Any understanding of social and cultural change is impossible without the knowledge of the way media reshape our environment. We are more and more used to wars that are initiated in primetime, to presidents who visit the troops for Thanksgiving with fake Turkeys, to football players who are more glamorous and photogenic than good players, to armies which use inflatable tanks to give a powerful impression, to know all the details of the sexual affair of a president or to people who agrees in being operated in front of the cameras…

“We have gone from the public space to the public image. The traditional city is organised around a public place, agora, forum or square. Starting with the 20th century, this space has been occupied by meeting rooms. Just think of the role of cinema in society over the last 40 years or of television nowadays. The primary city is a city in which what predominates is the public space, it is topical, whereas in the 20th century the city is no longer so bound up with this. We go from the theatre-city to the cinema-city and then to the tele-city. From a topical space to a teletopical space, in which the real time of the broadcasting of an event is imposed on the real space of the event itself. Tiananmen Square in 1989 was an extraordinary revelation. Here we had a teletopical event of the mass communications media as important as the landing on the moon twenty years before, in 1969.”1

With this declaration, Paul Virilio sketches a perfect portrait of what we might define today as the global public sphere, determined by the leading role of electronic technologies of communication and information, which redraw the system of relations that connects the history of private life to a dynamic system of global information, and which reduces factors such as location to secondary status. Actually, up to the time of the pinnacle of heavy industry as the leading economic factor, information or knowledge had been clearly located on specific places, administrated and communicated by specific people. With the rise global media, networks and communication, those places had become more abstract and the administration of these resources had become more anonymous. Likewise, chronological time – by nature extended – has been transformed into an intensive time of instantaneous novelties in which the individual, momentary gaze is more important than memory.

The global public sphere and the role played by the media in the (re)creation and (re)definition of reality have a great impact on the present. All the media reshape us completely. They are so persuasive in their personal, political, economic, aesthetic, psychological, moral, ethical, and social consequences, that they leave no part of us untouched or unaffected.

We live in a processed world. Mediatisation could be identified in many respects metaphorically with the concept of projection. In this sense, in both something is processed (information shaped as images and texts) to a point that the degree of visibility is directly proportional to the distance. Information moves instantaneously and globally. But this availability makes information also more vulnerable. To stay in the metaphor: Projections have their optimum of readability if they are projected onto flat surfaces. As soon as they hit a real spatial reality, projections reveal their potential of distortion and manipulation, which in fact is the other side, their real nature. This is known since the virtual space (the seemingly space of paintings and screens) has been described in the early Renaissance with the geometry of linear perspective. The form in which appeared this knowledge is called “anamorphosis”, and is based on an extreme use of this geometry. A famous example is the mural of a cupola in the church of St. Ignatius in Rom, done by Andrea Pozzo. Only from a specific point of view, which is marked on the ground of the church, the painted architecture is present as a perfect illusion. From any other point of view the painted form decline in more or less readable relics of perception. The geometry of lineal perspective (and with it the one of the “Anamorphosis”) has determined the most significant part of the picture production in western civilization during the last 500 years –and it still does in the mass media.“The medium is the message” of Marshall McLuhan is now truer than he could ever imagine. Through media such as the telephone, television, the personal computer and the Internet, we are increasingly linked together across the globe. We can now hear and see events taking place very far away in a matter of seconds, often quicker than we hear of events in our own neighbourhood.

This is exactly what Marshall McLuhan predicted: ‘“Time” has ceased, ‘space’ has vanished. We now live in a global village… a simultaneous happening.”2 The broadcast images of the I Gulf War are a good example of McLuhan’s vision, and go even further. Watching the missiles approaching their target from the point of view of the pilot or the rocket, we do not experience the events solely through our own ears and eyes. Through technology we bring the action closer to us, so the pilot can get a better shot, but this also enables us to stay at a safe physical distance.

The TV screen has transformed into a computer game with invisible victims. Media and victims, media and war have been always together… “There is no war without photography” said Ernst Jünger in 1930. In the recent Iraq Attacks (and let’s not forget the media name of the operation, “Enduring Freedom”) war reporters who accompanied soldiers, filmed and recorded the comments of the soldiers on shots, and their impressions after having hit their targets. In contrast to this depiction the victims were treated as collateral damage and broadcasted as humans of real flesh and blood. In the war against “the enemies of America” there are still different rules concerning what can be or can’t be shown: the images of the corpses of the sons of Saddam can be shown all over the world, but not the coffins of the American soldiers; Saddam in the moment of the capture, but not the American prisoners. But also, the preservation of these rules has interstices in between, and forbidden images or information are filtrated: the bloodcurdling images of the tortures to Iraqian prisoners in the jail of Abu Ghraib…

