In January 2013, a group of artists and specialists from around the world began talking about the possibility of making this project come true. A year later, in 2014, we began to work seriously on it. At the moment, we already have got the original score, ‘Just for a minute’ and the aesthetic concept has been developed through a number of Fire Painting images. In addition, the Salvadoran artist Mayra Barraza has given permission to use one of the drawings from her series República de la muerte [Republic of Death] (2010). The audiovisual running order is also complete. It only remains to record the voice and sound, to film and edit the material and then incorporate all the elements (music, images, sound) into a hypertext.
Our team members:
Alex Rambaud (France–El Salvador) has established various music groups that aim to break new ground and change expectations, including the PIGs, De La Propia (El Salvador), Try To Think (Germany), Black Mona Lisa and Circles End (Atlanta, Georgia). He has written numerous songs on topics ranging from social injustice to human survival and has contributed the lyrics and melody of ‘Just for a minute’. Alex currently lives in Xi’an, a city in the north of China.
Carmen Guzmán Martínez (El Salvador) was a radio and newspaper journalist in San Salvador before moving to California, where she studied film. She has lived in Barcelona for the past decade where she works as an audiovisual editor, mainly on documentaries. Her video installation, loqueval€unminuto, received the FEMART2007 prize. She is also, since 2010, a yoga instructor.
Carlos González (El Salvador) is a musician and sound engineer with over 12 years’ experience. He has worked in both post-production and audio design for documentaries, adverts and animated films. He has also worked as a sound technician for concerts, festivals and theatre productions. For the last five years he has been living in the Basque Country (Bilbao), where he continues to work on creative projects.
Dennis Accardo (Italy) is a programmer and IT engineer. Before focusing on information technology, he studied Film at Turin University. When he is not in front of a computer, he connects to Nature
Jessica Rainey (United Kingdom) is a writer and translator. She studied English Literature and African & Asian Studies at Sussex University and is completing an MA in Translation Studies at Durham University. She is co-founder of Trilengua, a multilingual reading series, and a founder member of El Prostíbulo Poético, a live poetry event. Her writing has been published in various international journals and an experimental hypertext poetry collection, Endoma, was released in 2012. Literary translations published in Teatro bajo mi piel. Poesía salvadoreña contemporánea / Theatre Under My Skin. Contemporary Salvadoran Poetry (San Salvador: Editorial Kalina, 2014) and Treinta días de una viuda / Thirty Days a Widow (UK: Red Ceilings Press, 2014). Jessica translated the poem 'Tropical Reflections' into English.
Claire is a multilingual creative writer, translator, and teacher currently based in Sheffield, UK, where she has organised festival events on storytelling and poetry in different languages. She has a BA in English Literature from the University of Georgia and an MA in Applied Linguistics from the University of Barcelona, and recently completed her translation certificate from NYU. Her poetry and stories have been published in Spain and the UK, and she is interested in collaborative projects involving writing and community development. Claire is currently a poet in residence for www.dalkular.com. She translated the poem 'Tropical Reflections' into French.
Jorge Barrientos, Skin On Glass (El Salvador), attempts to give form to the sounds of dystopia through his work. He is influenced by the psychedelic notes of The Soft Machine and Spaceman 3, the acoustic folk sounds of Nick Drake and Neil Young, the post-punk music of Joy Division and Wire and the words of Yeats, Allen Ginsberg and Michael McClure. His song lyrics are mainly concerned with religious abuse, the bleak conditions in developing countries and the work of Philip K. Dick. Ultimately, he offers a vision of what a future full of technical expertise could be like. His second album Skin On Glass II has been released and he is the composer of ‘Just for a minute’.
Thelma Seguí (México) is an architect living in Barcelona, where she develops multidisciplinary art projects fusing fine art, installation, dance, performance and film. She worked on the Italian Pavilion of the 2011 Venice Biennial. In 2012 she presented her solo show …de sensus natura as well as Les vacances d’Arachné produced by El Gran Ballet Europeo. She is currently developing a Fire Painting project, Pájaro de Fuego [Fire Bird], and collaborating with various artistic collectives.
Sharaab (India) is a pioneer of the Asian Massive Movement. Producer, composer and sound designer, Sharaab lives in Atlanta (USA) and has been pushing the boundaries of electronic music for over a decade. He incorporates vintage synthesisers and industrial rhythms with the lush sounds of strings and oriental instruments. The result: technology, urban experience and meditation converging in original sound designs. Sharaab has termed his style ‘ethnoclash’ and has produced three music collections: Infusion, Evolution and Asura. His upcoming EP, Deva, will be released on High Chai recordings. The remix of ‘Just for a minute’ is the work of Sharaab.
Tania Pleitez Vela (El Salvador) has a doctorate in Twentieth Century Poetry and Poetics from the University of Barcelona, where she has been a researcher in the Biographical Studies Department (Unidad de Estudios Biográficos). She began her professional career in the Arias Foundation for Peace and Human Progress in Costa Rica, where she worked on projects related to conflict and social appeasement. Since then, for the last twelve years, she has focused on Latin American literature through her academic work and teaching. She has published articles and research including, in particular, the biography Alfonsina Storni. Mi casa es el mar (Madrid, Espasa-Calpe, 2003) and the study Literatura. Análisis de situación de la expresión artística en El Salvador (San Salvador, AccesArte, 2012). She is currently Editorial Coordinator at Editorial Kalina where she's working on a collection of literature; volume 1 of the collection is a bilingual poetry anthology titled Teatro bajo mi piel. Poesía salvadoreña contemporánea / Theatre Under My Skin. Contemporary Salvadoran Poetry, which was published in February 2014. She is also a collaborator at the Academia Norteamericana de la Lengua Española (ANLE), a member of the European Network for Central American Studies (RedISCA), and an adviser on the programme "Development and Culture Platform", Fundación AccesArte (El Salvador). Her poem ‘Tropical Reflections’ was published in the anthology 25 poetas. Memorias de la Casa (2002–2010) (San Salvador: Índole, 2011) and features in her book Nostalgia del presente (Índole, 2014).
Collaborators
Roberto Torres (El Salvador) is a multidisciplinary communications specialist with qualifications in graphic design and marketing. He studied Film at the University of Stanford and Cinematography at the Centre for Cinematography in Catalonia. He has been assistant director for various audiovisual projects (Guatemala and Costa Rica), as well as a creative designer in advertising agencies. He has also provided social communications for various non-profit organisations in Barcelona. Roberto is currently creative director of La ciència al teu món, a platform promoting scientific discovery run by the Institute of Evolutionary Biology in Barcelona (Pompeu Fabra University). Roberto was the director of the first campaign video; he also designed the logo for the project.
Céline Pimentel (France) is a dancer with extensive and eclectic experience. She began learning ballet and went on to experiment with modern-jazz, various flamenco styles and hip hop. At 22, while studying Classics, she discovered contemporary dance and its many elements, nuances and techniques. She has been involved in numerous dance, performance, videodance and short film projects (La Fábrica Naranja, Decoliflor/Sintonizart, leúcade, El Gran Ballet Europeo, etc.). She was also director and coordinator of Les vacances d’Arachné, an interdisciplinary piece produced in collaboration with ballet dancers, video artists, visual artists, musicians and architects. Almost all the pieces she has created or co-created offer a critique of patriarchal society, aiming to shake up the status quo and lend the body to other possibilities, through a language that is demanding and precise, vociferous and chameleon-like, and in permanent dialogue with the audiovisual and visual arts. Céline worked on the first phase of the project, providing valuable comments.