XIX EDITION OF THE VISUAL ARTS GRANT

No longer can a work be reduced to the presence of an object in the here an now; rather, it consists of a significant network whose interrelationships the artist elaborates, and whose progression in time and space he or she controls; a circuit, in fact. ¹

A small island drifting down the River Tajo and getting lost in the ocean, the creation of a visibility platform for an ethnically diverse community; the introduction of a sub-story in a theatrical performance; a speculative transaction in the stock market; research on the relations among the visual arts, industrial design and socialism in the 19th century; the study of the history of psychiatric institutions in Spain; an experience of coexistence in the heart of an Andean community; the drawing as a tool to tell other possible stories in a small town in the middle of Italy.

Given the open-ended nature of these phrases, each one could just as easily be attributed to the myriad disciplines of the spheres of academia as it could to the realm of the private obsessions of those who embark on such projects. In fact, each of these epigraphs could be uttered in countless different ways, for example by shifting the study component towards a more personal preoccupation, or by bringing a political tone into something that would simply appear to be an existential experience, if phrased differently.

Today, arts practice increasingly bears a greater likeness to a hypertext system where the artist - and the audiences - have the opportunity to create, add, handle, link and share information from different sources, generating non-sequential products. In this manner, art’s devices have become complex production processes, their singularity residing precisely in the gaps and interruptions that they generate through time; in other words, in their achievements, yet also in their abandonment and failures, and in any case, in something that goes beyond the concretion of independent and irrefutable products.

In a quick reading, the phrases that disjointedly form the opening of this text refer to the strategies or actions taken by the eight artists who have received the Fundación Botín Visual Arts Grant in the initiative’s nineteenth year. Though they were virtually all (with the exception of Antoni Abad) born in the 1970s, their diverse practices speak to us of common procedures that have become well rooted in present day life and undoubtedly reveal a new approach to the characteristic modernity of our time. According to Nicolas Bourriaud ², the terms modernity, postmodernity and .

altermodernity do not define styles, but rather represent tools that enable us to attribute notions of time and scale to the different cultural eras in which they are inscribed. For this French art critic and curator, our modernity, the modernity of today, would be associated with the “alter” prefix. In other words, it would evoke that form of modernity that is linked with the notion of otherness.

For Bourriaud, altermodernity defines a moment of responsibility for the artists, who, without completely turning away from the demands and rewards of the market ³ , position their work within the area of knowledge production and within the social, political and economic milieu that governs and shapes the present time. Going beyond a conscious and uniform position on the global scene, the artists draw on alternative and local channels in their response to the reigning economic standardisation imposed by the muddle of globalization. The products generated by many artists lack universal points of reference, as there are no limits for the languages used for each thought. On the contrary, the line - or the journey - becomes the relevant issue.

Bourriaud speaks of the nomadic nature of the artist, although such movement undoubtedly needs to be construed in broader terms than those of the mere discovery of what is unknown. Instead, it should be understood as a reaction to the need to deeply explore what is known to be the cause of the rapid transformations of the present time. For that nomadic being, the journey, which has lost all connotation of risk, is hence a mere formality to lead into the very places where the ruptures or fissures of our time take place. When understood this way, what was previously referred to as the work (the boutade, if you will) is now a process that generates forms before, during and after its production.

The unmovable treatment of the notions of history and contemporaneity seems to be replaced by a confusing world of times and genres. From this perspective, many of today’s creators use the arts practice to venture into an analytical realm that goes beyond the conventional historiographical points of view, bringing other disciplines into play. Their aim is to produce works of art (whether devices or performances) that are ultimately open to the multiple subjectivities which enable an understanding of the past and action on the present. Anachronism, multi-temporality and disruption converge with documentary and fictitious aspects in a single practice, in an effort to shed light on the present. According to Bourriaud, the artist becomes the narrator of a connected chain of distinct elements in time and space.

The eight artists featured here test and transcend the limits of sculpture, installation, exhibition design, video and photography. They venture out into a wide range of disciplines that include art history and cultural manifestations, psychology, politics, economics and the social realm, to converge in a multi-faceted work that cannot be reduced to or classified as something either exclusively political or entirely formalist. Nevertheless, their works are rigorous in their formal devices and at the same time somewhat anarchic in their contents.

