Mònica Planes IN RESiDENCE at the School Juan Manuel Zafra

Initial contact with Mònica Planes’ work in the Arranz-Bravo Foundation

As a means of discovering the artist’s work first hand, a visit was organised to Mònica Planes and Alejandro Palacín's exhibition being held at the Arranz-Bravo Foundation, entitled “Jugar amb una fruita no és jugar”. Accompanied by the Foundation’s Director, Albert Mercadé, the students discovered the creator’s work during this visit.

Getting to know the artist: questions and small interventions with the classroom’s objects

The first session with Mònica Planes involved a rich dialogue on the work seen in the exhibition. The artist’s other works were discovered through the dialogue. Small temporary interventions were proposed, arranging elements and objects from the classroom to explain something. Over the course of a few days, an experimentation process got under way with the students producing small sculptural interventions in the classroom. The interventions were shared with the rest of the group for reflecting on the gestures that were made in each case.

Visit to the Museu del Disseny

The Museu del Disseny's decorative arts collection generated a great deal of interest. Conceived jointly with the museum's educational service, it was designed as an atypical journey through the collection:  pieces were selected that link the object and the gesture.

“Intervindicacions”: un primer assaig de treball en comú

It was on the basis of these premises and exploration of very common materials that a process got under way for coming up with ideas for small interventions to be located in various spaces within the school. So, a short route through the school was created covering the various interventions. “Intervindicacions” was presented at the school's staff meeting for all the teaching staff, with a tour with commentary of the spaces where the interventions had taken place.

Plaça de les Glòries Catalanes: photographs and texts

Located halfway between the school and the Museu del Disseny, Plaça de les Glòries Catalanes was the venue for the following exploration: from materials, transformation of the space, sensations and so on... In order to set the itinerary, it was suggested that they did a project with analogue photography and later, on the basis of the photographs, a piece of text.

Ceramics and mould workshop at the Museu del Disseny

This discovery of materials involved the organisation of a mould and liquid-ceramics workshop at the Museu del Disseny. So a technique was discovered and tested which they plan to use in some of the final pieces.

Let’s recap: choice of pieces and work groups

Recap session where a conceptual map was drawn up of the work carried out and all the elements they'd worked with were listed with concepts.

Producing models

Photographs of Plaça de les Glòries Catalanes were the starting point for producing sculptural pieces that relate gestures and also the entire conceptual map they had worked on together. So, a number of groups of students worked from models. The dialogue and the sharing work went on for several sessions and in some cases models were produced of the pieces that the students had been working on.

Mònica Planes’ workshop: the title

Materials were ordered from various suppliers based on the models, and preparations began for producing the sculptures. A visit was arranged to the workshop of Mònica Planes so the students could see first-hand some of the materials and pieces being constructed and, at the same time, to think up the entire exhibition, connecting thread, title of the works and explanations linking the gestures, the museum’s collection and the features of Plaça de les Glòries Catalanes.

A cross-cutting feature: gestures and dance (filming)

While all the pieces were being shared, there was a feature common to all of them which gained considerable momentum: gestures and movements. It was from this point, through ongoing dialogue with the whole group, that an urban dance was designed that linked all the pieces. Performed by one of the students, this dance was filmed in the museum’s temporary exhibition rooms and edited by a student work group.

Conception and assembly

Exhibition location and assembly session at the Museu del Disseny with the students: putting the pieces in place, assembling them, installing them and securing them. The entire exhibition was assembled by work teams.

Presentation and tour for classmates

The exhibition was presented in the afternoon of 24 May. After a few days, the students themselves offered a guided tour to classmates from their school, to share the work process and pieces produced.