Promise No Promises‪!‬ Institute Art Gender Nature HGK FHNW in Basel

EVERY GESTURE COUNTS, HOWEVER SMALL, is the 20th episode of the “Tale and the Tongue” podcast series. Full of intimate moments, Sonia Fernández Pan exchanged thoughts over months with Karolina Grzywnowicz, talking about plants, migration, activism and much more.“Dear Karolina, The cuttings of the plants you gave me are taking root in water. I put them on a windowsill so that they are closer to the sun. It is quite telling that plants, which apparently don't move from their place, make you travel so much. But as you say, plants are not as native as they appear to be in many places. How a landscape can be a crime scene and a place full of concealed violence, to borrow your words, reminds me of how the forests of my childhood did not exist in my grandparents' childhood... This podcast also relates to this moment: a shared need to meet and talk. Especially, when many want us to be silent, detached, and indifferent…. A feminist collective called for the need to talk about trees, connecting many, many feminist struggles around the world. As they say, to talk about trees is to talk about colonialism, extractivism, and injustice...I pause my words here, always curious to hear more stories from you.Take care, and water.Sonia ” 

MOVING IN MIGRANT RHYTHMS is episode nineteen, which follows a conversation with artist and loud thinker Maya Saravia and the podcast host Sonia Fernández Pan. In their conversation the migrant experience is very present. Maya has lived in different cities since she left Guatemala, including Madrid, Lisbon and Berlin. Even if we are the same person, our bodies do not move in the same way in all places and cultures. Part of the insights Maya and Sonia share have a lot to do with feeling and thinking with other rhythms. One of the music genres that Maya often talks about is raggaeton. The raggaeton rhythms are dangerously catchy. It is one of those music rhythms whose will is stronger than ours. In the statement of one of her projects, she refers to raggaeton as a syncretic event. It is a volcano erupting in the world, driven by the flows of capital, labour, many displacements and musical traditions. Another of her projects, El Olvido, starts in a bar in Guatemala. She says it's a bar that could be anywhere in the world. A place where the light-hearted life of bars mixes with the violence of the news. Violence always makes words fall short. Making things happen is usually the attitude of people who see art as a way, and not so much as a destination. It is not about the destination or following a course, but about how one thing leads to another; it is not only important to move, but to create conditions for movement. Perhaps that is the most magical thing about conversations, that they move us without intending to.

HOW CAN A FORM BE A HOLDER FOR INTENTIONS AND IDEAS is episode eighteen, following a conversation with multidisciplinary artist, experimental filmmaker, and writer Crystal Z Campbell. While form is one of the meaning-making elements in art, it can be often overlooked. Crystal Z Campbell, who furthermore refers to attention as a form of care, shaped formal relevance from a question: how can a form be a holder, a vessel, for intentions and ideas? In Crystal's work, which combines the specifics of historical events with the abstraction of artistic gestures and the serendipity of processes, form can be felt in many ways. Crystal's films are temporary places to enter and engage in a sensory relationship with the stories they make present. The witnessing relationship is also central to Crystal Z Campbell's work. Looking is not only a biological process, but also a historical one. They wonder in a public conversation: “How do we look at things we can't see?” Following Crystal's words, "looking should not be easy". Precisely when things are easy, our attention remains strategically distracted elsewhere, looking without seeing what is in front of us. The conversation with Crystal Z Campbell took place and words in November 2023. They were in Saint Louis, Oklahoma and Sonia Fernández Pan, the host of this podcast series, was in Berlin. Another thing Crystal mentioned in their conversation: the situation of indirect witness towards so many materials, events, and situations, the acts of omission, the gaps in the narratives. There are still many gaps in the official narratives, but also in our professional stories.

