Before We Go Down in History (We Have to Make a Living). 1st Session 

Presentation of an ongoing non-academic research into working-class academics and the power of biography as a political project. The proposition consists of critically analysing the material conditions of these figures who move between terms that might at first sight appear opposites: working-class academics. It also considers who is behind these figures: the mothers of those first generations to go to university and are now lecturers. Generations of cis women relegated to subordinate status. 

The research will result in a self-published essay. This will cover 2,661.855 kilometres of labour memory, of genealogies without trees and windows without sky. A memory of the other Barcelonas, those that do not run cultural institutions but that feed the critical fabric, affected by impostor syndrome. A story of philosophers without libraries, of machinists and cleaners. A proposition that highlights biography as a tool for exploring other narratives by re-approaching, deconstructing and challenging official histories. Generating an alternative counter-narrative to the “political radicalism” enunciated by the cultural elite schools of Barcelona. 

At a time when working as a professional artist is an increasingly unattainable luxury, art criticism duo The White Pube investigate why so many artists try anyway. Poor Artists follows aspiring artist Quest Talukdar as she embarks on a surreal journey into the creative industry, where she must decide whether she cares more about success or about staying true to herself. Featuring dialogue from anonymous interviews with real people who have all had to ask themselves the same question – including a Turner Prize winner or two, a recluse, a Venice Biennale fraudster, a communist messiah, a ghost, and a literal knight – The White Pube tell the story of art like never before.