INDEX. Biannual Journal

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ÍNDEXArtistic research, thought and education

2 EditorialXavier AntichStrategies o Openness:The Absurd

6 ZoomDaniel Heller-RoazenSpeculative Vibrations

8 DisplayCristina FreireThe Network on Display:

Prospectiva’74

12 MediterraneansYto Barradaand Marie MuraccioleOccupying the Realm o Imagination: A Conversation

17 Artistic ResearchJosé Antonio Vega MacotelaFive Years

24 Hassan Khanthe frst lesson I remember

learning is that humiliationexists

Biannual JournalAutumn 2011Number 2



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Editorial teamXavier AntichMela DávilaTeresa GrandasSoledad GutiérrezAna JiménezBartomeu MaríChus MartínezClara PlasenciaIdoia Villanueva

DirectorChus Martínez

Coordination and editingPublications Area of MACBA

Design and layout Enric Jardí, Meri Mateu

Translations Jane Brodie/e-verba translations:pp. 2–5, pp. 17–23Discobole: pp. 12–16

CopyeditingKeith Patrick: pp. 1–28

Published by

Museu d’Art Contemporani deBarcelona (MACBA)www.macba.cat

With the exception of photogr aphs by Gordon Matta-Clark

Images© of the works: the artists; Estateof Gordon Matta-Clark, VEGAP,Barcelona, 2011 (cover, pp. 3, 4)© of the photographs: the artists;Sarah Keller (pp. 13, 15)© of the reproductions: Courtesyof Arquivo MAC USP (pp. 8, 10,11); Vanessa Miralles (p. 4); GemmaPlanell/MACBA (p. 9); Rafael Vargas (cover, inner cover, p. 3)

CoverDetail of Gordon Matta-ClarkConical Intersect 4 (Documenta-tion of the action Conical Intersect carried out in Paris, France in 1975),1977. Silver-salt photograph,20.3 × 25.3 cm. Unique copy.MACBA Collection. FundacióMuseu d’Art Contemporani de Bar-celona. Harold Berg long-term loan.

Inner coverDetail of Stano Filko HAPPSOC III: Altar o Contemporaneity, 1966,installation including nine maps andan invitation. Moderna galerija deLjubljana / Museum of Modern Art,

Ljubljana.Pre-printingSCAN 4

PrintingIGOL

ISSN printed edition: 2014-0193ISSN digital edition: 2014-851DL: B-43640-2010

TypographiesGotham Narrow, DTL Documenta

PaperBiberist Furioso 135 g and 115 g



Biannual Journal

Autumn 2011

Number 2

Zoom

How is it possible to put together a

narrative o art? ‘Zoom’ is a space ointellectual and bibliographic pointreerence.

Editorial

Issues and terms that drive anotherand new thought rom and about ar

Display

How are exhibitions brought aboutdoes their research involve? This seattempts to make visible the proces by which exhibitions are conceiveddened.

Artistic Research

Why and how do I do what I do? Atalk about their projects in the rst

Mediterraneans

A space or dialogue on the Near EEurope and North Arica. Dieren

oer new ormulations regarding art, religion, education and the comuture o the societies in the Medinean region.



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STRATEGIES

OF OPENNESS:THE ABSURDXavier AntichDirector o MACBA’s Independent StudiesProgramme (PEI). A Doctor o Philosophy,he is a writer and proessor o art theory at t heUniversitat de Girona, where he directs theMaster’s Programme in Communication and

Art Criticism.

In recent decades, critical thought has allocated some o its eort to attempting to dismantle in all spheres thoseelements that continue to uphold any trace o domination. With uneven means o operating and diering results, thistendency has had an impact on universes as seemingly dis-tant as theoretical philosophy and political activism; artistic

practice and refection on language; thought on the bodyand the city, and gender theories. In some cases, eortshave been concentrated on the search or non-totalitarianor counter-hegemonic devices capable o shaping an other rationality that can operate in a dierent way than tech-nological, instrumental or bio-political rationality whileunalteringly attempting to reconstruct a powerul alterna-tive to the rationality that, as a orm o power, runs throughthe entire system o the actual. In other cases, however, thesearch or a viable way out o the strategies o dominationcharacteristic o hegemonic rationality have opted or aweakening o rationality itsel, or tentative attempts at other sorts o thought, and or the exploration o possibili-ties or dialogue based on the revulsives to emerge withthe armation o otherness, to mention just a ew o thepreerred and most successul o these eorts.

In this context, the revulsive and deconstructivepotential o the absurd, which played such a crucial rolein existentialism and Adornian aesthetics, seems toremain largely unexplored. It does not seem inoensive,purely speculative or digressive in this inal phase o

Editorial

Gordon Matta-CConical Intersec(Documentationaction Conical Incarried out in PaFrance, in 1975) Vintage silver-s

photograph,25.3 × 20.3 cm, dMACBA CollectFundació MuseuContemporani dBarcelona Harollong-term loan.

MACBA has onethe largest colleo works by GorMatta-Clark (Ne1943–78) o anypean museum ta donation romBerg o orty-sixto the Museum which joined thalready in the MCollection. The document Mattacelebrated build(cuts and temporemovals o segmo buildings), intions with whicartist changed thmeaning o sculIn 2012, MACBApresent works bMatta-Clark.





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critical modernism to uphold the rhetorics o the absurd asa highly negativist and prepositional possibility. ChristophMenke in Die Souveränität der Kunst (1991) has exploredkindred possibilities in the prismatic confuence o Adornoand Derrida.

When Adorno wrote in Minima Moralia (1951) that ‘thetask o art today is to bring chaos into the order’, he called onart and theory to play an active part in resistance. That meant not only conronting the dominant totalitarian rationality,protesting against an inhuman and oppressive world, but also, and above all, subversively producing an other logicwhose enigmatic nature would contain the model or what he called a negative aesthetic. Thus, in one o the celebratedphrases that articulated much o his thinking, ‘dissonance,the trademark o modernism’, Adorno not only attemptedto characterise our times by the orce o the negative, but

also to indicate the resistance exercised by any orm odissonance that cannot be reduced to an integrating orharmonising whole. The dissonant appears, then, as anment essentially resistant to any integration that wouleected by dominant reason, which is by denition viand totalitarian. As Adorno says in his Ästhetische The(1970), ‘Art must take up the cause o what is proscribugly, though no longer in order to integrate or mitigatto reconcile it with its own existence through humouris more oensive than anything repulsive. Rather, in tugly, art must denounce the world that creates and repduces the ugly in its own image.’

