Beyond its philosophical connotation, time can be an element to question the limits: of the institution, of perception, of the spectator, of the work, of the artist…

The shot in which Carey Mulligan performs the song “New York, New York” is eternal in Steve McQueen’s film “Shame.” And we are not in a museum. “Shame” is in the circuits of commercial cinema. Alexandr Sokurov’s cinema expands the notion of time so much that it challenges the conventions of its exhibition. In “Sleeping,” Andy Warhol filmed an eight-hour night of sleep by the poet John Giorno. Real time and cinematic time overlap. Martí Anson makes a pseudo-road-movie “Walt & Travis” that shows the moments in which nothing relevant happens.

Time can also expand in such a way that we are not able to encompass all the work. In “24 Hours Psycho”, Douglas Gordon slows down Alfred Hitchcock’s film “Psycho” so that its duration coincides with the 24 hours in which the film’s plot unfolds. Christian Marclay builds an installation from the editing of film scenes in which clocks appear, talk about time or actions linked to it are carried out, synchronized with the moment in which they are projected.

Dora García’s proposal at the 2011 Venice Biennale was equally unfathomable. “Lo recomendado” consisted of a series of performances that were carried out throughout the months that the Biennale lasted, so that hardly any spectator was able to follow the project in person in its entirety, except for the artist herself.

In other cases, perception changes because it focuses on the experience of reality. The time spent visiting the exhibition is transformed into a time of experience or conversation, as occurs with the “constructed situations” by Tino Sehgal. Or a time of surprise, as in Martin Creed’s “Work No. 850” which consisted of a sprinter running the 86 metres of the neoclassical corridor of the Tate Britain at full speed every 30 seconds.

Modifying temporal codes has to do with experience and, whether through expansion, freezing, slowing down or compression, it is related to exploring the limits of the institution and the very definition of the artistic fact: what is the work? How should it be presented? How should it be perceived? What is the role of the artist? What is the role of the spectator?

[Article published in Bonart, 2012]

Article published in A*DESK, 2012

Many artists propose exploring the limits of the museum, questioning the institution or redefining artistic practices. However, often it is not through grand visions, so much as through simplicity, that one can call into question all the categories that a priori seem immovable. Xavier Le Roy at the Fundació Tàpies considers various key questions about the artistic experience.

Bruce Nauman tried to do it by creating impossible corridors that placed the spectator in very uncomfortable situations; Dan Graham confronted the public with the image of itself; Abramoviċ/Ulay obliged the visitor to enter the exhibition space through the narrow passage permitted by their nude bodies. If all these experiences have something in common, it is the fact that they have modified the experience of the spectator to a certain extent and obliged the spectator to behave in a way that was different than usual in a museum. A few years later, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Philippe Parreno and others also created new situations in institutions, cooking or organising talks. Once again, the change in time and experience of the spectator completely modified the role and perception of the institution.

At the moment Xavier Le Roy offers us the possibility of experiencing the Fundació Tàpies in a totally different way, temporally as much as spatially. The “Retrospective” that he proposes comes from the retrospective experience of the interpreters in relation to some of the solos in his choreographies. Without videos, objects or deactivated documents (with the exception of one of the spaces), the empty rooms of the Fundació are occupied by six interpreters, who recreate fragments and strike up conversations with the visitor, to whom they explain aspects of their personal experiences in relation to the piece. In reality, the simplicity hides a slightly more sophisticated mechanism in that the setting of the scene contemplates not just the typologies of the solos that are evoked and what they recount, but also the entrances and exits of the interpreters in relation to the entrance of new visitors, or the balance between the more interactive and more performatic aspects.

As a visitor or spectator, the codes are clear, in an exhibition space as much as in a theatre. However, what happens when the codes are interchanged? Well then time and space are seen totally altered. There are no labels, nor explanatory texts, it is solely the experience of what we are recounted and how we incorporate it that generates a new perception in relation to the work of Le Roy and to the institution itself. Stripped of theories, prejudices or cuirasses, the visitor is confronted with a real experience. And, in this sense, one can’t avoid referring to Tino Sehgal, to whom A*DESK dedicated an article a while ago and who, incidentally, formed part of Le Roy’s company in diverse projects. In the “constructed situations” of Sehgal it can happen that museum security guards can carry out strange choreographies, different couples can recreate famous kisses from the history of art or the visitor can be asked by a child about what he thinks progress is.

