Perspectives on Herbers
Artistic and research residency
Perspectives on Herbers
Website: www.ruta99.gva.es
Client: IVAM (Valencian Institute of Modern Art)
Location: Herbers (Els Ports)
Date: 2023
Team: Fent Estudi Coop. V. (creation), LEBREL (production and installation)
Photography: Fent Estudi Coop. V.
Publications: Comarquesnord, ABC, Culturplaza, Lo Botadó, Mediterráneo
Document: download the project fail
Sharing knowledge, care, resources, traditions and social rituals throughout populations is of paramount importance in a world where, increasingly, the tendency is towards communication without community. Villages with a sparse population such as Herbers, in the Els Ports region, perhaps experience an even greater need to reinforce the community networks that support their sustainability.
The oral tradition provides access to multiple historic accounts and innumerable perspectives and memories: it is a living chronicle, with a multiplicity of narratives, overlapping layers and diverse visions —a kaleidoscope.
Perspectives on Herbers thus materialises as a kaleidoscope, an optical instrument capable of generating multiple and unlimited patterns using elements from the legend of La Tossa (twill, stones and paraffin drops). It will create multiple shapes and unlimited patterns as each person moves it. Once more, this is a device that requires our participation to activate it, encouraging reflection on the importance of people’s presence in rural environments at risk of depopulation, like Herbers.
The installation thus aims to stimulate this awareness and promote interaction between local inhabitants and visitors to Herbers, helping to present the oral tradition as an element of collective identity.
Perspectives on Herbersinstallation is part of the programme, “Confluències. Artistic Interventions in the Villages of Route 99.” This project involves artistic interventions in rural areas as part of IVAM’s outreach work in the wider community, extending to 24 Valencian villages at risk of depopulation.
Our intervention forms part of the Confluències project for the Els Ports area, specifically in Herbers, a village whose population has been in constant decline for about fifty years. The situation worsened in the 1950s with the closure of the coal mines in Castell de Cabres, where about 150 people were employed. It currently has 63 registered inhabitants.
Other interventions in “Confluències. Els Ports”: Pep Vidal (Castell de Cabres), Laura Palau (Vallibona), La Cuarta Piel (Palanques) i Lola Zoido (Villores).
*“Legend has it that on the summit of the mountain of this name (La Camiseta), where there is a shrine, a couple were killed in a war; she was pregnant, and it is said that the cries of the child were heard for a long time.
The husband’s undershirt remained lying on the shrine, until rain, frost, winds and storms saw it disappear forever.
For this reason, this place is known by the generic name ‘La Camiseta’ (‘camiseta’ means undershirt or T-shirt in Spanish).
Excerpt from the book Memòries d’Herbés.
(DL T. 1048-2001)
