Texts
«Pensar es un acto revolucionario»: las publicaciones de artista de Marie Orensanz
This text, published here in the University of Salamanca’s Umática online journal, analyzes Marie Orensanz’s artist publications. After beginning her career as a painter in the 1960s, Argentine artist Marie Orensanz (La Plata, Argentina, 1936) created a significant number of artist publications in the 1970s and 1980s, alongside her sculptural and pictorial practice. These publications, … Continued
The critical route of Manolo Laguillo through contemporary Valladolid
“‘The city’, says Manolo Laguillo, ‘is the largest of all human-made objects.’ The city, in marked contrast to the residential settlements of the rural environment, is also, without a doubt, the most characteristic habitat model of today’s world. And yet its close connection with the present does not exclude a burden of historical substance that … Continued
The ARCO catalogue is dead, long live the ARCO catalogue!
“…Thus, the ARCO catalogue functions, to a certain extent, as a paper replication of the fair’s space. Although the correspondence between the large three-dimensional volume that the fair occupies and the much smaller two-dimensional surface that unfolds in the printed volume is far from direct, the fact is that one moves through the catalogue’s pages … Continued
Beyond the Display Case. Proposals for New Formats in Documentary Exhibitions
“…Based on these reflections, the need was seen to give physical form to a hybrid, dynamic and social space, whose layout was sufficiently flexible to allow the development of certain functions of other spaces without being limited only to one: a classroom / a lounge / a projection room / an assembly room / an … Continued
Un espacio tomado quizás por fantasmas
“…While artist’s publications know how to ‘speak’ about space in different ways, when they are part of an exhibition, they inhabit the exhibition space and interact with it, often problematizing it in an obvious way. Can an open book be displayed in a glass case, out of reach of visitors who are also its potential … Continued
¿Archivo queer? – Queer Archive? Activism and Institutionalism Clash in the Archival Arena
“…The documentary collection Queer Archive? (…) set out to map and document the struggles of gender activist communities in Madrid in the 1990s so as to prevent contagion and promote safe sex, especially given the dramatic lack of institutional policies tackling the health crisis. Researchers and activists Sejo Carrascosa, Lucas Platero, Andrés Senra and Fefa … Continued
Magazine: BNV Producciones, Bulegoa, FelipaManuela y March International
Available on the A*Desk – Critical Thinking blog (https://a-desk.org/en/magazine/temporary-art-review-and-march-a-journal-of-art-strategy/) in English, Spanish and Catalan. Partially republished in March – A Journal of Art and Strategy (https://march.international/adesk-interview-by-mela-davila-freire/), May 2021. “…The slowdown in the pace of activity has been radical and prolonged, leaving many of us on the brink of bankruptcy and, what’s even worse, without clear … Continued
Beyond This Point, Nothing is Fiction
The artist’s book Aparicions / Apariciones is part of the exhibition project Coses que pasen, in which the artist Enric Farrés Durán uses the institutional archive of the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) as a primary source of materials and inspiration. For the preparation of this project, as with other people who had been … Continued
Un espacio hecho de espacios tras espacios
José-Miguel Ullán’s writing, which has been extensively analyzed and discussed, has often been noted for the difficulty of pigeonholing it into currents, trends, literary groups, and other commonly used classificatory contexts. José-Miguel Ullán, in fact, did not write only “literary” poetry. Is the same true of his visual poetry, or of the books he collaborated … Continued
Art Understanding, Economics, and Business Acumen: Documenta and the Art Market
From 1955 onwards, the makers of each documenta sought to offer insights into current trends in art and to document the spirit of their particular time. The exhibition and catalogue Documenta – Politics and Art (2021) set out to focus on the history of documenta in the context of the political, cultural and socio-historical development … Continued
Das Archiv im Museum
A very brief text on the current position of archives in museum institutions, which appeared in the publication Sich mit Sammlungen anlegen. Gemeinsame Dinge und alternative Archiven (Berlin: Verlag De Gruyter, 2020), edited by Martina Griesser, Nora Sternfeld, and Luisa Ziaja.
