The performing arts provide a privileged place from which to imagine, experiment, and act through thought, a thought that emanates tangibly from the body.
It is a medium that has the potential to engage the person it convenes in the very moment it occurs, and this allows for the revelation and sharing of realities based on diverse subjective experiences. Thus, this particular project, Object Permanence, seeks to delve deeper, through performance practice, into a theoretical-practical research process that explores notions of culture and perception, and the territory that opens between sensation and meaning, signal and feeling, body and thought, perception and imagination, and specifically the impact that canceling out one’s gaze has on our bodies. This is something I have already explored repeatedly in my artistic practice, with the creation of the immersive dance piece Party (2016), and which I have formally addressed as the central core of a long-term study since 2022.
The concept of object permanence refers to when a baby learns that if an object disappears from sight, it does not cease to exist, and it is this notion that gives its name to and activates the process, which begins with the development of an artistic collaboration with my uncle Diego Solano. Diego is a deafblind musician who suffers from Retinitis Pigmentosa, a hereditary and incurable eye disease that causes his visual field to progressively decrease until he becomes fully blind. What is remarkable about his condition is that as his visible world has diminished, he has developed new modes of perception, including synesthesia. In this shared process, together we imagine and navigate new psychophysical and perceptual maps that radically transform my practice and redefine my way of understanding our physical relationship with the world. Consequently, based on our reflections and practices, I explore ways of exchanging our perceptual filters to articulate new ways of relating our bodies to the world, to ourselves, and to each other, creating strategies and tools that help generate more inclusive perceptual artistic experiences.
“For me, ceasing to see has opened my eyes”
Object Permanence is a project led by iara Solano Arana in collaboration with Diego Solano
To date, the research has been supported by S’ala Espazio per Artist* in Sassari (Sardinia), Bilbaoeszena Residencies, Vital Foundation, Kampai Espazioa, and the Calderón Theater in Valladolid. The following are collaborators: Fundación Once and Retina Euskadi Begisare
