Contemporary art & critical thinking

I am Montse Badia, art historian and curator of exhibitions and projects. I am co-founder and director of A*DESK. 

I am concerned about the standardization we are experiencing and the loss of rights. I believe that analysis of the past is crucial to understanding the present. I transfer all this to the curatorial practice and to the editorial field based on research and transdisciplinary work.

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Montse Badia, the shared present (Interview Montse Frisach)

 

MONTSE BADIA

Montse Badia (Barcelona, ​​1965) is an independent curator and co-founder and director of the digital platform A*DESK. She studied Art History at the University of Barcelona and took part in the De Appel Curatorial Program in Amsterdam. She works in museums and art centres, independent venues and interventions in the public space, online and in print publications. Among her curatorial projects, ‘Screens and Pastilles’ at ADN Platform (2019) and the Geysers program at the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya (MNAC) (2022-2024) stand out. Badia believes that the function of the curator is ‘to explore issues that are relevant to understanding the world and also to accompany artists in their processes of research and production, and be good interlocutors with the institutions’. In her work she addresses topics such as ‘the standardisation in which we live, the loss of rights and the analysis of the past to understand the present’. One of her benchmarks in curating is Valentín Roma, ‘for the way in which he approaches subjects of great importance and works with and from the context, without being exclusively local’. Badia believes that for art to flourish it needs ‘a good, uncomplicated cultural fabric, one that gives space to artists and cultural professionals to develop projects and create networks of exchange at the local, national and international levels’. For her, ‘the artist is someone who questions things, who looks at them from new perspectives and is receptive to tendencies in society, not to replicate them but to situate her- or himself in a shared present’. She recommends the artists Núria Güell and Enric Farrés-Duran.

NÚRIA GÜELL

Núria Güell (Vidreres, Girona, 1981) views her artistic practice as ‘a socially and politically necessary practice in which the cultural fact and the established are put into play’. Her work process starts with the research and analysis of data and situations, continues with the framing of questions and results in a proposal for action with real impact. She dige deep into issues that create friction while pointing to the legal interstices through which abuses of power or unjust conditions occur: the heritage as the object of illegal actions, financial dynamics linked to tax evasion, immigration laws, the fiscal privileges of the Catholic church, or the working conditions of artists, among others. www.nuriaguell.com

ENRIC FARRÉS DURAN

Enric Farrés Duran (Palafrugell, Girona, 1983) is a teller of stories in which reality and fiction meet and are modified. His work starts from research, coincidences, fortuitous encounters and the possibility of making connections between different places, objects, circumstances and temporalities. His projects may take the form of installations, objects, guided tours or publications. A couple of examples: In Order To Find, You Must First Learn To Hide (2018), a catalogue that is embodied by the artist himself, in the manner of the characters in the novel Fahrenheit 451; Glasses with Museum Glass to Showcase the World (2023), spectacles with special safety glass that questions the mechanisms of the gaze and the normativity associated with art.

 

Projects

The 11th edition of A*LIVE, the multi-layered, transversal and expansive public event programme of A*DESK in collaboration with the Museu de l’Art Prohibit, on 6/11/2024 at 7:30 p.m.

In the ongoing debate about access to knowledge, censorship, fake news, distraction tactics, screen dependency, and the decline in critical thinking, A*LIVE 2024 delves into the concept of Radical Cuteness.

Radical Cuteness

The influence of memes and “cute” in popular culture is a radical part of collective imagination, from examples of sexualization of military propaganda, violence, to ways of radicalization in different areas through tenderness. Radical Cuteness aims to unmask the mechanisms that, based on subliminal strategies of seduction – the adorable, the childish, the tender, the vulnerable, the fragile, the soft – influence, disturb and confuse in order to reprogram minds. This approach questions the cultural and political meanings behind these aesthetics. Such disruptive mechanisms are increasingly more internal than external and go beyond prohibition to deploy their control from a veritable psychological warfare that the digital environment only intensifies. We see it through the massive presence on the Internet of very popular and attractive DIY products, in which subliminal aspects shape the collective consciousness, introducing supremacist messages.

