Regaining control

Autogestió (Self-Organization) is an exhibition that could perfectly well be titled “The world according to Antonio Ortega”, because it is a show that allows us to enter into the mind (I believe Víctor Valentín described it just like this) of its maker, Antonio Ortega, one of the most lucid insights into the current art scene. As evidenced by the coherence of his work which encompasses his own pieces, performative conferences, his activities as “a tertiary artist” during his time as the person in charge of public programmes at the Centro de Arte Santa Mònica (2003-2008), his PhD, and its later publication, on the process of monopolisation of art by the institution titled Demagogia y propaganda en arte según Antonio Ortega and his activity as a teacher at the Escuela Massana.

The exhibition he’s currently curating at the Fundació Miró deals with the subject of self-organization, from which sub-themes naturally derive, such as empowerment, control over one’s own work, DIY (Do it yourself), but also DIWO (Do it with others), alternatives to the system, the culture of the entrepreneur and precariousness; amongst others.

Self-organization is at present a more than habitual practice no doubt 60 % of artists and curators are currently working within these parameters. This makes it pertinent to ask if self-organization is a choice, the result of the generalization of certain tools of production and distribution that allow this possibility or a consequence of the economic crisis. All this considered, Ortega proposes to trace a path through some of these practices, pausing to pay special heed to specific voluntary gestures of established and respected artists who at a specific moment in time opt, with all the awareness of the world, for such sporadic gestures of empowerment (we’re talking about Gilbert & George, Hernández Pijoan and Joan Miró himself, burning one of his canvases in a totally controlled manner, subverting everything that was expected of him at that time).

In a certain way, the exhibition is also self-organised, in the sense that the curator, an artist himself, has taken control of numerous decisions that are habitually predetermined by the institution. In the first instance, emphasising and confirming his authority to talk about the subject, that is legitimised in various ways: by the nature of his own work, often along DIY lines; for having previously exhibited in different self-organised spaces (Fireplace and Espai Colona) and, last but not least, precisely for continually questioning his own authority to talk about the subject. In his catalogue text he introduces “ten suspicions” that are complemented (and endorsed) by the authority of Pilar Bonet in her role as historian, art critic, and lecturer at the University of Barcelona. In the exhibition, the corrections and observations added to the texts on the introductory panels are at the hand of the artist Mariona Moncunill who doesn’t hesitate to tinker with many of the curator’s affirmations.

Autogestió regains control of the work’s realization but also its distribution. Unlike other ambits of creation (above all, film and music) where various formulas for distribution (from online platforms to PSP) and also production (like crowdfounding, amongst others) have been encountered, in the context of art a series of contradictions still persist. We still talk about the commercialisation of unique pieces or limited editions of works made with media that permit unlimited reproductions; of buying and selling objects; of limited access: of institutions that have grown too big and find it difficult to adapt to the flexibility and dynamism demanded by the times, artistic practices and the public; of being able or wanting to form part of cultural industries…

Autogestió has to do with regaining control of the work and its distribution, control of the image and its communication rights. And in this sense, the exhibition presents a magnificent example, the canvases painted by Pere Llobera. The paintings are as magnificent as the history that precedes them. In 2014, Pere Llobera curated the group exhibition Una exposición luminosa, at the gallery Esther Monturiol. The impossibility of managing to access a photograph by Sigurdur Gudmundson led the curator to paint the image rather than relinquish it, and to exhibit this painting. This is the very commission that Antonio Ortega charges Pere Llobera with for this exhibition and its catalogue. In a prime example of self-organisation, Llobera converts himself into a sort of “oil printer” (Lloberas dixit) ) a reproducer of works by artists such as Yoko Ono, Gilbert & George or Piero Manzoni, amongst others, in such a way that the reproduction rights of the original works don’t go to any managing entity, so much as are transformed into honorariums for Llobera. Making friends (and also enemies) forms part of the process of self-organisation.

However, strategies of self-organisation in art are nothing more than a reflection of the formulas that are already implanted in other ambits of society, that are tied to the search for alternatives for production and responsible consumption. Curiously, in parallel, the most savage neoliberalism reads self-organisation as a form of entrepreneurship: the myth of the garage, as remembered by Rubén Martínez in his text for the catalogue, in which a young man (yes, it’s generally a “he”) on the margins of commercial structures creates something new that immediately leads to a successful startup, that subsequently leads to a new Steve Jobs who changes our lives and ends up becoming a multi-millionaire. But clearly, what this imaginary forgets is that in the garage there is usually a choral working process, much more DIWO than DIY.

