REVISITING VIDEO-NOU
POLYPHONIC MEMORIES FOR A SHARED PRESENT #2
MACBA COLLECTION. MACBA STUDY CENTRE. VIDEO-NOU / SERVEI DE VÍDEO COMUNITARI. © VIDEO-NOU COLLECTIVE / SERVEI DE VÍDEO COMUNITARI
In the third and final episode of this miniseries on the Vídeo-Nou collective, Lluïsa Roca, Luisa Ortínez, Xefo Guasch and Carles Ameller explore the material, experiential and sociological circumstances that led Vídeo-Nou to make way for the Servei de Vídeo Comunitari in 1979, and to the disbanding of the group in 1983. In their second incarnation, the group gave rise to new working dynamics that we explore here by revisiting projects such as Renfe-Meridiana (1981) and Los jóvenes de barrio (Young People from the ‘Hood, 1981), while also highlighting the importance of the group’s education and training activities at the time.
Emotional testimonies, almost like a coda, recount the recovery of lost video tapes, years after the group had disbanded, as well as the acquisition of the material by MACBA. The conversation also turns to the sometimes complex dynamics that occur when a project conceived as a device for social intervention enters the spaces of art. If there’s one thing that Roca, Ortínez, Guasch and Ameller are absolutely clear on, it’s the fact that archives must be completely democratic and accessible to all.
This one’s for you, Xefo.
Conversation: Loli Acebal, Ricardo Cárdenas and Anna Ramos. Script: Loli Acebal. Sound production: André Chêdas. Voice over: Clàudia Faus. SOUNDS: RWM WORKING GROUP, FROM WILLEM TWEE STUDIOS LIBRARY MUSIC, IN DEN BOSCH.
CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 DEED.ATTRIBUTION-NONCOMMERCIAL-NODERIVS 4.0 INTERNATIONAL
Polyphonic memories for a shared present #1
In this first episode, we revisit the early days of Video-Nou and its connection with other artists who were also starting to work with video in Catalonia. Hand in hand with Lluïsa Roca, Luisa Ortínez, Xefo Guasch and Carles Ameller, we look at the collective’s relationship with the counterculture, the underground, and libertarian movements. And we consider the particularities of video as a tool for documentary, communication, creation, and protest, with special attention to its uses within the political and social context of the period of the Spanish transition. We explore strategies such as feedback and counterinformation, and we get a behind-the-scenes insight into the making of Video-Nou’s first projects: Gràcia. Espais Verds (February-March 1977) and Campanya política per a la Lliga de Catalunya (April-May 1977), better known as the Video-Bus.
Polyphonic memories for a shared present #2
In the second episode of this series we pick up where we left off in our conversation with Lluïsa Roca, Luisa Ortínez, Xefo Guasch and Carles Ameller. With them, we explore Vídeo-Nou’s working methodologies, which were developed on the go, in the field, by doing things: because video was a new medium at the time, and because, together, they were inventing a system of transversal collaboration through which to capture the views and demands of a society eager to express itself after forty years of dictatorship, censorship and repression. Vídeo-Nou saw video as a mechanism for social engagement and intervention, making space for listening, conversation and debate as creative tools. Through video, the group became actively involved in neighbourhoods, community centres and associations, trade unions, and cultural spaces, opening up platforms for dialogue.
Juan Bufill
In this podcast, we sit down to talk with the poet, experimental filmmaker, scriptwriter, photographer, critic Juan Bufill talkl about the foundation of the Film Video Informació (FVI) and the many different artistries that came together there. The conversation starts from the early years of the Spansih transition, when opportunities to re-make everything and to dream seemed endless. It was a vibrant period of creative cross-fertilisation, with an underground, self-managed counterculture in which the energies of conceptual art, video art, experimental film, community video, comics and performance intertwined and radiated in multiple directions.
Culture, Counterculture, Design. The path to freedom
"UTOPIA IS POSSIBLE. ICSID. EIVISSA, 1971" is a three-part miniseries based on the research carried out for the exhibition of the same name. It brings together the testimonies of some of the participants who took part in the 7th Congress of the International Council of Societies of Industrial Design (ICSID), in an ensemble portrait of this collective experience.
Marcelo Expósito
In FONS ÀUDIO #59, artist, writer and activist Marcelo Expósito revisits his work in the MACBA Collection Photowritings 2011-2019 (Dedicated to Allan Sekula), a personal, sometimes intimate look at a series of collective experiences of self-determination and resistance. Marcelo talks about demonstrations, mass events and the occupation of public space, but also about micropolitical space and forms of bonding, empathy and solidarity.