The Chairs of Tàpies is a series of multidisciplinary sound actions organised in the context of the Tàpies Centenary Year, with the collaboration of Pompeu Fabra University. The proposal focuses on the voice and words to create a sound accompaniment to oral memory. In this way, each of the thirteen sessions will feature a creator whose starting point will be the chair, taken as a performative object, linking back to the creative universe of Tàpies through the expressive languages and settings of the present day.

The action for this seventh chair of Tàpies is Brief Phonetic Actions, a proposal by Bartolomé Ferrando. The project brings together short pieces based on the decomposition and re-composition of the voice and words, with some dedicated to Antoni Tàpies. A few of the pieces are grounded in phonetic poetry, situated part-way between speech and music, derived from dadaism and related to Concrete Poetry and Lettrism. In most of these actions, Ferrando addresses the improvised emission of language, in the search for the traits of oral primitivism.

Bartolomé Ferrando is Professor of Intermedia Art and Performance at the Polytechnic University of Valencia. As a performer, he has participated in international festivals and encounters held in Europe, the Americas and Asia. He has coordinated various international festivals at IVAM (Valencia) and MNCARS (Madrid). Ferrando has exhibited his visual poetry in various cities in Spain, Italy and France, and is a member of the groups SIC and dosentredos. Furthermore, he has published the journal Texto poético and the books Hacia una poesía del hacer, La mirada móvil, El arte intermedia, El arte de la performance, elementos de creación, and De la poesía visual al arte de acción, amongst others. He has also produced various recordings on cassette tape, vinyl and CD, as well as videos and DVDs of performance work.