In the end reality refutes the myth, revealing its true origins, precariousness. There’s little to add in view of the recently appeared latest reports (La actividad económica de los/las artistas en España, made by Marta Pérez Ibáñez and Isidro López-Aparicio and the Cartografía d’artistes visuals de Catalunya, still in the process of being prepared by the PAAC, the Plataforma Assembleària d’Artistes de Catalunya).So, we leave it here, but not without throwing out a couple of questions: is self-organisation, at this in point in time, the fruit of free choice? Does it respond to the use of specific tools of distribution? Or is it rather a plan B in the face of the crises of the institutions and/or a lack of other economic possibilities?

Sex, desires, utopias, architectures and control

We’ve got a problem with sex. Instead of considering it just another aspect of life, something natural, the object of enjoyment, communication and intimacy, for society today sex is a taboo or rather an element susceptible to be exploited commercially. Repression and/or exploitation. This is why it is so important and necessary to vindicate it, be it from LGBT stances as much as from a heterosexuality critical of the neo-liberal present.

1000 m2 of desire. Architecture and sexuality is an exhibition curated by Rosa Ferré and Adélaide de Caters for the CCCB, that proposes a journey through different moments in history when architecture has born in mind specific spaces for desire. And in this research presences are as important as absences. The strong presence in the 18th century and the absence in the 19th century leave well portrayed the spirit of the times. They also highlight the precision of the curators when clearly marking out the object of their study, leaving aside, for example, the subject of prostitution that would have opened up multiple parallel routes for investigation.

One of the great successes of the exhibition is the highlighting, the underlining of specific moments pertinent to be reread from our contemporaneity. Now that through critical theory, political activism and architecture unfinished and re-appropriated urban spaces are discussed, it is fundamental to revise (or discover for the first time) Fourier and the Situationists. Therefore, the value of this curatorial work doesn’t lie solely in the historical gaze or the establishing of genealogies so much as, above all, in its relevance today, in the possibility of considering proposals from the past to be able to rethink what type of space and society we want to build.

In an exhibition that has architecture as its principal axis, the architecture of the exhibition itself, designed by Sabine Theunissen (habitual collaborator of William Kentridge in his operatic projects) is one of its attractions, creating sections and spaces that generate a pathway full of surprises and delights, for the spatial design as much as for the documents, images and references that appear.

“To think about sex is the greatest and perhaps only real pleasure for all mortals”, wrote Jeremy Bentham in 1785, the same man who defended the theory of utilitarianism but who also didn’t publish in his lifetime the majority of the texts in which he defended sexual freedom, female emancipation and the decriminalization of homosexuality. Bentham, the creator of the Panopticon, the space of control par excellence, that in the thick of the 21st century is a good image of the technological society and big data. But before reaching Matrix, the Panopticon was also picked up on in the imagined architectures of Claude-Nicolas Ledoux or the meeting rooms of the castle of Silling featured in the The 120 Days of Sodomy by the Marquis de Sade. Because spaces typify practices and define roles. In the 19th century when the social dimension of sexuality is regulated by the church or medical science, Charles Fourier invents architecture that take into consideration passions and contribute to collective emancipation. They are the Phalanstères, where sexuality is integrated into the life of the collective in a harmonic and regulated manner; there is no repression because there is no guilt, there is neither monogamy nor adultery, and there are erotic volunteers practicing charitable love. His proposals are implemented in the covered galleries of the Louvre and the Palais-Royal, later eliminated with Haussmann’s urban reforms

Utopias and social democratization were recuperated by the counter-culture movements of the 60s and 70s, by communities such as Drop City en Colorado, the first rural hippy commune, a DIY proposal that included the geodesic domes of Buckminster Fuller, that are linked to a whole genealogy of architecture and design projects from those same years by Archigram, Ettore Sottsass or Nicolas Schöffer, an artist whose critical and historiographical recuperation is vindicated by the exhibition. Utopia, counter-culture, a need to rethink, to go against establishment…How important it is to revise our most recent history to see ourselves reflected in it and be able to reconsider the present in a critical way!

