A dialogue between El Primo de Saint Tropez and the Discalced Carmelite Nuns of Toro in the style of an interview in the parlour of a monastery. This conversation will address questions related to cloistering (enclosure), contemplation and spirituality, methodologies for studying the legacy of Saint Teresa of Ávila, radical community practices and new ways of conveying the Teresian charism – the saint’s power of healing – in order to explore tradition, repetition and community life as sources and tools. Assuming the saint’s foundational ambition was to create spaces for women who loved gifted moments and the spirit of community, this session will open a space where interactive formats of contemplative and discursive moments are promoted.
The Discalced Carmelite nuns of Toro are a religious community of cloistered nuns in the style of Saint Teresa. This way of life is mainly characterised by the longing for God through everything that happens and making life an act of friendship with the divine, and with other nuns. Silence and solitude are always balanced by a fraternal life. The Discalced Carmelite is very aware that “in this house all must be friends, all must be loved, all must be held dear, all must be helped” (Constitutions 4,7).
El Primo de Saint Tropez, heteronym of Jesús Barranco, began his life participating in different performance pieces where sound art gave rise to his identity as a performance artist, an identity that he activates with different creatives and collectives in Madrid. Since 2013, he has been conducting a research project on the living arts, which he updates during his long stays in Carmelite monasteries as another of its inhabitants. He joined Marta Azparren and Adriana Reyes to form the Na-morada collective, with its long-running project that has no end in sight: The Furrow Must Be Proportional to the Joy (triptych of research, documentation and dialogue on the living arts regarding the intangible archive of the mystical and loving heritage of the cloister and contemporary loving thought).