Thus, Adorno’s emphasis on the logic o decompotion, in which he saw a way – perhaps the most poweruway – to negate the systematic closure enacted by everythat, always the same unto itsel, arms its totalitar ian

Gordon Matta-ClarkConical Intersect 1 (Documentation o the actionConical Intersect carried out in Paris, France, in 1975), 1977 Vintage silver-salt photograph, 20.3 × 25.3 cmMACBA Collection. Fundació Museu d'Art Contemporanide Barcelona. Harold Berg long-term loan.



A series o books provide an in-depth analthe concept o ‘the absurd’ and its importacontemporary art:

Adorno, Theodor W. Ästhetische Theor ie. Furt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1970. English e Aesthetic Theory. Minneapolis: UniverMinnesota Press, 1997.

–––––––. Minima moralia. Reexionem ausbeschädigten Leben. Frankurt: Suhrkam1951. English edition: Minima Moraliations rom Damaged Lie. London: New

Books, 1974 (new edition, New York: V2006).Beckett, Samuel. The Complete Dramatic W

London: Faber & Faber, 2006.Birnbaum, Daniel, and Isabelle Graw (eds.

Power o Judgement. A Debate on Aesthtique. Paris: Les Presses du Réel, 2010.

Brater, Enoch, and Ruby Cohn (eds.). Arounsurd. Essays on Modern and PostmodernMichigan: University o Michigan Press

Bouchindhomme, Christian, and Rainer Rlitz (eds.). L’Art sans compas. Redéfnitiol’esthétique . Paris: Les Éditions du Cer,

Cornwell, Neil. The Absurd in Literature. Mter: Manchester University Press, 2006

Gómez, Vicente. El pensamiento estético deW. Adorno. Madrid. Ediciones Cátedra,

Menke, Christoph. Die Souveränität der K Ästhetische Er ahrung nach Ado rno un

Frankurt : Suhrkamp Verlag, 1991. Engtion: The Sovereignty o art: Adorno an Aesthetic Experience. Cambridge, MassThe MIT Press, 1998.

O’Connor, Brian. Adorno’s Negative DialePhilosophy and the Possibility o Criticaality (Studies in Contemporary GermanThought). Cambridge, Massachusetts: TPress, 2005.

Wellmer, Albrecht, and Vicente Gómez. Tcrítica y estética: dos interpretaciones de Adorno. Valencia: Universitat de Valèn

by driving out o the system any dierence, divergence orotherness. In opposition to the violence o synthesis withwhich conceptual thought and its logics operate, Adornoproposes the non-coercive synthesis o the multiple in thework o art. To uphold the absurd in the ramework o thisimpugnation o totalitarian rationality is to endorse other,essentially dissolutive ormulas capable o inhabiting thegaps in the system and, on the basis o the minutest ormo resistance or sabotage, to imagine and shape other pos-sible scenarios.

The absurd, and the logics and rhetoric derived there-rom, has nothing to do with a nihilistic renouncement o thought, language or action. Just the opposite. It entails,rather, placing a stake on the dissolution o orms that serve to close o meaning and all the structures o domi-nation that govern technological and instrumental ration-ality in the realms o theory, practice and action.The absurd entails the recognition o a possible logic innon-systematised heterogeneity and unresolved contra-diction. Or, to put it in aesthetic and political terms, analternative to dissent and antagonism. In a certain way, theabsurd constitutes, then, the best antidote to the totalitar-

ian and reductive temptation o any dialectic that yearns toovercome all contradictions in a greater synthesis. Becausethe absurd is not the mere absence o meaning, but ratherits questioning. Samuel Beckett’s plays, or instance, are not absurd because they lack meaning, but because they ormu-late a perhaps digressive debate on meaning.

‘At the end o my play, all that remains is dust: thenameable,’ writes Beckett, or whom all textual exercise isthe ongoing history o a process o dispossession, nega-tion, demolition. To write is to reuse to remain all alone inone’s own world. As Alain Badiou said, it is a question o ‘breaking with Cartesian terrorism’. Indeed, he said, ‘It was

important that the subject be opened up to an alterity andcease being olded upon itsel in an interminable and tortur-ous speech. Whence the growing importance... o the event.... and the voice o the other (which interrupts solipsism).’That is the lesson o the absurd in Beckett’s last text: theprogressive decay o textual materials to render the logico possession unviable. Freed rom the ‘sel’ that organisesit, the text can rejoin the fow o things and ollow its ownrhythm as the only possible order: disorder, conusion, thelogic o the absurd.

‘To nd a orm that accommodates the mess, that isthe task o the artist now,’ Beckett went on. ‘[To] introducechaos into order, rather than the reverse’ is the intentiono art or Adorno as well. To demolish the rationality o thelogic that sets out to institute itsel as the only legitimateguarantee o meaning through the dissolute logic o the ab-surd as a way to explore logics that have yet to be conceived.Either Beckett or Adorno could have said: ‘Perspectivesmust be ashioned that displace and estrange the world,reveal it to be, with its rits and crevices, as indignant anddistorted...’ Return to the concrete, buried beneath the slab

o vacuous generalisations, the exploration o constetory relations, rather than causal processes; an insisteragmentation and parataxis. The absurd does not clothing; it does not close o meaning in emptiness or s Just the opposite.



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SPECULATIVEVIBRATIONSDaniel Heller-RoazenFull proessor o Comparative Literature at PrincetonUniversity, where he teaches classical and medievalliterature, aesthetics and the philosophy o art. He isthe author o many essays, translations and books,including Echolalias: On the Forgetting o Language(2005), The Inner Touch: Archaeology o a Sensation(2007) and The Enemy o All: Piracy and the Lawo Nations (2009), all o them published by ZoneBooks.

In 1585, the distinguished Venetian mathematician andscientist Giovanni Battista Benedetti published one Book o Diverse Mathematical and Physical Speculations (Di-versarum speculationum mathematicarum et physicorumliber).1 Among the materials contained in this work are twoundated letters addressed to the composer Cipriano deRore, who appears to have turned to Benedetti or clari-cation concerning the nature and properties o soundinginstruments. Benedetti, himsel also a musician and com-poser, was particularly qualied to respond to the variousquestions posed to him. Today, it is clear that his letters

constituted ar more than a divulgation o ndings amiliarto scientists o his time. In the second o the two epistles,in particular, Benedetti proposed an account o harmonicconsonances, which, in hindsight, can be said to have an-nounced the nascent eld o the mathematical study o sound, or ‘acoustics’. Benedetti set aside what had beenthe ancient and medieval practice in the study o musicalsound: the measurement o the string lengths necessary orproducing consonant intervals and the derivations romtheir extensions o the ‘reasons’ or musical consonances.Benedetti proposed a method that allowed sounds to bequantied by unprecedented means. Perhaps or the rst time in the history o the study o sounding bodies, Benedettirelated musical sounds not to the lengths o strings, but to their rate o vibration. A new age in the transcription o nature by number now began.