1000 m2 of desirehas brilliant moments, like the incorporation of the investigations of the architectural historian and professor at Princeton University, Beatriz Colomina into the role of modern architecture in the magazine Playboy. We already reflected on it in the article dedicated to her work but now in the CCCB it’s not just a case of mentioning the bed-office of Heffner, so much as being able to see it or even touch it. And in relation to sex, the architecture in Playboy is introduced as an element of seduction, like thePlayboy bachelor’s apartment, moving to a true sexualisation of architecture that goes beyond interiors to act as preceptors, pointing to examples of modern architecture that would fit in with this style of life. And clearly, it is not by chance that Sean Connery suddenly appears as James Bond with a couple of girls with whom he carries out a game of seduction and a choreographed struggle in the Elrod house. And this leads us to think about how in the most contemporary James Bond (that of Daniel Craig), architecture is a hidden place, isolated and totally technologized (abandoned and inaccessible basements that house the offices of the secret services or large complexes in the middle of distant deserts). But this is the object of another study…

And we come to the present day. What place does sex occupy in architecture, apart from the phallic forms that have dominated the collective imaginary from the beginning of time? Contemporary fantasies are fragmentary like our present (and it is perhaps in this section that the exhibition loses precision). There are occupied spaces, theme parks for love in which everything is regulated, dark rooms that are disappearing at the pace the world of applications for contacts grows and there are clubs in which the combination of space-light-sound generate the displacement of sex for an equivalent collective experience. Magnificent, certainly, the catalogue text in which Pol Esteve studies this phenomenon born in the Paradise Garage of New York that continues to our days. Above all there is a lot of virtual sex, aseptic and distant, and safe relations. There are also lies, the possibility of inventing new identities and the risks and new moral dilemmas that this leads to. Are we responsible for our acts in the virtual world? Recently, the excellent piece El Inframundo touched on these issues at the Teatre Lliure, and incidentally, counted on a marvellous scenography by Alejandro Andújar by way of transparent spaces that represented the real and virtual world.

The question that underlies all these examples are the questions they raise about the role which sex has played at each moment, the importance that it has been given and the place it has occupied in the public sphere, through thinkers, architects and governments who have considered it. And also the role that the powers that be consider it ought to play now, as an element that must be controlled so as not to escape the schema of production and consumption that govern our present.

A few weeks ago, TV3 broadcast Jaume Bratolí’s documentary, Les músiques d’Obama, a journey through the legislature of the outgoing president of the United States, based on the music that has accompanied him at every political moment and has been consciously used to reinforce certain messages, from the hip hop of “Yes, we can” to the Gospel that accompanied “Black lives matter” denouncing police violence against the African-American community.

Music is part of our lives, it is the soundtrack that, as in films, intensifies emotional, intellectual and vital states. There are a thousand ways to work music in cultural productions. It can be used from an exquisite selection that reinforces and enhances certain aspects (Julio Manrique does this in each of the plays he directs). Playlists can be created to accompany exhibitions or can be incorporated into the exhibition space itself, contextualising and reinforcing the works (Valentín Roma did this at MACBA in 2014, in the exhibition La herencia inmaterial. Ensayando desde la colección). The programme can focus on the relationships between music and popular culture (as Ferran Barenblit did during his time directing CA2M in Madrid). And exhibitions can be dedicated to figures who move between the two spheres (and here the list can be very heterogeneous: John Cage, Raymond Pettibon, David Bowie, Martin Kippenberger, among many others).

Some artists use music as a reference element: in The History of the World (1997), Jeremy Deller created a diagram on the social, political and musical connections between house music and brass bands, which showed the transition from an industrial to a post-industrial society. And a subsequent, and logical, step was to ask a brass band to play pieces of house music.

In our immediate surroundings, El Viatge Frustrat by Enric Farrés Duran first featured the participation of the group 13 Magic Skulls on the soundtrack and, later, the production of a vinyl in collaboration between musicians and artist arose.

Another example, in the process of production, is 12 Canciones Concretas by Gonzalo Elvira, a multidisciplinary project that seeks to create a relationship between visual arts, architecture and music in a kind of rhizomatic process, based on the monument to the fallen workers in Kapp during a demonstration on May 1, 1921, which ends up becoming 12 musical pieces, formalized as drawings.