For the most part, their practices are marked by an interest in working with other cultural agents and producers. With a spirit of exploration, they often delve head first into already-existing materials, such as documents on historical figures or references of the cultural identity of specific milieus. Other times, they take measures to revise the pathologies of both present and past. Their works are temporally developed as works in progress and in their course, they activate and modify the ways in which we perceive cultural production, with the aim of constructing new meanings based on forms and devices that are in tune with our time.

When conceived this way, art is an essential tool to understand the era in which we live, while at the same time acting as a useful alternative vehicle for social change. As we have noted above, these discursive scenarios involve a deconstruction of the cultural bases of our society and challenge the predominant attitudes of the arts practice as a market-driven activity that is far removed from a broader political and social dimension. The works of these artists address the “actual” phenomenon of making art; in other words the rapport and affinity between the intellectual work and the material production. Their results, which are often steeped in traditions and codes that go beyond the specific features of each generation or nationality, can in fact serve as a testing field for new formulations, as well as a starting point for subversive discourse, whether through a direct act of resistance or through a set of mechanisms based on parody or critical commentary.

André Guedes, Julia Montilla and Jorge Satorre explore different aspects of history as a means to offer a critical view of the current times. Their research is extensive and the mechanisms they use are manifest in the here and now of each exhibition, as they are subjected to transformations and subsequent re-use; a process that somewhat nullifies the notion of the single and decontextualised device. Discontinuity typifies many of their pieces, in which they preferably opt for lines of discourse that are as open-ended as the forms of visibilisation that result from their research.

Prospectus the work by André Guedes (Lisbon, 1971), brings to light the political dimension of writer, artist, designer and social reformer William Morris, who was highly influential in the British society of the second half of the 19^th century. Taking Morris’ writings as his base, Guedes sets out to create a new narrative space that allows for the echoes of his thought to come together with the records of the material culture left behind by the former, with the aim of reflecting on certain universal notions such as work, freedom, equality and ecology. It is not insignificant that Guedes specifically draws on a personality such as that of Morris, whose name cannot be dissociated from the political sphere, to speak of the responsibility that artists can exercise as active thinkers of the present.

In the most recent years, André Guedes has become involved in the disciplines of the theatre and action as legitimate vehicles for the artistic practice . In his pieces, other supports also make their presence, such as the sculpture and the object, yet also the document and the photograph, generating an interstitial space that is activated by a dramatised story and by the energetic/performative transmission of documentary records and objects.

For the possible future presentations of Prospectus, Guedes conceives a display of fabrics arranged over vertical structures in a clear reference to the textile manufactures created by Morris and the underlying ideology of these productions. This work reveals Guedes’ interest in a certain anachronism in this device, which corresponds with the decorative/superficial - functional/political equation. Taking place over this scene is a performance or reading based on three of Morris’ most important texts on the social meaning dilemma posed by the decorative arts and the fine arts.

Performance and installation are combined, deconstructing their conventional codes, creating situations that manifest a unique confrontation with the notions of space and time, and hence casting doubt on the place of the viewer at the time of the “staging” ⁶.

Like other pieces created previously by the artist, this project is founded on the notion of rewriting history and its utility for critical thought on the present.

The work of Jorge Satorre (Mexico City, 1979) adheres to similar premises. In the most recent years, his work has focused on the revision of history and more specifically on the possibility of unveiling the importance of micro-stories vis-à-vis the large tales told through the channels of the official institutions.

The point of departure for his project, Los negros (El caso de Montereale), is based on the study by historian Carlo Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms, a text that exemplifies the historiographical method known as Microhistory. Drawing on the life and beliefs of a mill owner from the land of Friuli in the 16th century, Ginzburg speaks to us of the values, the power and the language of an entire era. The Italian scholar ventures into realms seldom explored by official historiography, such as age, gender, work and rituals, clothing, food, passions and tastes, emphasising the comprehensive study of the local communities in a sort of return to the subject and to the micro-units, in an effort to refute the idea that History is generated exclusively amid the realms of the dominant classes or macro-stories. Hence, Ginzburg introduces the notion of circularity and the reciprocal influence between subordinate and hegemonic culture.

For this project, Satorre goes to Montereale (the home town of Menocchio, the hero of The Cheese and the Worms) to re-edit the work of Ginzburg. However, he soon changes his plan, opting instead to detect a number of parallel histories that were experienced as a result of his stay in the town, which in turn enables him to position himself in a sort of sub-microhistory based on Ginzburg’s work.

