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28/5/2001

Experiences: Africas

Centre de Cultura Contemporania de Barcelona CCCB, Barcelona

Barcelona Art Report 2001

This spring sees the presentation in Barcelona of the first Barcelona Art Report 2001 triennial, an initiative of the Ajuntament de Barcelona (Barcelona City Council) which is organised jointly by the Institut de Cultura de Barcelona (ICUB), the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (CCCB) and the Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA).

This first triennial, under the title Experiences, also involves the collaboration of the Centre d'Art Santa Mònica (Visual Arts Delegation of the Generalitat de Catalunya - Government of Catalonia), Hangar, the Escola Tècnica Superior d'Arquitectura de Barcelona (ETSAB - Barcelona School of Architecture), the Fundació Antoni Tàpies and Barcelona Televisió (BTV), and is still open to institutions and collectives for new initiatives.

Concept and method. Experiences. Barcelona Art Report 2001 will be the starting shot, the opening for experimentation in a process of aggregation which sets out to present the all-round creative reality of the city of Barcelona, and to reflect on the image of the contemporary city and look at artistic practice as a factor of social criticism.

Experiences. Barcelona Art Report 2001 showcases creation and thought and aims, first and foremost, to be a cultural exercise in the spectacle society rather than spectacle with cultural subterfuge. The idea is not to select artists according to a canon established by one or various curators, but to incorporate proposals and display their differences, with no pretence at uniting them, simply to explain them. The method is neither neutral nor innocent; as opposed to interventionist or author-controlled events, the method employed to achieve the aims of this open event is aggregation, the successive incorporation of persons and projects on the basis of this initial impetus. The activity has a leading strand which allows the three-yearly fixing of a goal which comprises at once a process of stock-taking, a fresh impetus and an updating of an ongoing debate. The second event, in spring 2004, will coincide with the 2004 World Cultures Forum.

Ciutat Vella is the main host space this year. The venues will however change, ranging from museums to the street, from terrains vagues to city squares. The event is made up of EXHIBITIONS, DEBATES, WORKSHOPS, ACTIONS AND URBAN INTERVENTIONS. Over 300 creators, a hundred of them from Barcelona, are the authors of EXPERIENCES. They include critics, artists, architects, curators, social activists and thinkers such as Act Up, Antoni Abad, Jane Alexandre, Xabier Arakistain, Michael Asher, Vanessa Beecroft, Monica Bonvicini, Marcel Broodthaers, Daniel Buren, Olivier Calix, Paty Chang, Manel Clot, Guy Debord, Pep Duran, Samuel Fosso, Félix González-Torres, Ton Granero, Renée Green, Hans Haacke, Craigie Horsfield, Amadou Kan-Si, Perminder Kaur, La Fiambrera Obrera, Ananias Leki, Audrie, Rosa Martínez, Chus Martínez, Gordon Matta-Clark, Mario Merz, Jo Milner, Antoni Muntadas, Begoña Muñoz, Martí Perán, Perejaume, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Jaume Plensa, Gerhard Richter, Martha Rosler, Salvador Saura, Allan Sekula, Antoni Sellés, Penélope Sioips, Montserrat Soto, Pep Subirós, Eulàlia Valldosera, Eric Weis and Fred Wilson.

Definition. The name Barcelona Art Report is taken from:

Barcelona, after the host city.
Art, because it is devoted to art in its broadest sense.
Report, because we want to contribute information and a new form of communication.

Theme. The title of this year's event is Experiences, experience being understood here as the act of creating within the limits of the possible, on the basis of a synthesis of awareness and the world.

Distinctive elements. Barcelona Art Report 2000 is based on five basic points:

· A critical look at the phenomenon of globalisation, a new approach to local cultural practice and the channelling of energies and resources.
· Encouraging interrelation between creators and the city's different social realities. · A valuation of the working process.
· Direct action as a way of generating an ongoing dynamic to stimulate the creation of relations of complicity between artists and social agents, of comparisons and debate about art and society.
· Debate as one of the primary bases of Barcelona Art Report.

The programme. The social articulation of artistic practices, the construction of new subjectivities and the desacralisation of increasingly across-the-board identities are some of the themes which move the event.


Projects planned for the first year:

Exhibitions:

Africas: the Artist and the City. This exhibition aims to highlight the vitality and wealth of contemporary African art, and its close interrelation with the ever-increasing rate of urbanisation of the continent. A series of parallel activities is also organised to take a closer look at contemporary African culture. (Curator: Josep Subirós. CCCB, from 29 May to 11 September)

The un-Private House. Architects and artists reflect on the transformation undergone by the private house as a result of the social and cultural changes which have taken place in Western society. (Curators: Xavier Costa and Terence Riley. MACBA and public spaces, from 31 May to 7 October)

INSIDEOUT: jardí del cambalache. A portable garden, a laboratory, a workshop, a place to meet and work which is available to everyone, so that the public can enjoy it and take part in a whole series of activities and proposals marked by a playful approach. (Curator: Rosa Pera. Fundació Antoni Tàpies, from 10 May to 29 July).

