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Oral Museum of the Revolution is a project conceived by Beatriz Preciado and produced with the research and collaboration of students from the 2012-2013 edition of the MACBA Independent Studies Programme (PEI).

Oral Museum of the Revolution (OMR) is a performative and sound exhibition-archive that seeks to give an audio and spatial presence, within the context of the contemporary city and museum, to the languages of social change invented by minorities of race, gender, sexual, bodily and functional and cognitive diversity: from the first revolution of slaves in Haiti and the uprisings of the citoyennes to today's queer, autistic, intersex, transgender, antispeciesist movements and others that also fight to broaden and redefine the limits of the democratic horizon.

This project, produced as a collaborative research project by students of the 2012-2013 MACBA Independent Studies Programme (PEI), challenges the hegemony of the silent gaze, the visitor-eye and the white cube that prevail in contemporary museums. As opposed to a traditional exhibition, the OMR presents a darkened space that intensifies the experience of listening and the enunciation of acts of speech. The idea is to explore the production of oral knowledge, the function of theatricality, the links between language and action, the semiotic and pragmatic specificity of political statements, and the connections between the literary genre of the ‘manifesto’ and avant-garde and conceptual artistic practices.

In 1791, the slave Toussaint-Louverture proclaimed the abolition of slavery on the island of Haiti. That same year in France, where women and bastard children did not have the right to political speech, Olympe de Gouges publicly read out her Déclaration des droits de la femme et de la citoyenne. In 1849, when women did not have the right to vote, Jeanne Deroin stood as a candidate for the French legislative elections. In 1867, in front of a congress of German jurists who criminalized homosexuality, Karl Ulrich declared that homosexuals are not criminals or ill, but normal people and citizens with inalienable rights. In 1987, Larry Kramer publicly spoke out as a person with HIV to protest against the political management of the pandemic in the United States... Jacques Rancière asks, 'How can those who don’t have access to speak publicly or to govern, demand access to the political realm through the word? How can an abject body claim political subjethood through effraction? How can we invent a scene of enunciation?´ Judith Butler asks, 'What is the contemporary voice that enters into the language of the law to disrupt its univocal workings?'

Oral Museum of the Revolution invites a group of artists to respond to these questions by carrying out ‘acts of speech’ or performative readings and public interpretations of these statements, speeches and manifestos. During the first week of December, various spaces at MACBA and in the city will become improvised urban sounding-boards for the languages of social change.

With texts and manifestos by Sojourner Truth, Jeanne Deroin, Karl Ulrich, Karl Maria Kertbeny, Emma Goldman, Valentine de Saint-Point, Valerie Solanas, Aimé Césaire, Carl Wittman, Frantz Fanon, Monique Wittig, Combahee River Collective, Adrienne Rich, Gloria Anzaldúa, Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, Carla Lonzi, Cheryl Clarke, Pedro Lemebel, Virginie Despentes, Amanda Baggs, Mujeres Creando and Jim Sanclair, among others.

With the collaboration of:
The Lisbon Consortium
Oral museum of the revolution

Programme

Dates: 29 November, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 7 December
Format: Performative and sound exhibition-archive
Venue: A circuit of indoor and outdoor spaces at MACBA (Plaça dels Àngles, Capella) and nearby areas of the Raval South
Production: Students from the 2012-2013 edition of the Independent Studies Programme (PEI)

ACTS OF SPEECH. ORAL MUSEUM OF THE REVOLUTION
Thursday 5 and Saturday 7 December, from 7 pm onwards
Capella MACBA and other spaces
Free admission. Visitors are advised to bring a mobile device or a torch.

With the participation of Michael Roberson, Javier Peñafiel, Nadia Granados «La Fulminante», Pedro Costa, Jaume Ferrete, Antonio Centeno, PostOp, Quimera Rosa, Lucrecia Masson, Virginie Despentes, Mount Zion Soldiers and Rut Castells, among others.

WORKSHOPS
From 29 November to 5 December, a series of workshops will be held as part of a strategy to prepare the acts of speech, actions and performances based on the Oral Museum of the Revolution archive.

Free activities. Limited places. Bookings at pei [at] macba [dot] cat

Manifesto / I declare
Reading workshop
Friday 29 November and Monday 2 December, from 6.30 to 8 pm
Room 1, MACBA Study Centre
20 places

Bodily Disorder
Bodily, functional, sexual and gender diversity workshop
Monday 2 December, from 4 pm to 8 pm
Tuesday 3 December, from 12 am to 10 pm
Room 0, MACBA
10 places

Knitting Listening, Knitting Speech
Balaclava knitting and screen printing workshop
Friday 29 November and Monday 2 December, from 10 am to 2 pm
Room 0, MACBA
15 places

Go Oral! An OMR workshop
Led by Javier Peñafiel
Tuesday 3 December, from 5 to 8 pm
Wednesday 4 December, from 5 to 8 pm
Capella MACBA.
8 places

Ballroom has something to say about human beings and the struggle for freedom
Masterclass on vogue-análisis with Michael Roberson
Thursday 5 December, from 7 to 9 pm
Capella MACBA

THE FUNK LESSONS: RELOADED
Saturday 7 December, from 9 pm onwards
Capella MACBA.
Limited capacity

DEVICES
Portable OMR
It is an online project made up of various acts of speech that will be played on numerous free, community, and cooperative radio stations in cities in Spain, Mexico, Columbia, Chile, Argentina, Bolivia and Brazil.

Participating artists: Alejandra Egido, Chispilla Tronik, Cintia Mendonça / Lisa Kori Chung, Colectivo Anarco Funk, Gustavo Melo Cerqueira, Julia Cartier Bresson + Camila Bastos, Jeimy Martínez, La Multisectorial Invisible, María Eugenia Garza, Mujeres Públicas (feminist visual activism group, Argentina), Teatro de operações, Transcocho Cimarrón.

Mobile OMR
A DIY device on wheels that moves through different parts of the museum, the square and the streets of the Raval to collect, record and broadcast acts of speech.

Radio MOR
It is a radio network and the recipient of exchanges. Radio stations are invited to use the sound archive of the portable MOR to generate and exchange content such as podcasts, software, music and sound material that interweave the contents of MOR with the work of each radio station.

These devices can be consulted in the project website: www.morpei.org.

Listening and recording station
Located in the MACBA Hall, the listening and recording station allows museum visitors to listen to the manifestos and acts of speech and record their own statements.

MACBA Public Programs
Tel. 93 481 33 58
pei [at] macba [dot] cat