Call for submissions:
From 11 to 15 March we are planning to stage a hybrid exhibition / workshop in Arteleku which we are calling a “production meeting”. Over the five-day period we plan to install the project “Paris Is Burning oharduna” in the multipurpose hall. The installation will be used as a production meeting place in the broadest sense of the term. The project has been running since 2012 and will continue after this event. However, during the week in March it will be specifically tied to a given place and time. Arising out of the project we will be producing a collective publication similar to other ones we have published in the past, based on “footnotes”, which we expect to have ready by June.

If you think you might be interested or want further information, please write to us now at   jeleton@jeleton.com. and/or just come along to the multipurpose hall in Arteleku between 11 and 15 March.

“Paris Is Burning oharduna” is a collective experiment and a continuation of our investigation of the notion of the “footnote”, begun in 2008. The “footnote” poses questions about the rules governing the relationship between the author and the reader (and by extension, the spectator, listener, etc.) and about the way we regulate the identity of the subject and the object of a work of art and what the work “means”. “Paris Is Burning oharduna” is our contribution to Aimar Arriola's “Marginalia” project“, a proposal for the critical reactivation of the Pepe Espaliú Library.

“Paris Is Burning oharduna” is a collection of footnotes to the film “Paris Is Burning” (Jenny Livingston, 1990, USA) and an intervention in the book collection donated to Arteleku by Pepe Espaliú. Each footnote takes the film as its starting point but is not about the film. Similarly, it does not explain the library, but will inevitably be projected onto it. Throughout this process, we will look for points of friction between document and body, work and affection. Our planned piece, “Paris Is Burning” is a complex work involving both a historicization and a cosmology. It will be projected in a context that is at once specific and multiple: Pepe Espaliú’s personal library, AIDS, his action “Carrying”, Arteleku, Donostia-San Sebastian in 2013 and in 1992, etc. The analogy/projection is a prolific field for the appearance of all things repressed.

The general working method is as follows: we have already begun to connect the film up with issues that interest us; starting from there, we are preparing our “footnotes” which we will install in the multi-purpose hall in different media. Simultaneously, we are available to discuss this method with you and share the 8 previous publications produced in the project. By discussing how we make our footnotes and showing the previous collective publications, we want to help you develop your own “footnotes” to form part of the installation, the publication, or simply the surrounding discussion. In other sections of the project we have received contributions in person and by mail, for example.

In principle, the activity is open to anyone wanting to participate in it; there is no pre-established limit on the number of participants and there are no formal requirements (such as qualifications or merits). We do not plan to offer participants any financial reimbursement. You can participate to different degrees of intensity. Basically, we are inviting you to: discuss this method, check out the film “Paris Is Burning”, consult the Pepe Espaliú library, contribute a footnote to “Paris Is Burning” and get involved in the tasks involved in installation and/or publication. There is no deadline for participation, but the moment at which you take part will determine whether you have access to the decisions in each phase. It is up to you whether you want to take part in one or all of these things or just visit the installation as a member of the public. The project will create complex conditions and difficult questions related to authorship. Negotiating these terms and the related economics are all part of the process.