Every Saturday, the programme Tot és comèdia on Ràdio Barcelona/Cadena Ser ends with the “Vull” (I Want) section in which a guest expresses his wishes, that is, “everything he wants”, and he does so following the pattern of a poem by José Agustín Goytisolo entitled Quiero todo esto (I Want All This). We subscribe to all of this for 2014.

QUIERO TODO ESTO

Quiero ser informado de todo lo que ocurre al más alto nivel

Quiero ver a la gente uno por uno

Quiero que me amnistíen por todo lo que pienso hacer de ahora en adelante

Quiero entrar en los cines sin pagar

Quiero que una persona de fiar escoja mis camisas y nunca se equivoque

Quiero un informe sobre el comportamiento sexual de los sexólogos

Quiero que los cocineros no sean obscenos

Quiero que ordenen llevar camisa azul a todos los que en su día la llevaron

Quiero que no me den gato por liebre

Quiero que el socialismo vaya sin más directamente al grano

Quiero aprender inglés en 15 días

Quiero saber con precisión exacta la verdadera forma del Universo

Quiero que los croissants siempre estén calentitos y sabrosos

Quiero misas de culo y en latín

Quiero saber si el papel higiénico de la Real Academia limpia fija y da esplendor

Quiero ser la Madre Abadesa

Quiero que se prohíban los canalones y la plusvalía

Quiero que el Imperio Romano no siga decayendo de este modo

Quiero que fichen a la policía

Quiero comer Potitos Bledine

Quiero el control de natalidad con carácter retroactivo

Quiero que se sepa que el Presidente de U.S.A. barre para su casa de una manera descarada

Quiero amor

Quiero lanzarme en plancha y rematar marcando el sexto gol al Real Madrid

Quiero que Manolo no se quede calvo

Quiero saber si alguien me está robando los calzoncillos

Quiero entablar un Juicio

Quiero volver a merendar en la terraza con mis primas y Tía Catalina

Quiero que me homologuen en Ohio

Quiero que alguien me nombre su Delegado en el Exterior

Quiero que Reus sea puerto de mar

Quiero que me devuelvan la gabardina que me quitaron el 17 de Noviembre de 1949 en el Cine Carretas

Quiero que Dios exista

Quiero que los Catedráticos de estética no sean tan feos

Quiero ser de derechas

Quiero jugar al mus

Quiero que no menoscaben mi integridad

Quiero tener aparcamiento reservado dondequiera que vaya

Quiero bailar rock

Quiero que le salga un sarpullido al Santo Padre

Quiero una mantita en la barriga a la hora de la siesta

Quiero que se firmen todos los acuerdos

Quiero destituir a Bing Crosby de un modo fulminante

Quiero fugarme con la morterada

Quiero comer centollo con Julia y con la Ton

Quiero triunfar como una bestia

Quiero que no se me invite otra vez a disolverme pacíficamente

Quiero que emplumen a San Valentín

Quiero que Cataluña llegue hasta el Tirol

Quiero un felpudo igual que el del vecino

Quiero considerar seriamente la posibilidad de que me expulsen de cualquier país

Quiero unas garantías mínimas

Quiero que se suprima la circulación periférica

Quiero que en las cajas de quesitos hayan más quesitos

Quiero a las Islas Filipinas

Quiero que se eliminen las condiciones objetivas ya que por culpa de ellas todo sale mal

Quiero que no tiren más a nuestras mujeres

Quiero tirarme a alguien

Quiero controlar el gasto Público partida por partida

Quiero ser bueno

Quiero que se me paguen daños y perjuicios

Quiero que cada pueblo tenga el gobierno que no se merezca

Quiero que no me avergüencen más en las autopistas

Quiero que no haya clase obrera

Quiero que trasladen las Fallas de Valencia

Quiero que no vuelvan los buenos tiempos

Quiero revolcarme en la alfombra del Hotel des Templaires

Quiero ser hábilmente interrogado para cantarlo todo a la primera friega

Quiero sardinas en escabeche y pan tostado con aceite y sal

Quiero ascender por méritos de guerra

Quiero que se me incapacite legalmente para no ser ya nunca responsable de nada

Quiero que no me maten la ilusión

Quiero que no vuelvan a salir goteras en el techo

Quiero que todo el mundo cobre más

Quiero que no se me hinche la barriga

Quiero que me convenzan

Quiero un poco de caridad cristiana

Quiero que todos pasen por el tubo

Quiero un nuevo cepillo de dientes.

Quiero todo esto.