In “Retrospective” we learn what the different interpreters were doing when Xavier Le Roy presented some of his choreographies and we can discuss our own experience. The work ends up taking shape out of the interpretations, time and the spectator, it is the result of the interaction between the public and the interpreters. The simplicity and direct contact redefine what the work is and what are the roles of the artist, the spectator and the interpreter.

It may sound trite, but it is true that we are living a change in paradigm. There exists a conflict between the patrimonial vision of art, those objects and documents that have to be preserved and another approximation, one that responds to a change in modes of production, distribution, presentation, perception and of course, preservation and collection. Tino Sehgal is present in the art circuit; however, he doesn’t allow his works to be commercialised in a traditional manner. Experience takes precedence over memory. With coherence, he redefines the conventions of the market, in order to avoid falling into the same trap as the conceptualists. Xavier Le Roy presents his choreographies in theatres and also in the art context. He lays the emphasis on presence, the experience and representation. The documentary recordings are just that, documents to be consulted, not commercialised. Questions hover in the air: what is the role of the institution? Of the spectator? Of the act/the piece/the work? Propositions such as that of Le Roy and others set all these questions in motion.

Joseph Beuys said that “every human being is an artist. In every human being there is a virtual creative faculty. This does not mean that every person is a painter or a sculptor, but that there is a latent creativity in all spheres of human work.”

At a conference on education and creativity, the writer and educator Sir Ken Robinson explained that his interest in education was based on the fact that it takes us to a future that we cannot understand. Sir Ken Robinson, a reference in the field and also an advisor to different governments on educational issues, argued that all children have tremendous talent and we waste it ruthlessly. He reasoned his judgment by pointing out that the entire educational system is based on the idea of ​​academic ability and claimed the need to rethink the concept of intelligence. For him, creativity should be as important in education as literacy and, therefore, should be given the same importance.

I don’t know if the creators of Factoría de Sant Andreu, the educational programme of Sant Andreu Contemporani in Barcelona, ​​are aware of these theories, but they certainly share them. Directed by the artist Jordi Ferreiro, Factoría de Sant Andreu consists of a monthly programme of workshops aimed at schools and also at a family audience. The format is quite simple: each month an artist (participant in the Miquel Casablancas Prize Visual Arts Competition) is invited to present his or her work and then a practical workshop is held in which children learn about contemporary art through direct experience.

At Factoría de Sant Andreu, with Jordi Ferreiro as master of ceremonies, children attend presentations by emerging artists to learn about the unconventional ways of working and thinking in contemporary art. They then carry out various activities in a fun and relaxed manner with very basic and everyday materials, which can range from making sculptures with straws (workshop by Fermín Jiménez Landa), to filming a movie sequence (weareqq), rebuilding a town destroyed by a monster (Quim Packard), drawing and expressing desires and claims (Ana García Pineda), turning the space into a physical recreation of how the Internet works (Georgina Malagarriga) or designing a CD cover and recording a record as if the children were the vinyl itself (Ainara Elgoibar).

At the Sant Andreu Factory, there is no talk of shapes and colours, techniques or volumes. When artists talk about their work, they do so based on their own experiences, their concerns, worries and what motivates them, and through the activities they propose, they invite children to explore topics such as relationships between people, the representation of reality through various media, the way the Internet connects us or how we see ourselves and how others see us, to name just a few. And so, as if it were nothing, they contribute with their grain of sand to bringing contemporary art closer, to stimulating creativity, personal ideas and, ultimately, free thought. Not much.

[Article published in Bonart, 2012]

Article published in A*DESK

Kaspar König is retiring and doing so with a group exhibition at the Ludwig Museum in Cologne, the institution that he has directed for twelve years. With “Before the Law”, König once again makes a declaration of principles: art should talk about the big issues, whatever the circumstances. And the subject, in this case, is the human condition.

