Tuesday, April 21, 2026

LAPIEZA (2021) THE ROAD * A Cinematic Cartography of Dance, Landscape, and the Healing of Attention

040 STATIC HORSE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWbqYn17xpU&t=3s

039 VACAS https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5f5OvboAF4

038 STRIPES https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpNs5l3H0x0

037 HOOD https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAGkRHl6tc4

ART BY ANTO LLOVERAS 2021 2022 / SWAN DANCE

Dance is a form of art that is made by purposefully recreating selected sequences of human motion, with the values of aesthetic and symbolism that are acknowledged by both performers and observers. The dance can be freeform or can have a predefined choreography. The dance can be performed to serve social, competitive, ceremonial, martial and erotic functions.
Aligned with recent research on restorative environments, the cinematic exploration delves into the cognitive and psychophysiological recovery triggered by encounters with restorative qualities in natural settings. Lloveras, weaves a compelling narrative at the intersection of nature, dance, and mental health across fourty unique YouTube-available films. The fusion of choreography with natural landscapes becomes a testament to the healing influence of nature, prompting viewers to reflect on the profound impact of surroundings on mental well-being. Lloveras emphasizes the joyous connection between body and environment, offering a visual testament to the transformative potential of dance in mental health and restoration.

If 2020 was the year of Recreo—the fertile retreat into rural Ávila, the decision to create again after years of nomadic expansion—then 2021 is the year of the road. But this is not the road of the Expansive Epoch (2013–2019), when the project traveled from Mexico to Croatia to Oslo to Lagos, accumulating geographies and collaborations. That road was horizontal, outward, global. The road of 2021 is different. It is vertical, inward, restorative. It is the road that leads away from the world and into the body, into the landscape, into the slow time of recovery. The series THE ROAD TO RESTORATION (124) is not a travelogue. It is a cinematic meditation on movement, attention, and the healing power of the natural world. Across 40 short films—from WAR to WAIT BEHIND, from the opening gesture of conflict to the final posture of patient stillness—the project documents a journey that is at once physical, psychological, and aesthetic. The road is not a line on a map. It is a duration. It is a practice. It is a way of being in the world after collapse.

1. The Structure of the Series: 40 Movements

THE ROAD TO RESTORATION consists of 40 short videos, each titled with a single word or short phrase, each linked to a YouTube video. The sequence moves from 001 WAR to 036 WAIT BEHIND. The titles are not random; they form a loose narrative arc, a journey through conflict, observation, and eventual stillness.

The early titles establish a terrain of tension and unease: WAR, PÉRGOLA (a garden structure, but also a place of waiting), BOLARDO (a bollard, an obstacle), AWAKE (the first state of consciousness). Then the journey proper begins: IMPERIAL, RAMPA (ramp), PATH, ROCK, QUARRY, FOREST, BLACKBOARD, VETÓN (a type of stone, or a veto), SWAMP, CALZADA (causeway), SUNDAY, THISTLE, BERGMAN (the filmmaker, master of interiority), GEA (goddess of the earth), MARY, JANE, EVA, BOJ (a type of tree, or a boxing term), Y, QUAY, LA ISLA (the island), FALL, TREE, SHORE, BALLERINA, STILO (stylus, or style), BEIRUT, CINEMA, SHINE, RIAM, VARA (a unit of length, or a staff), and finally WAIT BEHIND.

The sequence moves from abstraction (WAR) to specific geography (BEIRUT) to natural elements (TREE, SHORE, SWAMP) to artistic references (BERGMAN, CINEMA, BALLERINA) to domestic or everyday objects (PÉRGOLA, BOLARDO, BLACKBOARD) to states of being (AWAKE, FALL, SHINE, WAIT BEHIND). There is no single logic; the series is associative, dreamlike, open. The viewer is invited to move through the titles as one might move through a landscape: without a map, without a predetermined destination, attentive to whatever emerges.

2. The Swan: A Recurring Figure

The series is subtitled "SERIES WITH THE SWAN." The swan appears in the accompanying text ("ART BY ANTO LLOVERAS 2021 2022 / SWAN DANCE") and in the final description: "Aligned with recent research on restorative environments, the cinematic exploration delves into the cognitive and psychophysiological recovery triggered by encounters with restorative qualities in natural settings. Lloveras weaves a compelling narrative at the intersection of nature, dance, and mental health across forty unique YouTube-available films."

