Los otros residentes
Paula Bruna and Silvia Renda
2022 – Artist’s book46 pages | Size: 9 x 14 cm
8 handmade envelopes with field record cards
Digital printing | Metallic spiral binding | Paper: Freelife Vellum, Colorplan rust
The book narrates the soliloquy of a researcher in residence in a large rural house in Portugal, who attempts to decipher the non-human world through encounters with the “others”—the only residents of the place.
Drawing from field diary entries and fragments of records, between the scientific, the speculative, and the poetic, the book traces Paula Bruna’s artistic process: a journey into an impossible classification system that ultimately leads her to confront her own human limitations.
In parallel with the growth cycle of a plant, the researcher experiences a series of encounters and misunderstandings with more than a dozen species (ants, bats, spiders, snakes, mint plants, crickets…). These discoveries culminate in a final story titled Pareidolia, where anthropomorphic roots expose the biases of the human gaze.
As part of the Radial Radiant collective’s ongoing research into artistic processes, Silvia Renda —in dialogue with Paula Bruna— transformed discarded material from the original project (stories, notes, audio recordings, videos, and photographs) into a new creation that goes beyond documentation, shaping it as an autonomous art object.
Collections:
2024 – MACBA archive (Centre d’Estudis i Documentació, Barcelona).
Exhibited at:
2023 – Reimaginados, exhibition at Ectopia Lab – Lisbon (PT)
2023 – Ecos , exhibition at the FBAUL gallery in Lisbon (PT)
2022 – Arts Libris, Mercat de Sant Antoni, Barcelona (ES)
Texts and unpublished images by Paula Bruna; Concept: Silvia Renda and Paula Bruna; Book making, design and editing: Silvia Renda; Handmade envelopes: Aurora Muñoz