Also recent is The Touching Community, the project by Aimar Pérez Galí that brings together dance and research into the impact of AIDS on the dance scene since the 1980s, which would not be the same without the letters read by the artist to the missing dancers, or the music of Arthur Russell, which could also be the soundtrack of this article.

[Article published in Bonart, 2017]

“Instead of a hermeneutics, we need an erotics of art.” This is how Susan Sontag concluded her essay “Against Interpretation” (1964), in which she alluded to the need for all commentary on art to make the works – and by analogy, our personal experience – more real. A good way to achieve this is to listen to the artists’ own voices explaining their motivations, interests, references or the processes that have led them to that specific idea or project.

The interview is a good format to access that personal story of the artists and Hans-Ulrich Obrist is a good representative of the art of conversation, having conducted hundreds of them, of a transdisciplinary and transgenerational nature, which have become books, have been kept in oral recordings or video records, which bring us closer to the thoughts of artists, filmmakers, writers or architects, among others, who relate in a very close way, what has been important for them and what has not, who inspired them in their beginnings and how they develop their work. Profiles as varied as Björk, Miranda July, Matthew Barney, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Fischli & Weiss, Merce Cunningham, Richard Hamilton, Doris Lessing, Michel Houellebec, Rem Koolhaas and Zaha Hadid, among many others, have appeared in Obrist’s notebooks, tape recorders and videos.

An image that sums up the spirit of these interviews is the video in which the duo, Gilbert and George, dressed in their traditional classic style, open various cupboards in their studio in London and, with great care and affection, show small models that reproduce the distribution of their works in the different exhibition spaces in which they have shown their work while sharing anecdotes and experiences.

Videos and documentaries about artists are another good way to get closer to their work and thinking. In this sense, FILAF stands out, a festival dedicated to film and artist books that has been held for six years in Perpignan. This year’s edition brought some great things to the table, such as “Malpartida Fluxus Village” by María Pérez, a journey through the present and the past, accompanied by various testimonies, through the experience of the museum founded by Wolf Vostell in Cáceres; “Troublemakers, the history of land art”, by James Crump and Ronnie Sassoon, naturally told by some of its main protagonists; or “Eva Hesse” by Marcie Begleiter, which approaches the late artist through her personal diaries.

Precisely, the most intimate and personal voice appears in literary code in “Germà de Gel” by the artist Alicia Kopf, in which research on explorers and polar expeditions form an exceptional story that is the basis of Kopf’s artistic research and, at the same time, constitutes the basis of a story about her place in the world, within her family, art and society.

[Article published in Bonart, 2016]

Contemporary Prisoners. Working and selling yourself

Work and how the nature of work is transforming, what is considered to be work, where, and when it happens, working relations and the implications of all of this is a subject that concerns us, giving rise to much reflection by economists, sociologists and naturally, artists.

Harun Farocki, for example, has explored the changes in working processes in contemporary societies and the way these are represented in line with the parameters of the dominant visual culture. This is reflected in his latest project, in collaboration with Antje Ehmann, Labour in a single shot, currently on show at the Tàpies Foundation. The fruit of a workshop carried out in 15 cities of the world, based on an investigation into the subject of “Labour”, brought together a series of videos, of 1 or 2 minutes long, with a single shot, that reflected different forms of work in the world, remunerated or not, material or immaterial.

The subject gives rise to much discussion, particularly now that we are witnessing how, due to the post-capitalist pressure of the “markets”, labour rights are at a very low ebb, and how if a remedy isn’t found soon human rights will also begin to be called into question, under a barrage of arguments revolving around security and sustainability. Hence, it was a bit disappointing to establish that the current edition of Manifesta, taking place these days in Zurich that proposed the suggestive title “What people do for money?” remained a not very incisive proposal. One in which, yes, work was undertaken in the context. The thirty artists invited to develop new projects did collaborate with specific professionals resident in the city of Zurich and also with different schools of architecture and film. But, the ambiguities and conflict that a subject like this (labour-money-selling yourself-power) could lead to, be it from a critical or prospective stance failed to appear.