Skulptur Projekte in Münster, Portikus in Frankfurt and Städelschule in Frankfurt are just a few of the projects/institutions that have been founded or directed by Kaspar König, a key figure in determining the criteria and discourse that have governed the art scene in the last few years. With “Before the Law”, König makes clear his way of understanding art and his relation with it, as well as his curatorial vision. The exhibition takes its title from a story by Kafka, in which a man from the country endeavours to gain access to where the law is. The desired moment never arrives, as a doorkeeper eternally postpones his entry. Kafka’s parable, in which there is a within and without of the law, translated into spatial terms, connects not just with the fragility of the man from the country, that extends to the human condition, but also with questions surrounding who determines the law, for whom, who is excluded and how.

To make the reflection more timeless, or more current, the exhibition takes a very specific historic moment as its starting point, the years following the Second World War, as the paradigm of the annihilation of human rights and dignity, and links it directly to the present, when there hasn’t been a great war, but yes many, dispersed, continuous and even some underground wars, in which the human being once again becomes extremely vulnerable. It seems as if we have access to a lot of information, that we are conscious of our rights, however, at the same time there are a lot of contradictory signs. Have we lost our liberty? Or have we gained it? Is it possible that one day the question will be raised publicly of whether we can still permit human rights?

“Before the Law” is a classical exhibition in its approach as much as in its formal presentation. König talks of the humanistic potential of contemporary art, of the need for art to propose existential questions. The works (figurative sculptures and installations, as indicated in the subtitle of the exhibition) have room to breathe there is no interference between them, albeit a connecting thread guides the spectator through the rooms. The pieces are left “to speak for themselves” (and it seems they do). There is no specific contextualisation, nor documents, publications, or documentary videos or films. Even though the subject would permit it. Though there are various talks being held in different cities (Brussels, London, Köln, Munich and Berlin). And there is a confrontation between the post-war figurative sculptures, which transmit all the insecurity and fragility that can accompany the human being and the contemporary installations, more resigned and ironic. While in the post-war sculptures the beings that appear represented cry out for shelter and protection, the contemporary proposals, that evoke the same fragility as their predecessors, can no longer call for this refuge, as they know that it doesn’t exist. And in this comparison numerous pathways are traced: the one that begins with the sculpture of the isolated leg (1958) by Alberto Giacometti, continues on the carousel that turns in slow agony dragging the animal cadavers of Bruce Nauman (1988), leaps to the lucky coin (a tiny centime shown in a huge vitrine) found by Andreas Slominski (1996) and ends with the fragmented and recomposed tree (1997/2011) by Zoe Leonard. And another possible itinerary that goes from the “Sibylla (Justitia)” (1957) that Joseph Beuys made for the law courts of Düsseldorf, continues with the South African conflicts of “Felix in Exile” (1994) by William Kentridge, contemplates the derogatory way that the North American authorities (starting with Roosevelt himself) saw the Native Indian Americans in “Building a Nation” (2006) by Jimmie Durham, and ends with the remake of the burgers of Calais (defending a city under siege in the 15th century) converted into “Bródno People” (2010) by Pawel Althamer, with the collaboration of the citizens of Bródno, or the “exclusions” carried out by the powers that be (legislative, executive and judicial) through the abundant material collected up by Andreas Siekmann in “Dante and Virgil walk through the World” (2011). It seems that things have changed a lot during this last century, but in some essential aspects we are closer to the post-war era than we imagine.

Aside from its quality, indisputable, “Before the law” is a agile exhibition in many senses: it functions as a “curatorial statement”, it incorporates an intergenerational dialogue by including Thomas Trummer as the co-curator and the collaborations of Anna Brohm and Andreas Prinzing, it includes a considerable number of pieces from the museum’s own collection and reckons with the necessary co-production of the Siemens Foundation.

There are times in history when subterfuge, cynicism and double meanings dominate discourses and ideologies. The early years of the 20th century were particularly dark and turbulent, years of crisis at all levels in which the only possible reaction was through fury: “Punch yourselves in the face and drop dead.” That was the end of the sixth of the seven manifestos written by the Dadaists.