As is usual in his work, Satorre uses the drawing as the fundamental means for his story. To do so, he joins forces with a number of illustrators and other local agents to shape his strategy. This choral structure also includes Carlo Ginzburg himself, whom the artist visits in his home in Bologna with hopes of convincing the latter to take part in his project. In the words of the artist himself, Los Negros “is a project that oscillates amid field work, hermeneutic research and experimental editorial illustration. The title of the work, which is based on the vulgar name for the ghostwriter, makes reference to my fascination with the reader’s contribution during the reading process and the desire to delve into all the parts of a book or story that do not appear written in the texts”.

Los Negros consists of six chapters that in turn correspond to the six “detours” that Satorre detects during his sojourn in Montereale. The artist makes use of a number of artistic, documentary and artisan records present in this Italian community to rewrite some of the minor episodes, which he uses to weave “another” history that runs in parallel to Ginzburg’s research and anti-historiographic precision.

Julia Montilla (Barcelona, 1970) delves into the history of the psychiatric institutions in Spain and undertakes a meticulous review of both scientific literature and the different artistic portrayals of the image of insanity, to produce a body of work - more political than therapeutic - about a traditionally ostracised community in the heart of the post-capitalist societies.

The first product of her research, Un mundo basado en la evidencia (A World Based on Evidence), is a model of a city ⁸ built with the empty packaging of the psychoactive drugs consumed by people with psychosis. The piece is designed by the very users of those medications, who become fully aware of their consumption and its effects, thanks to the mere fact of handling them with an aim that is by no means therapeutic. Inherent in this playful act is an obvious critique on the implications of the pharmaceutical industry and its economic interests in perpetuating consumption.

In the second case, Montilla establishes a number of connections and actions between the group of users from two institutions in the city of Zaragoza - the Romareda Day Care Centre and the Psychosocial Rehabilitation Centre - and the claims of the inhabitants of the Torrero and La Paz districts, who have been fighting since the early 1980s to dignify and clean up one of the channels of the River Ebro, which in the past was productive for local agriculture and has now become a symbol of identity for these communities.

The interchangeable nature of the categories of sanity and insanity serves as the essential argument to spur thought on the notions of norm and difference, an issue that continues to burden our advanced societies. In the words of the artist, her research and formalisations aim to “draw bridges between the inside and outside of the psychiatric institution, to bring its users into view, in order to empower them and overcome stigmatising conceptions”.

The traditional Bajada del Canal (Downstream River Float) festival organized by the residents of the area since 1982 precisely enables Montilla to bring into view the “insane” segment and place them at the same level as other traditionally minority groups. The action planned by the artist consists of the makeshift construction of two floating platforms, one occupied by four parodic characters that represent the church, the army, the bank and the monarchy (the insane are disguised as sane), and the other helmed by members of the city’s gay community. The idea is for both Insane Vessels to take part in the festival traditionally organized by the residents around the waterway, in an amusing group action by people who congratulate each other for belonging to the contexts of difference.

Antoni Abad (Lleida, 1956) has been working for more than a decade with different groups and communities at risk of social exclusion, using the communication technologies as a fundamental tool for the visibilisation and normalisation of those communities in the globalised world. From an ethical point of view, which Abad openly assumes, these experiences can only take place outside of the sphere of the art market. Hence, he draws on other structures and channels of distribution that are more in line with his intentions.

The dematerialisation process in Abad’s work does not refer to the gradual austerity of his formal mechanisms but rather to the creation of user-friendly tools and as a result, the simplification of their presentations as documentary and interactive devices. Here we are referring to the creation of the Megafone software and its website application, which allows for an orderly viewing of the contents processed in each of the artist’s projects ⁹.

Canal*PLURAL is the result of the initial canal*PUEBLAYORK project, a survey of the neighbourhood of Corona in New York’s Queens District, which has an immigrant community of nearly one million people, and which is known to be the largest urban area in the world in terms of ethnic diversity. In the first phase of the project, Abad could not find enough support from the district’s Latin American community (which is predominantly made up of immigrants from the Mexican state of Puebla), and moved on to another equally numerous group, the Chinese, who were nevertheless traditionally more deeply rooted in the district. The new group naturally became involved in the project and were quick to learn how to use the new technologies and data transmission work on their mobile devices.

