Combinatorial optimization

with Ulla Blanca Lima and with the collaboration of Laia Manonelles

In colloquial language, optimizing means little more than improvement; However, in the scientific context, optimization is the process of trying to find the best possible solution for a given problem ... Combinatorial optimization is the use of many combined resources to achieve greater efficiency.

In 2008, Ulla begins the formative cycle of Arts applied to the Wall on Stage. An excellent student, who combines skills, intelligence and learning ability. Within a few months, he suspended his studies for almost a year. On his return, he restarts his studies and leaves behind an unclear diagnosis of a viral process that explains his absences. It regains its capacity in the work, imprinting to its projects the rigor and the critical analysis that characterizes it.

Ulla is a student who, possibly for the age, is something more advanced than its companions. Within the group plays a role of representation, conflict mediator, cheerleader and in a sense, leader.

After 5 years, Ulla finishes her studies with an excellent final project, which I was fortunate to tutor. A green lounger, which still circulates around the school, symbolizes tactics in support of a student who, with a chronic illness, was able to efficiently end her studies.

A few years have passed and from time to time Ulla and I sometimes meet to talk about our work as artists and also to comment on our strategies to face our limits ... But this time and for the Xina A.R.T. We have set out to make visible a part of the work that resulted from those years of study and some works of what could be the beginning of a future path of work in common.

There is time ahead.

... "Thinkers and artists challenge a homogeneous system by infiltrating questions and other alternative ways of acting. Here is the ethical dimension of creation, relating it to the capacity to commit, to share, to create, to take initiative. And precisely the ability to take action is necessary in a re-active world, in which citizens re-trigger the stimulus but find it extremely difficult, generate, strive to build their own alternatives. It is essential to emphasize this close relationship between creation and life, between practice and theory, underlining the importance of the process, commitment ... (Laia Manonelles Moner de The artistic ritual as a therapeutic and subversive tool)

Title: "Optimització combinatòria"
Authors: Ulla Blanca Lima in dialogue with Nora Ancarola (and the collaboration of Laia Manonelles) Photography by Santi Erill
Space: La Xina A.R.T., Hort de la bomba 6, 08001 Barcelona
Dates: from March 12 to April 16, 2016

Text QUADERN de les arts i del lletres magazine (pdf)