A*LIVE 2024, Radical Cuteness

A*LIVE 2024, Radical Cuteness
Subliminal Strategies: Prohibition and Control: Unraveling the Power of Psychological Warfare in the Digital Age

A*LIVE 2024, Radical Cuteness delves into these themes from an agile and dynamic structure. To do so, it has Nuria Gómez Gabriel as master of ceremonies and host of the event; the screening of the video Nation Estate (2011) by the artist Larissa Sansour; performance conference by Noura Tafeche and Alex Quicho. The graphic image and visuals of the project that introduce the different sections are by the artists Momu & No Es.  A*LIVE 2024 event is completed with a Q&A section, led by the responsibles of A*DESK, Montse Badia and Maria Muñoz.

Más info

Núria Güell closes the first cycle of the public programme Geysers (curated by Montse Badia) with a lecture entitled NATIONAL HERITAGE. New temporary exhibition at the MNAC, 2024.

The artist makes public her extensive research into the little-known function of museums as custodians of works of art that undergo some judicial process. A search inside and outside the museum and the result of multiple conversations with professionals in the management, security and registration of works of art in heritage centres.

Núria Güell’s proposal takes the form of a conference in which she compiles this entire process, to evoke an exhibition curated, no longer by art specialists, but by the courts of justice.

Núria Güell understands her artistic practice “as a socially and politically necessary practice in which the cultural fact and the established are put into play.” Her work process starts with the research and analysis of data and situations, continues with the posing of questions and, finally, with a proposal for action with real impact.

In her research at the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, she focuses on a little-known but common function of museums: that of safeguarding works that are in judicial custody, that is, those assets (works of art) that judges proceed to secure as litigious assets when a seizure or confiscation is decreed in a legal case.

Núria Güell delves into this role of custodian, which clearly falls within the functions of the museum (as defined by UNESCO, “the institution at the service of society that researches, collects, conserves, interprets and exhibits tangible and intangible heritage”) but which, at the same time, reveals the other side of the notion of heritage associated with humanistic values, knowledge, beauty or goodness. Precisely because of their value, works of art are also subject to looting, falsification or illegal acquisitions.

In order to delve deeper into the frictions generated by definitions of heritage value arising from non-legitimised narratives, Núria Güell’s proposal takes the form of a conference in which she compiles her entire research process, to evoke an exhibition curated not by art specialists but by the courts of justice. With this project, Núria Güell invites us to re-evaluate the dichotomy between idealised notions of cultural preservation and the legal complexities underlying the custody of art in a contemporary social context.

Video of the lecture

 

Texts

The twenty-five years that separate 1999 from 2024 constitute a period of time that has radically changed everything. The Internet and digitization have transformed the world we live in: how we move, how we relate, how we travel, how we communicate, how we receive and disseminate information. The world of art is not left out. The year 2000 meant the transition to an inescapable globalization and not without negative consequences, and we are suffering from it now. Countless possibilities have opened up to travel and access everything that is happening on the other side of the world but, at the same time, this openness has diversified, multiplied and made precarious the number of cultural agents operating around the world.

Artistic mobility

The internationalization or the presence of Catalan creation on the international scene, in the twenties and thirties of the last century, had as its main milestone, first, the trip to Paris, in order to learn about the most avant-garde artistic trends and be part of them and , later, in New York. In the sixties and seventies, the diaspora of Catalan artists took this same route, in Paris (Rabascall, Miralda, Rossell) and New York (Muntadas, Torres). From the 2000s, the mobility of the artistic sector is favored by the ease of travel (with the cheapening of airplane prices), a little more moderate nowadays.

In the mid-1990s, international curatorial programs emerged at Le Magasin, De Appel, Bard College or Goldsmith, which involved mobility and the creation of work and exchange networks. The same happens with artistic residencies, which continue to play a fundamental role for temporary situations of research and production.

