radial radiant
Hybrid and transdisciplinary art collective, set up in 2019 in Barcelona and currently composed by Silvia Renda, Erica Volpini and Ezequiel Soriano.
Radial Radiant's practice embraces the art book as a device, investigating its language in contemporaneity, creating books and dynamizing contexts by means of books. The trio also experiments with workshops conceived as contexts for collective research, mixing practice based methodologies of creation, research and education.
The collective particularly focuses on researching and creating books on artistic processes: a multimodal transposition of different practices where they experiment with narrative forms and use specific tools of the book-device (typography, images, dimension, page, sequence, rhythm, paper, graphic resources, etc.).
Revealing artistic processes means showing embodied experiences, time, space, perception the different positions of both artists and other creators, including vernacular and informal forms of creativity. To this end, the trio seeks to design and experiment with artistic and informal methodologies to narrate creative processes in a non-logocentric and not necessarily linear way. They also want to test the hybridization between the roles of publisher, artist and designer.
The collective's dynamisations materialize into installations, events and participatory exercises that explore and make public the possibilities of the book, trying to break hierarchies of value, ranging from the fanzine to the photobook, from the artist's book to the best-seller.
Radial Radiant anchors itself in material and dialogue. What moves the group is having quality relationships, questioning oneself and sharing from the serious enjoyment of the playfulness.
In the last years, the collective has collaborated with other artists, publishers and cultural institutions in Barcelona such as CCCB, Santa Mònica Centre of Arts, MACBA, La Capella, Sala d'Art Jove, Can Felipa, Chiquita Room art gallery and Art Libris book fair. Since 2020 the members of Radial Radiant are artists in residence at La Escocesa and active members of EMA Association.
bios
Silvia Renda is a visual artist, editorial designer and independent researcher based in Barcelona. She holds an MA in Communication Sciences from the University of Bologna, a diploma in Photography from IED (Rome) and spent study periods at Ramon Lull University (Barcelona) and St.Joost Academie (Breda). Silvia mainly works with photographs and artist's books, researching contemporary editorial practices to detect experiences in which the editorial mixes with curating, mediation or activism. Her work also takes the form of expanded photography installations and relational experiences. In the last ten years, in addition to creating self-published editions, she has collaborated with other artists and designed books for Postcart edizioni and Maria Inc. She also researched on the photobook at Blank Paper Escuela in Madrid (Leonardo grant) and on experimental publications at the Santa Mònica Center of Arts in Barcelona. Silvia has carried out cultural projects with various institutions such as X3 Gallery, Institut français, Sicilia Queer Filmfest, Avarie Publishing in Palermo and Mare Culturale Urbano in Milan. She has also conducted interdisciplinary workshops on art, photography and publishing, by designing ad hoc methodologies, for the Gallery of Modern Art and the cooperative Bond of Union in Palermo, and at the CCCB in Barcelona.
Ezequiel Soriano Gómez is a researcher and artist. He works on the internet, folklore and appropriation through ethnography, artistic experimentation and post-digital publishing. He directs the publishing lab Artefactos Nativos, a publishing project with the aim of printing the internet. He is a pre-doctoral researcher in the Mediaccions group (UOC) and an artist-in-residence at La Escocesa and Sala d'Art Jove. He has carried out research and experimentation projects in communication and digital folklore at Santa Mònica Center of Arts and La Escocesa, and has developed workshops and non-creative marathons at Can Felipa, Fabra i Coats, alRaso (UGR) and ArtLibris.
Erica Volpini is a designer and visual artist focused in education in art and design, and in participatory and community practices. With a degree in Graphic Design and Visual Communication from the ISIA (Urbino) and a Master in Education in Arts from the Piet Zwart Institute (Rotterdam), she is driven by visual culture, trans-disciplinarity and participatory practices in art and design. She has developed methodologies of informal education and of book creation in primary schools in Italy and in the CCCB (Barcelona). She has collaborated as a designer and workshop organizer in cultural platforms such as Printroom (Rotterdam), OpenSet (Rotterdam), Can Felipa (Barcelona) and ArtLibris (Barcelona). She has worked as an editorial and visual designer at Kreeft Studio (Rotterdam) and for local institutions and projects such as Conversas in Rotterdam and RAI, Recursos d'Animació Intercultural in Barcelona. She is the founder and the president of the cultural association Conversas Barcelona.