A little later and with the situation still unresolved, Luis Buñuel also sought not only to “épater le bourgois” but to awaken the spectator from his lethargy, to make him uncomfortable and to make him react. And his strategy could not be more effective: “The Andalusian Dog” begins with a memorable scene in which a man holds a razor (Buñuel himself) and dissects a woman’s eye. Indifference has no place, and neither does comfort. In 1973, Bruce Nauman followed the same tactic to shake the viewer in an engraving in which the following warning appears inverted: “Pay attention mother fuckers”.

The first decade of the 21st century is proving to be as turbulent as the 20th century, but perhaps less clear. There has not been a great war that has swept away everything, but many and very subtle transformations that have made the ground of certainties break beneath our feet. “Sorry, we’re fucked”, writes Kendell Geers about a mirror in which we see ourselves reflected.

These days we meet again with Kendell Geers who presents a magnificent exhibition of his work at the ADN Gallery in Barcelona. His way of working and his forms of presentation could not be more pertinent not only in relation to the global context but
also to that of the anaesthetized (especially culturally and institutionally) Barcelona. Geers began to articulate his work from a feeling of guilt due to his condition as a white man born in South Africa. A witness to countless injustices, Geers quickly chose to apply a direct and uncompromising style. At the antipodes of political correctness, Geers defines himself as a “terrorist”, that is, “he exhibits reality in an impudent manner, without the ideological, moral or religious filters that usually alter it”, as Pierre Olivier Rollin, curator of the exhibition, writes.

These are some of the works on display. A decorative derivation of Robert Indiana’s “LOVE”, transformed into a huge mural in which the letters form filigrees in which the word “CUSSY” can be read; variations (in the form of explicit added penises) on various motifs such as religious, popular or political icons or an installation in which bricks hang from the ceiling, like those used by anti-apartheid activists who suspended bricks from bridges so that they would hit the windows of cars when they passed under the bridge.

Like the Dadaists, Buñuel, Nauman and so many others, Geers doesn’t let us relax. “Sorry, we’re fucked.” Let’s see if we react.

[Article published in Bonart, 2012]

Link to the article in A*DESK

A group exhibition, that explores research methodologies and the need to look at the world as an enigma. “Modelling Standard” is shown in a private gallery but could equally be in a museum.

Is there some point of union between Aby Warburg, George Steiner, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Matt Mullican and Sigmund Freud? What do the late writer, Ambrose Bierce, the Wizard of Oz, the Piltdown man and Freud’s dog have in common? A priori, not much. However, working with the research methodology of the Microhistory, the artists Jorge Satorre and Erick Beltrán have organised (more than curated) the group show, “Modelling Standard” in which they offer some answers.

The fact that they don’t figure as curators allows them to articulate their ideas with the collaboration of a long list of participants, in which figure artists, (Christoph Keller, Raphaël Zarka, Paloma Polo, Bernardo Ortiz, Efrén Álvarez, Meris Angioletti, Jose Antonio Vega Macotela and Florian Göttke), illustrators (Jorge Aviña) and scientists (Vilayanur Ramachandran). It also allows them to unfold their ideas in the form of two pieces that slowly discover, trace and unravel all the elements that link the people and characters mentioned at the beginning. The chosen form is double, a comic “El hallazgo del miembro fantasma” (The discovery of the phantom member), laid out on the wall, and a network of caricatures and texts at the end of the exhibition, in which all the famous protagonists participate – as victims or executioners – in a major crime. And to close the circle, the exhibition is finally set in motion with the talk given by both artists during the opening.

With intelligence, erudition and a great sense of humour, Jorge Satorre and Erick Beltrán have known how to organize an exhibition that while it is in a private gallery could equally be presented in an art centre. Following a scientific methodology, the Micro-history, and with a reference book, “Huellas. Raíces de un paradigma indiciario” (Traces. The roots of an indicative paradigm)(1978) by Carlo Ginzburg, they articulate a series of pieces which evidence strange things, enigmas and mysteries that are not always resolved and which conceal murky intentions. Let me enumerate them: filmed sequences, retrieved from the bottom of a lake, that recorded experiments with hypnosis to induce a crime (Christoph Keller); the exchange of time (and experiences) with prison inmates (Jose Antonio Vega Macotela); a sound installation susceptible to being converted into an image (Meris Angioletti); secret or inexistent novels (Bernardo Ortiz); the fascination for a geometric form, the rhombicuboctahedron, and its appearance in architecture, paintings and objects (Raphaël Zarka); the reading of the eclipses (Paloma Polo); the doubles of Saddam (Florian Göttke), socio-critical and political drawings-diagrams-caricatures (Efrén Álvarez) and neurological experiments with people who have lost one of their body parts (Vilayanur Ramachandran).

Rather than converting the presentation of these works into mere appendices of their idea, on the contrary, the artists Satorre and Beltrán, have known how to soften their erudition and bombardment of references with a layer of popular culture, pouring their ideas into a comic, illustrated by Jorge Aviña, the author of the classic “El libro vaquero”(The Western Book). The comic “El hallazgo del miembro fantasma” proposes, in a way that is both clear and effective, and goes without saying entertaining, a reflection on the image and the need “to see hidden images in objects, to organize them and to find relations between them”[sic].

And in the middle of this, it doesn’t seem crazy to mention Dr. House. It seems that medical students are taught that if they hear the sound of hooves they must think of horses and not of zebras. House uses other methods: “I look for zebras because the other doctors have ruled out horses”. It seems that Satorre and Beltrán also pursue zebras. Employing a method that allows them, to look for clues, symptoms and fragmentary testimonies, to reduce the scale and exhaustively analyse the sources. “Modelling Standard” seems like a brief stop on a longer journey during which, without a doubt, new discoveries and investigations can be added and expanded. It is also a good example of the road map followed by contemporary art practices. Namely of employing research methodologies proceeding from other ambits for the establishment of relations and crossovers with other scientific disciplines, the coexistence of references of so called high and low culture, and the exploration of narrative and other experiential aspects.

“In the 1980s, the art system was being transformed,” Muntadas explained in an interview with Anne Bénichou. “In the art world, there is, on the one hand, the work of the artist and everything that goes into producing the work, and on the other, the system that constitutes the environment of intermediation; dissemination, sale, collecting, distribution, everything that affects the subsequent visibility of the project. The 1980s represent a very specific period in which some of these intermediaries held excessive power and had exaggerated visibility. That is why I wanted to understand how we had arrived at a situation like this.” And that is why he began to interview numerous agents involved in the art world (gallerists, collectors, critics, curators, heads of institutions, educators, journalists) and recorded them on video over more than 200 hours. The result was Between the Frames, an installation that the artist has been revising and which is currently being presented at the MACBA under the title Between the Frames: The Forum (Barcelona), 1983-1993.
Divided into several chapters-rooms in which the published work can be viewed, some statements stand out: the pragmatism of the gallery sector (arrogant in the case of Ileana Sonnabend “What I think is good must also be good for other people”, or the realism of Marian Goodman, who stresses that the romantic aspect of the gallery owner must be totally balanced with the financial role); the variety of positions to define the institution (from the museum as a place of research into art and the ideas of our time proposed by Marcia Tucker, to the museum as a point of relation with history defended by Kaspar König, passing through the place that shares the gaze with the artist from Pontus Hulten) or the role of the critic and the media (“The media do not transmit, they transform”, René Berger bluntly states).

At the antipodes of these reflections, the art history students of the Faculty of Geography and History of the University of Barcelona received a very different input at the end of the 80s. While Miquel Barceló was triumphing on the art scene, the classes of “20th century art” and “latest art trends” continued to be based on almost vanished slides by Dalí or informalism which, if I remember correctly, was the most contemporary trend that could be reached. End of parenthesis.

We return to Muntadas, who completes his work with an epilogue that includes compelling statements from artists: “Art has become a real estate asset” (Dan Graham), “There has been no organic development of art in our society” (Joseph Beuys). There is no doubt that the current art system is indebted to the one that was created in the eighties, but also to the residue of previous decades. With one difference: nobody is innocent and the patterns of productivity and efficiency that prevail in other areas have also been assimilated by art.

[Article published in Bonart, 2011]