Yo no puedo seguir viviendo así:

es una decisión irrevocable

Criticism, applause and good wishes

18 - December - 2013

We are in an emergency situation. Social, political and economic values and models are changing, and we fear that they will change for the worse. Taking stock of what 2013 has been is no longer an innocent exercise consisting of pointing out what we liked and what we didn’t, but cannot be isolated from the direction things are taking. 2013 started badly, with a progressive loss of individual freedoms and a desire to generate fear and insecurity. Culture, “the most revolutionary political option in the long term” as Montserrat Roig said, is now in the spotlight.

In the context of art, the worst thing has been the cuts that have made the sector precarious. Institutions have seen their sources of funding reduced, but those who have come out worst off are artists, critics, curators, designers and assemblers who have seen their job prospects dramatically diminish. Instead of looking for solutions, institutions are disoriented and paralyzed. The crisis and the cuts have been used politically to make initiatives disappear that were not believed in, such as the Espai Zer01 in Olot, the Centre d’Art in Tarragona or the Office of Artistic Diffusion of the Barcelona Provincial Council, among others. Can Felipa was saved, but just barely.

But as by nature we tend to see the glass half full, we must mention the positive things of 2013. The main one is that there are people capable of saying NO and doing things. It has been a year in which presentations, exhibitions, events, projects, interventions, festivals and meetings have taken place in unusual places (artists’ studios, the streets of the city, domestic spaces or the beach). All these initiatives led by independent agents have shown that there is life (and a lot of it) outside the institution. We will mention some of them, such as the exhibition “A Place no cars go”, organised by Quim Packard and presented in his studio, the Lycra and Plaga festivals, the proposals of collectives such as Morir de Frío or Azotea, among others. Also noteworthy are the independent spaces that continue to stand firm, defending their programmes, such as halfhouse or homesession, and others such as BAR, focused on exchange.

The celebration of the 35th anniversary of the Espai 13 of the Miró Foundation is very positive. The galleries that are rethinking themselves, such as ADN, which has inaugurated ADN Platform, a space for curators and artists, with exhibitions, debates and presentations. Or the Tàpies Foundation, a pioneer in making its archive accessible, has faced a task that it had pending, the figure of Tàpies. The result was “Contra Tàpies”, curated by Valentín Roma.

And we finish with the “auguri” for 2014, which we hope will be dominated by a more critical attitude, with more action and less cowardice, more risk, more commitment and more honesty.

[Article published in Bonart, 2013]

Jafre, 10 years of biennial

18 - December - 2013

It began in a casual and festive way: in 2003, Mario Flecha invited a group of friends to hold an art event in a house he had just bought in Jafre, a town in the Baix Empordà with 300 inhabitants. With all the irony in the world, he called it a “biennial.” It was the time of the boom of the great international biennials. That same year alone, there were those in Venice, Sharjah, Istanbul, Beijing, Cairo, Havana, Kyoto, Mercosul, Lyon, Prague, Gothenburg… A couple of years earlier and with a similar knowing nod, Maurizio Cattelan had organized the 6th Caribean Biennial, a semi-false biennial that offered the ten invited artists a week of vacation without art or obligations on the island of St. Kitts. Ironies aside, Jafre continued to be held every two years and established itself as the “shortest and smallest biennial in the world.” With a duration of two days, a list of fourteen invited artists and a scope of action that has extended to the whole town, this summer has celebrated its sixth edition. Curated by Mario Flecha and Carolina Grau, who this year have been joined by the composer Daniel Teruggi, far from competing with other biennials, the Jafre Biennial offers artists, visitors and inhabitants of Jafre a pleasant experience, a series of interventions of an ephemeral nature and above all experiences and encounters. National and international artists of different generations and careers have participated in the biennial, such as Muntadas, Miralda, Ignasi Aballí, Jordi Mitjà, Jordi Colomer, Francis Alÿs, Yamandú Canosa, Martin Creed, Bestué/Vives, Patricia Dauder, Dora García, Wilfredo Prieto, Oriol Vilanova or Tamara Kuselman, to name just a few. “Escampar els fems” has been the title of this edition, which, alluding to the semi-rural environment, can be read as a metaphor for the current situation, in which the crisis has revealed all the hidden filth. Of an optimistic nature, the premise of the commissioners contemplates the possibility that shit and the unbearable smell can have the positive effect of fertilizing and making new things grow. In any case, the present edition of the biennial is an appeal to the critical capacity of artists and visitors, with the complicity and participation of the inhabitants of Jafre. And these have been some of the highlights: Perejaume offered a bouquet of flowers picked from the highest to the lowest point of the municipality; Ryan Rivadeneryra traveled along a part of the Ter river at night in an inflatable boat that ended up puncturing; Daniel Steegmann installed a version of the “Cirque de Relations” (with a tractor and other elements) in a threshing floor; Julia Mariscal carried out an intervention with chickens and sculptures in the Raliu butcher’s shop; Ruth Proctor wrote the phrase “Se’n va anar cap enllà” in front of a sanctuary; Bea Turner appealed to mystery and uncertainty in an action that involved a cloth, a tarp and a lot of smoke; Salma Cheddadi projected the film “Sweet Viking” about the journey of the Icelandic singer Jara to the house of her sick father, during which she tells stories of the country, of elves and trolls. There was a concert by the composer Diego Losa in collaboration with Daniel Teruggi. And there was also paella and a celebration. In its origins, the Jafre biennial was not about professional strategies for artists and curators to build a curriculum or international career, but about working from the freedom that micro allows to enjoy, maintain direct dialogues, so that art is something close, unpretentious and open to everyone. After six editions and an increasingly ambitious list of artists, it is clear that it is no longer just a meeting of friends, and its scope of action is also increasingly broader. The risk is institutionalization, the approach to marketing and cultural industries. The smart move would be to emphasize small scale, proximity, “do it yourself”, authenticity, experience and living.

