Blanca Bercial
¨(_/*`—{.^~<[

Llanuari / 2022
Sound poem
Duration: 2’34”
From Praxinoscope



How does January sound?
Google answers > jan·yoo·eh·ree

I have found an online voice generator where I could type any word to be pronounced by different voices.

“Insert your text here”
“January”

Next to it, there was a scrolling drop-down where I could choose from over 20 names:
Alex, Fred, Samantha, Victoria, Daniel, Fiona, Karen, Moira, Rishi, Tessa, Veena, Alice, Alva, Amelie, Anna, Carmit, Damayanti, Diego, Ellen, Ioana, Joana, Jorge, Juan, Kanya, Kyoko, Laura, Lekha, Luca, Luciana, Maged, Mariska, Mei-Jia, Melina, Milena, Monica, Nora, Paulina, Sara, Satu, Sin-ji, Thomas, Ting-Ting, Xander, Yelda , Yuna, Yuri, Zosia, Zuzana.

I could choose for each one of them to read January out loud. I did.

The pronunciation of “January” replicates strong accents speaking in English from their associated nationalities.

Who decides the voices that our technology has? Is it a male, female, non-binary voice? Is it soft? High pitched? Is it sensual? Is it hoarse? The voices are personified by geographical designated names and their corresponding accent in English. The prejudice is noticeable.

I recorded the sound of each one of those voices pronouncing “January” and passed them through a variety of filters using a Digital Audio Workstation until January slightly detached from its semantical properties. The musicality of the accents shadowed the meaning of the word, and by the various possibilities of pronouncing one same word, January became a multiplicity of sounds.

How does January sound?
What are its sound properties?
What feelings might the sound of January evoke?


TRASH poems 

Published by La Granja Editorial ︎




I’ve been taking photos in the streets of San Francisco from 2017
I wrote a poem for every one of them
Photos and poems inhabit this jar as TRASH
Their subjects inhabit the streets
Day after day
Living and non-living inhabit the unseen

Desde que llegué a esta ciudad, he estado fotografiando el suelo.
Día tras día, me cruzo con los mismos objetos inanimados.
Ante la falta de comunicación, les escribo un poema.
Vivos e inanimados habitan las calles de San Francisco.




Caja poética 

Objetos sin lugar asignado encuentran su sitio en una caja de lugares designados.

Lost objects without a fixed place at home found their place in a box of designated places.


                                                                                                                                  
Medidas



Una calle madrileña

Published in THE EYE 
Carta a Marcel

Published in THE EYE
GLORIA DIVERSA Contestando a los versos de Gloria Fuertes From Caoscopia, Proyecto Genoma Poético
yo quisiera haber sido del circo

si no existieran los payasos


desde siempre las frutas se cogen del árbol

o de la tragaperras


aún con la boca llena de tierra

Diles Que No Me Maten


algunos nunca tuvieron nada

como pan sin nocilla


ven a jugar al “no me da la gana” 

El mundo no necesita un modelo original


¡Queremos helado! ¡Queremos helado!

para mí de pistacho

y para ti de nata con un barquillito    


Frito-Lay

Published in Food& 






Deprived
You want to erase a shadow,

                                                                and I want to make it sound.
Empty Set
2021
Recovecos I
2019

Lisa Croner
Giuliana Funkhouser
Svetlana Gayshan
Jeff Maylath
Lexygius Sanchez Calip
Samuel de Lemos
Blanca Bercial
Recovecos is the Spanish word for nooks, hidden places, and hideouts. Recovecos aims to bring wordsin place to reverberate their messages further than a hidden corner can sustain. To reclaim words place in the arts, to be shown, to be shared, and finally, to be heard.
This project started in the summer of 2019, and has continued with Recovecos II and III. Every exhibition is a different conversation between artists that play with the duality of language, with the texts that intermingle in our everyday life, and with the postmodern clarity of meaning with words. Curated by Blanca Bercial and Samuel De Lemos, Recovecos is an ongoing project, where the expectations are left to the possibilities of language and the discourse that flow from artists works in conversation.


Recovecos II
2020

Jeff Maylath
Lexygius Sanchez Calip
Liu Sang Chi
Miles Stemp
Shao Yan
Samuel de Lemos
Blanca Bercial
Recovecos III
2020

Tamara Khasanova
Jeff Maylath
Lexygius Sanchez Calip
Miles Stemp
Christian Tan
Zhang Mengjiao
Samuel de Lemos
Blanca Bercial
A ras del suelo / 2023

El lazo izquierdo narra la historia de una paloma que quiere ser humana; el derecho sobre una humana que quiere ser paloma. 

Ojo! Se lee al ras. 

The shoelace on the left narrates the story of a pigeon who wants to be human; the one on the right of a human who wants to be a pigeon.

