FEATURING NEW LIFE RESIDENCY

Last Saturday, November 6th, saw the last opening of the NEW LIFE RESIDENCY at the Manifesta 8 biennial for contemporary art in Murcia, Spain.

The final Wooloo New Life Resident artist was Gema Alava in collaboration with her blind partner Rocío González from Murcia. Gema is a native Spaniard and for her residency project, she developed verbal descriptions of artworks on view in Manifesta 8 for Rocío to “see”.

During the opening on Saturday, Gema's descriptions were then passed on to the visiting public by Rocío during one-to-one walks inside the physically empty and dark space. These intimate, guided tours worked very well and became a suitable finale to five consecutive weeks of extremely different and interesting residency collborations.

We would like to thank all the participating artists Helidon Gjergji, Clarinda Mac Low, Matthias Neumann, Pedro Guirao and Gema Alava, as well as their wonderful assistants Cristina Martínez Roldán, Maria Jesús Cascales, Patricia Carrillo, Maria Jesús Ballesta and Rocío González for taking part in making this experiment happen.

Also, a special thanks goes to Mikkel Rosengaard, Giovanni Saladino and the entire Manifesta 8 team for their professionalism, skill and hard work. Without your efforts, there would have been no NEW LIFE RESIDENC!

Lastly, we want to bring your attention to some of the things, that have so far been written about the project...

READ ART IN AMERICA'S ARTICLE or practice your German with MONOPOL'S REVIEW of Manifesta 8 and Wooloo.

And if you did not already read Artforum's interview, HERE IT IS AGAIN.

You can read more about the NEW LIFE RESIDENCY HERE.