Paradoxically enough, we live in a time of “transparency” and “lightness”: the glass is dominating in architecture (with the glass cupola of the Reichtag in Berlin as an paradigm of the transparency of the political class), and even, the former Inner Minister Angel Acebes was insisting in “transparency” as a value when he was communicating news (100% manipulated) during the eve of the Spanish Elections last March. We may like it or dislike it, but television plays a central role in configuring the way society thinks. As Barbara Nierhoff points out: “The mirror of the media age is the television screen.”3 Television transforms events into ideas in the social imagination (It is not a coincidence that the main character of the film Good bye Lenin recreates the reality of the former DDR, specially TV news, to avoid her mother the shock of waking up from a coma and witness that all her values and understanding of life have fallen apart). What does not appear on TV does not exist socially and, in this sense, live broadcasting is a conceptual revolution, which allows us to be at a distance and at the same time in the place where things are happening. The spectator is physically distant but emotionally close, participating in the broadcast event. Watching becomes more important than living4. The ritual assembly in front of the TV for a live transmission is a way of identifying, of sharing the same sensibility, with other anonymous -and this is new – spectators. The events, which are broadcast life are related to universal arguments: the conquest (the landing of a man on the moon), rites of passage (coronations, royal weddings or funerals), the reward (the Oscar awards)5, etc. Broadcasting live follows a strict script in which everything is planned until the latest detail. That’s why the live event is only 100% live when the script is disrupted and the camera movements appear nervous and imprecise. One of the first examples of this was in 1969 on a local TV station in Dallas, when a banal conversation between two ladies was interrupted by a nervous journalist announcing Kennedy’s murder.

The efficiency of the attacks of September 11th was carefully planned not only as regards their physical, political, economic and sociologic consequences, but also their media impact. With almost perfect timing, the 15 minutes which separated the impact of the first plane on the North Tower and the shock to the South Tower allowed all the TV channels in the world to connect up and witness the second impact and subsequent collapse live. After the initial confusion, the images of the impacts were repeated again and again, and, after a while, they returned to the script: to the individual stories of the victims.

In the politics of the age before TV, charisma was the most important element of leadership, it being that rare ability of leaders to inspire loyalty and faith in the legitimacy of their autonomy. In the age of TV, political charisma as an intrinsic characteristic of personality has been substituted by charm, a value susceptible of being designed, implanted and retouched. Political images, polls and voter preferences are extremely sensitive to charm. Each time a politician makes a public speech, there is a meticulous art direction work, which defines if the politician has to wear formal or casual clothes, or even military uniform, and also there is a strict casting of the people who appear next to him. But from time to time, this rigid scenario is broken and makes evident all these mechanisms, as it happened during a speech of George Bush in Orange County (Florida) when a 12 year old boy, situated in the stage close to the president, couldn’t stop yawning during the 15 minutes of Bush’ speech for desperation of the other extras in the scene, not to talk about the president’s image advisers.

“We live in a time of fictive election results, which decide a fictive president, who send us to a war for fictive reasons”. This is the way the filmmaker Michael Moore referred to our present during the Oscar ceremony award in March 2003. Politicians do not rule the world anymore, the world is now ruled by commercial interest and lobbies, which have more power than the political debates. Recently, the magazine Forbes published a survey of the 50 more powerful people in the world. There was not a single politician in this survey, but directors of multinationals or economical empires. In these days of the end of ideologies and mass-unemployment, as a result of globalisation and technisation of work, entertainment becomes the super-ideology of TV discourse, not only through TV series, sitcoms and soap operas but also through a new concept, infotainment (information and entertainment) now derived into wartainment6 (war and entertainment), according to which wars are initiated in primetime and the countdown of the 48 previous hours becomes a TV show. The massive cult of serials reached one of its apexes during the war in Croatia, whose intensity decreased whenever Croatian TV was broadcasting a new episode of the soap opera Santa Barbara. For an hour the audience could forget the cruelties of war to identify collectively with the problems, setbacks, love affairs and revelations of family secrets of the characters in this fiction.

Television is a way to escape from reality but also bring us to an imperious need to get closer to reality by way of its most morbid aspects. A good indicator of this phenomenon is the success of television shows such as Big Brother (and all its followers), of Web cameras that show people’s daily lives in the most literal detail, or of reality shows that offer their participants those Warholian 15 minutes of fame in exchange for publicly confessing their most secret desires, which are compulsively consumed by an audience eager for hard-hitting experiences.

This is the society of the spectacle announced by Guy Debord, in which spectacle is not an ensemble of images, but a social relation among people mediated by images. As Mònica Terribas has analysed: “the gradual loss of importance of thought through a light form of abandonment of intellectual discourse or the lack of will by the media to incorporate it for fear of losing the receivers’ interest, has led the mass media to make use of the private domain as a priority source of production of its messages and as the beginning and end of its aims. And so in many television formats, the private domain is not only used as an essential element; it is structured and produced as a show in itself, subject to a process of theatricalisation which wipes out any possibility of a real reading of everyday experience. The theatricalisation of the private domain through those formats requires everyday life to be transformed, adapted, subjected to the dynamic needed to make it an entertainment product”. 7

