new team advance programme - macba.cat · george maciunas and the economy of art’, in res....
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Index
Team
Assessing Committee
New academic staff – Independent Study Programme
Exhibitions
Publications
General Information
NEW ASSESSING COMMITTEE
Cuautémoc Medina
Mexico City, 5 December 1965
Holds a PhD in History and Theory of Art from the University of Essex in
Britain and a BA in History from the Universidad Autónoma de México
(UNAM). He is a full-time researcher at the Instituto de Investigaciones
Estéticas at the UNAM. He has been Chief Curator at the Museo
Universitario de Arte Contemporáneo (MUAC) since 2013.
Between 2002 and 2008 he was the first Associate Curator of Latin
American Art Collections at Tate Modern, London. Among other projects he
has curated include Cuando la fe mueve montañas (When faith moves
mountains), Lima, Peru, 2001, by Francis Alÿs, and 20 Million Mexicans
Can´t Be Wrong, South London Gallery, 2002. In 2004 he was one of the
four curator-researchers who selected the International 04 exhibition for
the Liverpool Biennial.
Among his recent publications are: ‘Gerzso and the Indo-American Gothic:
From Eccentric Surrealism to Parallel Modernism’, in Diana C. Dupont,
Risking the Abstract: Mexican Modernism and the Art of Gunther Gerzso
(Santa Barbara, CA: Santa Barbara Museum of Art, 2003); ‘Sobre el
abrumador deseo de poner orden’ (The Overwhelming Desire for Order) in
Iñigo Manglano, ed. J. Jeffery and Pavelka Peet (Mexico-Monterrey: Museo
Tamayo-Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Monterrey, MARCO, 2004); and
‘Architecture and Efficiency. George Maciunas and the Economy of Art’, in
Res. Anthropology and Aesthetics, vol. 45, spring 2004.
Estrella de Diego
Madrid, 1958
Professor of Contemporary Art at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid
and writer. She has held the King Juan Carlos of Spain Chair in Spanish
Culture and Civilisation at New York University (1998–99). Her research
focuses on gender theory, post-colonial studies and the origins of
modernity. Among her publications are: La mujer y la pintura en la España
del siglo XIX (Women and painting in 19th century Spain); El andrógino
sexuado. Eternos ideales, nuevas estrategias de género (The sexed
androgyne. Eternal ideals, new gender strategies); Tristísimo Warhol (Sad,
sad Warhol); and the work of fiction El filósofo y otros relatos sin personajes
(The Philosopher and other stories without characters).
Among other exhibitions she has curated: Russian Symbolism (Fundación
“la Caixa”, Madrid, Barcelona and Bordeaux, 1999–2000); and the Spanish
representation at the 49th Venice Biennale, 2001.
Gold Medal for Merit in Fine Arts, 2010.
Catherine David
Paris, 1954
Art historian, curator and museum director. She studied Spanish and
Portuguese Literature and Linguistics. Curator at the Musée national d’art
moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, from 1981 to 1990, and Curator at the
Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume, from 1990 to 1994. She was the curator
of documenta X, Kassel, 1997, the first woman and the first non-German
speaker to do so. Between 2002 and 2004 she was Director of the Witte de
With Center of Contemporary Art, Rotterdam. She was also Chief Curator
of the Musées de France and Artistic Director of the Lyon Biennale 2009.
She is currently Deputy Director of the Musée national d’art moderne, Paris.
Interested in the Middle East, in 1998 she became Director of
Contemporary Arab Representations, which was first shown at the Fundació
Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona. In 2006 she presented the exhibition The Iraqi
Equation in Barcelona and Berlin. In 2007 she curated DI/VISIONS. Culture
and Politics in the Middle East at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin,
with the aim of breaking down the Western stereotype of Arab culture.
Chris Dercon
Lier, Belgium, 1958
Art historian, curator and cultural producer. In the 1980s he was Head of
Programming at MoMA’s P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, New York, where
he showed the work of Helio Oiticica and other pioneering artists such as
André Cadere, Franz West and David Medalla. In 1990 he became Director
of the Witte de With Center of Contemporary Art, Rotterdam, where he
organised exhibitions by Allan Sekula, Paul Thek and Eugenio Dittborn,
among others. In 1996 he stepped down to become Director of the Haus
der Kunst, Munich, known for its exhibitions of photographers such as
Robert Adams, Lee Friedlander and William Eggleston. In 2005 he produced
Svayambh with Anish Kapoor and published the essay My Body is Your Body
for the Deutsche Guggenheim. In 2011 he was appointed Director of Tate
Modern, London, a post he held until 2016 when he became Director of the
Volksbühne experimental theatre in Berlin. He has been a member of
MACBA’s Assessing Committee since 1999.