In his second letter, Benedetti stated three closely relatedphysical principles. The rst had its root in a act o which‘everyone’, as Benedetti noted, was well aware, namely, that ‘the longer the string, the more slowly it is moved’.2 Hence therule that Benedetti now expressly armed: the magnitudes

o string lengths and vibrations are inversely proportioor, to put matters in more modern terms, ‘the ratio o the requencies o two strings varies inversely with thlengths, the tension being equal’.3 Secondly, Benedettitablished that the consonances o harmonic intervals rom coincidences in the termination o vibratory cyclIn other words, i two strings cease to move at the sammoment, then their sounds will be concordant; inversthe two sounds o two bodies are harmonious, it is bectheir vibration has ceased simultaneously. One may tathe octave as an example. I two strings o unequal lengsound this interval, it is because their movements coma standstill in moments that are coincident. Each time longer string ceases to vibrate, the shorter one will be mtionless, and every other time the shorter string ceasesmove, the longer one, too, will be immobile. Benedettintuited that all harmonies derive rom one periodic ein the time o sounding bodies: the simultaneous endio movement.

Finally, Benedetti suggested that such ndings uelements with which one may dene degrees o consonance, stretching rom unison to all the other interval

An index o harmonic sounds may then be obtained. Treach its terms, two steps are necessary. One must conthe number o vibratory motions made by two stringsgiven moment; then, one must multiply the two numTwo strings will sound in unison i they vibrate the sanumber o times, ceasing their motions simultaneouslOne may thereore assign to the sound o unison the vo one times one (1 × 1), or one (1). Two strings will sothe octave i, or every vibration o the rst string, thond string vibrates twice. One may thereore attributthis consonance the value o two, produced by one titwo (1 × 2 = 2). In his second letter to Cipriano de Rore

Benedetti shows that each o the consonances o traditmusical theory may be subjected to such a representatThe old ratios o string lengths may, then, be rewrittenratios o string vibrations. Just as the sound o the octacan be derived rom the relation o two vibratory cycleone, so the th may be tied to the relation o three vibtory cycles to two. And just as one may assign to unisonumber ‘one’, so one may attribute to the interval o thth the number that results rom the product o two athree, that is, ‘six’; similarly, one may represent the ouas our times three, or ‘twelve’. Gradually, an arithmetscale o musical concordance in vibration will emerge.ple consonances may be correlated with single numbeand numbers, Benedetti notes, will in turn ‘correspondeach other in a wondrous proportion’.

Benedetti lent particular weight to the index o concordance he established. He dwelt little on the rsecond principles he so clearly armed and, althoughmay well be taken to be the rst thinker to have denconsonance by vibration, he oered no demonstratioo the necessary relation o sounds to cycles o motio

Zoom



A generation later, Galileo Galilei, who knew Benedetti’sworks on mechanics and acoustics, also maintained that musical ratios were reducible to ratios o vibration. In apassage o the Discorsi , which he published in 1638, Galileonot only armed that consonances could be derived romthe coincidence o pulsations but also sought to prove thisact. 4 Today most historians, however, attribute the rst rigorous demonstration o the correlation o quantities o sound and quantities o vibration to the Dutch scientist IsaacBeeckman (1588–1637). A journal entry dated 1615 containsa simple, yet decisive geometrical proo that the requencywith which a string vibrates stands in direct proportion tothe acuity o its sound. Being himsel an atomist, Beeckmanheld tones, like all other things, to consist in small and indi-visible beings ‘at diverse distances rom each other, that is, at intermediate empty spaces’, set in movement by vibrationand carried, with varying orce, rom the place o their rst motion to the aculties o human hearing.5 His contem-poraries might well reuse such an atomistic physics; theymight hold theories, or example, in which sounds resultedrom the motions not o discrete ‘corpuscles’ but waves. But the principle Beeckman demonstrated would remain, and

gradually it would be accepted that sounds could be dened by those ratios o vibrations (or beats or pulsations) to time,today called ‘requencies’.

The consequences o such physical ndings were intime to be immense. Initially, o course, the discoveries an-nounced by Benedetti and proven by Beeckman may haveappeared to pertain to music alone. Perhaps it seemed that it was only the intervals o motets and madrigals that were,in truth, vibrations. But soon the law o requency would be brought to bear on other phenomena. Benedetti, in a sense,had already oreseen this much, or with his method, he im-plicitly allowed that all sounds – concordant or discordant –

might be identiable with a number o modulations eect-ed in any given single instant. Yet one could go still urther.Later thinkers would demonstrate that not only sound but also light could be measured by many discrete, albeit rapid,motions. From there, it was but a step to deciphermentso subtler, yet ar more undamental rates o requency innature. Matter itsel, the most elementary o bodies, wouldone day be resolved into certain periodic rates o pulsation.A new world harmony would, then, be notated: that o theuniverse o modern science. Yet how could one know that its cycles o motion truly ormed a ‘harmony’? How, in

such a universe, might one dene a rule or consonandissonance? One thing, in any case, was certain: suchi there were one, could not emerge rom any new phor mathematics, let alone a musical acoustics. What wneeded was nothing less than a metaphysics and cosmsuited to a universe o ubiquitous vibrations. The boowould contain those ‘diverse speculations’, howevernot be written or some time.

1 Giovanni Battista Benedetti, Diversarum speculationum mathematicarum et physicorum liber. Torino: apud Haeredem Nicolai Bevilaquae, 1585.2 Ibid.3 Claude V. Palisca, ‘Scientic Empiricism in Musical Thought’, Hedley Howell

Rhys (ed.), Seventeenth Century Science and the Arts. Princeton: PrincetonUniversity Press, 1961, pp. 91–137, pp. 107–o9.

4 For a summary, see H. F. Cohen, Quantiying Music: The Science o Music at theFirst Stage o the Scientifc Revolution, 1580–1650. Dordrecht, Boston, Lancaster:D. Reidel, 1984, pp. 88–90. For a more sustained study discussion, see FrançoisBaskevitch, ‘L’élaboration de la notion de vibration sonore: Galilée dans lesDiscorsi’, Revue d’histoire des sciences, no. 60–62, 2007, pp. 387–418.