Privacy is becoming a trademark of identity. But once the simplistic ideas of identity are
surpassed, we realize that authenticity might be equally menaced, from the moment when
individuality becomes a mass phenomenon and identity is identified with images and products. Publicity doesn’t sell products but life styles. It is not only that we buy Calvin Klein or Donna Karan perfumes because of their fragrance, but also because of the image they communicate. Reality goes further and it is not only that we name Kleenex, Tempo or Tampax to refer to handkerchiefs or tampons, but now Chanel, Armani, Timberland or Canon are names chosen by some parents for their children. If in the past, names were taken from nature or saints, now is obvious that the models or ideals of our global world are the brands, the cosmology of the brands. Harvard, Louvre, New York, Naomi Campbell or David Beckham are much more than a university, a museum, a city, a top model or a football player, they are brands. According to Vicente Verdú, we are living the age of the capitalism of fiction. If in the capitalism of production (from the end of XVIII century until the II World War) the importance was given to goods, the capitalism of consumption (from II World War to the fall of Berlin wall) was focused on the signs, the signification of the products. In the present capitalism of fiction, the main aspect is to produce sensations. In other words, if the first and second formulations of capitalism provided reality with consumer goods, the third one improves reality by creating a new one. During the capitalism of consumption – still under the impression of the Second World War –
ethical standards, personal integrity and attitude have been norms. In our today reality of global societies and the „capitalism of fiction“, the invasion of the economic imperative in almost all parts of our life, availability and the skills, where and how to get knowledge have become the compensations for those norms. This does not necessary lead to the loss of memory, cultural identity, history, ethical standards and values etc. But they have become norms on demand: memory is “on” or “off”; ethical values are “on” or “off”; cultural identity is “on” or “off”– “on” or “off” seems to be no longer a question of principle, but of occasion. But this compensation jeopardize the substance of our common cultural identity with all related values, for which humans in the western hemisphere have fought for since the bill of rights. One day someone might raise in public the fatal question: „Can we still afford human rights?“

These are some of the reflections, which mark the starting point of the project Paisatges Mediàtics, an exhibition, which sets out to explore the impact of the media in the definition of our present. The title of our article mediascapes (media landscapes) is a term used by anthropologist Arjun Appadurai8 to rethink the distinctions between cultural undergoing
globalization. He uses the suffix “-scapes” (derived from the geographical metaphor of landscapes, to provide a framework for thinking about particular sorts of global flows. For him, the term “mediascapes” refers to the movement of media and cultural products throughout the world. Artists like Muntadas have analyzed extensively in his works the landscape of the media, that is, the creation (or mediatization) of the contemporary conscience, which includes all aspects of our lives, from how economic and cultural values are determined to the progressive disappearance of public space.

Not by coincidence, the works of many contemporary artists use and refer to the media and their strategies to raise questions about our present, including the appropriation, infiltration or redefinition of TV formats, cinematic references, advertising and corporate codes. And also, not by coincidence the artists (as well as the curators) participating in the exhibition Paisatges Mediàtics belong to different contexts but to the same generation: the generation that has grown up with TV. Their proposals amplify the views on the impact of the media in our present, in other words, they present different approaches to different types of mediatization or construction of reality: the mass media, represented by television (Bjørn Melhus, Christian Jankowski, Barbara Visser and Matthieu Laurette), collective memory through printed media (Zbigniew Libera), marketing strategies and their power structures (Claude Closky, Swetlana Heger, Joan Morey, Ester Partegàs, Daniel Garcia Andújar and Minerva Cuevas) and codes of representation (Pierre Bismuth and Stefanie Klingemann). With their proposals –ironical, critical, engaged, mimetic or distant – artists make things visible, evidence mechanisms and dynamics, show contradictions and, in the end, raise – or invite us to raise- questions about our present and our relation to it.

Montse Badia and Andreas M. Kaufmann (curators of the exhibition), May 2004

1 VIRILIO, Paul. “Dromología: la lógica de la carrera. Una conversación con Giacio Daghini”, in Media Culture.
Claudia Giannetti (ed.). L’Angelot, Barcelona, 1995 (p. 78)
2 McLUHAN, Marshall. Understanding Media: the extensions of man. McGraw-Hill, New York, 1964 (p. 63)
3 NIERHOFF, Barbara. “What form divinely fair within this magic mirror is revealed!” in Bjørn Melhus
(catalogue) Kunsthalle Bremen / Hauschild Bremen, 2002 (p. 37)
4 Although this experience is not really new: During the historical period called “Roccoco” especially the ladies of the high society loved to drink tea at vantage points while they where watching through their operaglasses battles which happend in a secure distance.
5 AAVV, Món TV. La cultura de la televisió (catalogue). Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (CCCB), Barcelona 19999
6 RÖTZER, Florian. „Wartainment. Der Krieg als Medienspektakel“. KUNSTFORUM, num. 165. Ruppichteroth,
June-july 2003 (pp 39-63)
7 TERRIBAS, Mònica. „The theatricalisation of the private domain and the hybridisation of television genres“ in
Revolving Doors (catalogue). Fundación Telefónica, Madrid, 2004 (p. 26)
8 APPADURAI, Arjun. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization, University of Minnesota
Press, Minneapolis, 1996

[Mediascapes is a group exhibition, presented in Lleida, Girona and Tarragona and comissioned by Fundació La Caixa, 2004-2005]

The work of Antonio Ortega (Sant Celoni, 1968) deals with social behaviour and social dynamics. He often creates «records», employing a strategy similar to that of a fable, with easily recognisable reference points to exemplify or illustrate different situations. For instance, in Record of frailty (1966) he forced a plant to grow inside a long cardboard tube so that when the tube was removed the plant withered away; in Record of sponsorship (1999-2000) he spent the production budget for his exhibition in Barcelona on sponsoring an English piglet called Lucy, providing it with care and attention, food and veterinary services for a year; in Record of goodness (1999) he made himself sick, kept the vomit in a container in the garden of his house in London and let the birds feed on it. As David G. Torres has pointed out, «They are records in which the unusual is a millimetre away from the futile. It is in this millimetre that his work lies… The document, anodyne in its appearance and simply a portrait of an experiment carried out by Antonio Ortega, has the ability to develop intensely at the level of meaning.» In these three instances, the behaviour, reactions and roles of plants and animals become portraits or projections of our own behaviour in accepting, adapting or submitting to the prejudices implicit in acts of generosity.

