María Salgado

María Salgado (b. 1984) is a low-tech poet and a scholar on contemporary poetics. She works with language as the material of texts, audiotexts and performances. She is part of the wild research on poetics & poetry & languageing called Seminario Euraca. She has been working lately with the contemporary musician Fran MM Cabeza de Vaca, searching for some inverted rap, some sound neither musical nor poetic but in between, some simple experiments such as transcription and manipulation of voice recordings in order to explore the potential of an orality / aurality that would bring new kinds of verses, that is: new forms of memory.

Since the first part of El Ranchito residency in Madrid Salgado has tried to make heard, looked at and be read the wealth of feelings like those which have been produced in Madrid since 2011. A great deal of those feelings appear expressed through political phrasing, a substance which despite its apparent transparency provides considerable obscurity and ambiguity. From the saturated and overflowing, from the contradiction and distortion of experiencing the world, and from the subjectivity which just about manages to be captured in the words, she wants to write a kind of textual storyboard for a film (barely visual and with very little narrative) to be filmed; and to produce an audiotext in vinyl format, which could create a treasure of this experience.

María Salgado has published three books of poems and lots of self-edited handmade booklets, zines and pamphlets. She has performed in different cities in and out Madrid, like Mexico DF, New York and Lima.


The residency was realised in context of El Ranchito Finland, co-produced by Matadero Madrid, AECID, Ibero-American Institute of Finland, Embassy of Finland, Madrid, HIAP – Helsinki International Artist Programme and Frame Visual Art Finland.