Concept

Calling Home is an audiovisual project based on the personal experience of twin sisters Gema and Mònica del Rey Jordà (Art al Quadrat) who will be separated in the week of the residency. During this period Gema will sojourn in Kassel where she will live Documenta 13 and all the parallel activities. Meanwhile Mònica will remain in Sagunt, their hometown, preparing her PhD thesis on twin artists.

During the time twin sisters correspond daily via online video letters in which they will establish a dialogue leading to new audiovisual works that recount their parallel days. These letters have been the umbilical cord linking the two episodes.

Based on personal experience, Calling Home speaks of the importance of interconnection between two people who need to keep a regular correspondence. The video raises contrasting themes such as the familiar and unfamiliar, being at home and being abroad, etc., presenting duality as a metaphor of life. The contrast between the two societies, German and Spanish, is obvious in the different ways in which culture, leisure and everyday life are portrayed.

This idea leads to a collaboration across cultures and a non-exclusive game of dualities: universality/specificity. What connects everyone all together in spite of the cultural differences but at the same time creates a universal positioning? And what characteristics make a culture unique? Twin sisters discuss the potential poles arising from the connection between Kassel and Sagunt (Germany and Spain), such as the contrast between tradition and innovation, local and global culture, an internal and external perspective, or how the unknown may become known by a journey of this kind into a new culture.

Calling home remember also the connection with self country in migrants process. Nowadays it’s quite unthinkable remember that time ago it was expensive and difficult to keep in contact just with family. Now people each time is more and more connected and net become a basic backup for the people to get in touch with their families, friends, acquaintance or even strangers.