From a naïve position devoid of any cynicism, Ortega observes with a permanent sense of perplexity and doubt the mechanisms that define the dynamics of artistic production and its purpose in society. In Antonio Ortega and the contestants (2002), for example, he transformed what was to have been a one-man exhibition in The Showroom in London into a group exhibition and invited five recent graduates from the Faculty of Fine Arts in Barcelona to take part in it with him. The aim was to try and demonstrate the dynamics of production in art, by imitating the promotional strategies employed in other areas of pop culture, while at the same time exploring the idea of authorship and the hierarchical and competitive nature of the art world.

Faith and enthusiasm is based on an idea he has been pondering for some time: the fact that only success releases the artist from the appearance of ingenuousness. Ortega explained this at a talk he gave in March 2002 in CaixaForum, Barcelona: «I think there is nothing more pathetic than a visual artist – or a singer or an actor – who has not been successful, because only a taste of success can neutralise the feeling of ingenuousness of an artist devoted to his career. If you still have doubts about this, you can join me in the following exercise. Think of a major artist and imagine that he only shows his work to his elderly parents. On Sundays he goes with his family to have lunch at his parents’ home and after coffee he shows them his latest works… I don’t know about you, but when I was writing this I was imagining a dignified Joseph Beuys carefully collecting on a tray the congealed lumps of fat stuck to the walls of his parents’ dining room. This is why I accept my naïve status.»

Faith and enthusiasm takes a look the current media scene, which creates personalities who come to exemplify stereotyped values. In Spain, television has created a new genre, a cross between the reality show and the soap opera, in which the lives and doings of these personalities can be followed, dissected and criticised, for they automatically place the audience in a superior position. Those who populate the current media scene are not (famous) public figures on account of their professional accomplishments but people who have turned the details of their private lives into a profession. Achieving fame at any price and maintaining it at any price is one of their main characteristics. Faith and enthusiasm concerns one such artiste, Yola Berrocal, the epitome of the fabrication of a celebrity, described by Ortega as «the real muse of enthusiasm» convinced of her own artistic talents. Ortega shares a faith with Berrocal – in their work and their possibilities of success – that eliminates any idea of cynicism.

In Faith and enthusiasm, he takes a detailed look at this mass media universe. His installation consists of an Fundraising Office for obtain money for a wax figure of Yola Berrocal. In our media-mad world, having one’s figure in a wax museum is the ultimate status symbol. It was only a short while ago, for example, that Madonna achieved this recognition. The office created by Antonio Ortega is run by art teacher and freelance curator David Armengol, assisted by two final-year art students, Lucía Moreno and Eva Noguera. The work of this team is to establish contacts, submit proposals and try to obtain financing in the form of sponsorship, in order to attain the goal of creating a wax figure of Yola Berrocal.

With a slight shift in aim and context, the office replicates exactly the production and communication structures of the world of contemporary art. Ortega uses easily identifiable references that provide us with the necessary distance – a plant, Lucy the piglet, the birds in his London garden, gags by Faemino and Cansado, and Yola Berrocal herself – in order to set up situations that relate directly to us and to our experiences. The sense of humour with which we confront stories that seem to have little to do with our lives can turn to deep embarrassment when we realise that the tales that Antonio Ortega tells are actually about us. It is only from a naïve position that the artist is able to really question our own reality and the values we consider to be

The work of Jens Haaning (Copenhagen, 1965) focuses on the composition of our society and on strategies for communication and for expressing power. The notion of «frontier» to determine the idea of belonging or exclusion is fundamental to his discourse. Haaning explores the complexity of cultural assimilation from two points of view: that of the majority and that of the minority. He began investigating these subjects in 1994, when the impact of globalisation and standardisation had only made a timid appearance. Now, when countries such as Denmark are proposing to lower the salaries of refugees simply because they are refugees, or when in Spain the drama of the boatloads of immigrants crossing the straits of Gibraltar is an everyday news item, Haaning’s reflections have become matters of priority.

This exhibition titled «Antonio, Aurangzeab, Deniz, Ecevit, Faysal, Hakan, Murat, Ömer, Radovan, Sambas, Shabeer and Dennis» is a selection of visual and audio items from some of the artist’s earlier projects (most of them designed for public open spaces), which explore the notions of cultural difference, foreignness, frontiers and exclusion.

Ma’lesh (2000) is a large box of light with the phrase «Who cares?» written on it in Arabic – an ambiguous statement that can be interpreted as one of either resentment or resignation. The message conveyed by this box of light – which in form could resemble a advertisement – is intelligible only to those who know the language. If belonging or exclusion are determined by access to certain codes, here Haaning inverts them, so that those people who are usually excluded are now the ones who can understand the message. It is not surprising that Ma’lesh, originally designed for the front of a building in Besançon, France, was not allowed to be installed during the election campaign because the mayor considered it a provocation.

