A chain reaction is a sequence of events, each one caused by the previous one. It is also a chemical reaction that gives rise to products that themselves cause another reaction equal to the first and so on. A chain reaction implies a certain impulse of energy that generates an amplification of events. A chain reaction can start from small impulses and can generate large transformations. At the same time, a chain reaction can be used to create new references or new relationships, in short, contribute to different ways of looking, thinking and acting.
A video programme can also be seen as a chain reaction, in which one video leads us to the next, so that its viewing cannot help but be influenced by the series of images that precede it and also by those that follow it. Chain reaction is the title of this video programme that brings together a selection of videos from the Cal Cego contemporary art collection. Cal Cego is a collection that is not based on media or formats, but on artists and discourses. At Cal Cego we find videos, projections, video installations, photographs, installations, drawings, paintings and other formats that are difficult to classify. Cal Cego is not based on fixed, pre-established and immovable cartographies of artists, but rather prefers to resemble a compass that guides the production of meaning. It is from this perspective that a collection of contemporary art can also be understood as a chain reaction in which genealogies of artists, works and discourses are created, the reading of which cannot ignore the relationships, associations, contrasts, superpositions, revisions and also conflicts that are generated between them.
The screening programme Chain Reaction literally begins with a chain reaction, the one proposed by the Swiss Fischli & Weiss, based on everyday objects, followed by a strange choreography by some filing cabinets by Ignacio Uriarte, to continue with the definition of the self in relation to others in the video by David Shrigley and the performance of an animal that follows instructions in the film by Douglas Gordon. Continuing with animals, the confrontation of some dogs with a strange element, a video camera by Francis Alÿs takes us into the field of art; relationships that Christian Jankowski explores by turning the spectators into sheep. The art system is presented with humour and also in an acute manner by Jesper Dalgaard and, finally, Bestué/Vives stay in a domestic and everyday environment to take us to another chain reaction, in this case, full of artistic references.
[Program of screenings based on works from the Cal Cego Collection, for Loop Barcelona, 2010]