PEI – NEW ACADEMIC STAFF
INDEPENDENT STUDY PROGRAMME
In 2017 PEI will initiate a new cycle with new academic staff for its sixth
edition. PEI, MACBA’s Independent Study Programme, is a learning
laboratory that takes place inside and outside the museum institution, and
whose main aim is to develop critical thought from the intersection of
artistic practices, social sciences and political and institutional
interventions. PEI questions the traditional division of knowledge and the
logic imposed by cultural marketing. Began in 2006, it has since been
consolidated as a programme of experimentation on the new forms of
knowledge production and on how to configure spaces capable of resisting
the ongoing spectacularisation of culture in the context of global tourism
and cognitive capitalism.
The programme’s contents have been developed around a cross section of
areas dealing with critical discourse, feminist studies, queer theory and
decolonial critique. In the current edition, a new working area has been
added to address the energy crisis caused by the shortage of fossil fuels and
the subsequent crisis of civilisations and ecological collapse. In this way, PEI
wants to reflect on limited growth, climatic activism and possible scenarios
of post-capitalist ways of life in a world without fossil fuels.
These contents relate to the tradition of radical, feminist and experimental
education, not only as an area of study but as a practice capable of
configuring new spaces of knowledge. The changes in PEI reject all
preconceived ideas on ‘high education’ in favour of a learning programme
that goes beyond the mere acquisition of qualifications.
PEI takes place at CED, a space that will celebrate its tenth anniversary in
2017 by reactivating itself as a specific place for research. The recent
changes in MACBA’s organisational structure have allowed greater
transversality in the Museum’s public programmes, archive and library, and
will strengthen its current work of conservation and acquisition of Fonds by
giving them greater visibility and activating them through research, not only
academic, but artistic and experimental.
Practical information
From 27 March 2017 to 30 June 2018
Duration: 15 months
Teaching hours (guideline): The course is divided into four terms, with
approximately 450 teaching hours. Lectures are held Mondays to Fridays, 4
to 8 pm.
Tuition fees: 3,000 euros. This may be paid in two instalments.
Registration period: 10 October to 25 November 2016.
Notice of acceptance: 5 December (this may be extended until all places are
filled).
For registration requirements and further information see www.macba.cat
NEW ACADEMIC STAFF
Lucía Egaña
Studied art, aesthetics and documentary media and holds a PhD in
Audiovisual Communication from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.
She is a writer and researcher on feminism and transfeminism,
representation, post-pornography, technology, free software and error.
She has developed educational processes in institutional and informal
contexts and her artistic work has been shown in Mexico, Uruguay, Chile,
Germany, Spain, France, Norway, Ecuador and Colombia, among others.
She organises the nomadic festival Muestra Marrana; has published the
book Enciclopedia del amor en los tiempos del porno (Cuarto propio, 2014);
and collaborates with various collectives and artists, mostly in the medium
of performance. She is a member of the research group FIC (Fractalidades
en Investigación Crítica, UAB) and has developed, together with Miriam
Solá, the research project ‘Máquinas de Guerra, políticas transfeministas de
la representación’ (2014–15).
Marcelo Expósito
His artistic work tends to focus on the fields of critical theory, editorial work,
curatorship, education and translation. He has been a member of PEI’s
academic staff since its inception in 2006 and was co-director of its fourth
edition (2012–13). He has taught in institutions such as Universitat Pompeu
Fabra (Barcelona); School of Fine Arts of the Universidad de Castilla-La
Mancha (Cuenca); Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporáneo de la
UNAM (MUAC); Centro de Investigaciones Artísticas (Buenos Aires), and the
universities of Buenos Aires (UBA) and La Plata (Argentina).
