDEN

Two performances were staged in the garden of La Maternitat, near the sculpture of “Maternity”. Firstly, coats were piled up on stools, and they were then removed. Then the action was repeated, but this time the coats were piled up on Pere Noguera and one of the pupils and then removed again. 

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VISIT TO MACBA

Visit to the exhibition Dos punts. As part of the outing, the group also takes the chance to tour two sites in Ciutat Vella districted related to the La Maternitat site: the Casa de Caritat former almshouse and the Torn dels Orfes (“Wheel of the Orphans”) former orphanage.

Visit to the museum with a route around certain works in the collection proposed by the education service, followed by a tour of places near the site. One of the places visited and discussed is the Torn dels Orfes former orphanage, housed in the former Casa de la Misericòrdia former almshouse. Pere Noguera compares the circular form of the “wheel of the orphans” to the circulars shapes in the Maternitat building. This circular form would play a key role in some of the performances organised subsequently.

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“THE WHEEL OF THE ORPHANS”: PAINTING AND INSTALLING THE PICTURES

Circles, which are present all over the Maternitat building, became the guiding thread behind the project. Another performance is based on this shape. The action revolved around the reuse of certain paintings made by former pupils in the art class. Each pupil in the group chose one of these paintings and made an intervention on it, making circles, and using both positive and negative, black and white. The resulting works were installed briefly in the playground and also in the dining room. 

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BARCELONA PROVINCIAL COUNCIL HISTORIC ARCHIVE

The visit to Barcelona Provincial Council Historic Archive, housed on the Maternitat site, enabled the group to learn more about the history of the place and to see some old photographs of it. In this way, they discovered the uses and activities that took place in different parts of what is now the school, activities that Pere Noguera planned to revive as part of this process. Some of the photographs were included in the final archive from which the film was made.

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PROJECTION OF NETWORKS: “OBRA LLUM ESCRITA” [WRITTEN LIGHT WORK]

Networks were another key theme in the process. Pere Noguera showed the group his own creative work on this theme: networks as frequently repeated grids to create a plane. He invited the pupils to make some works like these, based on a language project in which key words in artistic creation were selected. Once these had been made, a projector was used to project them onto objects, people and places, and new maps were drawn and redrawn.

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WATER MIX PARTY

Throughout the academic year, Pere Noguera brought a bottle of mineral water to the class at each session, placing them on a cupboard in the room. In the final performance for the residency, all these bottles were arranged around a fountain at the site. The water was then emptied into a bucket and served out in glasses. The group made a toast and the remaining water was poured into the fountain. 

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PRESENTATION OF UNEXPECTED UNDERSTANDINGS

All the performances carried out over the year were recorded, either on photographs or on video. These records were brought together in a work-cum-document entitled Comprensions inesperades [Unexpected Understandings]. At the same time, display cases were installed at the school entrance to show some of the objects used over the course of the process. The paintings were also installed in the playground and the stools are arranged on tables with a sign reading: “All repeated objects occupy unique spaces”.  The pupils and Pere Noguera presented their project and propose a free tour around the school, where they had installed the various elements. At each point on the route, a group of pupils was at hand to tell visitors about the process that led to this final product.

The pupils and the artist made the final presentation of the film in the library. The event was attended by teachers from the school, friends and family members, as well as by representatives from ICUB and Barcelona Education Consortium. The presentation itself was included in the final film, Comprensions inesperades [Unexpected Understandings].