Spanish transition

In this first episode, we revisit the early days of Video-Nou and its connection with other artists who were also starting to work with video in Catalonia. Hand in hand with Lluïsa Roca, Luisa Ortínez, Xefo Guasch and Carles Ameller, we look at the collective’s relationship with the counterculture, the underground, and libertarian movements. And we consider the particularities of video as a tool for documentary, communication, creation, and protest, with special attention to its uses within the political and social context of the period of the Spanish transition. We explore strategies such as feedback and counterinformation, and we get a behind-the-scenes insight into the making of Video-Nou’s first projects: Gràcia. Espais Verds (February-March 1977) and Campanya política per a la Lliga de Catalunya (April-May 1977), better known as the Video-Bus.

In the second episode of this series we pick up where we left off in our conversation with Lluïsa Roca, Luisa Ortínez, Xefo Guasch and Carles Ameller. With them, we explore Vídeo-Nou’s working methodologies, which were developed on the go, in the field, by doing things: because video was a new medium at the time, and because, together, they were inventing a system of transversal collaboration through which to capture the views and demands of a society eager to express itself after forty years of dictatorship, censorship and repression. Vídeo-Nou saw video as a mechanism for social engagement and intervention, making space for listening, conversation and debate as creative tools. Through video, the group became actively involved in neighbourhoods, community centres and associations, trade unions, and cultural spaces, opening up platforms for dialogue.

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.