GENEALOGIES OF ARTISTIC SELF-MANAGEMENT — INTERACTIVE MAP →

Although all the histories of the countercultural movements are being recovered (the most recent, the exhibition ” Underground y contracultura en la Cataluña de los 70″ [Underground and counterculture in Catalonia in the 70s], at the Palau Robert, curated precisely by one of its architects, Pepe Ribas (founder and director of the magazine Ajoblanco), there are still numerous self-management initiatives pending recovery, to be put in value through their archives, to incorporate the living memory of those who were part of it and use it collectively.

In this case, we present a cartography of places where there was a great interdisciplinary exchange and complicities, of great creative freedom, which constitute the basis of the public sphere of the city (a few years in which everything was to be done and everything was possible) and that due to personal attrition and the processes of institutionalization that took place in the early 80s, had an existence as intense as it was limited in time.

We are talking about initiatives that took place before the dynamics of institutionalization, therefore, in many cases, they have to do with life events that would constantly intertwine with creative events, with a great freedom of self-management, flexibility and also improvisation.

The 70s are a time of change in the city of Barcelona. Already at the end of the 60s, there was a whole generation that proposed different ways of living. Following the countercultural currents of the 60’s in the USA and other European countries, they shared music, readings and trips that opened a whole imaginary of vital alternatives. Values such as collectivity, feminism or ecology begin to mark different ways of thinking and living. Already in 1969 we find a paradigmatic case of an alternative housing model, the Fullà house, in Guinardó, where architects experiment with spaces and ways of inhabiting them. The idea of living in community or communes will be replicated in the city, in Tibidabo, in La Floresta, in Comerç street or in the Gothic quarter. This coexistence is linked to collective creativity. Apartments and houses in which living, working and having fun were closely interconnected. The practices of visual arts, comics, music, poetry, design, architecture, photography, theater and publishing often converged and intertwined.

Once the dictator is dead, everything remains to be done. Everything is possible. The Grec’76 Festival was a timid beginning of self-management followed by the commitment to work from the collective.  A paradigmatic case that perfectly summarizes these processes is that of Saló Diana.

In a way, its history is the history of the city of Barcelona, of what could have been and was not. It was unique because it brought together a very diverse group of people: young people studying at the Institut del Teatre, actors and actresses with a more consolidated classical professional career, people linked to the CNT, activists and other “freakies”. The richness of the program was its diversity: of its members and of its program, with a great variety of contents (which included from Living Theatre to Shakespeare, passing through the Jornades Llibertàries [Libertarian Days], Rock & Roll concerts, performances of the Yaqui Indians, dance Thursdays or screenings of films such as The Phantom of Paradise” or The Three Musketeers), the wide range of schedules (in morning, afternoon, night and early morning sessions) and the diversity of audiences.

The end of these initiatives coincides with the emergence of the punk wave coming from England as a reaction to the first signs of neoliberalism taking root and which has to do with a greater individualism and will to provoke. The death of the dictator, the process towards the transition, the Moncloa pacts and, very graphically, the Scala case (in which CNT militants were falsely accused of putting bombs in the Scala) show the step towards institutionalization, a more homogeneous and regularized city model in which very little space is left for the most unpredictable initiatives, such as the underground and the counterculture.

The form of a mental map used in this study has allowed us to establish groupings and also more dynamic relationship arrows between the different experiences. Thus, we situate the beginnings in the collective forms of living, the communes, among which we find that of Pau Riba and Mercè Pastor at Tibidabo, in 1969; the Fullà house, in 1970 in Guinardó; Comerç 64 with the members of El Rrotllo: Nazario, Javier Mariscal, Miquel Farriol,; in the same building lived the conceptual artists Muntadas, Miralda, Antoni Mercader, etc. The apartment in Plaça San José Oriol de Montesol; the apartment in Bruc street with Onliyou and members of Els Joglars; Xefo Guasch and some members of the Video-Nou collective in Blanquería; Ítaca, in Tibidabo; La Miranda with Pau Maragall and La Floresta, which became an important countercultural and absolutely self-managed center, to mention the most outstanding ones.