5 See H. F. Cohen, Quantiying Music , op. cit., pp. 120–23.

Since antiquity, ‘harmony’ has been a name than a theory o musical sounds; it has oeredigm or the scientic understanding o the nworld. Nature, through harmony, has been tin the ideal signs o mathematics. But, time athe transcription has run up against one und

limit: something in nature resists being writtranscribed in a stable set o ideal elements.In eight chapters, linked together as are the ta single scale, The Fith Hammer explores thand echoes o that troubling percussion as ththemselves elt on the most varied o attempderstand and represent the natural world. Frto metaphysics, aesthetics to astronomy, and and Boethius to Kepler, Leibniz, and Kant, thiexplores the ways in which the ordering o thworld has continued to suggest a reality that nletters can ully transcribe.

Daniel Heller-The Fith HamPythagoras anharmony o thNew York: ZonCloth/ Septem

November 20



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Display

In the last decades, the canonical history o art ocusedon individual artists and autonomous artworks has beenchallenged by an examination o the particular conditionso distribution, circulation and display o art in the publicsphere, that is, art exhibitions.

The mail network as a privileged channel or the dis-tribution o artistic inormation reveals a strategic principle

or the organisation o exhibitions, particularly relevant inLatin American countries in the sixties and seventies. Theexhibition Prospectiva’74 is an example o an active pro-gramme o international exchange promoted by the publicand the Museu de Arte Contemporãnea da Universidadede São Paulo (MAC USP) in Brazil. Conceived by WalterZanini, together with Julio Plaza, a Spanish artist living inSão Paulo, it took place or one month in 1974 (16 August to16 September) at the MAC de São Paulo.

View o one o the galleriesto the Prospectiva’74 exhibition, which tookplace at the Museu deArte Contemporãneada Universidade de SãoPaulo in August andSeptember 1974.

THE NETWORKON DISPLAY:

PROSPECTIVA’74Cristina FreireAssociate Proessor and Vice-Director o the Museu deArte Contemporãnea da Universidade de São Paulo.She is also a curator and writer. She was co-curatoro the 27th Biennale o São Paulo and has publishedamong others the books Poéticas do Processo. ArteConceitual no Museu (1999), Arte Conceitual (2006)and Paulo Bruscky, arte, arquivo e utopia (2007).



Important changes in the circulation channels and alsoin the proles o institutions such as the museum in its task

o preserving, storing and exhibiting artworks occurredthrough exhibitions like this. From the point o view o thecollections resulting rom these networks, another as yet untold narrative o Conceptual practices emerges. It belongsto a completely dierent context, ar removed rom Rio de Janeiro’s Neo-concrete art panorama so divulgated in HélioOiticica’s and Lygia Clark’s contemporaneous hegemonicpresence. It has been rarely discussed that, in the begin-ning o the seventies, the axis o the Conceptual practicesin Brazil moved to the city o São Paulo and rom this shit other issues must be considered. In this sense, the historyo exhibitions held at the Museu de Arte Contemporãnea

da Universidade de São Paulo under the direction o WalterZanini stands as a privileged point or observation. Theart historian and scholar Walter Zanini was appointedthe rst director o this then recently created museum.Under his direction (1963–78) the Museum’s programmesincluded young artists’ exhibitions and such internationalshows as Prospectiva’74. As a result, the Museum occupieda lively place or local artistic practice and international ar-tistic exchanges, as it was able to bring artists to work insideits walls, as well as connecting non-ocial art practices toinstitutional settings in its programme o exhibitions, despitethe censorship o those dicult decades.

More than a hundred and ty artists rom dier-ent countries participated in the Prospectiva’74, sendingworks by mail to the Museum. Within the broad scope o nationalities, the massive international presence was alsoa response to the organiser’s request that each participant propose a urther artist or inclusion in the show. The origi-nal list o names and addresses was brought to São Paulo by Julio Plaza, who had organised a similar collective interna-tional exhibition using the mail-art network in Porto Rico

in 1971, where he was then living. Among many otherexhibition included works by Jaroslaw Kozlowski, Krz

Wodiczko, Isidoro Valcárcel Medina, Luigi Ontani, AnMiralda, Muntadas, Yutaka Matsuzawa, Horacio ZabalEdgardo Antonio Vigo, Anna Bella Geiger, Clemente PArtur Barrio and Regina Silveira.

The catalogue, also designed by Plaza, is very moand austere. Printed in black and white, the rst page io names o all the participants in alphabetical order aindicating their country o origin. The amount o spalotted within the catalogue to artists and the reproduo their work is scrupulously equal. ‘No juries, no eeprizes, no return o the work and a catalogue to documparticipation’ were the shared and consensual princip

o these exhibitions organised at that time using mailpartner.It is well known that in this network o artistic e

changes, alien to the market, there existed Conceptua based artistic practices through circulated texts, cardsprojects o site-specic installations and actions, mantoes, photos o perormances, visual poetry and diekinds o artists’ publications including books, magaznewspapers, etc., and the invitation letter or Prospecwelcomed these sorts o Conceptual practices.

A special session or lms and slide projectionincluded in the programme. The method o displaythe exhibition space were both very simple; almost ious i compared to conventional modernist, white-standards.

The artworks were installed directly on the wallsramed so as not to create a sense o aura or divergencethe original intention o simply conveying inormatiodocumental character o the Conceptual work o the pwas noted by Walter Zanini in his claim or a diereno museum, where among its traditional unctions w

Cover and pages rom theto the Prospectiva’74



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be t he development o collections o artworks with ahybrid documentary character such as texts, words,maps and artists publications o dierent kinds. To thisday, the documentary character o these works consti-tutes a source by which the Museum activates itsel as anarchive, that is, an operational centre or exper imentalresearch in various ields.

Short catalogue texts by Walter Zanini and Julio Plazaprovided the introductory note. Julio Plaza stated that Prospectiva’74 was only made possible due to the com-munication among artists rom many countries who hadshown their cooperation and initiative, a situation that initsel was only possible because o the idea o inormationand not the idea o merchandise.

