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.

News

Montse Badia, the shared present

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.

 

Curador(es) in situ. Entrevista por José A. Aristazábal

Montse Badía: “Ser crítica i comissaria és partir d’un pensament crític que pots aplicar de diferents maneres”

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Projects

A*LIVE: Radical Cuteness

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; a 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.

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National Heritage. New Temporary Exhibition at MNAC

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

 

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Texts

Tomorrow is the question

In June 2020, Berlin’s legendary techno club Berghain, closed during the pandemic, reopened to present the Studio Berlin exhibition, featuring work by 117 artists living in the city. One of them, Rirkrit Tiravanija, presented an installation outside the building with the phrase “Morgen ist die Frage” [Tomorrow is the question].

Four years later, this phrase and this reference to Tiravanija appear in the work Totentanz. Morgen ist die Frage, by the company La Veronal, a creation that was presented at the Teatre Lliure and that brings together an installation, a video and a performance that brings medieval dances of death into the present.

There are many parallels between the medieval era and the present. If the former was a time of wars, plagues, misrule, banditry, insurrection, religious divisions and schisms, in the present moment, called technofeudalism by the economist Yanis Varoufakis, the feudal lords are the owners of the “cloud capital” and the rest of us are serfs, a new system of exploitation that causes inequality to increase. Indefiniteness and uncertainty reopen wounds, frustrations, millennial fears and become fertile ground for simple and populist missives. The medieval dances of death were a way of overcoming fear. The fear of death and insecurity; a fear that in our societies is also associated with the loss of values and an overreaction to ward it off through excess (of images, productions, noises, activities, opinions…). The final video of Totentanz, with an avalanche of images of an overflowing present (wars, violence, parties, masses, protests, genocides…), leaves us breathless. Perhaps this is the current way of neutralizing fears, with an excess of images and noises that hypnotizes us. While this state of shock lasts, censorship reigns with total impunity (the one that asks not to make compromising political statements, point out injustices or, directly, cancels).

But the dances of death are also a catharsis after which new things can emerge. The Middle Ages were not a uniform period, but between the 11th and 15th centuries the foundations of the Renaissance were laid, as well as a scientific interest in the investigation of nature, empirical knowledge and the phenomena of the universe. In the present, aspects of different moments coexist, the difference being that all those changes that in the past took centuries can now take place in a few years. It is essential to be attentive to analytical analogies to understand the current international system, but unlike how scholars of international politics or sociology would do it, those who can best work on these analogies are the artists who, in a free way, generate spaces for thought and lucidity.

[Article published in Bonart, March 2025]

Making visible for change?

Making visible for change? About institutional critique, institutionalized critique and constituent practices

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"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

Guèisers, at the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya – MNAC Canal
Group 8 Path Group 3 Group 3 Fill 1
FINANCIADO POR LA UNIÓN EUROPEA CON EL PROGRAMA KIT DIGITAL POR LOS FONDOS NEXT GENERATION (EU) DEL MECANISMO DE RECUPERACIÓN Y RESILIENCIA