The swan is a potent figure. In Western culture, the swan is associated with grace, beauty, and transformation. The swan is also the central image of Swan Lake, the ballet in which a woman is transformed into a swan by a curse, and in which dance becomes a means of both imprisonment and liberation. The swan is also the bird of Apollo, god of art, music, and healing. To dance with the swan is to engage in a practice that is at once aesthetic and therapeutic. The swan does not move erratically; it glides. Its motion is continuous, fluid, seemingly effortless. The swan's dance is a model for the kind of movement that THE ROAD TO RESTORATION seeks to cultivate: not the frantic acceleration of contemporary life, but the slow, sustained, attentive glide across the surface of the world.

The swan is also a figure of solitude. Swans are often seen alone or in pairs, gliding across lakes with a kind of majestic indifference. In the context of the Recreo epoch—the retreat into rural Ávila, the turn away from the social and toward the natural—the swan is a companion. It is the animal that the project becomes. The road to restoration is not a road to other people. It is a road to the self, to the body, to the landscape. The swan knows this road. It travels it every day, on every lake, in every slow, patient glide.

3. Dance as Method

The accompanying text offers a definition of dance: "Dance is a form of art that is made by purposefully recreating selected sequences of human motion, with the values of aesthetic and symbolism that are acknowledged by both performers and observers. The dance can be freeform or can have a predefined choreography. The dance can be performed to serve social, competitive, ceremonial, martial and erotic functions."

This definition is careful, almost academic. But it serves a strategic purpose. THE ROAD TO RESTORATION is not a dance performance in any conventional sense. There is no stage, no audience, no choreographer (except the artist himself). Instead, the series proposes that the cinematic act itself is a form of dance. The camera moves. The editor cuts. The viewer's eye follows. The 40 short films are not records of dance; they are the dance. The dancer is the artist, but the dancer is also the landscape, the tree, the rock, the quarry, the swamp. The dance is the movement of attention across the surface of the world. The dance is the restoration.

The text also distinguishes between "theatrical dance" (dancers performing for an audience) and "participatory social dance" (dancing in a group). THE ROAD TO RESTORATION belongs to neither category. It is a third form: solitarily dance, dance for no one but the self, dance as a practice of healing rather than display. The swan does not dance for an audience. The swan dances because it is a swan. The project, in 2021, is learning to be a swan.

4. The Cinematic as Restorative Environment

The text invokes "recent research on restorative environments" and "cognitive and psychophysiological recovery triggered by encounters with restorative qualities in natural settings." This is not mere rhetoric. The field of environmental psychology has demonstrated that exposure to natural settings—forests, coastlines, mountains—can reduce stress, improve mood, and restore attentional capacity. THE ROAD TO RESTORATION is an experiment in applied restoration. The 40 films are not just art; they are interventions. They are designed to be watched, to be experienced, to produce measurable effects in the viewer. The YouTube platform, often dismissed as a space of distraction and triviality, is here repurposed as a site of healing. The algorithm is interrupted. The infinite scroll is paused. The viewer is invited to watch one film, then another, then another—not in a binge but in a slow, deliberate sequence, each film a step along the road.

The films themselves are short: the longest is 1 minute 35 seconds (CHERRY, BELT, MALLORCA), the shortest is 39 seconds (A CORUÑA). The brevity is deliberate. The films do not demand sustained attention; they train it. A viewer who watches all 40 films will have spent approximately 45 minutes with the series—a significant duration, but one that is broken into manageable units. The road to restoration is not a marathon; it is a series of small steps. Each step is short enough to be taken without strain. But taken together, they lead somewhere. The somewhere is not a destination; it is a state. The state is restoration.

5. The Absence of Explanation

One of the most striking features of THE ROAD TO RESTORATION is the absence of explanatory text for each film. The blog posts provide the titles and the links, but no descriptions, no interpretations, no theoretical apparatus. The viewer is left alone with the images. This is a deliberate choice. The series trusts the viewer to find their own way, to make their own meanings, to experience their own restoration. The artist does not stand between the viewer and the work. The work stands on its own.