Antonio, Aurangzeab, Deniz, Ecevit, Faysal, Hakan, Murat, Ömer, Radovan, Sambas, Shabeer and Dennis are the names of the persons in Foreigners Portraits (2000). All of them are first-generation refugees in Copenhagen. In this series of photographs, the members of a community that are generally excluded from the dominant systems of representation are converted by the artist into the principal characters. Despite the fact that the twelve persons portrayed have fully assimilated the dress codes and accessories of our standardised Western societies – Jack & Jones trousers, Diesel jacket, Puma tee-shirt, Fred Perry polo shirt, Calvin Klein shoes, Nokia mobile phone, etc. – they are highly unlikely to be chosen as images for advertising these brands.

The culture of the «others», of the foreigners, is also transposed in a different context in Turkish Jokes (1994) and Arabic Jokes (2002). In the first of these, a loudspeaker installed in an Oslo square (and later too in Kassel in the context of Documenta 11) broadcast jokes in Turkish. In Arabic Jokes, a poster showing a joke in Arabic was distributed around the centre of Geneva. Once again, by means of subtle displacement, the artist has completely changed the relationship between the pedestrians and the public space. Suddenly, only those who know the language have the key to understanding the situation.

Foreigners Free (1997-2001) invites foreigners to visit the exhibitions in an art centre free of charge. In this particular context, the foreigner is usually the tourist who can afford to travel. But foreigners are also the immigrants who are obliged to live in societies that don’t accept them or, worse still, that treat them as invisible. Haaning demonstrates these mechanisms by placing them in the foreground. By including foreigners – whether tourists or immigrants – in the group of people who merit special attention, together with the unemployed, the elderly, children and the disabled, he highlights the precarious nature of their situation.

The contradiction between the lack of power and the desire for differentiation defines the social and aesthetic experience in Haaning’s work. He adopts the Duchampian strategy of turning everyday objects into objects of art, but unlike Duchamp he does this by taking real-life situations and turning them into forthright questions that give the viewer the opportunity to decide for himself on the values they possess. Haaning’s discourse is tremendously critical and political, but far from being either provocative or dogmatic it confronts «what is different» and invites us to change our perception of things and to question our own prejudices.

Montse Badia
November 200

One of the principal features of present-day artistic proposals is that they raise more questions than they answer when it comes to the mechanisms needed to make us change, or at least question, our perception of things, our perception of the world in which we live and our perception of our own selves.

If we consider art as a complex form of knowledge, we cannot but agree with Harald Szeemann and define the work of artists as a seismograph of the changes taking place in society.

These considerations form the starting point for this season’s cycle of exhibitions in the Espai 13 at the Joan Miró Foundation. The cycle consists of five works that, although very different from each other, share a similar approach to reality that disconcerts the viewer and raises a number of questions for him or her to reflect upon. The title, Angle of vision: 143º, refers to a highly unusual viewpoint that is far removed from any standard point of reference and tries to offer a very much broader vision. The subtitle, Objects in the rear view mirror are closer than they appear, is a warning that is often attached to rear-view mirrors in cars and refers to the optical distortion that drivers need to take into account in order to drive safely. In the context of this cycle, this small distortion serves as a metaphor for how the perception of reality can have different filters or perspectives.

All the artists taking part in the cycle work in the territory of this change of perspective. They approach things from unfamiliar, or at least unconventional, viewpoints. Their position is that they believe in difference; in other words, they accept the possibility of doubt. Through these works they demonstrate how, on the basis of a predetermined scale of values, we structure our surroundings in such a way as to give them meaning and authority. At the same time they show that these values can be altered, or at least challenged, and need not be taken as absolutes. Employing irony, political commitment, ingenuity or a taste for the absurd, the artists taking part – Luis Bisbe, Jens Haaning, Antonio Ortega, Claude Closky and Simon Starling – invite us to become aware of the need to question assumed parameters and values.

Montse Badia

One of the principal features of present-day artistic proposals is that they raise more questions than they answer when it comes to the mechanisms needed to make us change, or at least question, our perception of things, our perception of the world in which we live and our perception of our own selves.

If we consider art as a complex form of knowledge, we cannot but agree with Harald Szeemann and define the work of artists as a seismograph of the changes taking place in society.

These considerations form the starting point for this season’s cycle of exhibitions in the Espai 13 at the Joan Miró Foundation. The cycle consists of five works that, although very different from each other, share a similar approach to reality that disconcerts the viewer and raises a number of questions for him or her to reflect upon. The title, Angle of vision: 143º, refers to a highly unusual viewpoint that is far removed from any standard point of reference and tries to offer a very much broader vision. The subtitle, Objects in the rear view mirror are closer than they appear, is a warning that is often attached to rear-view mirrors in cars and refers to the optical distortion that drivers need to take into account in order to drive safely. In the context of this cycle, this small distortion serves as a metaphor for how the perception of reality can have different filters or perspectives.

All the artists taking part in the cycle work in the territory of this change of perspective. They approach things from unfamiliar, or at least unconventional, viewpoints. Their position is that they believe in difference; in other words, they accept the possibility of doubt. Through these works they demonstrate how, on the basis of a predetermined scale of values, we structure our surroundings in such a way as to give them meaning and authority. At the same time they show that these values can be altered, or at least challenged, and need not be taken as absolutes. Employing irony, political commitment, ingenuit y or a taste for the absurd, the artists taking part – Luis Bisbe, Jens Haaning, Antonio Ortega, Claude Closky and Simon Starling – invite us to become aware of the need to question assumed parameters and values.

