Alfonso Borragán’s practice is articulated between research, teaching, collective processes and performative action. He explores and activates relational processes, physical and metaphysical, with the earth. His practice is manifested inside the fragility of collective processes and the ephemerality of action, like a latent image in constant change. As an artist, he tries to channel an experience, building situations and devices that are born to be consumed and that try to modify the perception of reality, interfere or expand it. These develop at a symbiotic level with humans, through a correspondence that is activated through them and disappear with them.

Borragán studied Fine Arts at the University of Barcelona and later continued his training at the MFA Slade School of Fine Arts (London) where he concluded his PhD in 2022. He works and lives in London. He has exhibited and developed works internationally. His latest works have been seen at the National Museum of art and CCELP in La Paz (Litofagos-Goalito); Centro Botín in Santander (Halito); Emerson Dorsch in Miami (Bucarolito); Joan Miró Foundation in Barcelona (Alterbees); Kontejner in Zagreb (Daguerrolito); Plataforma Bogotá (Fosfofagia 04) and Khoj Artist Association, New Delhi (Fosfofagia 03). Currently he is lecturer in Arts and Interdisciplinarity at the Arts and Science department of University College London.

Throughout his time at AiR 351, Borragán will be developing his project Litófagos; an exploration about the ingestion, the relational poetics and the symbolic and metabolic significance that means the incorporation of bezoar stones in our organism. Bezoars is the name given in Europe to stones formed in the stomach of some ruminants that had medicinal-magical use. These stones were extremely sought and eaten by the European royal families, aristocracy and clergy during the 16^th and 17^th centuries. This new stage of the project intends to create a collective performative action about the ingestion of these rocks. It aims to focus on their pharmacological and magical use of enteroliths in the high European elites and the influence from the Bolivian Altiplano.

During this residency, Borragán will share his process with three guests: Martin Howse, Ainhoa González and Malena Rodriguez.

Martin Howse is an artist/programmer and theorist. His work spans the fields of computing programming, writing, education and performance and he is occupied with an artistic, interdisciplinary investigation of the links between the earth, software and the human psyche. He has pioneered numerous open-laboratory style projects and performed, workshopped, lectured and exhibited in galleries, venues and festivals across Europe, North and South America.

Ainhoa González is an independent curator and researcher. Her work explores the relation between the archive and its context as well as its activation in the contemporary scenario. For González these activations are processes and relational systems with the place. She is interested in art as a restricted action full of freedom and possibilities, as a portal to connect research with the present. Her research processes are rhizomes between connections and people; in which the formation of teams is a political act able to generate relations between methods, ideas and very different disciplines.

Malena Rodríguez is a performance artist and researcher in contemporary dance. She explores the corporality and discursive capacity that moves from somatic to politic. Her work manifests from the colonial wound, tighten contemporaneity and the moment in history we have to embody from cultural identity.

This residency is developed within the partnership with Mira Forum and CAC / Torres Vedras.