The meeting places were as varied as their creators: La Rambla, a key meeting point, a meeting point for demands, for strolling, for fun and also for celebrations. The bars in the area played an important role and in many of them concerts were held by new groups, later regulars at festivals such as Canet or the Progressive Music Festival. Halls such as Zeleste, also emerged from one of the inhabitants of the Casa Fullà, Victor Jou. Music magazines (Vibraciones, Star, Disco Express) also echoed all these trends. Magazines and comics were the reference point for many of the young people of a whole generation, comics like El Rrollo Enmascarado, Paupérrimus, etc. that were distributed both in La Rambla and in the Zap 275 store, temple of comics and key place for activities and meetings.

Other magazines like Ajoblanco were the standard of what all this social movement represented and organized the mythical Jornades Llibertàries (July 1977), in the Saló Diana (where the debates and meetings took place), some Ateneos Populares and in the Parç Güell (where the most playful and festive actions took place). The Video-Nou Collective recorded and filmed all the events.

The video camera, which Muntadas brought back from New York, was a fundamental tool for recording and defining a new way of making and understanding artistic and social practice. It was also a time of free radios and the first experiences of community television (in fact, Muntadas’ pieces Cadaqués, Canal Local (1974) and Distrito Uno (1976) are clear antecedents).

The theater was characterized by dynamism and plurality. The renewal of the Institut del Teatre in 1972 was the trigger for the edition of the Grec’76 totally self-managed. “For a theater at the service of the people”, was its motto. The split of the Assembly of Authors and Directors into the Assembly of Workers of the Spectacle (ADTE) and the organization of a multitudinous and experimental Don Juan Tenorio (with 9 Don Juanes, 15 Doña Inés, and a different director for each scene) in the Old Born Market, which the actors themselves cleaned and minimally conditioned for the occasion. The Saló Diana (1977-78), in an old cinema on San Pablo Street, was the next step.

The theatrical practices were places of work and debate. The same year that the Institut del Teatre was renovated, the Sala Villarroel appeared (1972), where, among others, La Cuadra de Sevilla, Los Goliardos, left-wing political theater, assemblies, anti-psychiatry conferences, with Guattari and Basaglia (July 17-23, 1978), meetings with feminist associations, anonymous alcoholics, etc., took place in the bar.

Visual artists worked under the parameters of conceptual practices, with a strong political and social commitment. With them, the spaces where they could present their work intensified, fleeing, in a certain way, from the traditional exhibition spaces and the art establishment. From the Espai B5-125 of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, to the foreign institutes of culture in Barcelona (Italian, German…), the Galería Mec-Mec, to mention just a few in the city of Barcelona, and spaces that expanded throughout Catalonia (in Granollers, Sabadell, Banyoles, etc.) and, naturally, La Sala Vinçon, which from the design store used the space that had been the studio of the painter Ramon Casas, and for 10 years developed a heterogeneous program where conceptual artists, designers and other formats exhibited.

Architecture and design were not on the fringes of this multidisciplinarity. One of the pioneers was Taller de Arquitectura, the studio headed by Ricardo Bofill which, as early as 1963, had a multidisciplinary team of engineers, urban planners, graphic designers, sociologists, writers, film directors and philosophers.

Another key figure was Santiago Roqueta, promoter of studio stores such as Snark Bazaar and the design publishing house Snark Disseny. Architect, designer, interior designer, editor and draftsman, he was a multifaceted character who also exhibited at the Sala Vinçon and organized exhibitions at the COAC. Precisely, in the COAC archives is preserved the history of paradigmatic exhibitions, the legacies of designers and architects who made a conceptual and transdisciplinary work (as Roqueta himself) and also the collaborations with the Institutes of Foreign Culture in the city (German, French, Italian Institute) that presented exhibitions such as Nuevos comportamientos artísticos  [New artistic behaviors] or Leer la imagen [Reading the image]).

