“Apnees i altres gramàtiques” / Exposició d’Anna Pasco

Next Thursday, March 19, we open “Apnees i altres gramàtiques” [Apneas and Other Grammars], an exhibition featuring an installation and a publication that present Anna Pascó’s research project, developed within the framework of the Barcelona Crea Grant – Homesession 2025.

“Apnees i altres gramàtiques” [Apneas and Other Grammars] is an artistic research project by Anna Pascó that explores the seabed as a living ecosystem—little known yet fundamental to the planet’s climatic balance. The project asks how to establish an ethical and sensitive relationship with environments that lie beyond our perceptual field, yet upon which we deeply depend.

The project articulates two interconnected research contexts: a collaboration with a group of retired women from the Club Natació Atlètic Barceloneta who practice aqua gym, with whom myths of mermaids and underwater imaginaries are explored through the body and memory; and a collaboration with geologist David Casas from the Institut de Ciències del Mar (ICM-CSIC), focused on scientific methodologies for accessing abyssal zones and on media technology as a mediator and co-creator of our relationship with the ocean floor.

The presentation takes the form of a lecture–performance that merges gastronomy, tasting protocols, anatomical dissection practices, and dynamics typical of geological sampling parties. Through the activation of gelatin cakes, gestures of observation, cutting, classification, and description are set into motion.

Gelatin occupies the center of the action not as representation, but as a material model of the seabed: both share a stratified, soft, and unstable behavior; they register layers, interruptions, and traces; and they cannot be analyzed without being transformed. Like abyssal sediments, gelatin can only be known by altering it. The performance proposes a collective experience of attention that rehearses other ways of perceiving and caring for what we do not directly see, yet which sustains our ways of life.

This project has received the Barcelona Crea 2025 Grant from the Barcelona City Council and Homesession.
Collaborating: Institut de Ciències del Mar and Club Natació Atlètic Barceloneta.