[Article published in Bonart, 2013]

Momentos de autenticidad: Mireia Sallarès y Bernard-Marie Koltès

14 - November - 2013

Link to the article in A*DESK

We’ve been watching it for a while. Perhaps it is due to the crisis and the cuts, but not only that. It is happening in most cultural events: cinema, theatre, music and, of course, visual arts. There is a return to self-management, to do it yourself, to direct and individualised dialogue with the spectator, to the small scale. This week we saw it at the Teatre Romea in Barcelona, in La nit just abans dels boscos (The night just before the woods), a monologue written by Bernard-Marie Koltès, which speaks of loneliness, incomprehension and rebellion. On this occasion, its director Roberto Romei has not let us listen to this intense monologue comfortably seated in the theatre’s stalls, but has made the spectator go out into the street and be challenged by a character (brilliant Òscar Muñoz) who could be any of those who usually hang around the Raval. Defenceless, vulnerable, demanding, desperate and dignified at the same time, the protagonist of La nit just abans dels boscos challenges the spectator and guides him through a journey through the depths of the theatre while he explains his experiences, frustrations, longings and desires, as one can only tell to a stranger who will never be seen again. There are precious moments of truth in this performance that ends in the dressing rooms, from which the actor cannot come out to greet, nor leave his character because, from the beginning, the safe separation between the performance space and the place of the spectator has been abandoned. Not far from number 51 Hospital Street, where the Romea Theatre is, is number 14 Muntaner Street. Mireia Sallarès lives there, an artist who carried out a project on “the truth” and, as Pilar Bonet wrote in an article dedicated to her in A*DESK, “has spent many years recording the lives lived, those realities that she records as true heritage of humanity.” Now Sallarès presents one of her most recent and also most personal works, Literatura de replà (Literature of landing) in the building where her grandmother used to live and where she now lives. Sallarès is a great storyteller who collects stories and sometimes finds them without looking for them. This is the case of the building on Muntaner Street, with a brothel on the main floor and two landings with boarded-up, silenced floors and on whose wall the artist wanted to tell her stories, of life lived, suffered and dreamed, in the first person of its previous tenants, directly questioning us. Literatura de replà is a project that is part of the exhibition “Jo em rebel·lo, nosaltres existim” (I rebel, we exist), organized by the Fundació Palau de Caldes d’Estrac and, as in the case of La nit just abans dels boscos, it has not left us any respite, nor an audience in which to protect ourselves from these tranches de vie or moments of authenticity.

