{"id":7325,"date":"2013-01-31T02:50:53","date_gmt":"2013-01-31T02:50:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/a-desk.org\/2013\/01\/31\/las-agencias-from-project-to\/"},"modified":"2013-01-31T02:50:53","modified_gmt":"2013-01-31T02:50:53","slug":"las-agencias-from-project-to","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/a-desk.org\/en\/magazine\/las-agencias-from-project-to\/","title":{"rendered":"“Las agencias”: from project to action"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Foto For a while now, I\u2019ve wanted to rescue an event that marked a before and after in the history of art activism in Spain, but couldn\u2019t find an opportune moment, until a week ago. Le\u00f3nidas Mart\u00edn (from the collective \u201cEnmedio\u201d) gave the seminar Artivism: art and politics in connected societies<\/em>, in the lecture-hall of ESDi (Barcelona). Starting off with a long list of precedents in art activism that now configure his modus operandi, he ended up placing special emphasis on one of the more interesting, and incomprehensibly little studied, projects in the history of protest art, one that has become the focus of my current research: \u201cLas Agencias\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cLas Agencias\u201d stemmed from various workshops carried out at MACBA in 2001, led by Jordi Claramonte (from the collective \u201cla Fiambrera Obrera\u201d) and Jorge Ribalta (in charge of the Department of Public Programmes), prior to the celebration of the summit of the World Bank in Barcelona. Seeking the complicity of collectives active in creation and in social movements, they worked as mediators to reach spaces of experimentation that the museum, on its own, couldn\u2019t have accessed. The project arose in order to grant them independence and autonomy, while taking advantage of some of the resources of the institution, to establish a broad collaborative network between professionals and amateurs. At the same time this dialectic served as an exercise of self-critique for the museum: fundamental to avoid settling into a rigid hierarchical structure. <\/p>\n

There were disagreements from the beginning of the workshop: the impossibility of \u201cCounter-information\u201d setting up a debate (with the participation of squatter groups) about urban speculation in the actual facilities of MACBA (a symbol of such speculation in the Raval); the precariousness of the means offered by the museum; the lack of accommodation for the participants\u2026The museum also didn\u2019t remain quiet: recriminating the participants for not having asked permission before copying and distributing amongst themselves keys to the workshops where they were working; or manifesting a certain fear that the computers and internet they had loaned could be used for \u201cactivities that could be defined as illegal\u201d.<\/p>\n

These workshops for agency<\/em> were resolved with a \u201cshow\u201d of the projects realised (Pr\u00eat-a-revolter suits, stickers with Free Money, the Show Bus…) in a demonstration in the centre of the city. Such visibility, accompanied by much hoo-ha, ended up with a more than foreseeable police charge on those in the street, as much as on those who had sought refuge in the old caf\u00e9 of MACBA (that ended up totally destroyed). Many of the participants in \u201cLas Agencias\u201d were charged and taken to the police station, while the museum\u2019s management protected themselves from any blows behind the walls of the CCCB. This event, along with the fact that the press had previously spread the opinion that the museum was sheltering activities of dubious legality, served as the trigger for the Consortium of MACBA (the Town Council, the Generalitat and the Foundation of the museum) to give a wake-up call to Manuel Borja-Villel, one effective enough to curb the continuity of \u201clas Agencias\u201d. Demands were made for Jorge Ribalta to be fired and even the director\u2019s head was under threat, but they had a lifebelt: the Consortium had given their prior approval to this project, so they could only complain and restrict \u201cpart\u201d of the liberty of \u201clas Agencias\u201d (consequently many of them refused to carry on participating with the museum). The catalogue, Relational Objects. MACBA collection 2002-2007<\/em> relates some of the facts of the official version, a very watered down version of what actually took place. <\/p>\n

This was all almost twelve years ago now, and it is interesting to analyse how both sides have evolved and what this event meant for the undertaking of certain projects at the moment. The institution of the museum still collaborates with collectives: albeit, on a small scale and in a much more mediated fashion than \u201clas Agencias\u201d. On the part of artivism<\/em>, these events have left a rich legacy regarding transformative methodologies and new languages with which to intervene in society\u2026A few examples of direct influence would be the collective \u201cEnmedio\u201d or the \u201cCCCB\u201d (Centre for Contemporary Cultivation of the Barrio). In any event, it is still interesting today to study the ways in which an institution relates to its surroundings. Does it merely show them or does it also learn from these interactions? <\/p>\n

To be continued.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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