Treball col·lectiu que consisteix a verificar la distribució de 44 professions entre 113 persones segons una nota apareguda últimament a la premsa, 1973

A few days after these events, Grup de Treball organised Tarragona, Informació d’Art in the Llibreria de la Rambla in that city. The proposal consisted of an area for exhibitions and actions, and another for information where they presented journals, audiovisual material and texts at a time when access to international information in Spain was very limited. The idea of getting out of Barcelona and working in small cities was part of Grup de Treball’s remit to take art beyond its usual circuits, which were still for the minority. The first Informació d’Art Concepte took place in Banyoles in February 1973. In the autumn, they organised two exhibitions: in Tarragona, in November, and in Terrassa, in December.

A reference to the 113 first appeared in Tarragona, Informació d’Art. The arrest of the 113 had occurred on 28 October. Twelve days later, on 10 November, Francesc Abad, Jaume Carbó, Maria Costa, Alícia Fingerhut, Antoni Mercader and Dorothée Selz were driving to Tarragona for the opening of the exhibition. They had planned some actions, a brief talk and a round table discussion, but things changed at a stop along the way. The artists decided that this collective detention required direct action. In protest, they cancelled the planned events and wrote a text in which the mass arrests were mentioned for the first time.

A few weeks later, on 1 December, Terrassa, Informació d’Art opened in the premises of the Institut Industrial, Terrassa. Grup de Treball presented 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). The work consisted of seven pages where they transcribed a list of the occupations of those arrested. Administrators, students, lawyers, builders, engineers, businessmen, housewives, graduates, mechanics, farmers, writers, labourers and others. The list ended with ‘one filmmaker and one musician’, a reference to the two members of Grup de Treball who were arrested: Pere Portabella and Carles Santos. Although professions were used instead of names – to avoid possible police retaliation against the authors of the work – this emphasised the inter-class nature of the struggle against Franco: a struggle that concerned all areas of society and all social groups. This denunciation aligns the work with that of Conceptual artists like Dan Graham and Joseph Kosuth. Grup de Treball presented a second work on the arrests: Recorreguts. Treball col·lectiu de Barcelona (Routes. Collective work from Barcelona), realised as part of the Mostra d’Art Realitat at the College of Quantity Surveyors in Barcelona, December 1973 in– January 1974. The piece reproduces the physical route taken by the detainees from the place of arrest to the prison.