New stories vs. immovable collections

25 - October - 2013

Link to A*DESK

For some time now, the programming of contemporary art museums and foundations has not been mainly based on exhibitions and projects curated by independent (or “multi-dependent” to be more precise) collaborators outside the institution. The crisis of the institutions, which is both economic and identity-related, is responsible for the fact that collections have returned to the forefront of their programming. Collections are alive, they evolve and show the origins and DNA of museums, they shape their identity and personality. Although it may be more rewarding for museums to show their “star pieces” again and again (a Jeff Wall here, a Gerhard Richter there), it is much more risky and enriching to try to create new stories and provide fresh perspectives on their works. This is precisely what the “la Caixa” Foundation has been doing for quite some time. With the cycle “The Artist’s View”, it welcomed the “views” of Juan Uslé and Luis Gordillo or, more recently, by Rosa Martínez, with the three-part exhibition What to Think? What to wish for? What to do? Caixaforum is now launching a programme called Comisart (yes, the name could have been a little more sophisticated) aimed at emerging curators, a concept that “la Caixa” translates as “under 40 years old and whose experience includes the realisation of three curatorial projects”. The first of the three proposals in this programme is Arte Ficción (Fiction Art). And the title is the least appropriate part of this project, curated by Jaime González Cela and Manuela Pedrón Nicolau, which starts from the classic parameters of science fiction to generate a different story, a proposal that activates the works in a way that has never been done before. It is true that science fiction is a genre that, from a temporal distance, allows us to analyse the present in a critical way and even to predict a future that is not always encouraging if we think of Blade Runner, 1984 or The Road. Jaime González Cela and Manuela Pedrón Nicolau place us in an indeterminate space and time, in which the absence of the human figure is striking, which only appears alienated in Aernout Mik’s video installation. The selected works project other worlds, show parallel dimensions or present objects that respond to other realities. In the exhibition we find the Disney-ized cities of Ante Timmermans, the marine horizons of Hiroshi Sugimoto, the strange and obsessive behaviors of the protagonists of Aernout Mik, the stopped-time clock of Jorge Barbi, the paradoxical signs of Rogelio López Cuenca or the bicycle loaded with bags as an icon of a nomadic and homeless life of Andreas Slominski. But the curatorial narrative is not only shaped by the spatial arrangement of the works, but by a very measured intervention as a path to follow (with lines literally painted on the floor) and by interrelating the works based on classic concepts in the field of science fiction, such as utopia, dystopia, cataclysm, genesis, paradox and virus. Because it is true that the works can speak for themselves, but what we must ask of an exhibition is that it be able to articulate a narrative, from among the many possible ones, and to generate a situation or a universe in which we feel called upon. And Arte Ficción (despite the title) achieves this.

À la ville de… Barcelona

25 - October - 2013

Link to the article in A*DESK

Urban imaginaries allow us to approach social and urban reality from symbolic, cultural and intangible dimensions. The anthropologist and cultural critic Néstor García Canclini stated in his book Imaginarios urbanos that “many assumptions that guide the actions and omissions of citizens derive from how we perceive the uses of urban space, the problems of consumption, transit and communication, and also from how we imagine the explanations for these issues.” À la ville de … Barcelona is a play written and directed by Joan Ollé (currently on the bill at the Teatre Lliure in Barcelona) that presents, analyses, dissects and criticises the city of Barcelona, covering everything from the Barcino of Roman times to the current city occupied by tourists and rigid regulations of the City Council that is beginning to become uncomfortable for its inhabitants.

À la ville de… Barcelona is a tableau (not an auca) full of scenes and jumps in time, through which characters, places, ways of relating and living together parade. The journey becomes a kind of kaleidoscope, composed of images that, rather than establishing a linear discourse, evoke associations from fragments and suggestions. The imaginary of Barcelona is emotionally constructed from very diverse references: facts, stories, events, characters, places, songs or objects.

Events such as the exhibitions of 1988 and 1929, the tragic week, the selection of Barcelona as the venue for the 1992 Olympic Games or the dismantling of the beach bars in Barceloneta, are combined with the parade/appearance of characters and prototypes (the night watchman, the bun-haired one, the nerd who goes to the Verdi cinemas, the depressed Barça fan of the 80s, the mayors Maragall and Trías, the regulars at the Liceo, the Pakistani who sells cans on the street…), with objects that recall important events (ranging from the entrance to the Beatles concert in 1966 to the first lollipop that Johann Cruyff ate after quitting smoking), places (bars and clubs, disappeared cinemas, the Boquería) and literary references (here we find a real arsenal: Eduardo Mendoza, Jaime Gil de Biedma, Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, Joan Maragall, George Orwell, Jean Genet, Joan Salvat-Papasseit, Merçè Rodoreda, Josep Carner, Rafael Duyos, José Agustín Goytisolo, Josep Pedrals, Josep Maria de Sagarra and Jacint Verdaguer).