More profound was the analysis proposed by the VI Jornadas Filosóficas de Barcelona, ccoordinated by Xavier Bassa and Felip Martí-Jufresa. These sessions explored the history of labour and the disciplinary domination of capitalism or, in other words, the “salaried slavery” that Noam Chomsky has explained so well.

But where were we? The architect and professor at Princeton, Beatriz Colomina talks about to be permanently connected and available, in sleep mode but always alert and prepared to switch into on mode, converts us into “voluntary prisoners” into professionals whose office ends up overlapping with the place of rest. The bed, where we remain hyper-connected, predisposed to interrupt our sleep at 3 in the morning if necessary to have a videoconference with Brazil or China, to later carry on sleeping. Colomina, who focussed on the study of architecture in relation to the media, sees a quite peculiar antecedent for this form of life: Hugh Hefner, the creator of Playboy. Whose rotating bed became the place from where he constructed his economic empire and also the centre of his mansion. A bed not precisely for having sex with the playmates so much as a place of control, equipped with a fridge, hi-fi, telephone, archives, bar, microphone, dicta-phone, headphones, television, breakfast table, desk and remote to control the lights. According to Colomina: “The post-war era inaugurated the high-performance bed as an epicentre of productivity: a new form of industrialisation which was exported globally and had now become available to an international arm of dispersed but interconnected producers. A new kind of factory without walls was constructed by compact electronics and extra pillows for the 24/7 generation”.

In his book 24/7. Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep, goes further, observing how the supermarkets open 24 hours seven days a week and the global structure that sustains them, which exemplify non-stop production and consumption, are on the point of uniting with the human subject. “24/7 is a time of indifference, against which the fragility of human life is increasingly inadequate and within which sleep has no necessity or inevitability. In relation to labour, it renders plausible, even normal, the idea of working without pause, without limits. It is aligned with what is inanimate, inert, or un-ageing. As an advertising exhortation it decrees the absoluteness of availability, and hence the ceaselessness of needs and their incitement, but also their perpetual non-fulfilment”. The future Crary envisages is terrifying, based on scientific studies (stemming from the observation of the white crown sparrow that passes days without sleeping to leave its nest ready) aimed to be applied in a military environment (there’s a pressing need for a sleepless soldier): “as history has shown, war-related innovations are inevitably assimilated into a broader social sphere, and the sleepless soldier would be the forerunner of the sleepless worker or consumer. Non-sleep products, when aggressively promoted by pharmaceutical companies, would become first a lifestyle option, and eventually, for many, a necessity.”

And if we return to pose the question “What do people do for money?” no doubt the answer would be “anything and for little money”. Enslaved and precarious. How can artists indicate, reflect and respond to this situation? How do artists today confront the impositions of the political and financial powers? What are the ambiguities? These are the questions that were raised in the exhibition Yes, I Can! Un portrait du pouvoir, curated by Sébastien Planas at the Centre d’Art Contemporain Walter Benjamin in Perpignan and these are the responses or comments the artists offer: Franco within an urn, camouflaged by ballot papers (Eugenio Merino), two riot police executing a careful choreography (Carlos Aires), an arm, a penis and a crow as the “passions” that motivate all actions (Taroop & Glabel), a combination of iconic images and popular texts on the value of money (Claire Fontaine) or the protest phrases written on walls and later erased such as, “An ignorant populace usually chooses an ignorant government” (Adrian Melis). How is criticism established? How to be part of the political, financial, military and religious system and at the same time maintain freedom? Is it possible to remain between resistance and submission?

Andrea Fraser is another of the artists who knows how to play well with ambiguities and contradictions. She herself has embodied and interpreted the different roles, voices and hierarchies of the agents of the art system. Her conclusion is clear: “It is not a question of being against the institution. We are the institution. It’s a question of what kind of institution we are, what kind of values we institutionalise, what forms of practice we rewards and what kind of rewards do we aspire to.”

The exhibition in Arts Santa Mònica, celebrating the ten years of the Sala d’Art Jove, in some way, endeavours to identify certain discourses and common threads, to elaborate a sort of photo-fit image and summary of the emerging art scene in Barcelona of these last ten years. It identifies as one of the most significant subjects that of professionalization, a reflection on work, the work of the artist and work in contemporary societies. A good example is the installation Quiero Trabajar de Ciprian Homorodean that brings together advertisements offering employment, in which the artist himself, Rumanian in origin, offers himself for a wide variety of jobs. And in this way subjects, such as the European immigration laws, self-exploitation and the insecurity that establishes no differentiation between qualified or unqualified jobs, are deployed.