Youarehere. A look at the artistic creation taking place in Barcelona today. Exhibition, documentary web page, forum for critical debate between artists, curators and other interlocutors of the medium and a net art space. (Curators: Rosa Ferré and Chus Martínez. Palau de la Virreina, from 14 June to 2 September)

Trans Sexual Express Barcelona 2001. An exhibition which basically deals with the changes in gender politics and the reinvention of affective relations. The guest artists have a polymorphic capacity to reinvent their own bodies and throw out a critical challenge to accepted models. (Curators: Xabier Arakistain and Rosa Martínez. Centre d'Art Santa Mònica, from 26 June to 30 September)

Antagonisms. An exhibition which analyses the political aspects and activism of artistic practices to have appeared between the late fifties and the present day. The exhibition is complemented by artist interventions, a cycle of cinema and video, workshops, lectures and seminars (see The Agencies, actions and urban interventions). (Curator. José Lebrero, Jorge Ribalta, Manuel J. Borja. MACBA, from 5 July to 14 October)

The City of Film-makers. The work of a series of contemporary film-makers shows us the germ of some of the basic ideas about the space in which we now live or will in the future. The exhibition reflects the cinema's capacity to express different conceptions of space. (Curators: Jordi Balló and Andrés Hispano. CCCB, from 24 July to 24 November)

Debates. Thought and action are the guiding stars in the series of processes that is Experiences.

Urban Africa: Reinventing the City. To coincide with the exhibition Africas: the Artist and the City, this year's Barcelona Debate will centre on an analysis of the far-reaching urban transformations being undergone by the African continent, and the correlation between new urban realities and the contemporary art scene. (Organized by: Josep Subirós. CCCB, 31 May, 1 and 2 June)

World and Experiences. Three sessions of debate will be organised by Albanian writer Bashkim Shehu on the themes: Globalisation and Cultural Diversity, Creation and Territory and Immigration and the Image of the Other. (CCCB, October)

Actions and urban interventions: public space, direct action and everyday life. Artists such as Ghada Amer, Rogelio López Cuenca and Guillermo Gómez-Peña relativise the exceptional nature of the artistic space and experiment with the possibilities of intervention, dialogue and disagreement in the spaces of real life.

Three Actions Co-ordinated by Rosa Martínez, with the Egyptian artist Ghada Amer, Santiago Sierra and Sergio Vega. (Various spaces in Ciutat Vella, from 29 May to July)

Documentation Processes. Short individual interventions with talks and meetings review the concept of the document in contemporary photography and video, closer to the sense of process than of stylistic genre. (La Capella, from 12 June to 22 July)

Fairground. Interventions by sixteen artists who base their reflections on expiry, memory and the irrecoverable past. (Curator: Elena Vallet. Former Montjuïc Fairground, from 13 June to 29 July)

The Agencies. To complement the exhibition Antagonisms, a series of workshops have been organised for the exchange, discussion and pooling of ideas of artists and collectives who base their approach on a combination of creation and social and political activism. (Curator: Jordi Claramonte. Various public spaces, from June to September)

Ethno-Techno. Performances, lectures and workshops form the basis of a project of urban intervention which aims to demonstrate the cultural pathologies caused by globalisation. Ethno-Techno invites the spectator/participant to reflect on their attitude towards the so-called "second-class cultures". (Lectures: CCCB; performances: La Capella; workshops: number 24, Carrer Joaquim Costa, June)

Questions of use. This action sets out to question the use of various of Barcelona's public spaces. (Curator: Eduard Bru. Plaça de les Palmeres, Plaça Letamendi and Plaça dels Àngels, Barcelona, June/July)

Intimacy, architecture and new citizens. Proposals for new housing for new citizens. (plurifamily apartment building in Ciutat Vella, June/July. Curator: Eduard Bru)


Workshops

Made in Hangar. For three months, the Convent dels Àngels will become a production space where visual and multimedia artists from Barcelona and other places, selected in an open competition, along with other guests, can turn their projects into reality, compare and contrast them, debate and present them in public. In some cases, the actual creation process will become a workshop open to other artists, and the results will be presented to the public. Each and everyone of the activities Made by Angels will take place in three, not necessarily chronological phases: production = workshop = diffusion. (Curator: Florenci Guntin. Convent dels Àngels, July/September).


XL magazine

With David G. Torres and Ferran Barenblit as editors, XL is a magazine of creation and reflection, a discursive space which is open to both writers and visual artists. Contemporary art is well on the way to the dissolution of its physical limits: artists are working with new media and formats. The task of the curator is to take up the challenge of responding to a series of initiatives which question the very idea of exhibition. The aim of XL is to be a publication which reflects these concerns and investigates this form of communication between creators and public.

The pages of XL feature the ideas generated by Barcelona Art Report 2001 - the city, the conflict (or the co-existence) of globality with local specificity, the inequalities being imposed by the new world order, commitment and political and social responsibility, the very idea of exhibiting contemporary art - and the new artistic supports, as well as their critical revision. They also include other alternatives to the ideas which shape the thought of these early years of the twenty-first century.

XL is open both to interventions and the development of hard-copy artistic projects as theory-based reflection on contemporary art.


TECHNICAL INFORMATION

Dates
Opening: 29 May 2001
Closing: October 2001

Promoting body: Ajuntament de Barcelona (Barcelona City Council)

Organising bodies
Institut de Cultura de Barcelona (ICUB)
Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (CCCB)
Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA)

Organising Committee
Ferran Mascarell, Councillor for Culture of the Ajuntament de Barcelona
Josep Ramoneda, Director of the CCCB
Manuel J. Borja-Villel, Director of the MACBA
Jordi Martí, Managing Director of the ICUB
Iván de la Nuez, Director of La Virreina Exhibitions
Jordi Balló, Head of Exhibitions of the CCCB
Jorge Ribalta, Head of Cultural Services of the MACBA

Collaborating bodies (initial list)

Centre d'Art Santa Mònica, Visual Arts Delegation of the Generalitat de Catalunya Hangar
Escola Tècnica Superior d'Arquitectura de Barcelona (ETSAB - Barcelona School of Architecture)
Fundació Antoni Tàpies
BTV

CCCB
Calle Montalegre 5, Barcellona
t. 933064100

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