Recorreguts. Treball col·lectiu de Barcelona, 1973
Recorreguts. Treball col·lectiu de Barcelona was produced in December 1973 and presented in the context of the exhibition Mostra d’Art Realitat, held at the College of Quantity Surveyors, Barcelona, at its headquarters in the Via Augusta, from December 1973 to January 1974. The project presents a book consisting of three readings of the route taken in Barcelona by 113 people from 28–31 October 1973. The work alludes to the police detention of 113 members of the Assembly of Catalonia, a platform founded in 1971 bringing together a very broad opposition to the Franco regime. On 28 October 1973, police raided a meeting of the Assembly in the church of Santa Maria Mitjancera, Barcelona, and arrested 113 of the participants, who were taken to the police station on the Via Laietana and from there to one of two prisons: Model for the men and Trinitat for the women. Two of the arrested Assembly members were also active in Grup de Treball: the composer Carles Santos and filmmaker Pere Portabella.
The work proposes three different ways of measuring the journey of the 113 on a map of Barcelona: by the motorcycle odometer of the artist Jordi Benito; by putting a finger on a map and measuring that distance in centimetres; and through the usual system of topographic maps and contour lines. In this way, the total measurements of the route are indicated in kilometres, in centimetres and on a graphic scale.
The Recorreguts project was conceived as a publication. The exhibition Mostra d’Art Realitat was intended to raise fonds for Solidaritat amb el Moviment Obrer (Solidarity with the Labour Movement), a group that raised money to help political prisoners. The authors of the book-work presented it under the name of Equip Conceptual (the group did not call themselves Grup de Treball until six months later, in the context of the Catalan Summer University in Prades de Conflent) and their intention was that the person who bought the piece would undertake to publish it and donate the money from sales to the Solidarity movement. This project was related to another work presented in the exhibition Terrassa, Informació d’Art, organised at the Institut Industrial, Terrassa, in December 1973, and entitled Treball col·lectiu que consisteix a verificar la distribució de 44 professions entre 113 persones segons una nota apareguda últimament a la premsa (Collective work to verify the distribution of 44 professions among 113 people according to a note published recently in the press). In this work, the names of the 113 detained Assembly members were omitted and replaced by their profession.
Both works represent the creative ideology of Grup de Treball: political and social involvement, the idea of record or chronicle, fragmentation and art as process or experience. ‘This is, then, a work in which fragmentation is in some sense substituted for the traditional concept of the perfectly delimited work. The idea of record, of chronicle, embodies within it a questioning both of excessive subjectiveness and of absolute precision, and gives rise to a type of work reminiscent of the urban experiences of the Situationists.’ (AAVV: Grup de Treball. Barcelona: MACBA, 1999, p. 141 [cat. exp.])
Technical details
- Original title:
- Recorreguts. Treball col·lectiu de Barcelona
- Registration number:
- 0492
- Artist:
- Grup de Treball (Grup d'artistes)
- Date created:
- 1973
- Date acquired:
- 1997
- Fonds:
- MACBA Collection. Government of Catalonia long-term loan
- Object type:
- Graphic material
- Media:
- Print, letraset, photographic collage and ink on cardboard
- Dimensions:
- 34 sheets: 29.9 x 21.2 cm each (height x width)
- Credits:
- MACBA Collection. Government of Catalonia long-term loan. National Collection of Art
- Copyright:
- © Grup de Treball
- It has accessibility resources:
- No
The MACBA Collection features Catalan, Spanish and international art and, although it includes works from the 1920s onwards, its primary focus is on the period between the 1960s and the present.
For more information on the work or the artist, please consult MACBA's Library. To request a loan of the work, please write to colleccio [at] macba.cat.
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