Note: They can only be read close to the ground. 
Poems down to earth / 2023
Pffffffffffff Vol.II / 2023
Pfffffffffffffff / 2022-23
Audio Book / 2020 Wood, back spray, mylar, cord
((Transmitting sound ))


Handle with Care / 2020 Pins, nails, fishing hooks, fabric, metal wire



Handle with Care / 2020
Typewriter on petals

Anne Bremer Memorial Library’s 37th Artists’ Book Contest Award




︎︎ 
Trash poems / 2019

Shredded poems in a jar

Anne Bremer Memorial Library’s 36th Artists’ Book Contest Award
I’ve been taking photos in the streets of San Francisco from 2017
I wrote a poem for every one of them
Photos and poems inhabit this jar as TRASH
Their subjects inhabit the streets
Day after day
Living and non-living inhabit the unseen 

Following myself / 2023

Letter to the Noonan Building East Wall / 2023

Just a letter for the wall. 
Silent Due Dates / 2019 - (ongoing)
I am stamping the due date on the first page of every book I borrow from the San Francisco Public Library, using white ink on white paper. The date can barely be seen. It is my silent mark and complaint to libraries stopping leaving physical trace of the borrowing history on books.

Ongoing action~



Smoking Poems / 2022


Ink on smoking paper
Tobacco

Each cigarette has one thought that occured while walking around San Francisco. 

I invite the audience to smoke my poems. 
Pfffffffffffff





Llanuari / 2022
Phonetic transcription & Listening score

Ink on paper
Typewriter on paper
How does January sound?
Google answers > jan·yoo·eh·ree

I have found an online voice generator where I could type any word to be pronounced by different voices.

“Insert your text here”
“January”

Next to it, there was a scrolling drop-down where I could choose from over 20 names:

Alex, Fred, Samantha, Victoria, Daniel, Fiona, Karen, Moira, Rishi, Tessa, Veena, Alice, Alva, Amelie, Anna, Carmit, Damayanti, Diego, Ellen, Ioana, Joana, Jorge, Juan, Kanya, Kyoko, Laura, Lekha, Luca, Luciana, Maged, Mariska, Mei-Jia, Melina, Milena, Monica, Nora, Paulina, Sara, Satu, Sin-ji, Thomas, Ting-Ting, Xander, Yelda , Yuna, Yuri, Zosia, Zuzana.

I could choose for each one of them to read January out loud.  

The pronunciation of “January” replicates strong accents speaking in English from their associated nationalities.

Who decides the voices that our technology has? Is it a male, female, non-binary voice? Is it soft? High pitched? Is it sensual? Is it hoarse? The voices are personified by geographical designated names and their corresponding accent in English. The prejudice is noticeable.

I recorded the sound of each one of those voices pronouncing “January” and passed them through a variety of filters until January slightly detached from its semantical properties. The musicality of the accents shadowed the meaning of the word, and by the various possibilities of pronouncing one same word, January became a multiplicity of sounds.


How does January sound?
What are its sound properties?
What feelings might the sound of January evoke?

brecha / 2022
Typewriter on paper
Pending Status / WIP
Ink on paper 

This calendar marks the days I have been working on my artist visa application. From March 1, 2021 to (unknown).

An impasse of action, standing by, days pass legally blank. 

The Creek / 2021
El arroyo
Typewriter on paper, water
This is a short story I wrote last year about a creek in my grandma’s village. The story narrates my time spent in the village as a kid and how I grew up thinking that the word ‘creek’ was meant to name a dried road that crossed the village under the sea level and with bridges on top. Of course I grew up and found out what a creek is, and how rivers dried  and the creek no longer crossed my grandma’s village. 

I wrote the story on paper and then submerged it in water. The water gradually washed away the letters, just as the water slowly drained away from the creek in my grandmother's village.


Care / 2020 Handle with Care Series Barbed wire
8.5 in x 23.5 in




Self Care, Health Care, Dental Care, Skin Care, Life Care, Don’t Care, Care Taker, Care Plan, Personal Care, Hair Care, Primary Care, Child Care, Palliative Care, Critical Care, Take Care, Give Care…

Living in San Francisco, I have heard the word ‘care’ countless times, to the extent that I started questioning if this word has lost its meaning due to the extreme use that is made of it. ‘Care’ has become a ready-made word. Yet ‘care,’ like barbed wire, hurts if we are close enough to handle it.


 

Bestiario / 2020
Typewriter on mylar
From Poetry as a Critical Form
How can poetry be translated from one language to another without losing its essence? For this project I have translated Julio Cortazar's first short stories book. (((Bestiario))) consists of 8 short stories narrating monstruos appearances in the daily life of different people. The monsters and the stories in the book are metaphors for the quotidian of the everyday and from the writer's personal and historical context. In an effort to translate the untranslatable, I have translated the eight stories to symbol-based poems. Each pair of symbol-based texts signify one story contained in Cortazar’s book. Through this self-made language, I seek to illustrate the essence of each story in the simplest way possible, and question the use we make of languages, how we shape them, how they shape us in return, and ultimately, how we make sense of them.




Sound Poems Series


Concrete Poems Series

Air Poems Series