Folklore deals with events of historic relevance and parallel stories recorded in the collective “folk” memory. Employing modest aesthetics and unrehearsed speech to narrate these stories, Esquivias weaves together unrelated facts, presenting history-making as a democratic, continuous, permeable and participatory activity. In fact the lecture is seen through the eyes and hands of the lecturer. We follow her manually selecting and reselecting a scrapbook of visual images, consulting hand written notes and watching the clock.
In Folklore I (2006), Esquivias continually returns to two distinct threads. Commencing with the 36 year dictatorship in Spain, she enters the personal trajectory of Franco protégé Jesús Gil who abuses his position of minor power, amasses a small fortune, purchases a soccer club and dies, after betting that he could eat twenty fried eggs in one go. The other narrative follows the rise and decline of rave music events in Valencia, which began some years after Franco’s death on 1975. However, of the apparently liberating parties that took place, we mostly learn about the drug abuse and tragic road accidents that accompanied them.