A conversation between Muntadas, Anne Bénichou and Bartomeu Marí
'I conceived this work as a whole, whole as a project and in its presentation to the public. This project is the result of a process of ten years of work, a reflection on the system of art, a system that has been created by a (capitalist) society in a specific context and from a Western viewpoint. Evidently, it is also the result of my personal, subjective reflection on the world of art, its system and the various actors in force in a context that emerged in the early 1980s. Finally, the content has to do with the interpretation, the mediation and, on occasion, the manipulation of the work, by the people and the institutions who help to interpret, present, defend and "take care" of the work of artists. (…) A metaphor of the overall system on which art is based, but also an analysis of the various parts of which it is comprised.' (Muntadas, 1994)
Until April 30, the MACBA will be exhibiting the installation Between the Frames: The Forum (Barcelona), 1983-1993 (2011) by Antoni Muntadas, recently incorporated into the Museum's permanent Collection. During the period of exhibition, in the Study Centre visitors will be able to access the complete original interviews that constitute the raw material of the work, and which now are part of the Study Centre's collection. The MACBA has also produced two publications directly related to Muntadas's piece. Firstly, the transcribed fragments of the 160 interviews contained in the installation, and secondly (as part of the collection Col·lecció de la Col·lecció) a monograph entitled Between the Frames: The Forum, which includes an extensive interview with Muntadas by Anne Bénichou and a critical essay by the same author. Without attempting to explain or define the scope of the piece, the book invites new readings and interpretations of a long-term artistic project subject to constant transformation.
To celebrate the publication of this book, we invite you to participate in an open conversation between Antoni Muntadas, the theorist Anne Bénichou and the MACBA's director, Bartomeu Marí.
Programme
Wednesday January 18 at 7.30 pm.
Anne Bénichou is a historian, art theorist and professor at the Department of Visual Arts and Media at the University of Quebec in Montreal. Her research is centred on the use of archives, forms of memory and the historical narratives that are derived from contemporary artistic practice, as well as on the institutions charged with preserving and distributing it. She is particularly interested in works like Between the Frames, which adopt the form of a collection, an archive or a fictitious museum, as well as with the conceptions of memory, history and patrimony that these works often reference.
Bartomeu Marí is the director of the MACBA. Previously, he was the curator of exhibitions at the Fondation pour l’Architecture in Brussels and curator at the IVAM in Valencia. Between 1996 and 2002, he was director of the Witte de With in Rotterdam, later becoming coordinator at the Centro Internacional de Cultura Contemporánea project in Donostia. Since 2004, he has worked at MACBA, first as chief curator and, since 2008, as the Museum's director. He was a curator at the Taipei Biennial in 2002 and also at the Spanish Pavilion of the 51st Venice Biennial, to which he invited Antoni Muntadas (2005).
Antoni Muntadas is an artist. Since the beginning of the 1970s, his work has dealt with social and political problems through analysis and the use of media. Utilizing a wide variety of formats and processes, he has frequently re-visited problems within the art industry, power relationships, mechanisms of control, the link between the public and the private, and globalization. His work has been exhibited at numerous museums and international events, including the retrospective Entre/Between at the MNCARS in 2011. Among his many awards are the Premio Velázquez de las Artes Plásticas in 2009. He is also a visiting professor at different European institutions in Europe and the USA. He is currently a visiting professor at the Visual Arts Program at MIT (Massachusetts) and at the University Institute of Architecture of Venice.
Tel. (+34) 93 481 46 81
programespublics [at] macba [dot] cat