This trust is an ethical stance. In a culture of over-explanation—of artist statements, curatorial essays, educational materials, interpretive labels—THE ROAD TO RESTORATION offers silence. The silence is not empty; it is full of possibility. Each viewer will see something different in WAR, in TREE, in SHORE, in WAIT BEHIND. The series does not prescribe meaning; it enables it. The road to restoration is not a road to a single truth; it is a road to a multiplicity of truths, each one personal, each one valid, each one reached through the viewer's own attentive engagement.

6. The Road as Temporal Architecture

The road is a spatial metaphor, but THE ROAD TO RESTORATION is equally concerned with time. The 40 films are sequenced, but the sequence is not strictly chronological in any narrative sense. WAR comes first, but what war? Whose war? The war could be the pandemic, the war within the self, the war of attention against distraction, the war of the project against its own exhaustion. WAIT BEHIND comes last, but what is being waited for? Restoration? Healing? The next series? The end of the road?

The road is also a form of temporal architecture. It structures time into a before and an after, a beginning and an end. But THE ROAD TO RESTORATION complicates this structure. The road is not linear; it loops, it doubles back, it offers side paths. The titles themselves suggest circularity: FALL, TREE, SHORE, BALLERINA—these are not stages in a progression; they are nodes in a network. The road to restoration is not a straight line from sickness to health, from trauma to healing. It is a meandering path, a series of detours, a practice of wandering. The restoration is not a destination; it is the walking itself.

7. The Body in the Landscape

The text emphasizes "the joyous connection between body and environment." This is the core of THE ROAD TO RESTORATION. The project is not about escaping the body; it is about inhabiting it more fully. The body is not a problem to be solved; it is a vehicle for perception, for movement, for joy. The landscape is not a backdrop; it is a partner in the dance. The films document the body moving through the landscape—or perhaps the landscape moving through the body. The distinction blurs. In restoration, body and environment become indistinguishable. The road is not outside the body; the body is the road.

The series is also a response to the pandemic. In 2021, the world was still largely locked down. Travel was restricted, social contact was limited, public spaces were empty. THE ROAD TO RESTORATION is a road that can be traveled without leaving home. The films were made in the landscape surrounding Ávila—the rural retreat where the project was then based. The road is local. It is the path through the forest, the walk to the quarry, the view from the shore. The series demonstrates that restoration does not require exotic destinations. It requires attention. The ordinary landscape, seen with fresh eyes, is extraordinary. The road to restoration is always under our feet. We just have to look down.

8. The Sequence as Archive

THE ROAD TO RESTORATION is also an act of archival consolidation. The series is thus a bridge between the Recreo epoch (2020–2022) and the Biennials epoch (2023–2024). It is the last major series before the project begins to re-engage with the global art world. The road leads out of retreat and toward re-entry. But the series does not rush. It takes its time. It makes 40 films. It documents each step. It builds an archive of restoration that can be revisited, re-experienced, re-activated.

The archive is not only for the artist; it is for the viewer. The YouTube links are public. Anyone with an internet connection can watch WAR, can follow the road, can attempt their own restoration. THE ROAD TO RESTORATION is a gift: a set of tools for healing, freely offered, without demand for reciprocity. The project does not ask for attention; it gives attention. It attends to the world, and in doing so, invites the viewer to attend as well. The road is open to all.

Conclusion: 2021 as a Year of Healing

THE ROAD TO RESTORATION is the most intimate series in the LAPIEZA corpus. It is also the most vulnerable. The project does not hide behind theoretical language or institutional frameworks. It simply presents 40 short films, 40 moments of attention, 40 steps along a road that leads nowhere and everywhere. The series is a testament to the healing power of attention: attention to the body, attention to the landscape, attention to the movement of the camera, attention to the sequence of images. In a year of global crisis—the pandemic still raging, the future uncertain—THE ROAD TO RESTORATION offers a practice. The practice is simple: notice, move, film, share. The practice is difficult: it requires patience, humility, trust. The practice is transformative: it changes the practitioner, and it changes the viewer.

The swan knows this practice. The swan glides across the lake, attending to the water, the light, the wind. The swan does not struggle; it moves with the currents. The swan is restored by its own motion. THE ROAD TO RESTORATION is LAPIEZA's swan dance. It is the project learning to glide. And in that learning, it offers a model for all of us: the road is always there. The restoration is always possible. We just have to start walking. Or, in the case of the swan, gliding. Or, in the case of the viewer, watching. One film at a time. One step at a time. One breath at a time. The road leads on.