In a very inormal tone, Zanini noted, as i he wasspeaking directly to the participants, that the main chal-lenge o the show in that dictatorial period (the boycott o the São Paulo Biennial had continued since 1969) was to

enhance international dialogue: ‘The international repcussion o Prospectiva’74, demonstrated by the presenartists rom many countries, rom my point o view opan important direction that, in many aspects, seems clin our country in recent years. A proound dialogue m be started with Brazilian artists. The Museum has tr iedto acilitate this contact all over the world, as is shownthis exhibition and activities abroad…’1 In addition, herecognised the exhibition as an opportunity to stimuladialogue among the Conceptual tendencies rom dieparts o the world in a more open and democratic settiAs a consequence, the exhibition turned out to be a prileged space or the visibility o those subterranean netoperating beyond censorship and completely beyond mercial interests. It provided us with tools or understing its context and dynamic as it reached beyond indivwell-known artists and encompassed more complex sand political orces. All the artworks sent to Prospectiv

View o the Prospectiva’74exhibition



were kept by the Museum and now provide Brazil witha representative collection o Conceptual internationalpractices that would be unaordable today when the no-tion o art has become increasingly synonymous with theart market.

1 Walter Zanini, Prospectiva’74. São Paulo: Museu de Arte Contemporãnea daUSP, August/September 1974, p. 5 [exh. cat.].

For an overview o the history o exhibitionthe Latin American context, see:

Altshuler, Bruce. The Avant-garde in ExhibNew Art in the 20th century. New York1994.

–––––––. Salon to Biennial: Exhibitions that Art Histor y (vol. 1: 1863–1959). Londo York: Phaidon, 2008.

Greenberg, Clement, et al.. Thinking abouttions. London, New York: Routledge, 1

Kluser, Bernd, and Katharina Hegewischl’exposition . Paris: Éditions du regard

Stanizewski, Mary Anne. The Power o D A his tory o Ex hibit ion Inst allations aMuseum o Modern Art. Cambridge: MPress, 1998.

For the history o exhibitions at the MuseuContemporãnea da Universidade de São PauUSP), see:

Freire, Cristina. Poéticas do processo. Arte Cno Museu. São Paulo: Editorial Iluminu

More than one hundred and ty artists pain the Prospectiva’74 exhibition by sendin

post to the



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The Cinémathèque de Tanger1 began in 2003, when a

group o artists and lm proessionals led by Yto Barradaormed a non-prot association to take over the lease o the ailing 1938 Cinema Ri, on the main Grand Soccoplaza o Tangier.

Ater two years o undraising and two more o con-struction, the Cinémathèque de Tanger opened in 2007as North Arica’s rst artist-run cinema/cultural centre,and began showing an ambitious programme o contem-porary and classic lm. Subsequently, they launched ahigh-prole series o workshops and master classes, whichput world-renowned presenters in touch with local audi-ences, including children, women’s groups, student lm-makers and non-prot organisations. The Cinémathèquehas welcomed an audience o tens o thousands rom allwalks o lie, screening some three hundred lms rommore than twenty countries, and thus realising its primarygoal: to bring the people o Tangier back to the movies. At the heart o any cinema/cultural centre is a lm archive,and the Cinémathèque has presented selections rom itsarchive o documentaries, Arab cinema and related lmsrom home and abroad.

Mediterraneans

Foyer o theCinémathèque deTanger, opened in 2007.

OCCUPYING THE REALMOF IMAGINATION:

A CONVERSATION Yto Barrada and Marie Muracciole Yto Barrada is the artistic director and co-ounder o the Cinémathèque de Tanger in Morocco; she is alsoan artist and photographer. Born in Paris and cur-rently living and working in Tangier, she studied at the Université Paris-Sorbonne and at the Interna-tional Centre o Photography in New York, and haswon several international photography awards.

Marie Muracciole is a Paris-based art critic, she hasco-curated Yto Barrada’s Ris exhibition at the

Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin. She has written anessay in the book on t his artist, which is due to bepublished shortly by JRP-Ringier. Currently, sheis working on the French edition o Allan Sekula’swritings.





14

tion between desire and need, a point where capitalismexample, has led to considerable conusion. By untangthe strands o that conusion, we are able to change theimposed models and, by doing so, change ways o dayday living.YB: At this moment in time, it is indeed about being oto collective and subjective relationships, something thas become apparent in Arab countries in recent montThe Cinémathèque is not essential, but it allows peoplrevisit and access sources o culture as it is today, to matheir own, to try and have it reely available to them. Tare these archives, pieces rom the past made by otherwhich we watch rom the perspective o the present dThey situate us and tell us where we come rom – mosIn them we nd the shape o the city and we can obserthe speed o the changes it has undergone: is this the mdernity we expected, the one we want now? The docutaries that we propose and have made in the workshopall o those we regularly show, allow things to settle onterritory, on the stratications o recent history.MM: The question that arises now is: What economicmodel? The world is governed by the economy and no

politics. You try to seek grant aid, which essentially go back to the French model. The latter has been marked recent years by the association between culture and tosuch as communication, human management and desiopenly aimed at deusing conficts o meaning, o autho unctional conficts (and at controlling the roles play by each individual). Aren’t you araid o the eects thathese tools might have? They oten give rise to short-levents, a considerable number o economic propagandoperations and, all in all, everyone spends their time trto nd money... Why, then, conorm to a model whenon its last legs?YB:

But we are already there! We have to use these toothey take up a lot o our time: evaluation, ‘easibility’ ctions... things like this that have to appear in the dratigrant applications. Work is a scenario o violence and pit’s a context o conficting interests, so everyone tries smooth over these dierences and ocus on ‘good resuThe scale o our work is huge. Fortunately, there’s a costant presence o people, audiences, their requests andreactions, and that’s what makes us take our time over thcontent, or true periods o experimentation. The drivino the Cinémathèque is the people that come to it. But wweighed down by the sheer volume o proposals that werespond to due to a lack o time and resources. We havvery small team and need to pay people. The Cinémathproject – and the day-to-day lie that it has managed toate around it, like tens o other places around the worlstill a ragile pilot initiative. All I ask mysel is why, likmany other o the region’s indispensable organisationit so hard to do what we do? We are trying to nd a ba between the French-style welare state – now nowher be seen – and the realm o American pr ivate sponsorsh