Museums of the Future: Between Promise and Damnation
The book The Museum of the Future: 43 Contributions to the Discussion on the Future of the Museum was published in 1970 so as to present some ideas on the expected and desired development of this institution. Fifty years later, in 2020, a “revision”, which took the same idea as a starting point was edited … Continued
Reading the Archive against the Grain. Power relations, affective affinities and subjectivity in the documenta Archive
«…Debido a su papel como directora del Archivo, de hecho, Ela Spornitz aparece mencionada en la web institucional, donde la lista de directores se acompaña de sus fotografías. Así pues, para ilustrar estas cartas en la conferencia que estaba preparando, solicité al Archivo su fotografía. El documento digital que recibí me brindó otra sugerente e inesperada sorpresa…»
Puntos de vista. Algunos usos de la fotografía como recurso editorial
«En sus horas de trabajo, Haacke se dedicó a observar a los visitantes y aprovechó para tomar numerosas fotografías que documentan…»
Gesa Lange: Im Halbkreis Neben der Lampe
«…Tatsächlich sind die assoziativen Bindungen zwischen Gewebe und Textualität sehr eng: etymologisch stammt das Wort Text der lateinischen Vokabel textum ab, dem Partizip des Verbs texere, das „weben, flechten; kunstvoll zusammenfügen“ bedeutet…»
Modificar lo dado. La experimentación espacial en los libros de Francisco Pino
«…El corpus poético de Pino, aparecido en numerosos volúmenes de poemas y en colaboraciones con revistas, siguió desarrollándose por los cauces esperados para un poeta de vanguardia hasta 1970, momento en que, con la publicación de Solar —a la edad de 68 años—, su trabajo dio un nuevo e importante giro experimental…»
Desfases del archivo: cómo construir la imagen desde la memoria (y no a la inversa). Tres casos de estudio
«El archivo, en sus numerosísimas manifestaciones posibles, es el repositorio por excelencia de la memoria y el recuerdo, herramientas indispensables en la construcción de la identidad tanto individual como colectiva. Entre los soportes en los que los documentos del archivo, a su vez, atrapan y fijan en el tiempo los recuerdos, la fotografía ocupa desde su invención un lugar…»
Granma’s Room. An Attempt at Recording what Happens when Nothing Happens
«One day in 2004, Gesa Lange was invited to visit the estate of a good friend’s family. The property comprised a house and several adjacent buildings – a stable, various out-buildings and sheds. Noticing Lange’s interest in these run-down edifices…»
Patrícia Dauder, 41°08’ 56.66” N / 08° 36’ 43.60” W
«The artist book was conceived together the work with the same title, produced for the occasion of the exhibition The Second Image, presented at Museu Serralves, Porto, in 2012. The work, an original drawing – graphite on paper – in twelve parts, subsequently transferred to offset prints…»
Dear Reader, Don’t (Only) Read
«Manuel Raeder has been working on publishing and design projects for more than 15 years. He has run his own design office, Studio Manuel Raeder, since 2009, and in 2013 founded the publishing label Bom Dia Boa Tarde Boa Noite , a platform for challenging…»
Dora García, Read with Golden Fingers (L’Innommable – Samuel Beckett)
“En la primera década de los 2000 Dora García inició una serie de obras, realizadas a partir de volúmenes de obras literarias, que ha proseguido ampliando hasta la actualidad. En esta serie, además de materializar su constante interés por estudiar los fenómenos vinculados al lenguaje y la comunicación, la artista pone en juego su habilidad para explorar…”
El cubo blanco reducido a tamaño de bolsillo. La publicación como práctica curatorial y artística
«Venecia, mayo de 2015: la 56 edición de la exposición internacional de arte se inaugura entre los destellos de las cámaras fotográficas y el relumbre de los invitados vip. Pocos días después comienzan a aparecer, tanto en la prensa diaria como en la especializada, numerosas críticas y reseñas. De ellas se desprende que la impresión que parece haber calado entre los comentaristas es que esta edición de la Bienal…»
How to Do Things with Email: My Holy Nacho
«In June 2013, Jamie Allen and Bernhard Garnicnig took three steps to set in motion the collaborative, fragmented and remotely controlled project My Holy Nacho. To start with, they selected six different used objects that were being sold on well-known web pages. Then…»
¿Por qué tener miedo al futuro? La colección de colecciones del Centre de Documentació de La Panera
«…El arranque de los fondos documentales de La Panera coincidió con la cuarta edición de la Biennal Leandre Cristòfol, celebrada en 2004. Aquella fue la edición de la Biennal en la que por primera vez se incluyeron publicaciones de artista en la exposición…»
El tiempo como coreógrafo. William Kentridge en la Schauspielhaus de Hamburgo
«Hará unos diez meses, un día llamé a mi padre por teléfono. Quería contarle que me había llegado una invitación para las Norton Lectures de Harvard. “Y…”, me replicó, “¿vas a tener algo que decir?”…»