El espacio público ha sido, y todavía es, un reflejo –o una narración, como lo ha definido Walter Grasskamp – de las voluntades políticas, del tejido social, de las dinámicas culturales y del contexto económico, así como de la reorganización y la expansión de nuestras ciudades. En este espacio común, que es lugar de mercado, de afirmación del poder, de manifestaciones políticas y económicas, de conmemoraciones religiosas y de celebración festiva, diferentes realidades y formas de uso diario convergen y se superponen: los cortos desplazamientos de los escolares, las largas distancias del cartero, el deambular del ratero, el trayecto en zigzag del perro y su dueño, las rutas nocturnas por bares y clubs…

En un tiempo definido por el final de las ideologías, al que se une la inhabilidad de los poderes políticos y religiosos para definir la noción de “público”, el espacio público se ha transformado en un ámbito de consumo. Los centros comerciales, en los que la oferta de productos y entretenimiento responde a una promesa de experiencias, se han convertido en los sustitutos del ágora tradicional. Su aparente accesibilidad, con sus bancos, paseos y jardines artificiales, responde en realidad, a una privatización del espacio que establece sus propias reglas de acceso, vigilancia y control.

No es ningún secreto que el motor principal de las transformaciones de las ciudades se realiza a través del desarrollo inmobiliario y del desplazamiento económico. Los centros de las ciudades se transforman cada vez más en centros comerciales y los espacios de comunicación y relación en parques temáticos. El espacio público se rediseña constantemente para facilitar la vigilancia y la expulsión de aquellos ciudadanos que no encajan en los modelos de consumo preestablecidos. No es, por tanto, infrecuente la incorporación de obstáculos arquitectónicos que imposibilitan la utilización de mobiliario urbano para usos personales, como los bancos de las calles, que son progresivamente sustituidos por sillas individuales en las que es imposible tenderse para dormir.

Cuando todos los espacios sociales se han convertido en públicos, la esfera privada se encuentra constantemente bombardeada por una sociabilidad determinada en sus funciones diarias normales. De ser un lugar específico de experiencia democrática, el espacio público ha pasado a ser un lugar de conexión de usos y funciones diferentes. Existe una “convivencia pacífica” de zonas de usos específicos: de trabajo, de ocio, de consumo, de residencia, etc que nos transforma en transeúntes, con un punto de partida y un destino claros, para los que el espacio público es simplemente un lugar de transición y en el que el “otro”, el desconocido, es considerado como una amenaza. “Una multitud de desconocidos que pasean por las calles, que conversan, que hacen sus compras, que van o vienen del trabajo, aparece unida en la telaraña de la rutina; esta vida en común es inferior a la vida real que acontece dentro de cada una de las personas que componen la muchedumbre”. El deambular sin rumbo fijo (los flâneurs del siglo XIX, la experiencia subjetiva del entorno de los surrealistas, la Nadja de Breton, la deriva de los situacionistas o de los protagonistas de las novelas de Paul Auster), creando cartografías personales, en relación a vivencias y experiencias individuales y otorgando al azar un papel relevante, difícilmente encuentra un lugar en nuestros días. Solamente algunas válvulas de escape, absolutamente reguladas y organizadas (rebajas, manifestaciones, desfiles, maratones y otras celebraciones populares) permiten una ruptura, sólo aparente, de la rigidez normativa.

El concepto de esfera pública, una noción más amplia que la de espacio público, va más allá de las distinciones físicas entre los entornos público y privado en el que las actividades y las experiencias de los seres humanos se desarrollan. De acuerdo con el análisis de Oscar Negt y Alexander Kluge , “la esfera pública fluctúa entre ser una fachada de legitimación capaz de desplegarse en diversos lugares y ser un mecanismo de control de la percepción de aquello que es relevante para la sociedad”. En consecuencia, la diferencia entre público y privado es sustituida por la contradicción entre la presión ejercida por los intereses de producción y las necesidades de legitimación.

La disolución entre público y privado, que ya había sido abordado por el ideario del Movimiento Moderno, se hace mucho más evidente ahora cuando en la definición de la noción espacial intervienen las tecnologías de la comunicación y la información. En este contexto, la idea de “lugar” se convierte en un concepto precario y la esfera pública se transforma en un punto de comunicación hecho de imágenes y representaciones, fijados en el tiempo y en el espacio por las pantallas y, cada vez más, relacionados con “lo real” y la vida cotidiana.

“Hemos pasado del espacio público a la imagen pública. La ciudad tradicional siempre se ha organizado en torno a un lugar público, ágora, foro o plaza. A partir del siglo XX, ocupan este lugar las salas de reunión. Pensemos en el papel del cine en la sociedad de hace cuarenta años y en el actual de la televisión. La ciudad primaria es una ciudad en la que predomina el espacio público, es tópica, mientras que desde el siglo XX ya no está vinculada a éste. Pasamos de la ciudad-teatro a la cine-ciudad y, luego a la tele-ciudad. De un espacio tópico hemos pasado a un espacio teletópico en el que el tiempo real de la retransmisión de un acontecimiento se impone al espacio real del propio acontecimiento”. Así traza Paul Virilio el retrato perfecto de lo que hoy podemos definir como esfera pública global, determinada por el papel dominante de las tecnologías de la comunicación, que redibujan el sistema de relaciones que conectan la historia de la vida privada a un sistema global de información y que reduce aspectos como la localización a un estatus secundario. De una forma parecida, el tiempo cronológico –extensivo, por naturaleza- se transforma en un tiempo intensivo de novedades instantáneas en el que la mirada individual y puntual es más importante que la memoria.