Carles Riart also stands out, with more conceptual design works and author of RiartBD and later of the shop/meeting point Muebles 114 y Gris, together with the filmmaker Bigas Luna. Graphic designers like Salvador Saura, together with Carles Camps, Xavier Franquesa, Jordi Pablo and Santiago Pau collaborate in what we can call Grup de Gràcia.

It is very curious to observe how the change of the city model towards a more regularized and efficient model implies the elimination of any type of dissidence (an urban redevelopment plan puts an implacable end to the Saló Diana; the Scala Case deeply weakens the anarcho-syndicalist movement; the urban redevelopment of the Raval implies a change of uses and consumption -from a permanent meeting place, La Rambla is transformed into a tourist attraction for mass consumption that expels the city’s own inhabitants-, etc.).

One of the questions that arise in view of this cartography of self-management in Barcelona in the 1970s is:

How is subjective and artistic production historically organized, and what can we learn from it?

First of all, the parallels.  Concerns about ecology, studies on alternative energies, mobilizations in defense of the environment, freedom, the demand for freedom and sexual diversity, feminism, were very present at the end of the 1960s and throughout the 1980s and are also present today. The contexts are different and the motivations are different, but the need to try to change things and make the world a better place existed then and exists now. The expansion of economic liberalism in the 1970s and the crisis of globalization today are the frameworks that give rise to these reactions.

This mapping of the historical genealogies that have articulated our public sphere should allow us to trace productive structures where instituting processes are generated prior to the creation of institutions in the 1980s and the cultural policies of the 1990s and 2000s.

The research and contextualization of this genealogy of the artistic self-management of the 1970s, goes beyond pure historiographical recovery and serves us as a case study to learn from the past. Knowing the past helps us to better understand the present, to identify mechanisms, to establish parallels and differences, and to apply and reinvent ways of doing things that can be useful today.

The complexity of the times we live in, together with the standardization to which globalization has been leading us for some time now (which implies a vision of culture more as a consumer product than as a tool for social and personal transformation) means that culture and the arts are going through a time of crisis in terms of funding and survival. All this implies changes in their approaches and issues such as sustainability, self-management, the emergence of forms of collaborative and cooperative management and governance systems are the common denominator of many experiences that have been appearing in recent years, with new formats and spaces for the development of artistic, visual and performing practices, with interferences between them.

Self-management is now a more than usual practice and it is pertinent to wonder if it is a choice, if it is the result of the generalization of certain production and distribution tools that allow it or if it is a consequence of the economic crisis and also of the artistic institution itself. Self-management implies control over the production, broadcasting and reception of projects and raises questions related to the function of art, the relationship with the spectator/recipient and also with the social and political context.

One difference between the practices of the visual arts in relation to music, theater, video and film, among others, is that while the latter incorporated mass production tools for the distribution of their works, in the practices of the visual and plastic arts this democratization did not occur, but rather a model of commercialization and market that applies the same protocols to works that no longer have originality or uniqueness as their main value. The response to these contradictions has been the intensification of artistic practices that bet on immateriality, processual aspects and move between the artistic, the social and the cultural.

The intensification of the use of communication tools, Internet and social networks emphasize this practice of self-management and blur the boundaries between what is professional and what is amateur, between professional and personal life. Let’s think of artists sharing studios in L’Hospitalet (Salamina, Trama, FASE), in Zona Franca (MalPaís, Cordova, FOC), independent initiatives such as Bar Projects, A*DESK, GRAF, Halfhouse, Homesession, The Green Parrot and Bao A Qu, among others.

There is no doubt that the political, social and economic context contributes to stimulate these forms of self-management. And it is no coincidence that programs are beginning to emerge to help make these projects economically sustainable, whether through training and mentoring programs (ProgramaIMPULSACULTURA de la Fundació Catalunya Cultura), awards such as that of the Carulla Foundation or specific programs within the framework of Barcelona Activa and others.

(Featured Image: Pilar Aymerich. Demonstration by the Assembly of Actors and Directors of Barcelona at Las Ramblas, 1976. MAE – Centre de Documentació i Museu de les Arts Escèniques-. Institut del Teatre. http://www.cdmae.cat)