Mercè Jara Muns
"My name is @mercejaramuns, but lately you can also find me as my sonic alter ego - Charnega - with which I connect to the world through radio and sound art."
Mercè considers herself to be a transdisciplinary artist because although her ceramic work is a central element of her practice, her approach is from a perspective of hybridising ancestral culture with concepts of open source and easily accessible technologies. Many of her works and concepts radiate out from this core part of her practice, which she then experiments with to formulate alternative thought structures in order to construct other disciplines and planes of significance.
On returning to Barcelona in 2019, Mercè adopted a new concept of "cocción cerámica radical/radical ceramic cooking" as a conceptual tool to encompass all her transdisciplinary practices and, at the same time, a thought structure from which to develop alternative proposals of material creation and cultural/intangible creation.
With the arrival of 2020 and the ensuing pandemic, “Cocciones Radicales” reached far beyond an artistic practice and into a political position with which Mercè redefined herself in the face of the crisis and from where she now develops her own protocols, spaces, rights and needs - and accordingly a personal proposal for survival.
During quarantine, Mercè collaborated with the virtual edition of the OpenMIC Huesca festival 2020 (#yomequedoencasa). There, she broadcast a 30-minute live performance on Zoom so that viewers could see the visual effects of working with porcelain sound instruments. Allowing for an expanded concert experience on several video channels, the virtual platform simultaneously showed the varied different aspects of her process.
In May 2020, Mercè began to collaborate with La Escocesa as a fellow within the CO-project. Thanks to its support structure, the project was able to resume (after quarantine) in order to create an analogue manufacturing workshop specialising in ceramics, which in turn led to the creation of the collaborative workshop CO-*OBRA.
Currently, Mercè works as a resident artist at la Escocesa, were she developes a research about open source ceramics, social networking and multidimensional spaces around ceramics and sound. Also she has a radio program on Dublab.es called "Lugar no donde". Together with Bendito Chándal, she explores the possibilities of sonic discourse as a place where imagination and spirit can meet, and also a space to collaborate/experiment with other artists.
Mercè has shown her work in France, Barcelona, Bilbao, Burgos and at events such as CERCO Zaragoza 2018, Festival de Nueva Escena Teatracciones Burgos 2019, OpenMIC 2020 (online), Recreant Ruïnes 2020 La Escocesa Barcelona.