EVERYTHING BEGINS AND ENDS ON A BEACH
ABOUT SUN & SEA AT THE TEATRE LLIURE OF BARCELONA
Genealogies of artistic self-management. CARTOGRAPHY OF PLACES AND INTERDISCIPLINARY COMPLICITIES IN THE BARCELONA OF THE 70S
Desaprendre per imaginar alternatives viables
In her biography of the writer Hannah Arendt, Marie Luise Kott relates the philosopher’s thought to this notion: “Unlearning in order to see things from a completely renewed perspective and thus conquer new grounds of freedom.” Hannah Arendt’s unlearning had to do precisely with opening up new possibilities for thinking when reality (Europe in the years 1939-1945) closed off all options for reflection. Unlearning meant “going beyond the dead ends of the current and traditional representations of the world and man.” Perhaps we are closer to that scenario right now than we would like to think.
Does the artist Johan Grimonprez bring these ideas to the present, with regard to his work Close Encounter? “The contemporary condition of what it is to be human questions the relevance of politics and reality, which has collapsed under the weight of an overload of information and mass deception. Paranoia suddenly seems like the only sane state of being, where it is easier to contemplate the end of the world than to imagine viable political alternatives.”
In this new issue of Malart, we set out to explore the notion of unlearning. If until now we were aware of the importance of continuous learning (for people, professionals, organizations, institutions or companies), perhaps now the crux of the matter is not so much learning, but unlearning: unlearning mental models that now appear obsolete to us, that are no longer relevant. Unlearning is not so much forgetting what has been learned, but seeking to adapt to changes and imagine viable alternatives, leaving fear behind and being able to think for ourselves.
[Article published in Bonart, 2022]
If there is one thing the artistic community has, it is its capacity to assimilate the moment, the critical spirit and the willingness to make difficulties visible from a space of freedom, or at least that is what we think. Economic orthodoxy –completely integrated into our thinking and responsible for the disorder we find ourselves in– has led us, in a subtle and deceptive way, to internalize a set of values and ways of seeing the world that prevents us from RE-imagining radical changes.
We are in a time of prefixes. The concepts exist but it is the nuances that actualize their meanings. This RE prefix that has been repeated to exhaustion in recent months is what we explore in this monograph. RE is so present that there is even talk of the “RE generation”. It is no longer even biological. It does not encompass people born in a time frame with common patterns of thought or behavior, but RE-unites a “mental generation”, which shares a supportive, inclusive, resilient, flexible, dynamic and adaptable attitude. Reasonable qualities to be able to navigate in these “liquid times”, as Zygmunt Bauman defined them, full of uncertainty and at the same time possibilities, of empowerment, but also of fragility.
They are also times to think about collectivity. For this reason, we have invited multidisciplinary, transversal and multifaceted profiles in order to RE-act on an amalgam of proposed concepts. The result is a puzzle of formal and mental approaches. Mar Arza works on rewriting; Armen Avanessian and Andreas Töpfer speculate and draw the notion of recursion; Fito Conesa refreshes us with new technologies. Eli Cortiñas poetically explores refeminizing; Gisela Chillida finds reaction in re-reaction; Frau Diamanda/Hector Acuña and Pol Merchan explore, from different positions, the implications of re-gendering. Marcelo Expósito’s regrouping leads us to a sense of community; Laura González and Chiquita Room claim the idea of self-fulfillment from an individual and human point of view; Martí Manen relates past and present to build the future. Marta Marcé re-emerges with mythology; resilience comes through Diana Padrón. Moisés Puente brings us closer to reinventing the city; Tere Recarens redraws, and, finally, Eirik Senje seeks reactivation from longing.
The pandemic has shown that, to address the climate emergency, the growing social dystopias and any emerging crisis, it is necessary to RE-settle the system in its entirety. Put more positively, would it be possible to promote change in this structural fragility in which we are immersed? This RE-set will depend on our ability to listen to what is happening around us and on the symbiosis between all the figures involved. LET’S RESET!