Marie Muracciole: The Cinémathèque project takes up aconsiderable amount o space and time in your work asan artist, and ultimately it can’t be separated rom it. Put-ting the Tangier cinema, its history and its operation rst is now both an artistic and political choice because it’s not a humanitarian endeavour, unlike other situations that could be classied as such. What I mean is that the cinemaisn’t essential, unlike Darna2 or example, the associationrun by your mother, with whom you’ve collaborated.Darna is a project that deals with problems o survival. TheCinémathèque is rather more symbolic in its scope, whichconstructs a situation in the long term.Yto Barrada: First o all, the Cinémathèque sometimes doestake priority over my work, but that’s something that can’t be helped. Between my work as an artist, which describesand criticises the changes we are experiencing, and the con-stant supervision and concessions necessary or the survivalo the Cinémathèque, there is an occasional contradiction.Secondly, Darna was ounded on the basis o a model,whereas the Cinémathèque is a group project that has devel-oped out o the recent situation: a dierent generation actu-ally. To transorm lie in Tangier, we elt that people needed

to be transormed. What’s more, urban Morocco has lost itstheatres, its storytellers. Cinema is a uniying medium: it carries people away, both literally and metaphorically; it’s atool or refection; it’s an instrument o collective hypnosis...Cinema is illusionist and usional: it promotes ways o see-ing things and encourages people to dream; at rst sight, it isn’t an instrument o rationalisation. It’s an instrument orcolonising the realms o the imagination and desire, whichmanages to reach out to a considerable number o people.MM: Personal emancipation and projecting onesel in a living, breathing world begins with access to the realm o imagina-tion and its critical articulation with community lie. I the

realms o imagination, which have been and will continueto be colonised – because the realm o imagination is simplycrying out to be ‘invaded’ in both the positive and negativesenses o the term – are not cultivated and conronted bya certain degree o diversity, by orms o complexity, theiremancipation is very improbable.YB: Tangier is a city where people are stuck; they can’t leave;the border o Europe is closed to them. The inaccessible West becomes an idealised universe. Movie, TV and pirateDVD images also invade that space. Creating a cinema/cultural centre, that is to say, a place or collective projectionlinked to the history o cinema, is thereore a notion o his-tory; it’s about giving viewers the chance to simultaneouslymaniest and put into perspective the way they project themselves, to put things simply. To a large extent, we arestill colonised; we are living with models rom the past suchas Lyautey,3 whose name is still given to schools. It is goodto take that into account instead o shrugging it o: ourdesire is still occupied by those models too.MM: Desire is a true orce; it produces something sharedand representations. The strategic point is the intersec-



The Cinémathèque has become a cultural centre

or the city o Tangier. View o the caé.



16

Yto Barrada, Omar Berr ada (eds.), Album. Th

Cinémathèque de Tanger. Barcelona: La VirreCentre de la Imatge, Tangier: Librairie des Co(oreseen or 2011).

Album is a short illustrated history o lm inTangier, and o Tangier on lm, told througharchives and stories o the Cinémathèque de With texts by Philippe Azoury, Yto BarradaBerrada, Ahmed Boughaba, Edgardo CozarinCarles Guerra, Bouchra Khalili and Luc SanteThe book will be published in Spanish, CataArabic, French and English.

sizing up the extent o it. There are thousands o things and we really hope that initiatives other than our own wget o the ground. That is where the diculty o establiing the orm they should take lies, and paradoxically thagood sign: our work is never done; we still need to comewith new ideas.

1 The Cinémathèque de Tanger (www.cinemathequedetanger.com) is supported by Prince Claus Fund, Agence pour la Promotion et le Développement du Nord(APDN), Fonds de Dotation de la Fondation Agnès b., Foundation or the Future,Anna Lindh Foundation, Fondation Tamaas and Luma Foundation.

2 A Tangier-based association dedicated to children and women at risk(www.darnamaroc.org).

3 Marshal Lyautey was the rst Resident-General o the French protectorate overMorocco in 1912, and as such has let a long-lasting legacy in the country’s organi-sations.

4 The Arab Image Foundation (AIF: www.ai.org.lb) is a non-prot organisationestablished in Beirut in 1997. The Foundation’s mission is to collect, preserve andstudy photographs rom the Middle East, North Arica and the Arab diaspora.

where associations are legions that have their own cultureo marketing and ways o attracting the public and spon-sors. Here, and in other Arab cities, we’re trying to come upwith new ideas and to interest our own sponsors becausewe have to take the atereect o 11 September into account. Very ortunately, we have enjoyed ten years o a certainvague interest (oten it was to understand the enemy, tocivilise...) and grants, which are going to run out (China,Latin America and Eastern European countries are on thewaiting list and all o them have very dynamic art scenes).But we’re now thinking about other ways to survive.MM: Returning to the economic issue, the general tendencyo globalisation is to make savings on salaries and to auto-mate actions. The industrialisation o culture might mean,or example, that a project should be able to be replicated,as you said.YB: Replication is an important evaluation criterion orthose in charge o allocating European unds. The languageo Euro-Mediterranean grant applications is a very interest-ing genre worth studying because o the active distortionthat it osters: a very good application may get a bad scoreand be rejected (relevance to the target audience: OK; inter-

est o the project: OK; replication: no). A very bad applica-tion may be eective i it gets the jargon right. Associationsare increasingly using the services o proessionals specialis-ing in putting together applications o this type. We spendtoo much time on pandering to the strategies o administra-tive management: impersonality and mechanisation and,above all, red tape and paternalism. Proessionalisation may be the answer. For example, The Arab Image Foundation 4 was created by artists to unearth and protect heritage whoseexistence was suspected, and to draw on it; but when you’realso a practising artist, the growth o a project like that one becomes very arduous. One day, the Cinémathèque will

need to nd a rational mode o operation that is minimallyreliant on grant aid, welcoming experimental projects andendorsing their oddity and ability to change things.MM: Do the artists’ projects have a specic ocus?YB: Artists start projects such as the Arab Image Foundationand the Cinémathèque to ll a local gap. These projects couldalmost be considered personal since they aren’t just alterna-tives to state or corporate initiatives. Instead o competingwith oerings that already exist, we thought about what was missing or lacking. We had to ll a gap and today we are



Artistic Research

FIVE YEARS

Be advised that these l ines are entirely lacking in theo-retical rigour. They are, rat her, a soliloquy, an attempt toput something into words. A conversation that has beentaking shape in my mind or several years. This is noth-ing new or theorists versed in economics or philosophy.It is just an attempt to exter nalise this bit o intimacy,this personal monologue largely spurr ed by my interest in the study o systems or t he alignment o time in lie,an interest that has given rise to, among other things, theTime Divisa project, which was carried out rom 2006 to2010 in the Santa Martha Acatitla prison in Mexico City.

For several years, Baltasar Gracián’s phrase ‘We

have nothing o our own except time, which eventhe homeless can exper ience’ has been on my mind.I don’t remember exactly what part o the The Crit-icón (1651–57) it comes rom. In act, I know it rom LaSociété du spectacle (1967) (The Society o the Spectacle,1995) by Guy Debord, in which it is quoted. It is hardor me to separate the Gracián quote rom the context o Debord, very likely because o the a inity I eel withthe Situationalist stance and the romantic image o that French writer. But also – and this is the most important thing – because o the similar ity that I see between thealignment o spectacle ormulated by Debord and thealignment o time. Indeed, ‘ We have nothing o our ownexcept time’.