Contrasting concepts, that go hand in hand with insecurity are entrepreneurship and creativity; the magical recipes, the big traps presented to justify this process of self-exploitation and culpability of all that doesn’t fit within the system. In his book, Paradojas de lo cool, Alberto Santamaría explains how creativity and culture are used to coat the logic of capitalism with a layer of sugar that makes it more appetising and addictive.

To identify these processes is the first step to being able to change them. Mladen Stilinovic, the recently deceased artist from Belgrade, did so in 1978 (and later in 2011), in his performance Artist at work, in which, wrapped up in a white sheet with his head resting on a pillow, he slept in a gallery. The idea is clear: the artist is an unproductive being within the dynamics of capitalist society. An act of resistance avant-la-lettre for the desolating future contemplated by Jonathan Crary in 24/7.

“If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution” are the words attributed to Emma Goldman, a well-known Lithuanian feminist and anarchist activist who was reprimanded for dancing too excitedly, questioning her seriousness and commitment to the cause. “I cannot believe that a cause that defends a beautiful ideal, such as anarchism and that advocates freedom from conventions and prejudices, calls for the denial of life and joy,” were her literal words.

As history shows us, with this and other examples, dancing and partying are not only synonymous with escape and lack of commitment. At the Factory in New York, parties were just another stage of the permanent creative process, filming movies, producing silkscreens, casting, holding meetings and exchanges that took place day and night in Andy Warhol’s studio.

It is not common for articles to have music, but if we had to put music to this one, it would undoubtedly be Lou Reed’s “All tomorrow parties.”

Meetings, parties and celebrations are not alien to certain current artistic practices in which the procedural, the performative and the ephemeral play an important role. Two recent cases with their specificities are Ex-Abrupto and El Palomar.

Ex-Abrupto, which defines itself as a festival of contemporary art in uncomfortable environments, was presented this spring in Vic, within the Parada Zero event. The members of the collective settled (with the permission of its owner) in the house (now for sale) where Antonio María Claret had lived, tidied it up, repaired the basic installations and, for a week, presented an exhibition as well as concerts, actions and presentations both in the house and in its garden. Artistic interventions, music, drinks and encounters to show a conception of art that is alive, vibrant and that has to do above all with people and relationships.

El Palomar is an initiative by R. Marcos Mota and Mariokissme that reviews the hidden history in relation to identity and gender. El Palomar participated in the Spanish Pavilion of the Venice Biennale curated by Martí Manen, in relation to the work of Francesc Ruiz, making unpublished itineraries through the Giardini and these days, within the Barcelona Production’16 program, they are presenting at the Capella in Barcelona, ​​a project based on a script written by Alberto Cardín, the essayist, anthropologist and prominent LGBT activist of the 70s and 80s in Spain. But above all we mention El Palomar here for its work Hedonismo Crítico, hosted within the cycle of exhibitions curated by Martí Manen at the Espai 13 of the Fundació Joan Miró. Hedonismo Crítico. Reinvention and vindication proposed the party as a format from which to generate different times and ways of communication and reception, a festive marathon that escaped the weight of the institution “to share and generate new avenues of affection without exclusion.”

[Article published in Bonart, 2016]

Burning onto a hard drive. Percentage completed 99 %
About the exhibition, reception, distribution, marketing, collection and preservation of digital works

Moving images, and image-time are two of the vehicles more widely used to experience image in contemporary society. This is precisely why many contemporary artists work in this field. This type of image brought by technical devices of image generation and distribution, determines a extended perception of time, which is not unique and specific, but continuous. Nothing new so far, the novelty lies now on the changing implications and relationships created in the art scene in terms of creation, exhibition, reception, distribution, marketing, collection and preservation. Let’s focus on what happens once the work is produced, and ready to be burnt onto a hard drive so that it can be reproduced.

Moon sections, and perception understood as participation

With this type of works and installations, the space in a museum traditionally static and ready for presentations now turns into an open space for projections. Sometimes, the artist Jeff Wall has underlined that museums should compulsory have a sun wing, as well as a moon section that would allow the development of cinematographic experiences.

Contrary to the white cube, the black box creates a space for projection, and also for suggestion, where public can experience images in movement as enlarged images that stimulate senses, whereas the distance between the inner self of the spectator, and the visual representations becomes blurred. The space allocated for the exhibitions is metamorphosed and turned into a cinema, where, like Boris Groys presented in his symposium Concepts on the move (ZKM, Karlsruhe, 2001), “the need for darkness creates an individual state that merges with the structural impossibility to see a video piece until the end. This lack of visibility is a challenge for the spectator, and the perception has now turned into participation.”

Videos, films or sound pieces require a perception period that often exceeds the time we usually allocate to this type of works. This decides the way in which we imagine an exhibition. Not every single piece of art fits in an open space. There could be visual and acoustic incompatibilities. Festivals, video programs, cinema halls, dark rooms where the projections times are indicated (especially for videos of long duration), are suitable to show this type of works. As Groys says, perception can turn into participation when an empowered spectator who has been provided with all necessary details to decide how s/he wants to visit the exhibition, how s/he wants to organize her/his time and what pieces s/he wants to see complete or partially.

Distribution and marketing

In recent times, professionals of the arts (artists, curators, institutions, and so forth) have somehow had to redefine their roles and functions. Also and without any doubt, art galleries have had to rethink their approach dramatically, because one of its functions is to collaborate closely with artists, and also to help them develop artistically. Another one is to be part of the most commercial aspects that have seen how objects turned into processes or digital supports that questioned traditional values, such as for instance, unity in their works or questioning original versus copy criteria. By default, with digital supports the contents can be copied an unlimited amount of times from a master copy that does not really have to be unique, but thanks to their no compression, and other formal features is the version from which all sorts of files and formats are created to be later on reproduced.

This doesn’t mean that certain conventions should be abolished, nor that artists should refrain from producing limited editions of video pieces, but at the same time, these copies might be randomly available on the Internet, be it in an authorised or unauthorised way.

Distribution and marketing are two faces of the same coin that can be approached from slightly different perspectives. There are distribution companies who deal with copyrights of visual works for exhibition, and there are also art galleries who sell videos to be the new additions to private and public collections.

Collecting videos and other digital supports

All these contradictions and questions trouble the minds of artists, curators, and gallery directors, but not only them, this domino effect affects as well to collectors. As we have discussed further up, institutions as well as private collectors should rethink the exhibition formats, but also the purchase and preservation means. An illustrative example of this is Richard y Pamela Kramlich’s collection, held in San Francisco. For a start they refurbished the space in their house so that they could set up and show the video pieces, and the video installations of their collection. And in 1997 they founded the New Art Trust to promote research and preservation of videos and other formats of productions based on temporal functions, in cooperation with museums the likes of San Francisco MOMA, Museum of Modern Art New York, and Tate London, who at the same time have been involved in co-productions and co-acquisitions.

To add new videos and other digital supports onto a collection has got some practical implications and conservational issues that are not that relevant for example, when acquiring photographs, paintings, drawings or performances. Amongst other things because the buyer, or the collector incorporates to their collection a digital file saved onto a hard drive (or a link to a file hosted in a server) that functions as a master copy to create their own copies of the exhibition. New Art Trust in San Francisco, and recently Screen-Projects in Barcelona have recently drawn up a sales contract where they mention the exhibition rights acquired with the work, and the possibility to migrate and update to new formats or technologies, should the current supports become out of date.

Digital works are based in technology, but at the same time their immateriality links them to a volatile present in constant change. To a collector it can be a problem the fact that s/he has acquired a digital piece of art for thousands of euros (or dollars), that can be seen at no charge on the Internet, although we have to bear in mind that they are no longer the exclusive owners of that piece, but the facilitators of the accessibility to that piece of work (and some more in the future), transferring their role of legal guardian to facilitator of new productions.

Moving images, and image-time are two of the vehicles more widely used to experience image in contemporary society. This is precisely why many contemporary artists work in this field. This type of image brought by technical devices of image generation and distribution, determines a extended perception of time, which is not unique and specific, but continuous. Nothing new so far, the novelty lies now on the changing implications and relationships created in the art scene in terms of creation, exhibition, reception, distribution, marketing, collection and preservation. Let’s focus on what happens once the work is produced, and ready to be burnt onto a hard drive so that it can be reproduced.

Moon sections, and perception understood as participation

With this type of works and installations, the space in a museum traditionally static and ready for presentations now turns into an open space for projections. Sometimes, the artist Jeff Wall has underlined that museums should compulsory have a sun wing, as well as a moon section that would allow the development of cinematographic experiences.

Contrary to the white cube, the black box creates a space for projection, and also for suggestion, where public can experience images in movement as enlarged images that stimulate senses, whereas the distance between the inner self of the spectator, and the visual representations becomes blurred. The space allocated for the exhibitions is metamorphosed and turned into a cinema, where, like Boris Groys presented in his symposium Concepts on the move (ZKM, Karlsruhe, 2001), “the need for darkness creates an individual state that merges with the structural impossibility to see a video piece until the end. This lack of visibility is a challenge for the spectator, and the perception has now turned into participation.”

Videos, films or sound pieces require a perception period that often exceeds the time we usually allocate to this type of works. This decides the way in which we imagine an exhibition. Not every single piece of art fits in an open space. There could be visual and acoustic incompatibilities. Festivals, video programs, cinema halls, dark rooms where the projections times are indicated (especially for videos of long duration), are suitable to show this type of works. As Groys says, perception can turn into participation when an empowered spectator who has been provided with all necessary details to decide how s/he wants to visit the exhibition, how s/he wants to organize her/his time and what pieces s/he wants to see complete or partially.

Distribution and marketing

In recent times, professionals of the arts (artists, curators, institutions, and so forth) have somehow had to redefine their roles and functions. Also and without any doubt, art galleries have had to rethink their approach dramatically, because one of its functions is to collaborate closely with artists, and also to help them develop artistically. Another one is to be part of the most commercial aspects that have seen how objects turned into processes or digital supports that questioned traditional values, such as for instance, unity in their works or questioning original versus copy criteria. By default, with digital supports the contents can be copied an unlimited amount of times from a master copy that does not really have to be unique, but thanks to their no compression, and other formal features is the version from which all sorts of files and formats are created to be later on reproduced.

This doesn’t mean that certain conventions should be abolished, nor that artists should refrain from producing limited editions of video pieces, but at the same time, these copies might be randomly available on the Internet, be it in an authorised or unauthorised way.

Distribution and marketing are two faces of the same coin that can be approached from slightly different perspectives. There are distribution companies who deal with copyrights of visual works for exhibition, and there are also art galleries who sell videos to be the new additions to private and public collections.

Collecting videos and other digital supports

All these contradictions and questions trouble the minds of artists, curators, and gallery directors, but not only them, this domino effect affects as well to collectors. As we have discussed further up, institutions as well as private collectors should rethink the exhibition formats, but also the purchase and preservation means. An illustrative example of this is Richard y Pamela Kramlich’s collection, held in San Francisco. For a start they refurbished the space in their house so that they could set up and show the video pieces, and the video installations of their collection. And in 1997 they founded the New Art Trust to promote research and preservation of videos and other formats of productions based on temporal functions, in cooperation with museums the likes of San Francisco MOMA, Museum of Modern Art New York, and Tate London, who at the same time have been involved in co-productions and co-acquisitions.

To add new videos and other digital supports onto a collection has got some practical implications and conservational issues that are not that relevant for example, when acquiring photographs, paintings, drawings or performances. Amongst other things because the buyer, or the collector incorporates to their collection a digital file saved onto a hard drive (or a link to a file hosted in a server) that functions as a master copy to create their own copies of the exhibition. New Art Trust in San Francisco, and recently Screen-Projects in Barcelona have recently drawn up a sales contract where they mention the exhibition rights acquired with the work, and the possibility to migrate and update to new formats or technologies, should the current supports become out of date.

Digital works are based in technology, but at the same time their immateriality links them to a volatile present in constant change. To a collector it can be a problem the fact that s/he has acquired a digital piece of art for thousands of euros (or dollars), that can be seen at no charge on the Internet, although we have to bear in mind that they are no longer the exclusive owners of that piece, but the facilitators of the accessibility to that piece of work (and some more in the future), transferring their role of legal guardian to facilitator of new productions.

[Article published in the magazine El Pulpo, Brasil, 2016]