The speed with which events are happening almost calls into question a tool like Twitter. News bombshells fall one after another, the subjects have to be dealt with in five minutes before the next one comes crashing down and we jump to the new subject, as the last one is already out of date. State your opinion fast or lose your turn. Although, in the end, as far as losing is concerned, it will all be lost. Who knows. With Twitter the archive is of no interest.
In this speedy context, Damien Hirst has his five minutes. He earns them by controlling the tools that disseminate the information, using just the right words (or lack of them) to make his stuff not seem too complicated, that it can enter into the usual modes of communication. Genius, mad, provocative, art and money. Without forgetting male and white. Then one has to see whether the art sector has the capacity to articulate an interesting debate, discussing key, or not so key, ideas about what art is today, its roles, processes and reception. Ideas that also oblige a rethinking of the type of contact visitors have with the exhibitions: if communication is the way it is, if the dominant language is that of the media, what to do with exhibitions? Does the exhibition have to play with the same words? Is the exhibition a context for another type of approximation? Will exhibitions that don’t follow the canons defined by the media be considered news?
Hirst, exhibitions, contact and formats and, on the other hand, proposals that seek other rhythms or stem from another idea about what an impact is. It is important that the spectre be wide ranging, that there exists a variety of possibilities. Nothing is exclusive, although some might be visible and others invisible.
In this edition of A*Magazine we present three situations. Alba Mayol takes a look at the commotion surrounding Damien Hirst at the Tate Modern, Haizea Barcenilla analyses the symposium recently organised in Bilbao by ENPAP and Consonni, looking at the meaning in art of public, and Oriol Fontdevila takes a look at a proposal in two times and locations by Job Ramos at Bòlit in Girona.
Damien Hirst at the Tate Modern. The sum of these two elements is one of the best definitions of a blockbuster in contemporary art. The person and the place. Thousands of questions, commentaries, analysis and more or less contained rage, and all at the moment that Damien Hirst most needs it. If Dalí controlled the media with his loaded phrases and his moustache, Hirst does so with capital and a voluntarily uncouth, almost stupid, pose
The European Network of Public Art Producers, ENPAP, presented in Bilbao its first public programme, under the title "Going public, telling it as it is?”. A narrative title, with a series of implications that reveal the lines of work, the doubts and the challenges faced by the producers of public art in a Europe that is seeing the commons reduced at an alarming rate.
Bòlit presents a project by Job Ramos divided between two spaces; on the one hand an exhibition with objects that deny the documentary feel that we sometimes want to grant art. On the other, Ramos situates the art spectator within a theatre stage, to later enter into the space just below the stage, to experience a piece that we aren’t sure if it is being represented or if it is recorded. Sound and control, from references to politically charged radio, to the theatre of everyday life.