Autor, actor, lector. El camino de la performance al libro
«La conferencia performativa es un subgénero de la performance en el que los recursos, la técnica y las herramientas de las conferencias académicas se ponen al servicio de la práctica artística. Las conferencias performativas suelen echar mano…»
Return Journeys: Documentary Threads of Art in the Lafuente Archive
«Such was the panorama at the dawn of the new millennium: despite the evidence of the inextricable relation between work and document in the artistic output of the 20th century, in Spain – and in Latin America for that matter – there were hardly any important bibliographic collections for documenting it…»
New formats, new roles, new agents: Artists’ publications in Spain since 2000
“More than half a century has passed since the legendary 1960s, which are unanimously considered the era of the expansion and consolidation of artist publications—although, in fact, their beginnings date back to the Russian avant-garde, Futurism, and even earlier moments. It could be said that this medium has entered a new golden age: in recent … Continued
When Attitudes Become Form y la máquina del tiempo. Sobre la posibilidad (o no) de reproducir el arte
«…When Attitudes Become Form: Bern 1969 / Venice 2013, abierta al público entre junio y noviembre de 2013 en la sede veneciana de la Fundación Prada, es un ejemplo particularmente interesante de esta tendencia. El reto, en este caso, consistía en “recuperar” la mítica exposición de 1969…»
(Hacer) explotar el archivo. La fricción entre patrimonio artístico y documental en la institución artística contemporánea
«…Otras son, quizás, menos tangibles, y por ello parecen haber desempeñado un papel menos visible en este cambio de orientación; así, el desmesurado crecimiento del turismo de masas y su consiguiente arribada en tromba a los museos de arte contemporáneo…»
Collection/recollection. The idea of collecting as editorial praxis
«…And it is not often the case that the collector’s activities are linked to those of the editor, although both, in essence, devote themselves to quite similar work: at the end of the day, what is an editor if not a “collector” of content carefully ordered and chosen from abundant material to be included in a particular context…»
Proceso frente a producto. Nuevas vías para el archivo en el ámbito de las prácticas artísticas
«A partir de 1999, la idea de crear un centro de documentación que reuniese no solo publicaciones de referencia, sino también libros de artista, publicaciones especiales y todo tipo de material documental, pasó a formar parte de los planes de crecimiento del Museo, al mismo tiempo que el interés por la documentación vinculada al arte contemporáneo…»
New Uses for Old Images. Shared Management in the Exploitation of Photographic Archives
«…The first magazine, entitled WC, which referred to the famous Fontaine (1917) by Marcel Duchamp, was a collective project that spanned five issues and adopted the format of an envelope which included wood engravings, collages, graphic compositions, foldable leaflets and texts-manifestos…»
Artwork or document? Latin American materials at the Study Centre of the Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona (MACBA)
«…The first magazine, entitled WC, which referred to the famous Fontaine (1917) by Marcel Duchamp, was a collective project that spanned five issues and adopted the format of an envelope which included wood engravings, collages, graphic compositions, foldable leaflets and texts-manifestos…»
¿Es una obra, o es un documento? El Centro de Estudios y Documentación del MACBA
This text was published in the 10th volume of the “Impasse” series – published by La Panera in Lleida –, which was edited by Glòria Picazo and bears the exhaustive title of Artist’s Books, Special Editions, Object Magazines, Editorial Projects, Independent Editions, Publications Specials, Limited Editions, Desktop Publishing, Artist Editions, Digital Publications…
El Centro de Estudios y Documentación del MACBA. Hacia un nuevo modelo de biblioteca de museo
«Esta transformación, evidente sobre todo en prácticas como la performance, el happening, etc., ha tenido profundas consecuencias que llegan hasta la actualidad, en tanto que ha otorgado un nuevo estatus a la documentación que ilustra eventos creativos de esta índole, asimilándola a la “obra de arte” en muchos sentidos…»
SOME FEATURES OF A CONTEMPORARY DOCUMENTATION CENTRE. Case study of the MACBA (Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art) Studies and Documentation Centre
MACBA created the Studies and Documentation Centre, which opened its doors in 2007, to promote the museum’s development by extending its scope of activity so as to foster research on and the analysis of contemporary artistic practices. The tasks of the Studies and Documentation Centre can be summarized as the collection, preservation, and dissemination of … Continued