Without intending to make an exhaustive tour here, we will stop at some specific moments in which the will to be and do within the international panorama, with more or less fortune, has played a relevant role.

Exchanges and international representation

In this sense, it is necessary to distinguish between institutional representation and the cultural policies that make it possible and organic exchange, concrete people who live and work in other geographical places and who play an active role in the international scene, either on a personal level (we remember the role of “hosts” in Berlin by the artist Chema Alvargonzález or in New York by Muntadas) or, from their institutions (such as the cases of Martí Manen in Stockholm, Chus Martínez in Basel or Marta Gili in France ), without ceasing to be part of the Catalan context while creating links and fabric.

When we talk about institutional representation we have to go back to the creation, in 1991, of the Catalan Consorci de Promoció Exterior de la Cultura (COPEC), which explicitly introduced the axis of internationalization to Catalan cultural policy. Since then, actions have been taken to promote this representation, either through specific exchange policies, aid or the appearance of institutions such as the Ramon Llull Institute, in 2002, with the aim of promoting the outside the Catalan language and culture.

A review of CONCA’s annual reports, since 2010, shows how in the years in which the economic crisis and precariousness have not occupied the central arguments, the focus is on the need for internationalization and keys are provided for new models based on institutional coordination, strategic events and impact on training.

Whether from the Ramon Llull Institute, the OSIC, the ICEC, city councils or the Ministry of Culture, it is essential to promote through grants for mobility both for artists, professional critics and curators or galleries for participate in international fairs or also for the translation into other languages of texts about artists.

Desperate optimism

Another important aspect is the presence of creation made in Catalonia at biennials, fairs and other international events. Since 2009, the Ramon Llull Institute has been promoting the Catalan Pavilion in Venice, “the great event” of contemporary art, often with risky and innovative bets. As an example, we remember The Unconfessable Community, curated by Valentín Roma (2009), or Llim, by the artist Lara Fluxà (2022).

But, when talking about strategic events to promote the internationalization of the context, organized from Catalonia, we often start with great expectations that are not always met. We remember the Triennial Barcelona Art Report, which had its first and only edition in 2001. Recently, the MACBA within the [contra]panorama program dedicated a study to it by Antonio Gagliano and Verónica Lahitte Reconstruction: Barcelona Art Report [ 2001], with a precise diagnosis: “There is a kind of desperate optimism in the repeated attempts of triennials or biennials to define the present and plant their flag in the future. They are always somehow late for the appointment. The accelerated temporality with which the art system adopts and considers its subjects of interest to be exhausted only increases this feeling that everything grows old quickly. Now that the future has ceased to be the repository of all the unfulfilled promises of modernity and has become a source of planetary anxieties, what is the point of continuing to organize biennials?”.

Strategic alliances

The desire to join international strategic events is accompanied by the consolidation of these through the creation of “franchises”. We constantly see this in successful festivals in other disciplines, such as Sónar or Primavera Sound. This is the case of the presence in Barcelona of Ars Electrònica (2021), a pioneering event in art and technology that expanded from its original location in Linz to different locations around the world. Surely, participation in this type of event contributes to better local coordination when developing joint projects that articulate part of the sector.

Another example is the celebration of Manifesta 15 in the metropolitan area of Barcelona (September – November 2024). From its previous nomadic contemporary art biennial format, it has become a project to propose models for the challenges that cities and regions face. Very pertinent, if it weren’t for the fact that its definition and execution is centralized from the management of the Manifesta Foundation in the Netherlands.

The evaluation of all these initiatives is linked to the management of resources. A balance is needed when allocating public resources to events that are considered strategic, as long as they do not go to the detriment of the weakest part of the sector, artists and other independent professionals who, let’s not forget, constitute the most important part in the generation and consolidation of the artistic and cultural fabric.

[Article published in Bonart 200, September 2024 – February 2025]

"It is crucial to revalue art and culture, highlighting their social impact. Institutions must focus on quality and sustainability rather than speed. The system is saturated and unsustainable, and it is time to reinvent itself."

Montse Badía