We live in moments marked by a return to the roots, to the basics of life. There are those who attribute it to the pandemic, which made us change our perspective on many things, but the truth is that for some time now a part of humanity, perhaps tired of advancing with giant steps towards who knows exactly where, has stopped to think and reflect on the way of living with parameters of more human dimensions.
The cycle that the Fundació Romea has just released responds to these reflections. In its Monday events, yesterday it inaugurated the cycle Pensar amb les mans, which will offer the live audience the making of three pieces: a hat, a musical instrument and a jacket.
“One of the attributes that we value most when buying clothes, objects or furniture is that it is handmade,” said Fèlix Riera at the presentation of this artistic performance. The director of the Fundació Romea added: “The artisan personalizes the garment, making it unique, unlike those that are mass-produced. The ‘handmade’ label is disappearing; “You no longer see artisans on the street working with their hands.”
Riera also mentioned Heidegger. The German philosopher said that “we had to think with our hands.” And he concluded: “If a society ignores the artisan and his subtlety, something is wrong.” Immediately afterwards he announced “the miracle of attention”, because the proposal of the cycle is to see an artisan working with his hands on the Romea stage. And so it was, without any artifice, without music, just the sound of the hands touching the materials, threading the pin, sewing, shaping. Yesterday it was the turn of the hat, act I of the cycle: Sutura, by the plastic artist Gema Galdón, accompanied by the commentary of Jaime Serra, multidisciplinary artist and journalist.
Galdón did not open his mouth; His entire message resided in the gesture, in the work, in the hands moving and shaping a white tulle that ended up becoming an ostentatious hat. The artist from the Gema Galdón Hat Gallery workshop, in the Gràcia neighborhood of Barcelona, ??still had time to make, with some leftover clothing from the hat, a crest-like headdress, which is what she ended up wearing for the rest of the performance. while holding the other with his hands.
Then Jaime Serra took the stage. He was dressed in black from head to toe, wearing a Cordoban hat and a dictionary in his hands. He lectured on the meaning of the word hat, while the hatmaker remained in profile and still.
“What is a hat?” I wonder. She consulted that word in the dictionary, reading meaning after meaning. “Disregarding the other meanings, I opt for the one that says it is a garment to cover the head.” From here, jumping from word to word of the first meaning of hat, he constructed a semantic discourse on the meaning as a whole, with the nuances provided by words such as garment, cover, head, consist, cup and brim.
“A hat is a poem, and building it, an act of poetry in itself,” he concluded.