La efectividad de los atentados del 11 de septiembre no sólo fue planeada al detalle en sus consecuencias físicas, políticas y sociológicas, sino también en su impacto mediático. En un timing casi perfecto, los quince minutos que separaron el impacto del primer avión contra la Torre Norte del impacto del segundo avión contra la Torre Sur, permitió que todas las cadenas de televisión del mundo tuvieran tiempo de establecer la conexión para presenciar en riguroso directo el segundo choque y el posterior derrumbamiento. Tras el desconcierto inicial, que se tradujo en la repetición una y otra vez de las imágenes correspondientes al momento de los impactos, el seguimiento de la noticia se centró en la escala individual, en los testimonios de las personas cercanas a las víctimas.

La cobertura mediática de la primera y la segunda guerras del Golfo constituye otro buen ejemplo de este aspecto. Mientras en Kuwait la retransmisión desde el punto de vista de los misiles convertía las pantallas de televisión en una especie de videojuego en el que las víctimas humanas eran invisibles, los reporteros que acompañaban a los soldados en el ataque a Irak, recogían los comentarios de los soldados cuando acertaban o fallaban en sus disparos y lanzamientos y, aunque las víctimas recibían el eufemístico nombre de “daños colaterales”, eran visualizadas como bajas reales, como seres humanos de carne y hueso.

Paralelamente, la progresiva invasión de la vida privada se transforma en una teatralización de la esfera privada, a través de la proliferación de formatos, especialmente televisivos (reality shows, talk shows y recientemente, también algunos concursos y otros híbridos de distintas fórmulas), que exigen que la vida privada se adapte y se someta a la dinámica necesaria para convertirse en producto de espectáculo.

No es, pues, sorprendente, que la privacidad se transforme cada vez más en una garantía de identidad. Sin embargo, una vez superadas las ideas simplificadas sobre la identidad, y la aceptación de ésta como algo múltiple, se constata cómo su autenticidad puede estar igualmente amenazada, desde el momento en que la individualidad se convierte en un fenómeno de masas y la identidad se crea a partir de la identificación con ciertas imágenes y productos. La publicidad ya no vende únicamente productos sino estilos de vida. Compramos perfumes Dona Karan ó Calvin Klein no sólo por su aroma, sino también por la imagen de bohemia burguesa, sensual, urbana y dinámica que va asociada a dichos productos.

La explosión de la tecnología ha llevado, en ciertas áreas de la vida pública y privada, a una existencia dual y simultánea, digital y real, a la vez. En este sentido, el espacio de la red aporta un nuevo tipo de ambigüedad, puesto que la actividad en Internet consiste en participantes individuales, en un espacio públicamente accesible, y con el paradójico deseo por el anonimato y la comunicación al mismo tiempo. No es casualidad, que en los chats, la plataforma de comunicación abierta por excelencia, sea frecuente la creación de identidades falsas que responden tanto a una voluntad de protección como de liberación de los complejos personales. Tampoco es extraño, pues, que más del 70 % de los chats en Internet, terminen adquiriendo un contenido abiertamente sexual.

En una conferencia en Dia Center for the Arts, en Nueva York, Martha Rosler planteaba algunos de estos interrogantes y contradicciones:

“Si las esferas pública y privada existen sólo en una relación de complementareidad, ¿cómo podemos hablar de esfera privada cuando no se recuerda ya que en el pasado, se esperaba que los miembros de la familia mostraran públicamente un propósito de unidad? Y ¿cómo podemos hablar de esfera pública cuando los informativos, el entretenimiento y la historia son relatados en términos de las vidas de los actuantes y las citas en los shows de máxima audiencia? ¿Cómo podemos hablar de estar en la esfera privada cuando a millones de personas se les dice simultáneamente que deben utilizar supositorios para aliviar las hemorroides? ¿Cómo se puede hablar de estar en la esfera pública cuando la mayor parte de la audiencia es ajena a esta simultaneidad, haga o no el mensaje referencia a ellos? ¿Cómo se puede hablar de esfera pública cuando los diagramas esquemáticos de la operación del pene y la parte baja de los intestinos del presidente aparecen de manera prominente en los medios de comunicación? Asimismo, ¿cómo podemos hablar de esfera pública cuando el concepto de privacidad, violado por estos ejemplos, ha sido desde hace mucho tiempo borrado por el aparente deseo de aparecer en televisión y en consecuencia, ser inscrito en la historia? ¿Cómo se puede hablar de esfera pública cuando las reglas del comportamiento civil –personal, moral y legal- son suspendidas para las celebridades? Asimismo, ¿cómo se puede hablar de estar en la esfera pública cuando se ha convertido en imposible el retar y criticar a los representantes del estado, con la excepción de los más restringidos términos circunscritos a una estúpida corrección? Finalmente ¿cómo se puede hablar de esfera privada, cómo se puede hablar de esfera pública cuando la imagen de un terrorista, el espantoso espectro de la muerte, de lo privado o igualmente de lo público, es puesta junto a mi familia en la mesa de la cena?”

