Son[i]a #185
Maite Muñoz
In January 2013, the Joan Brossa Foundation and Ajuntament de Barcelona deposited the entire legacy of the Catalan artist Joan Brossa with MACBA. A total of 60.000 elements including poems, photographs, objects, paintings, manuscripts and many other documents that help to contextualise Brossa’s work and further our knowledge of this interdisciplinary, avant-garde artist.
The cataloguing, conservation and dissemination process that a collection of this type entails is an exciting challenge for the MACBA Study Centre, which was set up in December 2007 to broaden the Museum’s scope of action through the study of documentary practices that are inextricably bound to contemporary artistic practice.
Here, Joan Brossa’s legacy guides us through the different stages of the Centre’s work, and offers us an insight into the importance of archives as a means to manage and disseminate our documentary heritage.
SON[I]A talks to Maite Muñoz, Head of MACBA Archive, about how the material in the Archive is organised, strategies for dissemination, and how it all contributes to redefining the boundaries between art and document.
Teaser
As part of the exhibition "Sampler #4. Things that Happen", Enric Farrés Duran turns the tables on us with a proposal to get Ràdio Web MACBA to talk about his artistic practice. Here is a small preview of what we’ve been cooking up in this Barcelona-Los Angeles connection: listening on listening, suspended times, recalcitrant amateurism, desperate clawing at the fourth wall, and a few tough journalistic questions.
Teal Triggs
Teal Triggs talks about the historical background of zines and their key role in generating communities outside of the mainstream. She discusses in particular the Riot Grrrl movement and the language and visual universe that opened up as a result of the cross between music, DIY, activisim, femininity, and feminism in the self-publishing world.
Some reflections on the small press boom in the art world
Independent publishing is experiencing a boom in the art world. Before the bubble bursts, we speak to Kit Hammonds and Bernhard Cella about the boom, the recovery of supposedly obsolete printing techniques, the risk-aversion of institutional art collections, about professionalisation and about digital generation.
Wolfgang Ernst
Wolfgang Ernst reflects on the possibility of going beyond the concept of the archive by exploring some of the practices around what is now being called the 'anarchive'.
Enric Farrés Duran
Enric Farrés talks about collecting obsessively, the value of the ephemeral, the use of lies as a creative strategy and the complicit relationship with those around him, as well as other aspects of his work.
Pere Portabella
Pere Portabella (1929) has done significant work on renewing the codes of film language since the 1960s in his dual role as director and producer.
Mela Dávila
Interview with Mela Dávila, head of the MACBA Study Center.