Although the work is for internal consumption, the ambiguity of a gaze that combines love and hate in equal parts is evident. There are emotional moments, but also merciless criticism: such as a lottery draw in which the numbers are called out (for example: the reports commissioned by public administrations that are useless) and the prizes (“a lot of money”); or a recreation of Millet’s Angelus (in this case Millet is Félix Millet) with his inventory of expenses and attendees at his daughters’ weddings, making clear the link with “the best families” of the city. There are also acidic, very acidic superpositions of scenes: the arrow that lights the cauldron of the Olympic Games is transformed into the bullet that executes Companys or the collective and enthusiastic cry upon learning of the venue of the 1992 games is confused with the uproar produced by the entry of Franco’s troops in 1939.

That is why we get angry when this inclusion of Barcelona is done badly, and especially when it is done badly in contemporary art. For example, every time the MACBA exhibits its collection it tries to shoehorn in references to the context (tracing the legacy of modernity in the construction of the Universal Exposition of 1929, showing the dull and unrecognisable spaces of Barcelona as recorded by Jean-Marc Bustamante or “la ciutat de la gent” portrayed by Craigie Horsfield) without really relating to that context or offering a sympathetic or critical view of it, or both at the same time, because it is precisely in that tension (which À la ville de … Barcelona resolves so well) where the true will to try to understand the world around us or the city in which we live lies.

Back to Tàpies

4 - September - 2013

Link to the article in A*DESK

It has been so long since Tàpies was the subject of serious study that it is now news. A few months ago, Valentín Roma went “against Tàpies” and confronted him with the present (at the Fundació Tàpies). Now Vicenç Todolí wants to go in his favour and show his work “from within” (at the Fundació Tàpies and the MNAC). Both of them show the “Tàpies problem”: it is impossible to fit him into any genealogy of artists. While Beuys, for example, was proactive and his work was based on the discussion of ideas and being in public, Tàpies continues to appear to us alone and isolated in his studio.

About factories and creators

4 - September - 2013

The need for artists to use spaces appropriate to their individual needs and professional practice has always existed. The dematerialization of art, since the conceptual practices of the 60s, freed artists from personal involvement in the process of creating artistic objects and the concept of “studio”, traditionally considered as the place of learning the most artisanal aspects of artistic work or the space where the artist experiences the genesis of creation alone, changed to become a laboratory of ideas in which the creator conceptualizes but does not necessarily formalize or objectualize his projects.

Large spaces, non-rehabilitated buildings or industrial buildings have traditionally adapted to these needs of creators, giving rise to clichés when the cinema has wanted to represent the figure of the artist or to jokes that caricature them (“Why do artists need such large studios? Because they have so much ego that it does not fit in smaller spaces”).

The use of old factories as laboratory spaces for multidisciplinary artistic experimentation is not new and occurs in many countries, but the way in which it arises or is managed is different. While in Germany and England they tend to be private spaces, managed by associations or entities, in France, as in Spain, they are managed by the public administration. This type of cultural policy fulfills a double function (once the corresponding museums, auditoriums and libraries have been built and inaugurated), since on the one hand it recovers the industrial heritage and, on the other hand, it supports the creators, offering them public facilities dedicated to artistic research, where hybrid projects can emerge from the collaboration between creators of different disciplines.

But what does an artist really need to work? Space? Square meters? Not always. Often a table, a computer, a mobile phone and above all an Internet connection are the essential requirements for being able to work, when the role of the artist is closer to that of a researcher who at certain moments in the production of his projects does need a large space or collaborators from other fields or, directly, from industrial services and suppliers. When the work of an artist is more similar to that of a film director (more independent than Hollywood) who must investigate, explore other fields, conduct interviews, travel, read, write, film or have other collaborators, rather than large spaces and square meters, he will surely need resources, time, mobility, meetings, exchanges, visibility and projection.

Spaces and places are important, but more important are resources and, above all, vision. Andy Warhol’s Factory has not gone down in art history for the type of space it was (a loft on East 47th Street in New York), but for the dynamic it generated, for its doors being open to numerous collaborators and characters and its character as a meeting place where things happened: films were shot, painting was done, series of works were produced and talks or meetings took place, both intellectual and sexual. Warhol’s Factory is a good example of the need to emphasise the content rather than the container, although we must not forget that it was an independent, private and commercial space.

It is always positive that public administrations support artists, solving the problem of high rents and offering facilities in which the appropriate conditions are created to be able to develop a creative task in the most independent way possible, facilitating resources, time, mobility, meetings, exchanges and visibility. It is these dynamics and not others that would give meaning right now to the management of old factories destined for creation.

[Article published in Bonart, 2013]