Co-founder and editor of the magazine Brumaria (2002–6), since 2006 he
is a member of the editorial collective of the multilingual webzine
transversal, published by eipcp (European Institute for Progressive Cultural
Policies). He has written and edited, on his own or in collaboration, books
on critical theory, cultural activism and the history of the artistic avant-
gardes. Among others: Plusvalías de la imagen. Anotaciones (locales) para
una crítica de los usos (y abusos) de la imagen (1993); Chris Marker. Retorno
a la inmemoria del cineasta (2000); Modos de hacer. Arte crítico, esfera
pública y acción directa (2001); Historias sin argumento. El cine de Pere
Portabella (2001); Producción cultural y prácticas instituyentes. Líneas de
ruptura en la crítica institucional (2008); Los nuevos productivismos (2010);
Walter Benjamin, productivista (2013); Desinventario. Esquirlas de
Tucumán Arde en el archivo de Graciela Carnevale (2015); Conversación con
Manuel Borja-Villel (2015).
An activist in movements of civil disobedience, against neoliberalism and in
favour of social rights and democracy since the 1990s, he is currently a
member of the Executive Committee of Barcelona En Comú, as well as a
member of parliament for Barcelona en Comú and Third Secretary in the
Congress.
Marina Garcés
Philosopher and lecturer at the Universidad de Zaragoza. Her work focuses
on the fields of politics and critical thought, and on the need to articulate a
challenging and committed voice. To this aim, her philosophy has
developed as a wide experimentation of ideas, ways of learning and forms
of intervention in today’s world. She is the author of books such as En las
prisiones de lo posible (2002); Un mundo común (2013); El compromiso /
Commitment (Colección Breus, CCCB, 2013); Filosofía inacabada (2015);
and Fuera de clase. Textos de filosofía de guerrilla (2016). Since 2002 she
has coordinated ‘Espai en Blanc’, a collective project in favour of a
committed, practical and experimental relationship with philosophical
thought.
Dora García
An artist and researcher on the parameters and conventions of the
presentation of art, questions of time – real or fictional – and the limits
between representation and reality. She uses various supports to generate
contexts in which the traditional system of communication – transmitter,
message, recipient – is altered, thus modifying the traditional relationship
between artist, work and public.
In 2011 she represented Spain at the Venice Biennale with The Inadequate,
and in the 56th edition of 2015 she presented the performance and
installation project The Sinthome Score, based on a transcription of Jacques
Lacan’s 23rd seminar Le Sinthome. A reference in her recent work, she
discovered Jacques Lacan thanks to James Joyce, on whom she has
reflected deeply in works such as her film The Joycean Society. She is
currently working on Óscar Masotta and the notion of repetition and her
ongoing project El café de las voces, which began in Hamburg in 2014 and
is still taking place in different cities.
She has had solo exhibition at CGAC (Santiago de Compostela, 2009); Index
Stockholm (2009); Kunsthalle Bern, Switzerland, (2010); Kunsthaus Bregenz
(2013); Universidad Torcuato di Tella (Buenos Aires, 2014); and Toronto
Power Plant (Toronto, 2015). Her work is represented by ProjecteSD
(Barcelona), Galería Juana de Aizpuru (Madrid), Ellen de Bruijne Projects
(Amsterdam) and Galerie Michel Rein (Paris and Brussels).
Emilio Santiago Muíño
Holds a PhD in Social Anthropology with a doctoral thesis on the systemic
transition in Cuba since the fall of the USSR. He was a researcher and
lecturer at the Department of Social Anthropology and Spanish
Philosophical Thought of the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. He is a
member of the Transdisciplinary Investigation Group on Socio-Ecological
Transitions (part of the project HUAMECO: Humanidades ambientales.
Estrategias para la empatía ecológica y la transición hacia sociedades
sostenibles), and of the Consejo del Instituto Universitario DEMOS-PAZ
(Universidad Autónoma de Madrid). He was an active member of the group
behind the manifesto Última Llamada (2013). Besides his scientific
publications, he has written the books No es una estafa, es una crisis (de
civilización), (Enclave, 2015), and Rutas sin mapa (2nd Catarata Essay Prize,
2015). Founder of the social transformation project Rompe el Círculo
(Móstoles) and an activist of the Instituto de Transición Rompe el Círculo.
He is currently Head of the Department of the Environment at the Móstoles
City Council.
Jaime Vindel
European doctorate in Art History and Masters in Philosophy and Social
Sciences. He is an art critic and the author of essays and other publications.
In recent years he has worked in universities in Argentina, Chile and Spain,
focusing his research on the crossroads between art, activism and politics
in those contexts since the 1960s to the present. He is a member of the
Southern Conceptualisms Network and took part in the curatorial team of
the exhibition Losing the Human Form. A Seismic Image of the 1980s in Latin
America (MNCARS, 2012).
