Spanish transition

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.

Mari Chordà was born on 14 May 1942 in Amposta, Tarragona, a land to which she is deeply attached. She is a painter, sculptor, writer, poet, and activist, whose painting and poetry speak of pleasure, motherhood, and the female body. She was also among the first of her generation to propose the idea of free sexuality. Mari Chordà developed her own pictorial style in formal and colour terms, without following trends but focusing on the direct depiction of her own body—the female body—and its cavities, sinuosity, fluids, and mutations.