NOT KNOWING HOW A DEAD LANGUAGE SOUNDED—episode seventeen of the of The Tale and the Tongue series—follows a conversation with multi-media producer, writer, public speaker, educator, audio remixer, DJ, and owner of the Comatonse Recordings record label Terre Thaemlitz, and Sonia Fernández Pan, the host of this podcast series.The title of this podcast is inspired by a comment that appeared during the meeting with Terre Thaemlitz. She proposed a future in which aspects of the past are unknown as a critical gesture towards the ongoing and growing demand for visibility and preservation of mainstream, but not only, archival systems. Like any other medium, archives and documents produce ideology and are produced by ideology. Following more of Terre Thaemlitz’s comments, this podcast conversation is also not excluded from how criticism of the system is part of the system. Because, as he says, analysis and artistic work is often confused with political organisation. The relational dynamics of gender also emerged in this conversation with Terre Thaemlitz. Like Brigitte Vasallo—author, activist and former guest of the Promise No Promises! podcast series, episode 27 The Monogamy of the System—he is very nuanced about the widespread belief that removing gender from language removes its impact on social realities. On the current situation of gender pronouns, Sonia Fernández Pan also shared with Terre Thaemlitz her thoughts on other uses for the pronoun “they.” Sometimes Sonia Fernández Pan perceives in this pronoun a chance to imply the plurality of the self: “they” in relation to the “I” and not so much to the “she” or “he.” We are often asked to speak in key words that make us less complex than we are. Identity as a comfort zone or final destination contradicts the identity discomfort of so many lives. Being different like others is not the same as being different from others.

Staying with the wonder, is the sixteenth episode of the Tale and the Tongue series. As with Luz Broto, this episode is created through an audio recording exchange by artist Daniela Medina Poch and Sonia Fernández Pan, the host of the Tale and the Tongue podcast series.  Dear Daniela, I have been collecting bottle caps these days to keep bringing the sea closer to this marshy city. Yesterday I brought back several from a long journey to reach a lake, as well as some strange, very hard mushrooms growing on the trunks of some trees. Curiosity makes us eavesdrop and intrusive, diverts us from the straight and narrow, makes us perceive the extraordinary within the ordinary, even makes us change our minds. Do you think curiosity is a crossing point between seeking and finding? I feel it is an indispensable attitude to stay with the wonder, an idea of yours that is much more than an idea. It is perhaps a way of being in the world, an unstable position that makes and unmakes given realities. Someone told me that curiosity was a type of youth. And I think that if you stay with the wonder, you age youthfully.In starting to write this letter, which is for you, but also for anyone who wants to listen to us through your voice, I was trying to recall things I said to you in my voice notes but not doing so keeps the secret. However, it is not the mystery of my stories that is important here, but the possibility of not telling something or of telling it half-heartedly. Not knowing everything stops being uncomfortable and becomes a way to stay with the wonder.I stop here, a bit suddenly. A summer storm has just started. Perhaps these drops bring to Berlin the waters of so many rivers that are important to you. See you in the future to share flavors, wishes and stories. In the meantime, enjoy the unknown very much.  Yours, Sonia

STORIES OF FRIENDSHIP is the fifteenth episode that emerged from a conversation with the podcast host Sonia Fernández Pan and the constellating artist-duo and friends Tara Njála Ingvarsdóttir and Silfrun Una Guðlaugsdóttir. They first met on their way to LungA School in Seyðisfjörður, Island, where they were invited to lead two workshops. Seeing Tara and Silla being dressed alike, giving two different characters to the same piece of clothing, gave a glimpse to something that is very present in their work as artists: the way in which everyday life and art can become friends. For this podcast episode Sonia Fernández Pan proposed a little play to them: to tell her separately about a memory of their friendship to add to this podcast together. Tara would tell the story of the little bugs, and Silla would return to Athens with Tara, sharing past situations and present emotions that make friendship a living home. Art is for both, Silla and Tara, a space where it is possible to be many other things at the same time. The artist becomes a shape shifter, a temporary identity. This way of doing things has enabled them to become waterproof gallerists, heads of a company providing apology support, emotional dinner party hosts, hairdressers for naughty hairstyles, talking pipes suppliers or bird-shaped instrument players. Not so long-ago Tara and Silla got married in blue, celebrating their friendship and their constellating life together. The wedding included a contract in which they signed a piece of advice that someone gave them: to put friendship first. Performance as an artistic device is a medium that not only allows them to invite many other media, but also lets them play with the framework as themselves. Stories of friendship are important and inspiring for many reasons, not least because they also make friends out of stories.