26 November 2020 to 2 April 2021

The concept of plague indicates a relationship between life and territory: life forms which, from this point on, will be considered excessive in a given space. Being a plague means that you are categorized as an agent that destabilises a standardized relationship system. The plague is a mathematical notion and an economic matrix: the number of individuals considered problematic for a given economic operation in a territory. There are about 50,000,000 pigs in Spain. These pigs are animals bred for the purpose of being sold as dead animal protein. There are also 1,000,000 wild boars. The former are part of the life-and-death economy of contemporary capitalism; the latter are considered a nuisance because they get in the way of real-estate speculation in forest areas. Although both are of the same species —Sus scrofa— pigs are considered breeding stock and wild boars, a pest. Lives to be produced and lives to be eliminated, respectively. The exhibition ties the concept of plague into the way living things are categorized. Eucalyptus, parrots, urban grasses, water, native species and invasive species; the Cultural Ecologies group of the Independent Studies Programme offers us a critical look at the different forms of “nature” management currently applied.

Collaborators: Adrià Guardiola Rius, Anna Turbau, Archivo Asociación para la Defensa Ecolóxica de Galicia - ADEGA, Archivo de la Fundación Salvador Seguí, CED MACBA, Centre de Documentació Mercè Grenzner, Diego Cidrás, Ecologistas en Acción, Enric Puyoles García, Filmoteca de Catalunya, Filmoteca Española, Fundación Solón, Illa Bufarda, Llorenç Soler, Luz Broto Salvador Solé and Waves Films.

Curated by: the PEI 2019-2020 Cultural Ecologies Research Group, coordinated by Alberto Berzosa and Jaime Vindel. 

Members: Luna Acosta, Renan Araujo, Bia Bittencourt, Rafael Frazão, Karen, Ánxela Louzao, Maíra das Neves, José Platzeck, Lucas Pretti and Marguerita Isola.

This exhibition is part of Education from Below, a project supported by the Creative Europe programme of the European Union

logo- def- cofinanciado por el programa Europa Creativa de la Unión Europea