The result of this work is a large archive of images, videos, audio and texts that have been entered by the members of the community. This body of material serves to trace out a map of local community activities, traditions, daily routines, celebrations, and in a word, all the registered data that make them visible as citizens in their own right.

David Zink Yi (Lima, 1973) uses his work to explore cultural traditions from a horizontal and intimate perspective, both with groups and communities and with precise social and historical situations. Through the video, the photograph and the sculpture, the artist produces heavily symbolic and customarily recognisable images, which, far from representing idealist visions, act as powerful registry probes of the cultural realities in which he submerges himself.

His project Sulcán functions as a tale within a tale and at the same time within other possible tales. The features of an emotional project of this nature are not closed by a set of initial objectives, but rather open up new prospects in the course of development.

In April of this year, Zink Yi moved to the Andean community of Sulcán - an area highly affected by the violence of Maoist guerrilla group Sendero Luminoso during the 1980s - with the aim of sharing with some of the local people a high-risk experience related with the shepherding tasks, in an awe-inspiring setting at an altitude of five thousand metres above sea level. In the time before the climb up into the mountains, the artist immersed himself in all aspects of the daily life of these communities, creating close and trusting connections with the local people, in an effort to draw out the stories of the times when the town was occupied by Sendero Luminoso and the military forcess.

A new story was added to this real-life experience in the community, as a result of the social unrest generated by the installation of the foreign-backed mining industry in the area of Sulcán. In eyes of the artist, the political dimension of the past and the threats to the mining colonisation in the community coexist as though they formed part of a novel based on local customs where personal issues, emotional aspects and traditions are only small stories within a complex social and political framework that is hard to overlook.

Zink Yi uses photography as a diary of sensitive impacts based on both the social setting that takes him in and his knowledge of the social and political vicissitudes that continue to leave an indelible mark on the region. The first photos taken by the artist record the daily repairs of the asphalt as a result of the ongoing passage of the mining company lorries. These photos are abstractions that nevertheless must be read as powerful records within the sphere of reality.

The practices of Karmelo Bermejo and Javier Núñez Gascó are associated with the paradoxes of the art system and its validation mechanisms, calling into question the very status of the art object and the accommodation and reception policies by both the institution and the audiences. In this sense, their work diverts the attention from the device or event to the rhetorical visibility and transparency processes over what is supposedly the “artistic” essence.

Through his work "                                                                                                        " ¹⁰ Karmelo Bermejo (Malaga, Spain, 1979) generates a long process that stems from other similar pieces (Booked and Booked, The Movie). The common denominator between these apparently identical works (the only change being the settings in which the artist acts with the same strategy: by purchasing all the tickets to a film screening, the seats on a bus line between Bilbao and Madrid and all the seats on a low-cost flight from Spain to Tunisia) must be measured strictly in the most basic terms of consumption, aside from any returns that such transactions might generate. Actually, these pieces bear witness to the workings of an incomplete system: the beneficiary disappears without altering the services offered. In other words, a film and two trips less and barely two hundred perplexed users.

Nevertheless, the project "                                                                                                        " is only the pretext or starting point for one of the most complex and perverse processes ever undertaken by the artist in his career. In fact, the awarding of this grant is cause enough to emphasise the implications and true meaning of the fact of receiving a sum of money for a project that is once again “artistic”. Before investing any money in the production for which the grant was awarded, the artist undertook an initial act within the framework of his solo show at the Contemporary Art Museum of Vigo (MARCO) , which consisted of burying the grant money at the entrance to the museum, just before the access point to the museum’s installations. Only a bronze plaque bears witness to the treasure hidden several metres below the ground. This operation embodied the first risk strategy.

Before investing any money in the production for which the grant was awarded, the artist undertook an initial act within the framework of his solo show at the Contemporary Art Museum of Vigo (MARCO) ¹¹ , which consisted of burying the grant money at the entrance to the museum, just before the access point to the museum’s installations. Only a bronze plaque bears witness to the treasure hidden several metres below the ground. This operation embodied the first risk strategy.

