Although to some intellectuals and cultural agents travelling internationally, giving their lectures here and there, it might irritate them we are faced with a new movement, facing the appearance of a form of political activism without precedents. A movement that is ever more extensive and global, where the demands are not clear and transparent but complex, hidden and ranging from the most practical to the most symbolic. A movement that shuns pre-established and designated forms of media. That there aren’t leaders, with a name and surname, is to have understood how the machine works: they will go to the who in order to discredit the what, so better not to have a figurehead and see what happens.
Squares occupied in various cities and continents, bridges that are forced to close, demonstrations in front of stock markets, attempts to prevent evictions. And also cellular forms of organisation, work groups, lectures, critiques, a wish to redefine…hang on a minute, we are getting close to the language used in art!
And the museums? Are they not occupying museums? Maybe they are not directly the enemy, but who knows they could be an ally…for the time being, it is as if art observes the situation as if nothing much was happening, as if it all had nothing to do with us. And it keeps growing. Although, not so long ago, something very strange happened: the opening of a biennial was the location for a terrorist attack. In the Göteborg Biennial the opening party had to be evacuated due to a very real terrorist threat. Four people remanded in custody and a sensation of not quite understanding what it meant to be a target.
In this edition of A*Magazine we publish 3 new critical texts. Haizea Barcenilla analyzes the brutal gender inequalities that still pervade the politics in the acquisition of work by institutions, Eduardo Pérez Soler intermingles terms such as mob, technology and museum, and Paloma Checa takes a look at the latest film by Miranda July.
Equality? Is art a context where everything is possible? Are we extremely tolerant and forward thinking? Focusing on a certain place and a specific situation can demonstrate that no, there is still a huge amount of ground to be covered to overcome the historic inequalities, the unquestioned assumptions of power and ways of doing things that are just more of the same. An example? Women and Basque art, or the second division league.
Communities of developers elaborating free software projects crucial for the advance of computer technology and the Internet; groups of scientists working together via the web to create public databases with genetic information of the world; legions of writers and editors elaborating enormous encyclopaedic compendia of knowledge that are open and freely accessible from any terminal connected to the web; citizens movements that arise spontaneously to overthrow dictatorial governments or demand political transparency in democratic States. These are just some examples of one of the most notable phenomena of the last few years: the emergence of numerous self-organizing networks that use new digital technologies to establish collaborative relations.
Miranda July presents her second feature length film. A romantic comedy described as the story of what happens to a couple when they decide to adopt a kitten. But in reality The Future is a film about space. Miranda July is writer, actress, director, artist and a whole series of titles that provoke an easy link with the renaissance though maybe what we are faced with is a proposal typical of the era of the Internet.
