Son[i]a #354 Daniel Gasol

Daniel Gasol (Tarragona, 1983) describes himself as a “faggot child of the proletariat and cultural worker,” not (just) to provoke a response, but as a carefully calibrated strategy, fully aware that it immediately highlights the class privilege that informs any contemporary artistic practice and possibility of being. Moving on from there, discipline is the next pitfall that he avoids without batting an eyelid, through a practice that goes from almost invisible gestures in highly personal pieces and actions such as Trabajos forzosos (Forced Labour) to an activity that does not separate research and writing to objects, video, graphic art, installations, working with the archive, and thinking with others. “Anti-discipline”, he calls it. As required, it also extends to mediation, critical pedagogies, and group dynamics: all tools that he uses freely to dismantle dominant discourses around identity, work, class, and consumption.

In this podcast, Daniel Gasol explores the research and formulation of his project Orden público: Vagos, Maleantes y Peligrosidad Social (Public Order: Bums, Crooks, and Social Danger). An against-the-grain reading of Spain’s Vagrancy Law (1933-1970) and Law of Social Danger (1970-1995) through the prism of class, in which he reviews literature and criminal records from the National Archive of Catalonia in order to show the criminalisation of the underprivileged classes and of the proletarian body. File smuggling, accepting insults, working with what’s at hand, and hacking work spaces come up during the conversation as examples of survival tactics for living on the margins of the art system.