Time is, ater all, the sustenance o lie, its stu andnourishment. But, when it is appropriated, alienated orexploited, it is also the generator o surplus value; it isan exhaustible resource that exhausts us. T ime appro-priated, clustered and broken down into exchangeableunits gets lost in a system o abstraction, representation,exchange and accumulation. Money.

José Antonio Vega MacotelaA Mexican artist, he has undertaken multidiscipli-nary projects and interventions in public spacesinvolving the experience o and speculation ontime. From 2006 to 2010, he worked on the project Time Divisa, or which he received a grant rom theBancomer-macg Programme. He participated in theMedios múltiples (Multiple Media) project withTime Divisa and is currently participating in an art-ist’s residency at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam.

As an artist, I am interested in the workings o theconomy as a system o symbolic abstraction and in aa tool or intervening on that system. I am equally cocerned that the works I make operate on two levels: as a system o social intervention with real repercussin a community, and second as a metaphor constructthe basis o that rst level. Thus, I am interested in nmodels o a situation in which it is possible to interve but also in having those models operate as metaphorand o themselves.

Prison is, in my view, a model o the economic asocial unctioning o the culture to which it belongs.

model, though, it does not operate on a proportional(like a mock-up). The prison model, rather, maintaincertain proportions o what it models – that is, the soin which it is placed –, while others are caricature-esqThough they might bear a certain relation to what is melled, the proportions in prison are exaggerated, dimor inverted, like images seen in a concave or convex mHouse o mirrors, house o horrors. In view o what iproportional or evident and what is inverted in prisoI am interested in the experience o time in prison, inthat experience is a metaphor or the alienation o tim‘ree’ society, in the society ‘on the outside’.

In prison, the experience and value o time are drical to what they are on the outside. In prison, as oppto outside prison, there is no alienated labour; insteatime stretches out slowly and painully. A precise numyears, months and days that are counted down emphthe act that lie is just that: a sum o amounts. Objectime is a sentence. Nonetheless – and paradoxically –prison there is a system o apparent ‘reedoms’ that agranted in exchange or submission. The more subm



18

the individual and the more his time in lie is voluntarilyenmeshed in the prison structures, the more privileges hehas. At the same time, the more time the prisoner spends inprison, the more these structures expand; they begin withthe external, the institutional and, gradually but relent-lessly, they are interjected into the depths o the prisoner’s being. As time goes by, the inmate becomes punisher andpunished, disciplined and discipliner. In the most aablecases, when the sentence is short and the crime not seri-ous, obeying the rules o the institution (whether ocialor unocial) can reduce the prisoner’s sentence and bringhim closer to ‘reedom’. In more dicult cases, when thesentence is longer and cannot be reduced, an extended sub-mission to the punishment system changes the prisoner,eventually convincing him that the length o his stay giveshim power over others and makes him the ruling voice, touse Mexican prison jargon. He becomes a predator o otherswithout understanding himsel to be prey, protecting andserving the very system that has condemned him.

In prison, the degree o submission is proportionalto the degree o institutional reedom: submitting coners‘benets’, rom a shorter sentence to orming part o the

power structure within the prison. On the outside, in myopinion, the system o submission, though inverted, oper-ates quite similarly. In ree society, the economic system,not the prison system, is the organ o submission and o themanagement o time and reedoms. Rewards are obtainedonly by unquestioningly accepting and assimilating therules on which the system is based: Long live exploitation!Long live accumulation! As i it were the reduction o asentence, the individual submits to a system o production,accumulation and consumption in which he exchanges histime in lie or the inequitable representation o the lie hehas given over. Money. (Under this system, it is clear that

not everyone’s time has the same value.) The more timeyou give, the more money you get – whether it is a worker’spoorly paid overtime, the ve extra minutes a street personspends fagging down a cab or someone at the entrance toa supermarket or the years some spend amassing ortunes.The power system has devised an almost behaviourist rela-tion whereby the more time in lie you obediently give over– whether in prison or in the economic system – the greateryour ‘reward’: the reduction o a sentence, the procurement o privileges or o power, or ‘buying whatever you want’.

I had much o this in mind when, in 2006, I went intothe Santa Martha Acatitla ederal prison, located to the east o Mexico City. With the excuse o doing a perormance, Iproposed a deal to the inmates whereby I would exchangemy time or theirs. ‘I am oering you some o my time inexchange or your time… I will do whatever you want to do,an everyday activity that you cannot carry out in here, in ex-change or which you, at the same time, will do my work asan artist.’ That was the beginning o the Time Divisa project.

This project was born as the metaphorical attempt to replace money as the system or the representation o

time in lie with a poetic barter o actions. In the end, 3exchanges o time took place, the period it takes the earevolve around the sun, the basic cycle o almost all cuThe prisoners and I did what the other requested o usmultaneously, and the currency we exchanged as ‘paymwas the register o our actions (mine were in electronicormat, and the inmates’ in drawings and objects). Theregisters were deigned to be representations o a subjetime, an unquantiable time dierent rom the sets o that make up a salary or the days o delay on a paymenyield interest. According to this vision, time goes by diently or each person and in each situation; it moves aor slower depending on whether we are in love or anxi bored or enraged, old or young. Nonetheless, and despthese multiple subjectivities, time is the same or everas subjects, all o our lives have the same value. We havnothing o our own except time.

I everyone’s time is equivalent, it can be exchanas long as that exchange is vital and not subject to anyo speculation or accumulation; therein lies t he impotance o the act that these actions took place at the satime. Each inmate knew that while he was doing wha

asked him to, I would be doing what he had asked medo on the outside, in the street: it was reciprocal. As twent by and the trust and commitment between us gthe models or representing the actions we exchangeied. At the beginning, the only proo that I had done the inmates asked me to was the video or audio recorthat attested to my action. But, or a number o reasonthe use o those media gradually became less importauntil the only proo I gave was the spoken account ohad happened. Similarly, what the inmates gave me aunderwent changes, changes connected to the represtation o time in a non-monetary system. These chan

emerged alongside a provocative question: in what sycan I trust i I am not interested in using seconds, minand hours as the system or measuring time?