His post-doctoral research project focuses on aspects of the relations that
were established at the end of the Cold War between the philosophy of
praxis, materialist aesthetics and historical sociology, as in the irradiations
in Spanish art criticism of the ideas of the Hispano-Mexican philosopher
Adolfo Sánchez Vázquez, or the activities of the Unión Popular de Artistas
(UPA), a forgotten milestone from the last years of Francoism, yet essential
for understanding the links between radical politics, urban activism and the
artistic avant-garde.
He is the author of Transparente opacidad. Arte conceptual en los límites
del lenguaje y la política (Madrid, Brumaria, 2015); La vida por asalto: arte,
política e historia en Argentina entre 1965 y 2001 (Madrid, Brumaria, 2014);
‘La imagen de las cosas: cuerpo y objeto ante la crisis de consume’, in A.
Fernández Polanco (ed.), Pensar la imagen/pensar con las imágenes,
(Salamanca, Delirio, 2014); and the editor, together with J. Carrillo, of
Desacuerdos. Crítica, 8 (Barcelona, MACBA, 2014).
Pablo Martínez
Head of Programming, MACBA
EXHIBITIONS
AKRAM ZAATARI
AGAINST PHOTOGRAPHY. AN ANNOTATED HISTORY OF THE ARAB
IMAGE FOUNDATION
Curators: Bartomeu Marí and Hiuwai Chu
Organised by: the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) and
co-produced with the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary
Art, Korea (MMCA).
Press conference and opening: 6 April 2016
Dates: 6 April 2016 – 24 September 2017
Akram Zaatari, imatge d’On People, Photography and Modern Times, 2010. Cortesia de l’artista i Thomas Dane
Gallery.
The exhibition will look at the dual status of the AIF itself, as an archive of
photographic and collecting practices and as The archives of the Arab
Image Foundation (AIF) in Beirut, Lebanon, encompass a plethora of
photographic material from the Middle East, North Africa and the Arab
Diaspora. Initiated and developed by artists interested in photographic
preservation, the AIF emerged as a place dedicated to the understanding
of photography and the practices of collecting, preserving and sharing
images. The AIF’s initial collection was a result of research generated by
artists’ projects, leading to a new type of institution and a different
approach to photographic heritage. The archive has since grown to include
a vast array of other collections, ranging from vernacular snapshots to
formalised studio compositions.
Beyond showcasing a wide spectrum of visual representations of the Arab
world, artists who constituted or used AIF’s collection addressed radical
questions about photographic documents and their function in our times.
Projects engaged the writing of histories concerning the practice of
ordinary people, small events and a society in general, resulting in new
discourses related to the medium.
Far from presenting a historical account of the AIF, this exhibition presents
an artist’s perspective, which is critical for understanding the
organisation’s practice. Through Akram Zaatari, one of AIF’s founding
members who played a key role in its development, the exhibition reflects
on AIF’s 20-year history and the multiple statuses of the photograph, as
descriptive document, as object, as material value, as aesthetics and as
memory. Zaatari’s expansive work on photography and the practice of
collecting, takes an archaeological approach to the medium, digging into
the past, resurfacing with new narratives and resituating them in the
contemporary.
an artist-led initiative that left a visible mark on the artistic landscape of its
times, signalling significant moments in its history and the critical debates
generated throughout its evolution. Past projects and new artist
productions related to the collection will be presented.
An illustrated catalogue with texts by Mark Westmoreland, Kaelen Wilson-
Goldie and Akram Zaatari and Chad Elias will be published for the occasion
Akram Zaatari, vista de la instal·lació On People, Photography and Modern Times, 2010. Foto: Thierry Bal. Cortesia
de l’artista i Thomas Dane Gallery
FORENSIC ARCHITECTURE
Press conference: 26 April, 11.30 am
Opening: 27 April, 7.30 pm
Exhibition organised by the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) and the group of museums: L’Internationale
Curated by: Anselm Franke, Eyal Weizman and Rosario Güiraldes
IMAGE: The ArchitecturalImageComplex, Rafah: Black Friday, Forensic
Architecture, 2015. The story of Rafah, on 1 August 2014, lies in the
hundreds of images and video clips that exist in the smartphones of
activists, press clippings and social media posts. Three-dimensional models
provide a means of composing the relation between multiple images and
videos in space and time. This assemblage of evidence has allowed for the
emergence of a narrative of events. © Forensic Architecture, 2015.
In recent years the little-known research group Forensic Architecture began
using novel research methods to undertake a series of investigations into
human rights abuses. While providing crucial evidence for international
courts and working with a wide range of activist groups, NGOs, Amnesty
International and the UN, Forensic Architecture has not only shed new light
on human rights violations and state crimes across the globe, it has also
given rise to a new form of investigative practice, to which it has given its
name. The group uses architecture as a methodological device with which
to investigate armed conflicts and environmental destruction, and to cross-
reference multiple other evidence sources such as new media, remote
sensing, material investigation and witness testimony. This exhibition
introduces the practice, outlining its origins, history, assumptions, potential
and double binds. With these investigations and the critical texts that
accompany them, Forensic Architecture examines how public truth is
produced, technologically, architecturally and aesthetically; how it can be
used to confront state propaganda and secrets; and how to expose newer
forms of state violence.
IMAGE: Miranshah, North Waziristan Pakistan: 30 March 2012. This case
analysed video material out of North Waziristan, in Pakistan's frontier zones
with Afghanistan, in order to reconstruct and interrogate the targeting of
buildings in a secret CIA drone assassination campaign. On 30 March 2012
a drone strike hit a market area in Miranshah, Pakistan, killing four people.
A rare 43-second video, smuggled out of the besieged area, recorded the
building in which the people were killed. Reconstructing the room on a 1:1
scale, we were able to mark every trace that the blast left on the walls, thus
establishing the location of the explosion and the places where people were
killed. The above image shows how animating the shadows cast on different
days and at different times enabled us to compare our model with the
shadows visible in the satellite and video images, to corroborate its volumes
as well as determine the approximate time of 3 pm when the video was
shot. © Forensic Architecture, 2013.
IMAGE: Kite photography 2015–16 Public Lab/Zochrot/al’Araqib Village.
The Bedouin village of al’Araqib, next to the old alTuri cemetery in the
northern threshold of the Naqab/Negev desert in Palestine/Israel, has been
destroyed 98 times as the Israeli State seeks to displace the inhabitants
from their ancestral lands. The authorities claimed that the village and
cemetery did not exist prior to the establishment of the State and that its
population were trespassers. We analysed British Royal Air Force aerial
photography from 1945 (more than three years before Israel was
established) and compared them with contemporary photographs taken
using kites. In this way we have sought to confirm the historical continuity
of the inhabitation of this landscape. © Forensic Architecture, 2016.
POESIA BROSSA
Exhibition: Poesia Brossa
Curated by: Teresa Grandas and Pedro G. Romero
Dates: 20 September 2017 - February 2018
MACBA presents a comprehensive survey of the work of this pioneering
artist, from his early books to his latest visual investigations, and including
his work in the theatre, cinema, music and artistic actions.
Joan Brossa (Barcelona, 1919-1998) was first and foremost a poet, but we
believe it is necessary to see this in relation to his way of working, his
poiesis. This exhibition establishes a dialogue and confronts Brossa’s work
with the poetry of artists such as Marcel Marien, Nicanor Parra and Ian
Hamilton-Finlay, as well as the poets of Lettrism, visual, concrete,
experimental and expanded poetry, and Fluxus. Brossa was a poet, but his
works stood at a crossroad of languages. Frequently collaborating with
other artists, musicians, filmmakers, dancers, comedians and even
magicians, his work constantly went against the grain and beyond the
limits between disciplines.
Brossa developed his artistic practice in the 1940s in a social-political
context marked by Franco’s dictatorship and in a cultural milieu
characterised by the absence of avant-garde and innovative proposals.
From the beginning, Brossa’s work was one of aesthetic renewal, based on
literary and artistic research. Up until his death, his extensive production
never ceased to develop new forms of expression and ways of
experimenting with different media.
In 2011, the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona was made the
depository of the Fonds of the Fundació Joan Brossa, which contains the
legacy of the artist. The Fonds consists of manuscripts, documents,
correspondence and his personal library, among other materials. It is a
unique tool for understanding Brossa’s extremely interesting work.
The exhibition that MACBA is preparing for 2017 approaches Brossa’s
work by reappraising his influence and interrelationship with the practice
of other artists. The project brings to the fore the constellations of artists
around Brossa, his interrelationship with works he may have been
unaware of, but which allow us to establish parallels and seek dialogues
and tensions. It also aims to emphasise the performative aspects of
Brossa’s poetic practice, his poiesis.
Accompanying the exhibition there will be a publication exploring these
aspects, realised in collaboration with Roger Bernat, Isabel de Naverán
and Maria Salgado.
To secularise this great poet is not an easy task and this is the challenge
facing this project, half way between Marx and Mallarmé: to give Brossa
back his simple and popular voice, the voice of the people, whether they
wear a hat or not; the voice of a light bulb, a train ticket, a playing card, a
set of handcuffs or confetti. People speak Brossa.
MACBA IN THE WORLD:
CO-PRODUCTIONS AND TOURING EXHIBITIONS 2016 – 2017
One of the features of MACBA’s identity is that it produces the majority of its exhibitions and programmes in collaboration with a wide network of museums and art centres, universities and international research centres, mostly in Europe and North and South America.
From the beginning, MACBA’s collaborations with other museums and art centres continue to increase and, to this day, we have conducted over 100 co-productions and touring exhibitions with nearly 80 institutions in the world.
TOURING EXHIBITIONS
The Passion According to Carol Rama
GAM, Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Torino
12 October 2016 – 5 February 2017
Andrea Fraser. L’1%, c’est moi
Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo (MUAC), Mexico City
15 October 2016 – March 2017
PUNK. Its Traces in Contemporary Art
Museo del Chopo, Mexico City
26 October 2016 – February 2017
Akram Zaatari. Arab Image Foundation
Garage, Moscow
May – September 2017
NMCA National Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul
PUBLICATIONS
At the end of the year we will publish a new volume of the MACBA
Collection with a selection of approximately 190 works that are central to
the Museum’s discourse. The publication includes a detailed and illustrated
chronology of the evolution of the Collection and related activities from
1985 to the present, with texts by Chris Dercon, Ivo Mesquita and others.
In close collaboration with the artist and his archive, the publication
MIRALDA MADEINUSA documents for the first time all the work made by
Miralda in the United States from the mid-seventies to the late nineties,
including projects that were never realised. It features an essay by the
Catalan journalist Josep M. Martí Font and the re-edition of the text ‘El
Mahamastakabhisheka de Miralda’, 1984, by Vicent Todolí, curator of the
exhibition, as well as testimonial texts written specifically for this volume
by Paul Schimmel, John Mason, James Wines, Muntadas, César Trasobares,
Suzie Aron and Néstor García Canclini, who participated one way or another
in the projects Miralda made in the United States. Their personal views add
a new dimension to the work. José Luis Gallero has composed a detailed
chronology of the artist from a mishmash of texts and quotes by different
authors and collaborators.
Quadern portàtil 33 recovers two unpublished texts by Pierre Restany, in
the French original version, on the occasion of the exhibition MIRALDA
MADEINUSA: Miralda! « Une vie d’artiste » and Dix ans sont passés. Pierre
Restany (Amélie-les-Bains-Palalda, 1930 – Paris, 2003) was a curator and
writer. His role as an art critic goes back to 1955 when he met Yves Klein,
with whom he would later coin the term Nouveau Réalisme to define the
artists who became the European answer to North-American Pop: Arman,
César, Christo, Yves Klein, Niki de Saint Phalle, Martial Raysse, Mimmo
Rotella and Jean Tinguely. In 1982 Restany published Miralda! « Une vie
d’artiste » in a book by the same name (Àmbit, Barcelona), and ten years
later he wrote the second part, Dix ans sont passés, which remained
unpublished until 2002 (Fundación ICO, Madrid). In both these texts,
translated into Spanish, Restany explains, in his characteristically humorous
style, Miralda’s trajectory from the sixties to 1991. After describing his early
anti-military works, Restany talks in depth about the period of the banquets
and the so-called public ‘ceremonials’, where food, collective participation,
colour and symbolism are the protagonists.
Hard Gelatin is a graphic portrayal of a series of historical events of a socio-
political nature that took place between 1977 and 1992. It features works
by cultural activist groups and artists who dissented from the generalised
way of thinking by adopting attitudes that, in the previous decade, had
supported refutation, irony and political questioning. The publication
includes a text by Teresa Grandas, curator of the exhibition, and another by
Servando Rocha.
Against Photography. An Annotated History of the Arab Image
Foundation will present Akram Zaatari’s artistic project on the concept of
archive. Zaatari questions issues such as the practice of archives and their
function, the authorship of images, their preservation and support, among
others. The publication includes texts by Mark Westmoreland, Kaelen
Wilson-Goldie and Zaatari himself, together with Chad Elias.