The artist’s second step addressed economic issues that were not planned ahead of time. In the middle of the stock market crash in August generated by Bankia - a bank institution that was bailed out by the Spanish State at the height of the Eurozone debt crisis - Bermejo invested in Bankia stocks (second risk strategy) all the money granted to him by one of Europe’s most powerful banks. This could indeed be considered an investment against all odds, yet the artist in fact obtained yield.

After this investment adventure, Karmelo Bermejo used both capital and profits to fully charter a flight to the city of Tunis with the airline Tunish Air, which in fact was the initial proposal of his project. The paradox of this process undoubtedly resides in the easy profits obtained by an African airline company, bearing in mind the hardships and economic and human costs inherent in the disheartening trips of so many Africans in the opposite direction.

Javier Núñez Gascó (Salamanca, 1971) is one of the most excellent exponents of the Spanish art scene as regards the complexity of his production processes; something that does not cease to call attention when those processes are put to the service of an artistic practice to which it is difficult to subscribe. In his work, the apparent subtlety (sometimes the slightest gestures or movements) of his solutions seems disproportionate in relation to the nature of the procedures that make them possible. It is not in vain that in the last few years the artist has involved himself in a type of stage production that is relatively uncommon in the art world. In fact, it is the very collaborative structures of the theatre that have been governing much of his work since the middle of this decade. Núñez Gascó has perfect command over the protocols and bureaucracies of the theatre structure, which serve as a base for his intervention or the hacking of “conventional” productions.
His close collaboration with the Teatro Praga in Lisbon ¹², with which he has made different pieces, including the project we are discussing here, Miedo escénico (Stage Fright), involves a journey in two directions, where performative action and theatrical fact crisscross to generate new and thus far unsuspected platforms.

As occurs with most of the artists in this selection, in the case of Núñez Gascó, the work resides in the very process that sustains it, opening up several branches of meaning as well as a number of other formal devices and platforms for visibility. Though it is not the only one, Miedo escénico is the most important production that Núñez Gascó has made with the Teatro Praga this year. In a few words, the aim of this piece is to analyse and put into practice the interferences of reality in theatrical fiction and vice versa. In other actions produced in the context of the theatre , Núñez Gascó established a number of appearances or movements in which the stage action went beyond the limits of the stage and reached out into the audience seating area, producing minor alterations that interfered not with the narrative-stage construction, but rather with the audience perceptions. Nevertheless, for Miedo escénico, the space of the fiction that embodies the essence of the theatre is invaded by a sub-space belonging to the domain of reality.

In the context of the Companhia Nacional de Bailado de Portugal’s dance piece Perda Preciosa (with stage design by André Teodosio), Núñez Gascó takes charge of a four-square-metre space on the stage of the Teatro Camões, which he in turn lets to third parties for them to carry out their activities during the main performance. The artist adheres to the rigid copyright regulations as he scrupulously manages the entire consented intrusion process, making himself the manager and creator of an unusual enterprise at the same time.

We are witnessing a world in constant conflict. Until now, we looked out of the corner of our eyes at the misfortunes of others, and we trusted the ideologies and the political instruments that were used to sustain our state of minor welfare. Art, even for its most faithful followers, was still an introspective exercise. At most, it was a tool of sociability and shared inspiration. Artists continue to think and generate images, perhaps expanding their audiences. All the same, the distance continues to be enormous. The system organizes and engulfs their productions, and we can only access them at a specific time designated to generate thoughts that are just as fast as they are fleeting. In the end, it is a matter of faith.

João Onofre - for poetic reasons, please allow me to omit his biographical information from this text at this time - has created a simple and universal image: a tiny island that slowly floats along and gets lost on the horizon; a drifting refuge for those who disagree with the turn the world has taken. It is the epilogue dreamed by a creator of images, by an artist, a novelist, a philosopher, a film director, or even by a scientist. The centre of the island, if there actually were one on such a limited surface, is occupied by a palm tree that is uncommon to our hemisphere. So the tree stands, out of context, yet firm in its verticality. It is the antithesis of the Bajada del Canal (Downstream River Float); it is impossible, at least for now, to socialise in its region. Ghost, that is the name of this archetype of paradise, it is an aesthetic and political statement about the world. A spectre that we cling to with our gaze as it slowly flows through civilisation. The palm tree is the main device of this chimerical image; and just when we think we can finally take refuge beneath it, it has simply disappeared.