The body – its rhythms and repetitions – was thething I latched onto in an attempt to create an alternatisystem or the representation o the time that the inmgave me: or each action that they asked me to perormon the outside, they gave me their breaths, heartbeats other bodily rhythms as maniest in drawings. Touchineck artery as each beat became a sign or concentratingeach breath rendered lines and dots was the beginningthis investigation. From there, what I asked o the inmchanged in ways very akin to the way the work o any artist changes while he experiments. Though my handwere not the ones doing the work, while I went arouncity (and the country) doing what the inmates had askto, it seemed as i they were.

The research into bodily rhythms as a system or representation o time led to the creation o cartographand the drawing o maps o the prison’s interior. ‘Timmaniest in the spaces it inhabits and in the places it cr



José Antonio Vega MacotelaTime Divisa project , 2006–10Time Exchange 331, 2010 42.5 × 43 cmCourtesy o the artist

Spying on Eduardo’s ormer boyriend

in exchange or which he would build me a Poleana board with his hair and hair rom his current boyriend’s head ( Poleana is a betting game played inMexican prisons in which the board isa simulation o the jail).



20



José Antonio Vega MacotelaTime Divisa project , 2006–10Time Exchange 321, 2010 43 × 56 cmCourtesy o the artist

Trafcking within the prisono goods useul or ‘El Kamaexchange or a diagram o thbution o 100,000 pesos wi prison, collecting a piece o f rom the hand o each persontouches the money.

I thought. Wanderings, paths made with rottage, senmaps and reconstructions o the memory o spaces wmost common examples o the registers that the prismade at this phase. From there came new concerns, nquests that I made o the inmates in exchange or myI began to take an interest in ormulating symbolic iventions inside the prison or in studies o the capita between intimates. I must clar iy at this point t hat inot my intention to describe the pieces produced inexchanges, but rather to emphasise that these workregisters o actions in a subjective time. Because excor each action that I carried out in the name o the imates, these pieces acted (and act) as the representamy time. That, then, is my work as an artist. These rters, it is important to point out, are the only thing I can show in an exhibition space. That is all that belto me, just as the audio and video recordings that I mor the inmates belong to them alone, as does the rigexhibit or share them.

As the project progressed, the representation oceased to be my main concern, and the relationships took shape between the inmates with whom I exchan

time and mysel became crucial. Not as anecdote, butquestion: why did they do what I ask o them? The anto that question seemed obvious, but, like everythingous, entailed mystery.

Contrary to what I might have thought, in pr isthere is a code o honour that could be summed up ayou keep your word, I’ll keep mine’. This is deeper tmight rst appear, since it implies that the idea o coration goes hand in hand with trust, and trust with ing ties. As the bonds between the prisoners and mygrew stronger, I elt more and more identied with Indeed, at a certain point I had a hard time consideri

mysel an agent outside the prison. Though I was obly not an inmate and did not experience the vexatiolie in prison entails, I had, I must admit, become soto the inmates that I too elt like a prisoner. And theI was doing or the inmates were getting more and mdaring. Why not do these things, i I was a part o thThus, an escape attempt became necessary.

The Robert Bresson lm Un condamné à mort séchappé ou Le vent soue où il veut ( A Man Escaped,was a vital source o inspiration or my escape. My intion was clear: to emulate Fontaine and use techniqulearned in prison to escape rom it. Thus, I was intereprison as a system to generate knowledge, techniquetechnologies. Hence, or the nal exchanges I request



22



payment or my work that the inmates nd me three spe-cialists in prison knowledge rom whom I would choose mymentor or a certain period o time.

This process took several months, and continuedeven ater the 365 exchanges had been completed. I must say that, or me, it was like a r ite o passage. This time wedid not exchange time, but rather conversed and ate to-gether. I no longer entered the prison as an artist workingon a project; instead, like a amily member hoping to visit a loved one, I waited in the endless lines to get in. Little by little, the symbolic ties that I had (and still have) to theprison have aded. The conclusions that I have reachedare still vague; they are slowly taking shape as I write andthink back on what took place over almost ve years. Evennow, no matter how much I write, remember and refect,the Gracián quote keeps coming back to me: ‘We havenothing o our own except time.’

The ollowing were among the points o re

in conceiving the project Time Divisa (200 Vaneigem, Raoul. Traité de savoir-vivre à l

des jeunes générations. Paris: GallimardEnglish edition: The Revolution o EverSaint Louis, MO: Let Bank Books; WelRebel Press, 1983.

Foucault, Michel. Les Anormaux: cours au de France (1974–1975). Paris: Gallimard1999. English edition: Abnormal: Lectuthe Collège de France, 1974-1975. Londo2003.

–––––––. Technologies o the Sel: a SeminarMichel Foucault . Amherst: University osachusetts Press, 1988.

–––––––. Surveiller et punir: naissance de laParis: Gallimard, 1975. English edition pline and Punish: The Bir th o the Prison York: Vintage Books, 1979.

Bataille, Georges. La Part maudite; précédétion de dépense. Paris: Éditions de MinuEnglish edition: The Accursed Share. NZone Books, 1991.

Deleuze, Gilles. Diérence et répétition. Pa1968. English edition: Dierence and RLondon: The Athlone Press, 1994.

Marx, Karl. Das Kapital . Hamburg: Otto M1867. English edition: Capital. New YoModern Library, 1936.

Plato. Alcibiades. Cambridge: Cambridge UPress, 2001.

1 One example o this is the division o the social classes. There are three socialclasses in prison: the upper class, which consists o the richest and most power-ul inmates, mostly drug dealers; t he increasingly vague middle class, whichconsists o prisoners who still receive visitors; and lastly, the lower class, onwhich the others rest. Called ‘monsters’ in prison slang, these workers do thedomestic work and act as peons to t he two higher classes.

José Antonio Vega MacotelaTime Divisa project , 2006–10Time Exchange 66, 201084 × 64.5 cmCourtesy o the artist

Singing a serenade to Ivan’s mother while he makes an acoustic map o the prison, codiying the sounds that he heard 360-degrees around him: red would indicate aggressive sounds, blue riendlysounds and black indierent sounds.



24

THE FIRST LESSONI REMEMBER LEARNING

IS THAT HUMILIATIONEXISTS

1

Hassan KhanArtist, musician and writer who lives and worksin Cairo. Recent solo shows include: The QueensMuseum (New York, 2011), Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen (St. Gallen, 2010), Le Plateau (Paris, 2007)and Gasworks (London, 2006). He has partici-pated in international exhibitions like Maniesta

8 (Murcia, 2010), Yokohama Trienniale (2008),Gwangju Biennale (2008), