Link to the article in A*DESK

In her second solo exhibition in Barcelona, ​​Aleksandra Mir returns to a theme that interests her, the moon and space, this time in combination with angels, saints, virgins and little else.

The moon, rockets, aviation, newspapers and global communication have been recurring themes in Aleksandra Mir’s work. The dialectic between the public and private spheres and the local and global spheres are the main axes that articulate her discourse. Heir to the conceptual tradition of the 60s, and especially to its most performative aspects, Mir’s best works are precisely those that rely on irony as a strategy that allows her to point out, from intelligence and distance, those aspects on which she wants to influence.

“The Dream and the Promise” is the artist’s second solo exhibition in Barcelona. Four years ago, her exhibition “Airport” took us into the world of aviation, from a small scale and manual work that translated into the meticulous drawing of logos, brands and models of airplanes from all the companies in the world. In her current exhibition, Mir is still in the clouds, this time with a series of works that answer a question that the artist asks herself: “If astronauts and angels share the sky, isn’t it time for them to meet?” And the exhibition is literally that, the meeting, through collage, of images of angels, saints and virgins, together with rockets, ships and other space artifacts.

This is not the first time that Aleksandra Mir has visited the moon. Her video “First Woman on the Moon” (1999) (which can be seen on her website: www.aleksandramir.info) combined the grandiloquence of speeches about the great step for humanity that the arrival of man on the moon represented, with images filmed on a Dutch beach, in which excavators created a lunar landscape populated by children, workers, curious people and, of course, the first woman on the moon. In this way, with humor and intelligence, Mir pointed from a feminism as critical as it was funny to the ambition for the space race and the fascination with technology.

A few years later, in 2005, “Gravity” and “Garden of Rockets” emphasized the absurdity of this ambition, building rockets from piles of everyday items among which were Ajax, Pringles or Hellmans, to name just a few.

The series of collages “The Dream and the Promise” probably refers to a much more complex reflection on the similarities between religion and technology, their codes and strategies and the degree of faith and occultism that both spheres share. Unfortunately, there is an imbalance between this reflection and its formalization. Regrettably, the intelligent irony of some of his earlier works has also given way to a formalism that falls into repetition and redundancy.

The American artist Lawrence Weiner once wrote, “all art comes from anger,” or in other words, from discontent, from the need to point out what doesn’t work and what should be rethought. This is a line that has run through art for centuries: from Honoré Daumier’s caricatures in which he exposed all those situations that he disliked in the society in which he lived, to Joseph Beuys’ performances-classes-lectures, passing through the provocations of the Dadaists.

These days, we find in the newspapers the news that in Sweden, an art student, Ana Odell wanted to focus her graduation project on the harshness of the Swedish health system in relation to suicides and, to do so, pretended to be about to jump off a bridge. She was arrested, sedated and taken to a psychiatric hospital. The controversy broke out when it was discovered that it was all part of an artistic project. The artist and the faculty are being held accountable, and the (media) debate is taking place in a different place than the artist had anticipated and hoped for. There is talk of wasting taxpayers’ money and distracting the police and emergency services.

AUTONOMY OF ART. And that is the problem: art enjoys an autonomy that allows it to enter multiple fields and artists to use a multitude of expressive resources, but perhaps the price of this versatility is the mistrust it generates in society. Ana Odell achieved a debate that was different from what she expected, but what kind of public presence do artists and their projects have in the media? When and how do news related to contemporary art appear in the press? We remember the media attention of Sam Taylor Wood’s video, “David sleeping” (David was David Beckham, of course), Jeff Koons’ photographs and sculptures with his wife, the former porn actress and politician, Cicciolina, the sensationalism that accompanies the Turner Prizes (the artist dressed as a girl, the bed and the list of the artist’s lovers, works starring Bin Laden and George Bush, etc.), gold sculptures representing the controversial model Kate Moss, premature deaths as a consequence of marginal lives (the most recent case, the young artist from the East Village, Dash Snow, nephew of the actress Uma Thurman), as well as statistics, exorbitant prices (in this section we usually find Damian Hirst), auction records or long queues of people to attend macro-exhibitions. In short, sensationalism or banality seem to be the two arguments for talking about contemporary art in non-specialized media. There is no trace of interest in the debate that can be generated by contemporary art.

CENSORSHIP. George Orwell said that in democracies censorship is no longer necessary, because the most effective veto consists of denying visibility, in letting things remain hidden. We live in a society that tends to be reactionary, that prefers us to be consumers rather than citizens. Given this panorama, what space for criticism and real projection in society is left for art? What possibilities exist for opening a real debate? Or perhaps the question should be much more pessimistic: is there room for critical thinking?

[Article published in Bonart, 2009]

Link to the article in A*DESK

One of the responsibilities of a museum is to activate meanings by contextualising what is presented. For example, it is not the same to look at Richard Hamilton’s emblematic collage “Just What Is It That Makes Today’s Homes So Different, So Appealing?” in isolation, than to see it alongside other works from the same period, the catalogue for the exhibition “This is Tomorrow”, magazines from the time or records and films from the same period.

In one of his first statements as director of MACBA, in April 2008, Bartomeu Marí stressed the importance of documents, printed, audiovisual and sound material, to better contextualise the works of artists and to better understand history. He also announced the active role of the Centre for Studies and Documentation, not only as a place of archives, conservation and study for specialists, but also as a place of research, presentation and debate.

When market prices are at levels where even the most conceptual works (see for example, “Shapolsky et al. Manhattan Real Estate Holdings, a Real-Time Social System, as of May 1st, 1971” by Hans Haacke) must be acquired in collaboration with other museum institutions, it does not seem a bad strategy to broaden the scope of the work to other media or formats, used by numerous and renowned artists, whose prices are, for the moment, more affordable. There is no doubt about the importance of creating a documentary collection “aimed at establishing close links of continuity with the MACBA collection to enrich it and expand its potential”, as stated on the museum’s own website.

“On the margins of art. Creation and political commitment” is a documentary exhibition curated by Guy Schraenen that can currently be seen in the exhibition hall of the MACBA Study and Documentation Centre. A British resident of Paris, Schraenen was director of the Kontakt gallery in Antwerp in the 1960s and is a collector who focuses especially on the period 1960-1980 and is interested in “printed material” which for him is as fundamental as the works of art. Schraenen was the curator of two previous exhibitions at MACBA, “Sold Out Edition” (2001) and “Vinyl. Records and Covers” (2006). In both, as in the one we are dealing with here, the curator presented material from his own collection to show how artists of the 1960s used other production and dissemination channels (posters, postcards, etc.) to escape from the museums and institutions considered as established. In the case of “Vinyl. Records and Covers” he also emphasised the fruitful relationship between visual arts and music by presenting material resulting from collaborations between musicians and artists.

“On the margins of art. Creation and political commitment” highlights the critical and active role of the artist, and to this end he takes up a whole line that runs through the 20th century, and which for him intensified between 1960 and 1980, of artistic practices understood as an element of irritation, of protest and of rejection that uses channels outside the artistic circuits to establish a more direct, effective and, why not, controversial communication. For Schraenen this period ends in the 1980s, with the prominence achieved by the art market, social changes and a more conservative and reactionary attitude that we still suffer today.

The exhibition in the foyer of the Documentation Centre offers a transversal view that, taking this critical and denouncing attitude as its articulating axis, relates elements, actions and creators from different geographical and temporal contexts based on 230 artist books, magazines, brochures, posters and postcards, among others. Thus, political commitment and the conception of art as an instrument of political action are evident in the declarations “for a revolutionary and independent art” of the surrealists in the 1930s. In the 1960s and 1970s, this same spirit is taken up again in art and political magazines such as “Konkret”, headed by Ulrike Meinhof (who later joined the RAF), in the publications of the situationists or in the material published to defend the civil rights of the Black Panthers. And in the 1980s, the combative tone is maintained, albeit with irony, in the posters and inserts to defend gender rights by the Guerrilla Girls. Immigration appears both in references to the homeless in Art in Ruins and in El Perro’s publication “Wayaway” on deportations of illegal immigrants.

Despite the relevance of the topic, its approach and even the materials presented, “On the Margins of Art” seems to be presented as an exhibition for “specialists”, without making the slightest effort to approach or explain itself. It distributes the material in a dozen display cases and on the walls of the room without considering (or perhaps it is its will) that some of the elements could be “activated”. Why not incorporate audiovisual elements that would better situate us in what is being shown to us? Why not, for example, complete the presence of Joseph Beuys’ vinyl, “Sonne Statt Reagan” with the video that shows him singing and that is even on Youtube? Why, if in the two previous exhibitions curated by Schraenen the documents were “alive”, here he decides to show them in such an austere and “deactivated” way? Why does the exhibition not reveal a hint of the vital, critical and committed attitude of its curator, which he does communicate with his words in the section Son(i)a #84 on the museum’s website: http://rwm.macba.cat/ca/sonia?

A documentary exhibition can be the place or format capable of redefining itself, of being bold and risky, of mixing, superimposing and contrasting with more freedom and fewer restrictions than the pieces in a collection, for example. For some time now, research has not only happened in silent libraries and archives and documents are not only for specialists; everything depends on the way they are presented and on the way access to them is offered. It is important to be attentive to the changes that occur and, in this regard, we recall the recent case of the report written by a teenager on the media – and its usage habits – which was taken very seriously by Morgan Stanley and published in the Financial Times because, despite the lack of scientific rigor of its author, it revealed widespread forms of behaviour that gave sufficient clues to glimpse the urgent need for adaptation of the media in order not to be left without users in the near future.

Link to the article in A*DESK

Talking about others to talk about oneself is a well-known strategy in the art world. This is precisely what Jonathan Monk does, using the master Richard Prince, a group of young artists and, to round off the quote, Prince himself, the genius from Minnesota.

Jonathan Monk is an artist that is easy to classify. His work presents the most varied formats and the most diverse appearances (abstract paintings, documentary photographs, texts that set appointments for the near future, objects that reproduce parts of his own body as a unit of measurement, indicators with the opening hours of an art gallery or slide projections that “animate” minimalist proposals, among others), but his discourse is clear: he analyzes the referents of art from an ironic perspective anchored in the present. His objective is also clear: to demystify art and the creative process, to take it down from its pedestal and question the idea of ​​artistic authority. His strategy: in a chameleon-like manner, he appropriates ideas and images, revises them and proposes their reinterpretation from irony.

Far from being an outsider in the art system, Jonathan Monk’s career is widely recognised, he is a regular on the lists of artists at international biennials, he is represented or collaborates with more than half a dozen international galleries (and, consequently, his diverse presence is sometimes excessive at international art fairs). And, of course, he also curates exhibitions.

“Richard Prince and the Revolution” is an exhibition curated by Jonathan Monk, in which he uses an intelligent strategy that consists of talking about others in order, in essence, to talk about oneself or to generate situations of meaning. Looking at other examples of artists who have acted in a similar way, we find Franz West. In 2007, West started the “Hammsterwheel” project with Urs Fischer, which brought together a series of works related to an idea of ​​”carnivalisation” of art, humour, low technology and a certain dirtiness, that is, some of the characteristics that define West’s own work. The exhibition that was shown at Le Primtemps de Setembre in Montpellier, the Santa Mònica Art Centre and the 52nd edition of the Venice Biennale, grew and adapted itself, including and refining works in a rhizomatic way, based on criteria of friendship, closeness or empathy between the artists.

Other cases: in November 2007, at the Palais de Tokyo, Ugo Rondinone curated an exhibition in which he included artists present in his collection. In September 2008, François Curlet brought together twenty artists in an exhibition entitled “Curiosität” in which the everyday was the “leitmotiv” of both the selected works and Curlet’s discursive interests. Antonio Ortega (also present at Curlet’s exhibition) had worked in the same direction in 2002 with “Antonio Ortega and the Contestants”, in which he transformed his solo exhibition at The Showroom in London into a collective show in which he invited five artists who had recently graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts in Barcelona to participate. With this proposal, he intended to highlight the dynamics of production in art, by mimicking the promotional strategies of other areas of pop culture, while exploring the notions of authorship and the hierarchical and competitive nature of the art world. And also, last but not least, he established himself as a reference for a younger generation of artists.

Another possibility is to talk about another in order to talk about oneself, but not looking to the future but rather looking for recognised references and as a strategy of legitimation. In October 2004, after receiving the Hugo Boss Prize in 2002, exhibiting at the Guggenheim Museum in New York and while consolidating his presence in the North American art scene, Pierre Huyghe wrote an article entitled “Garden party” in the magazine Artforum, in which he analysed Andy Warhol’s works and his ways of producing, in relation to capitalism and consumer society, but in which he mainly emphasised the idea of ​​The Factory as a place of production of myths and relationships rather than objects. By defining The Factory as a relational place, Huyghe establishes a genealogy that links him directly to Andy Warhol, or in other words, he says: “Andy Warhol and I”.

In “Richard Prince and the Revolution”, Jonathan Monk does both Ortega and Huyghe. It is legitimised by an unquestionable reference, while incorporating younger artists (some of them his students) for whom he himself is a reference. And what is Monk’s reference? None other than the king of appropriation, Richard Prince, the artist who in 1975 began to work with collages of photographs and since then has not stopped making “rephotographs”, that is, photographing the work of others, taking advertising images from which he removes slogans and brands, as is the case of the Marlboro cowboys, or incorporating easy and popular jokes into his works, as a strategy to show the subconscious of the American collective conscience, while, from the irony and subversion of the messages, questioning the notions of authorship, authenticity and copyright.

It is not the first time that the names of Jonathan Monk and Richard Prince come together in the same project. In 2006, at the Mezzanin gallery in Vienna, the exhibition “Jonathan Monk, Richard Prince” established a dialogue between the works of both artists. A relationship that Monk does not hesitate to take up again now to emphasize the genealogy that links him directly to Richard Prince, an artist who is also highly valued (remember that “Untitled (Cowboy)” broke a record at an auction at Christie’s New York in 2005 when it was sold for a million dollars), a type of recognition that Monk does not turn his nose up at. But Monk also adds another link to the chain by incorporating Pierre Bismuth, an artist of almost the same generation as Monk (Bismuth was born in 1963 and Monk in 1969), with a long career and interested in analyzing and deconstructing models of perception and destabilizing reading codes. In the exhibition at ProjecteSD, Bismuth is well represented with a work in the purest Prince style, consisting of two women’s fashion magazines whose fragmented and transversal reading of the headlines gives the piece its name: “Don’t Date After Apartheid”.

Thus, in “Richard Prince and the Revolution”, Prince’s work is revisited or cited by a dozen artists who underline certain characteristic features of the North American artist. We highlight some of them: Anne Collier and Matthew Higgs refer to Prince’s passion for books when photographing the book “I Married An Artist”, the autobiography of a woman who married a renowned Canadian artist. The reference finds echoes in the personal life of Collier and Higgs, also a couple. Scott Myles focuses on the re-photography and re-creation of advertising images and presents a double self-portrait accompanied by a small reference photograph: two almost identical photographs in which a close-up of the artist appears hide a great difference in the “making of”, since while in one of them the artist poses in front of a fragment of a Marlboro billboard on which Monument Valley is identified, the other was taken in the original location. The small reference photograph shows the Marlboro billboard in Scotland. Isabell Heimerdingen revisits an old work, dated 1999, which alludes to Prince’s Cowboys works. Heimerdingen cut out Marlboro advertisements from magazines and removed, disguising them with paint, all those elements that were not part of the landscape, from cigarette packs to the cowboys themselves, thus returning the horses to their natural and wild environment. Dan Rees takes Prince’s “Girlfriends” works (erotic photographs of girls) and transforms them into “80 girlfriends in 2007”, in which he shows a series of images of the artist’s friends and acquaintances during 2007 in 80 slides. Rees’ reference in this case is not only Prince, but also Ed Ruscha and “Five 1955 Girlfriends” (1969), a work published in the catalogue of the exhibition “Konzeption-Conception” at the Städtisches Museum in Leverkusen in which Ruscha incorporated portraits of his friends at school in Oklahoma.

And, since books have always been a strong part of Prince’s career (an exhaustive selection is presented in ProjecteSD), Jonathan Monk’s contribution is completed with the publication of an artist’s book, “Studio Visit”, in which Monk opens up his studio to us, that is, a multitude of images that for one reason or another the artist points out, collects and compiles.

There is no doubt that there is a clear connection between the works of Prince and Monk, but we also find differences. Prince is a collector of art, furniture, books, images and references, he needs to appropriate things to make things evident, he uses mimicry to say something completely different, which in his case is very specific: what is hidden behind the so-called “American identity”. Monk, for his part, would surely agree with Vito Acconci’s answer to a question about the definition of his practice as a conceptual artist: “I don’t have any particular skills, but I know how to use the Yellow Pages”.

Link the article in A*DESK

Despite the proliferation of biennials held around the world and the acceptance of their speculative nature, the Venice Biennale remains the benchmark event to which the entire art world flocks. As much criticised as it is celebrated, the Venice event remains firmly present on all the Blackberries, iPhones and Moleskins of the art world.

2008-2009 has been a “bienal” period for Daniel Birnbaum. In 2008, he was the curator of the Yokohama and Turin triennials (we reported on the latter in a-desk: and this year he completed the curating of the international exhibition of the Venice Biennale.

Daniel Birnbaum is a subtle curator. He is neither controversial nor dogmatic and he usually works “alongside artists”. Rector since 2001 of the Staedelschule in Frankfurt, he previously directed Iaspis, a study space for artists and exchange program in Stockholm. In his proposals, he is usually generous in his approach, in the sense that with his exhibitions and projects he raises questions in a way that is not too rigid and, often, he gives the spotlight to the artists and their works.

If in the winter of 2008, melancholy as a creative motor was the “leitmotiv” of the Turin triennial, in the spring of 2009, the belief in art as a driving force for creativity was the theme of the triennial. To make, to fabricate, to build or to invent worlds is the motto of this Venice Biennale. The international exhibition curated by Birnbaum for the Venice Biennale is not prospective but recapitulative, it attempts to order and establish new genealogies rather than to launch new theories. It draws on some references in the recent history of exhibitions (such as “Poetry Must Be Made by All! Transform the World!”, which in 1969 juxtaposed radical politics with avant-garde art) or books such as “Ways of Worldmaking” by Nelson Goodman (from whom he directly takes the title for his exhibition) to vindicate the diversity and multiplicity of references, even if they sometimes do not fit or seem contradictory, appealing, ultimately, to multiplicity itself, so well explained by Pablo Neruda in his poem “Many We Are” (“Of so many men that I am, that we are / I can’t find any / They get lost under my clothes, / they went to another city.)

Aware that “the party is over,” the curator of this biennial seems to call for calm and moderation and, above all, a lot of common sense. Birnbaum does not advocate spectacle, but rather positions himself at a good level of craftsmanship that defines concepts clearly and precisely. “Making Worlds” is a project that is carefully crafted. For example, the graphic design (by Stockholm Design Lab) deconstructs the flags of all countries until they are reduced to their most basic components: geometric shapes that are juxtaposed and take on new meanings. The exhibition at the Palazzo delle Espozioni in the Giardini (much more successful than the part at the Arsenale, it must be said) begins its journey with the tensions created in space by Tomas Saraceno, who immediately places the spectator in a different space and time, in which he has to define his position and his path consciously. An experience that has certain parallels with the wonderful start of the exhibition at Arsenale, with Ligia Pape’s golden threads that seem to struggle between tension and immateriality.

The tour of the exhibition leads the spectator through moments that alternate between enjoyment, reflection and identification. The experience of space, the identification of the art space as a place for utopia and the possibility of the spectator being an active part of the process (and I am not talking about interactivity here, but of being a participant) are accompanied by Gordon Matta-Clark, Yona Friedman or Yoko Ono, to cite three examples that are well representative of these three aspects.

“Making Worlds” confirms certainties rather than intuitions and seeks to draw genealogies that connect current artists with references anchored in the 60s and 70s, emphasizing their common points, but also pointing out the differences, with a double purpose: to support current discourses in previous references and, at the same time, to allow rereadings of positions that are already part of the history of art. The presence of Gutai, Baldessari, Fahlström or the already mentioned Matta-Clark must be understood in that role of antecedents with clear survivals in the present and, at the same time, as the necessary revision of postulates that cannot differentiate art from life and that cannot fail to understand art as one of the last bastions from which it is possible to transform society (on a greater or lesser scale, but transform it, in the end).

It is likely that “Making Worlds” will not become a reference in the history of the Venice Biennale. It is not groundbreaking, nor controversial, nor even speculative. However, it does seem to us to be honest in its approach and generous with the artists’ work. The list is populated by creators with whom Birnbaum has worked on numerous occasions, a fact that translates into a good presentation of the works (excellent spaces dedicated to Wolfgang Tillmans, exceptional piece by Simon Starling, and very successful interventions by Tobias Rehberger in the bar and Rirkrit Tiravanija in the bookstore, to name just a few).

“Making Worlds” is not an exhibition of thesis, but of proposals and experiences that adapt perfectly to the unreal space that is Venice, a bubble in which it makes no sense to turn the biennial into a theme park, because the city itself is one. And that is how John Baldessari’s intervention on the façade of the pavilion should be understood. For this reason, it seems much more honest to reaffirm the belief in art and its capacity to open new paths and influence new ways of thinking and acting. Given the current situation, this is no small feat.

Nunca como ahora se había visto tanto cine, aunque no necesariamente en las salas de cine. Televisión, DVD, museos, galerías y centros de arte, Internet y también teléfonos móviles son espacios habituales de consumo cinematográfico. Ante este panorama cambiante, ¿qué papel puede desempeñar y qué reto debe asumir uno de los festivales más antiguos y especializado en vídeos y cortometrajes?

Se acaba de celebrar la 55 edición del International Film Festival de Oberhausen, un evento con una larga historia que, lejos de decaer, se va adaptando a la proliferación de festivales similares, por un lado, y a la vertiginosa evolución que la tecnología impone no sólo para producir, sino también para distribuir y visionar los filmes y vídeos de artistas.

Un festival de cine es un lugar en el que se va a presentar películas y vídeos, se compite por un premio, se proyectan los filmes, se intenta dar a conocer y distribuir los trabajos, se realizan multitud de contactos e intercambios y, ya que estamos en un contexto de experimentación, se debate sobre las diferentes y múltiples proyecciones que se van realizando a lo largo de los días. Como muy bien afirmaba Lars Henrik Gass, director del International Short Film Festival de Oberhausen, “el festival es el contexto que permite recuperar la idea de esfera pública, de espacio de discusión, más que de mercado o de mera votación, como sucede en la mayoría de foros cinematográficos en Internet”. Por ello, desde el año 2006, el festival ha incorporado el valor añadido de un programa de mesas redondas, además de los debates con los directores que tienen lugar al término de cada bloque de proyecciones, encaminados a profundizar en temas relevantes en relación al programa.

Diversifica la oferta y vencerás. Este parece ser el lema del Festival de Oberhausen que, aunque se celebra en un único cine con cuatro salas de proyección, ofrece una gran variedad de apartados y secciones: competición internacional, competición nacional, tema central (“Unreal Asia”, en esta ocasión), vídeos musicales (también a concurso), competición de films infantiles y juveniles, perfiles que recuperan trayectorias de diversos cineastas (este año Matsumoto Toshio, Nicolás Echevarría, Herbert Fritsch, Factory of Found Clothes y Sarajevo Documentary School) y diferentes selecciones de distribuidoras (Electronic Arts Intermix, Video Data Bank, Lux) o centros de arte como Hong Kong Arts Centre, entre otros. Pero no vamos a detenernos aquí en un programa que ya es historia. Sin duda los organizadores están ya planeando la edición de 2010 que, por cierto, coincide con la Capitalidad Europea de la zona del Ruhr. Programa y premios se encuentran detallados en su página web: www.kurzfilmtage.de.

Entre tanta oferta siempre hay lugar para descubrir pequeñas joyas, que no necesariamente son las premiadas. Destacamos algunas: “Moruk”, de Serdal Karaça, el devenir diario de dos hermanos turcos en el berlinés barrio de Kreuzberg, que parece que va a cambiar por momentos, para seguir permanentemente en un dejar pasar el tiempo con ecos de “Accatone” de Passolini, lleno de energía e intensidad. “Berlun” de Ezgi Killinçaslan, realizado a partir de imágenes captadas con el teléfono móvil que se convierten en un retrato personal y también social. “Marcher” de Jeanne Henry, narra el momento en que una mujer, la conocida actriz Miou-Miou, en la realidad y en la ficción, va a ser abuela. “Elefantenhaut” de Severin Fiala y Ulrike Putzer, con personajes reales que nos adentran en problemáticas sociales. “Plane Days” de Benjamin Kracun, centrado en un grupo de observadores que se instalan en los alrededores de Heathrow para registrar, inventariar aviones y quizá descubrir algo inédito al tiempo que componen una curiosa comunidad.

Pero no todo han sido alegrías, sino que también ha habido grandes decepciones. Mencionaremos también algunas: la imprecisión de un tema central, “Unreal Asia”, en el que no queda claro su alcance geográfico, temático, cinematográfico o histórico. Las selecciones de distribuidoras como Electronic Arts Intermix o Lux, que parecen más compilaciones realizadas al azar que elecciones a partir de un criterio o una finalidad concretas. La presentación de la anunciada “première” del trabajo de Eija-Liisa Ahtila, en realidad una instalación ya mostrada anteriormente y presentada ahora en versión cinematográfica como pantalla dividida en tres partes que no acaba de funcionar…

Y este caso nos adentra en uno de los temas más delicados de todo este asunto. ¿Dónde están, si las hay, las fronteras entre cine y arte, entre artistas y cineastas, entre presentación en un contexto artístico y en un contexto cinematográfico? Si obviamos la solución exclusivamente formal con que Eija-Liisa Ahtila se plantea la cuestión, podemos recordar casos de artistas que realizaban presentaciones claramente cinematográficas en espacios de exposición, como Steve McQueen en Documenta XI, creando una sala cinematográfica en la que se impedía el acceso una vez iniciada la proyección. Curioso también que Steve McQueen se estrenara hace unos meses como director de cine, ya sin coartadas artísticas, en una película ambientada en la problemática de Irlanda del Norte. No cabe duda que la exhibición de imágenes en movimiento es un tema todavía no resuelto en las salas de exposiciones. Presentadas como videoinstalaciones, en monitor o monocanal, en espacios transformados en cajas negras o reconvertidos en salas cinematográficas, a menudo en los museos son objeto del mismo tipo de recepción que una fotografía, un dibujo o una pintura, esto es, ignorando la dimensión temporal que es su esencia y que determina una manera distinta de percibirlas. Sin duda, un tema todavía susceptible de reflexión y discusión. Por eso mismo, uno de los grandes placeres de este festival es tener la posibilidad de ver filmes y vídeos en una pantalla grande, en alta resolución, con buen sonido y sin visitantes entrando y saliendo todo el tiempo. ¡Qué básico, pero qué importante!

Barcelona y diseño son dos conceptos que a menudo van unidos. Barcelona y turismo también. Una exposición en Disseny Hub Barcelona se propone analizar el fenómeno del turismo y el papel que juega el diseño en dicho fenómeno.
Barcelona Disseny Hub [hacer un comentario]

No cabe duda que Barcelona ha sabido inventarse y “diseñarse” como marca. Un plan de marketing que funcionó muy bien a principios de los años 90, con la remodelación de la ciudad con motivo de los Juegos Olímpicos del año 1992 y que no funcionó tan bien a principios del siglo XXI, con la coartada del Forum de las Culturas. Todos y cada uno de los meses del año, miles de turistas llegan a la ciudad con el ánimo de descubrir la playa y el sol, una ciudad amable y cómoda, un modelo de plan urbanístico, la ciudad del diseño o las localizaciones de algunas películas recientes, una de ellas firmada por el mismísimo Woody Allen.

Barcelona es una ciudad cada vez más turística y pensada para turistas, por ello no es una mala iniciativa que “Turismo. Espacios de ficción” sea una de las primeras exposiciones que presenta Disseny Hub Barcelona, un nuevo centro o, tal como se presenta, “el centro neurálgico de una red de instituciones, centros, museos, laboratorios, empresas y personas que trabajan por y con el diseño, dedicado a promover el conocimiento, la comprensión y el buen uso del mundo del diseño”.

La exposición se propone analizar el fenómeno del turismo en su calidad de primera actividad económica mundial. Y puesto que prácticamente está ya todo descubierto, seguramente el único ámbito que queda por explorar es el de la producción de sensaciones, de experiencias y de deseos. En la era del capitalismo de ficción, que tan bien describió Vicente Verdú en su libro “El estilo del mundo”, lo más importante no es ya crear productos o servicios, sino sensaciones.

Y en esa trampa cae “Turismo. Espacios de ficción”. Si bien el punto de partida es el análisis de la realidad de esa gran industria y de los diseñadores que la proyectan, al final acaba convirtiéndose en una especie de parque temático sobre-diseñado con apariencia de sostenible (con un diseño de montaje firmado por Cloud 9 – Enric Ruiz-Geli) que parece querer epatar al visitante-usuario con multitud de pantallas y pantallitas, proyecciones, construcciones y dispositivos, algunos de los cuales no resistirán nada bien la duración de la exposición y el flujo de visitantes.

La exposición sabe “construir deseo” y también, diríamos, frustrar las expectativas. Por un lado, plantea un tema absolutamente relevante, cuenta con la colaboración de una docena de comisarios (algunos de ellos tan brillantes como Andrés Hispano) y lo organiza en diferentes secciones: la construcción del deseo a través de revistas, la publicidad o el cine o la tematización del imaginario (la divinidad, el poder, el conocimiento, la modernidad o el ocio para llegar a Bawadi en Dubai, una ciudad totalmente tematizada), para concluir con un inventario de nuevos proyectos que incluyen desde la experimentación con nuevas tecnologías hasta otras tipologías atípicas de propuestas turísticas. Pero por otro lado, pesan más los “displays” (las pantallas, pasarelas, maquetas e instalaciones de dudosa relevancia) que el contenido que se pretende abordar, explicado desde una sofisticada pantalla portátil que acompaña a los visitantes en su recorrido, pero que termina siendo una audio-guía en la que van pasando los textos de introducción que en una exposición tradicional estarían presentados en paneles. Muchas secciones, muchos textos (breves y muy genéricos) y pocas referencias de los elementos que se muestran (sí se referencia el film “Steps” de Zbig Rybczynski, pero no la tabla medieval que representa la ciudad celestial, por poner un ejemplo). Es decir, mucho diseño y poco rigor, mucho enunciado y poco desarrollo. Lo dicho, la construcción del deseo.

BCN Producció cumple tres ediciones. Con motivo de su exposición más reciente reflexionamos sobre el papel de esta convocatoria en relación al panorama artístico local.

En el año 2006, el Instituto de Cultura del Ayuntamiento de Barcelona puso en marcha BCN Producció, una convocatoria abierta destinada a producir trabajos de artistas emergentes de la escena local. Recordemos que La Capella como espacio expositivo llevaba un tiempo sin acabar de encontrar su lugar y aquella convocatoria pudo significar su identificación con jóvenes creadores. A diferencia de otros espacios que ya abordaban este ámbito (Sant Andreu Contemporani, a través del Premio Miquel Casablancas, Can Felipa o Art Jove. Sala d’Art Jove de la Generalitat, por citar algunos ejemplos), BCN Producció no se contentaba con seleccionar y producir trabajos, sino que quiso reflexionar y debatir sobre lo que identificó como el gran tema del momento: “la producción”.

Antes de continuar, hagamos un breve repaso a los nombres que han ido pasando en el transcurso de estas tres ediciones: la primera convocatoria, la del 2006 contó con un jurado integrado por Amanda Cuesta, Valentín Roma, Manuel Olveira y Oriol Gual y en la exposición que comisariaron Cuesta y Roma, se mostraron los trabajos de Jeleton, Julia Montilla, Didac P. Lagarriga, Enrique Radigales y Jorge Satorre. En la edición del 2008, el jurado estuvo compuesto por Amanda Cuesta, Eloy Fernández-Porta y Martí Manen y se seleccionaron y produjeron los trabajos de Carlos Albalá-Ignasi López, Efrén Álvarez, Ana García-Pineda, Ruben Grilo y Job Ramos. La edición que nos ocupa, la del 2009, ha corrido a cargo de Amanda Cuesta, Eloy Fernández-Porta y Carles Guerra y presenta los trabajos de Fito Conesa, MOMU & NO ES, Joan Morey, Mireia Sallarés y Oriol Vilanova. Las tres ediciones suman un total de quince artistas, lo que significa quince nuevas producciones.

Uno de los aspectos positivos a destacar es que el apoyo institucional que se plantea no se reduce al mero apoyo económico para la producción y que el jurado no limita su labor a la selección de propuestas sino que hay un seguimiento de los proyectos, es decir, un trabajo curatorial. Se agradece también que para contrarrestar las rimbombantes premisas de la convocatoria: “dar apoyo a una hornada de nuevos creadores, responder a las necesidades económicas y comisariales de los artistas participantes y proponer lecturas creativas a las problemáticas de la contemporaneidad”, uno de los miembros del jurado, Carles Guerra haya declarado que la selección final de los artistas no pretende ser representativa de la creación actual en Barcelona, sino que de lo que se trataba era de elegir buenos proyectos. Nada más y nada menos. Y traigo esto a colación porque durante la celebración de BCN Producció’08 y de las jornadas de debates que se organizaron, se quiso poner el énfasis en aspectos relacionados con la producción que insistían en el descubrimiento de formas de trabajo aparentemente inéditas. Se habló de la importancia del proceso, de la necesidad de un nuevo modelo de publicación para acompañar tan fascinante proceso, de la relación entre disciplinas, etc, etc. En realidad, formulaciones de este tipo no hacían más que intentar abrir debate y reflexión donde en realidad lo que había era una voluntad de desplazamiento, de no llamar a las cosas por su nombre: ¿modos de producción? ¿énfasis en los procesos? pues sí, desde los conceptuales de los años 60 y 70 el trabajo de numerosos artistas pone el énfasis en el proceso más que en el objeto final; ¿publicación que recoge y reflexiona sobre todo el proceso? si estuviéramos haciendo un crucigrama, la palabra empezaría por la letra “c” y tendría ocho letras: catálogo (hace ya muchas décadas que el catálogo dejó de ser el inventario de una exposición para funcionar en paralelo a las premisas planteadas por ésta); ¿relación con otras disciplinas? también hace ya muchos años que los artistas tienen a su disposición ilimitados medios, temas y ámbitos de actuación. El problema es que no se conviertan en amateurs y que sus propuestas tengan impacto en la sociedad, pero ese sí que es otro gran tema. En definitiva, planteamientos que no aportan gran cosa al debate artístico y que además desvían la atención de lo realmente importante, esto es, las propuestas de los artistas.

Así que antes de entrar en materia, nos parece interesante plantear brevemente algunas cuestiones sobre el significado y el papel de BCN Producció. ¿Es BCN Producció un revitalizante de la escena local? ¿Sirve para abrir un debate real sobre arte? ¿No corre el riesgo de convertirse en un vivero artificial de artistas? ¿Qué papel juega en el circuito local? ¿Es un verdadero mapeo de lo que sucede aquí y ahora? ¿Cuál es el siguiente paso para un artista tras participar en BCN Producció? ¿Es realmente “la producción” el gran tema? ¿Habrá suficientes buenas propuestas de artistas distintos para continuar esta convocatoria con una periodicidad anual? ¿No tendría más sentido que La Capella encontrase de una vez su línea de programación, quizás centrada en artistas emergentes, y BCN Producció pasara a tener una periodicidad trienal o cuatrienal?

Más que una exposición colectiva, BCN Producció’09 son cinco propuestas individuales que se verán completadas próximamente con una publicación, a excepción de una de ellas que es básicamente una publicación. Se trata del “Diccionario-museo del éxito” de Oriol Vilanova (Manresa, 1980). No podemos dejar de preguntarnos sobre la necesidad de “colgar” literalmente todas las páginas de la publicacion en la pared, aunque este ligero desacierto formal no desmerece los aspectos interesantes de este trabajo con el que el artista sigue su exploración sobre las ideas de éxito y fracaso. Este análisis se inició en forma de archivo, con una compilación de textos y aforismos de fuentes bien variadas, desde Salvador Dalí a Guy Debord, pasando por Robert Walser o Pau Riba, que se formalizó a partir de imágenes de Arcos de Triunfo en Sant Andreu (2008) o con un verdadero “gabinete de curiosidades” alrededor de la celebración de la derrota (Sala d’Art Jove de la Generalitat, 2008). Con su diccionario, en el que encontramos con voluntad enciclopédica entradas como “alfombra roja”, “ambición” (el último refugio de todo fracaso), “promesa”, “valor” o “warhol”, entre otros, Vilanova utiliza la contraposición éxito-fracaso aplicados tanto a la carrera artística como a la propia vida y reivindica el fracaso como modelo alternativo a la competitividad y la eficiencia de la sociedad capitalista.

“Miedo de Muchos, los Mundos Posibles” es la instalación de MOMU & NO ES (Eva Noguera y Lucía Moreno) tras su exposición “1979-1982. Las guerras élficas”, el pasado verano en la Sala Montcada de Caixaforum. “Miedo de Muchos, los Mundos Posibles” se aleja del humor aparentemente inocente de trabajos anteriores como “El Ajo Ganador” (2006) o “Mi Dispiace” (2005), para acercarse más a la ambición y la aparición de universos paralelos que suponía “Las guerra élficas”. En este caso, una instalación que pretende invitar al espectador a realizar un recorrido teatralizado por experiencias y referentes relacionados con el miedo se acaba pareciendo más a una escenografía teatral que pierde su eficacia al convertirse en puerta de entrada a esta no-exposición colectiva.

En “Las Muertes Chiquitas”, Mirella Sallarés utiliza metodologías propias de la sociología para hacer un estudio sobre “las muertes chiquitas”, una expresión que en México se utiliza para denominar al orgasmo femenino (como “la petite mort” en la cultura francesa). Sin embargo, a diferencia del contexto francés, analizar el orgasmo femenino en una sociedad como la mejicana pasa irremediablemente por hablar de placer y también de dolor, de violencia y de muertes que no son tenidas en consideración. La instalación de Mireia Sallarés reúne el material recopilado desde el año 2006 mediante un vídeo que reproduce entrevistas a mujeres de distintos estratos de la sociedad mejicana, fotografías y un libro de artista elaborado a partir del material recogido.

Hace un tiempo, Fito Conesa escribió en su statement, o declaración de intenciones como artista lo siguiente: “Me interesa más hacer de una sonrisa un “event_o” y de una mirada desafiante un discurso cinematográfico que pasar horas pensando en balde y generando discursos cuya finalidad simpatiza con el hacinar, apilar o apelotonar. Hay mil maneras de generar política y mil formas de detonar una bomba… en ocasiones basta con un gesto micro para activar el mecanismo primario que nos pone alerta”. Conesa se centra en lo micro, en las vivencias de cada día, en los entornos más inmediatos para hablar de él mismo y, por extensión de todos nosotros, de nuestras experiencias compartidas. El sonido ocupa un lugar destacado en sus trabajos. En “Waiting Time/Wasting Time”, con distancia el mejor de los trabajos presentados, Conesa se propone “musicalizar el ritmo de las colas de espera” a partir de los marcadores que indican el turno en diversos sitios oficiales. En otras palabras, Conesa pone en primer plano los momentos de transición, en los que parece que no pasa nada, momentos y situaciones irrelevantes que nunca aparecen en una película, a no ser que tengan una finalidad dramática o incidan en el desarrollo de la acción, pero que forman parte de nuestras vidas y son tan reales como aquellos instantes en los que nos pasan grandes cosas o grandes encuentros.

Más de una década ha pasado desde que Joan Morey presentara en La Capella su proyecto STP (Soy tu puta), una “marca” que utilizaba numerosas estrategias de la moda y la publicidad, para “hacer visible el sometimiento de cualquier producción artística a las estructuras de poder”. Y esta vuelta de Morey a la Capella nos hace dudar de la eficacia de esta convocatoria, o quizás de que algo falla en el tejido artístico-institucional de la ciudad cuando un artista que ya ha pasado por La Capella y ha tenido exposiciones individuales en circuitos más consolidados, vuelve a acogerse de nuevo a este tipo de convocatorias. En cualquier caso, tras las series de performances de proyectos como “Dominion” o “El Mal ejemplo”, Morey presenta “Gritos y Susurros. Conversaciones con los radicales”, una serie de lecturas dramatizadas a partir del film “Gritos y Susurros” (1972) de Ingmar Bergman y del libro del grupo Actuel, “Conversaciones con los radicales” (1973). En el momento de escribir estas líneas sólo podemos adelantar las fechas en las que tendrán lugar las diferentes performances (27 de marzo, 3, 9, 17 y 30 de abril). Como es habitual en este artista, a las cuatro primeras se podrá asistir previa petición y a la última estrictamente por invitación.