Individual residencies / Andorra
CAROLINA OTERO
From Wednesday, 6 November 2024 to Friday, 29 November 2024
Bio
She set up the band Carolina Otero & The Someone Elses in 2009 and has released several albums since, including Diastema Girls (Malatesta Records, 2015). She has also been publishing her poetry since 1998. She was recognised at the Irreconciliables poetry festival in Malaga in 2021 and her poetry book Curso avanzado de perra was published by Editorial Cántico in 2022. At the 2022 Festival Vociferio she performed a fusion of her poetry, music and videos.
Project
Indoeuropeu de cops – Performance
The project she will be working on in Andorra is essentially an interdisciplinary montage of live videopoetry, based on her unpublished collection of poems Indoeuropeu de cops. This book, in the form of lyrical poetry, deals with historical violence against women, through fictional characters such as Lilith, Daphne, Scheherazade and Ellen Ripley, and women from history (scientists and literary figures) such as Theano of Crotone, Juana Inés de la Cruz and Gloria Fuertes, as well as one of the most terrible cases of femicide in Spain: Ana Orantes.
For the final product, the performance, she will work with a selection of poems, fitting them to the images I will create and other copyright-free ones. My project will combine poetry reading, live music and projected images on stage.
A TIME AND SPACE OF ONE’S OWN
Virginia Woolf discussed the importance of a woman having her own space and money in order to write, in a man’s world governed by men’s ideals. What has changed since the 1920s and 1930s?
At La Massana, I found a space of my own, which was also time, valuable time, setting aside, for a few days, the breakneck pace of everyday life and my work teaching: an endless cycle of beginnings and endings, paperwork and back to square one again.
The residence is a very comfortable space with everything a creator could need (even a washer-dryer), plus it’s not far from a municipal library and the surrounding parish, Ordino, is a great place to enjoy nature, as well as the local museums and good public transport to get into Andorra la Vella.
With this time and space, I was able to work on tasks that take concentration, and therefore few distractions -this seems redundant but isn’t- like reading and translating texts. I also worked on editing an audiovisual piece (storyboard, choosing stills, recording the voice overs, etc.) for the videopoem “Darrere una nena”. Plus, I prepared and gave a writing workshop at the Maria Moliner Spanish School, with visual support, and as a result have processed some of the students’ productions and incorporated them into the aforementioned audiovisual piece.
I also got the chance to speak with Teresa Colom i Pich, a noteworthy Andorran author, thanks to Sandra Colell, who put us in contact. I took part in the “Avui serà un bon dia” thanks to Anna Torrandell and Llorenç Roviras, who made me feel very comfortable, speaking about my performative poetry project, language and current issues, such as the patriarchy and the consequences of the DANA (cut-off low) in the Valencian Community.
I will miss this time and space I have inhabited, my walks along Avinguda el Través to the church, passing by Hostal Palanques, inaugurated in 1933 just a few years after Virginia Woolf published A Room of One’s Own. And I will miss the beautiful feeling of spending three weeks in November in a small, comfortable place of my own in this vast universe.
I’ll always be grateful to Faber Andorra for all of this and will remember this little journey fondly.