Evidentemente cuando Martha Rosler pronunció estas palabras, en 1987, no podía ni imaginarse que hacer públicos los detalles de la operación del pene del presidente Roland Reagan era todavía un tímido acto de intromisión en la intimidad de las personas, al margen de su cargo público, en comparación con el caso Lewinsky, en el que hasta los más íntimos detalles de la relación entre Bill Clinton y Monica Lewinsky fueron presentados, divulgados, consumidos y paladeados en público a través de los medios de comunicación e íntegramente transcritos y publicados en Internet.

Igualmente, no deja de sorprender el actual grado de cinismo y la indeferencia con la que los responsables de la Guerra contra Irak han aceptado que los motivos que dieron en su momento (la eliminación de armas de destrucción masiva en poder de Sadam) no respondían a la realidad; o la doble moral que censura las imágenes de soldados americanos muertos o torturados, pero no la exposición obscena de los cadáveres de los hijos de Sadam, o los políticos que se niegan a dimitir aunque sea evidente que su ética y moral son más que cuestionables.

Cada día desayunamos, comemos y cenamos con este telón de fondo de noticias a medias que, funcionan desde su vertiente de impacto, pero también de rumor, de murmullo enrarecido cuya autenticidad resulta difícil de rastrear. No obstante, todavía existen reductos o espacios intersticiales en los que es posible actuar y manifestarse de una manera auténtica y autónoma. Y esa es precisamente una de las funciones del arte (si es que el arte tiene que justificarse por tener una función). Es, en ese sentido, que el arte puede convertirse, y de hecho se convierte en una forma compleja de conocimiento y, parafraseando y coincidiendo con Harald Szeemann, podemos decir que el trabajo de los artistas puede ser un sismógrafo de los cambios que se producen en la sociedad. El arte funciona como un lugar de ansiedad y de descontento y se convierte en una forma de interrogación. Con sus trabajos, los artistas plantean más preguntas que respuestas, que pueden cambiar nuestra percepción del mundo.

Estas son algunas de las reflexiones que marcan el punto de partida del proyecto Puertas Giratorias. Revolving Doors toma su título de la conocida imagen Porte, 11 rue Larrey, que muestra la puerta del apartamento parisino en el que Marcel Duchamp vivió entre 1927 y 1942, que, comunicaba el estudio y el dormitorio y el estudio y el baño, de manera que, al abrir una estancia, simultáneamente cerraba otra y viceversa: al abrir la puerta para entrar en la habitación, la puerta cerraba el baño y cuando se entraba en el cuarto de baño, la puerta cerraba el estudio. Marcel Duchamp encargó a un carpintero la construcción de dicha puerta, a partir de sus indicaciones. La concepción de esta puerta, que se vincula tanto a la vida cotidiana de Duchamp como a su discurso artístico, evoca la fluidez y la confusión entre los ámbitos de lo público y lo privado, que la exposición se propone explorar.

La exposición Revolving Doors se presentó por primera vez, en noviembre de 2001, en un formato más reducido en Apex Art, en Nueva York. La versión de la exposición que se presenta ahora en Fundación Telefónica ha ampliado el número de artistas y trabajos, de manera que se pueden establecer conexiones más complejas entre los diferentes proyectos presentados. La lista de artistas participantes en Revolving Doors incluye creadores pertenecientes a diversas generaciones que, en diferentes contextos y momentos reflexionan sobre estos aspectos. Con sus propuestas, los artistas participantes en este proyecto presentan una amplia diversidad de aproximaciones relacionadas con la ambigüedad y la confusión entre la esfera pública y el dominio privado tales como la fluidez entre distintos escenarios como paráfrasis de las relaciones sociales (Zbig Rybczynski), la invasión del espacio público de los individuos (Vito Aconcci), la definición del espacio personal y la presentación individual en público (Francis Alÿs, Andreas M. Kaufmann, Gillian Wearing, Colin Cook, Mark Formanek), el uso subversivo y secreto del espacio público (Begoña Muñoz), la proyección en la esfera pública de una privacidad creada (Vanesa Beecroft, Christian Jankowski, Douglas Gordon), la creación de espacios relacionales (Otto Berchem), la subjetiva percepción de los medios de comunicación y su reverso (Antonio Muntadas), la creación de los límites de la privacidad a partir de la confesión pública en los media (Bjǿrn Melhus), y la redefinición del diseño arquitectónico a partir de las necesidades y los usos individuales o como metáfora de éstos (Krzystof Wodiczko, Roland Boden, Alicia Framis, Michael Elmgreen & Ingar Dragset).

Con sus propuestas críticas, irónicas, poéticas o subversivas, los artistas participantes en Revolving Doors realizan comentarios que alteran la forma en que percibimos o pensamos la realidad. Aunque los proyectos divergen mucho entre sí, todos ellos comparten el hecho de erigirse como gestos individuales que definen la relación público/privado desde una escala humana. Finalmente, es el individuo el que hace girar la puerta.

[Revolving Doors es una exposición colectiva presentada en Apex Art, Nueva York, 2001 y Fundación Telefónica, Madrid, 2004]