rolling

In Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation (2002), Brian Massumi points out that it is impossible to obtain a number by multiplying zero by any other figure. For a result to emerge, there must already be an initial quantity, a prior force. Movement operates in a similar way: adding movement to stillness is as difficult as multiplying a number by zero and producing a positive result. For a body to move, it must already be traversed by vibration, inertia, energy in circulation.

rolling – the prelude programme to the first edition of the biennial in Arrieta – emerges from this logic in order to name a movement that is only just beginning. The term encapsulates the energy of that initial impulse: something starting to roll, unfold and expand, while establishing a tone, a cadence and a direction from which something broader may develop.

Inspired by the primary, childlike gesture of spinning around one’s own axis, rolling is articulated around the kinetic energy of rotation and the desire to move through and explore the world via the body in motion. Through fiction, listening, resonance, repetition and material transformation, this prelude to a biennial introduces subtle shifts into the ordinary landscape – there are miniature worlds, resonating chambers, platforms open to action, familiar signs, and so on. It also presents proposals that alter the scale of the familiar and transform everyday spaces into settings for imagination and encounter.

The programme is conceived as a poetics in motion: an open framework that does not seek to impose a single ideology or fixed meaning, but rather to activate a shared energy from which to invite a group of artists to unfold their own processes, languages and concerns. The curatorial work has consisted primarily in selecting a group of artists capable of creating a fertile dialogue with the context, while also attending to the encounter between each practice and the spaces and surfaces of intervention within the town. The curatorial gesture lies in the trust placed in each invitation: to let things happen, to observe, and to allow relations, readings and forms to emerge that could not have been anticipated in advance.

Between vertigo and orientation, between dissonance and play, rolling expresses the desire to find a direction of its own and, through it, a place from which the biennial may take root in time and territory.