FONS ÀUDIO #50 Francesc Torres
- 00:01 A product of the Spanish Civil War
- 02:16 Art and politics. Political art
- 06:25 Series of multiple works: the singular work is over
- 07:27 Paris and Piotr Kowalski
- 08:17 Piotr Kowalski "The Autodidactic Machine": artists no longer use their hands, only their heads
- 09:35 Prototypes: plaster, plastic, aluminium
- 10:40 Cut-outs
- 12:12 "Sculptura", 1969
- 13:37 Between sculpture and poetry
- 14:39 From stage to stage at an astronomical rate: a whole period was one piece
- 15:36 "Poème - eméoP. Prototype for an unlimited edition", 1969
- 16:19 On performance
- 20:56 "Image's identity", 1974
- 24:19 "An Attempt to Decondition Myself", 1974
- 25:44 On the importance of multimedia installations in museums. A paradigm shift
- 30:19 "Construction of the Matrix", 1976
- 34:00 Christianity and Marxism. Faith and sacrifice.
- 37:50 On large scale works. Occupying the museum
- 41:58 "Siegesallee. Avinguda de la Victòria", 1991
- 49:01 "Okinomos", 1989: Reagan's economic model
- 56:39 From a collector’s obsession to the The Hermetic Bell, 2018
- 62:12 There’s no precedent for collections of this type in the museum
- 63:56 Ways of thinking about material sediment, and where artworks begin and end
- 65:13 We could have changed the current paradigm of art
- 72:50 An advocate for the museum
Francesc Torres (Barcelona, 1948) is an artist, essayist, poet, collector, and curator, who has been involved with conceptual art since the late sixties. He has been a pioneering figure in the use of installation as an artistic and narrative device with which to explore the possibilities of the exhibition space, the artistic object, and the interactions that take place between the audience and the art work. Historical memory, understood as a political category, is an another element that runs through his work.
In FONS AUDIO #50 Francesc Torres talks about some of his works in the MACBA Collection as he looks back over his years in Paris working with Piotr Kowalski and his early performances in the United States. He also reflects on the aesthetic-political characteristics of installations, on historical memory, collecting, and the role of museums.