Collective residencies / Touched nerves: on feelings in contemporary Catalan culture / Olot
ALEKSANDRA GOCLAWSKA
From Monday, 20 May 2024 to Friday, 24 May 2024
Bio
Aleksandra Goclawska is a developer at the Samsung research centre in Warsaw. She did her PhD at the University of Cambridge, specialising in multilingual studies through the works of Maria-Mercè Marçal and Julia Fiedorczuk. She has worked as an associate professor of Hispanic Studies and Catalan literature at the Warsaw University of Social Sciences and Humanities, the University of Warsaw and the University of Cambridge. She is currently working on the application of large language models to encourage creative writing, as well as translating a research book on collaboration from a psycho-social point of view from Polish to Catalan as part of her project analysing how human-tower groups work.
Project
During her stay at Faberllull, she will work on refining her Marie-Curie Sklodowska grant project titled QR (Queer and Rural), which looks at the intersections of queerness and rurality in the works of modernist writers: Víctor Català and Piotr Odmieniec Wlast, from the perspective of Affect Studies.
Specifically, she will focus on creating practical workshops using the body of work of Caterina Albert/Víctor Català in order to create an archive to analyse affect in her stories by searching with regular expressions.
I stayed at the Faberllull residence for the first time and, although I knew Olot pretty well, it I saw it from a completely different angle. The hotel is located in front of an incredible mountain range, which offers views of the sun rising and allows you to wake up listening to the birds singing. The rooms are silent, spacious and equipped with a desk, a wardrobe and a double bed and a big bathroom - everything you need for writing. On my first day I met Andreu and Pepa, who explained everything to me, gave me a tour of the hotel and overlooked the organization during the entire event. It was great to be able to have breakfast and dine together with other participants,which allowed us to exchange ideas in a more relaxed setting. It was one of the most creative and inspiring weeks for me in a long time, thank you for organizing the writing retreat and thanks for having me!