collective creation

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.

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.

In this podcast, Seba Calfuqueo dismantles heroes, monuments and categories, while reclaiming gaps, taboos and the elements as spaces of complexity from which to strike up conversation. They also talk about owning where you come from and the position from which you speak. And they argue for the collective occupation of spaces that have historically been denied to the Mapuche people. For Seba, being Mapuche means having a connection with the land, and in this conversation they present a way of understanding of life in which queerness is the very essence of nature.

In this podcast, we talk to filmmaker and visual artist Wu Tsang about her way of understanding (and practicing) the ungraspable nature of the moving image through her concept of magic realism, as well as other reality-modification strategies. We talk about big and small stories, about myths and clichés, and about rewriting and unravelling timelines, part real and part fictional. We also look at the benefits of collaborative processes and at the need to challenge and dismantle the idea of individual authorship in the visual arts.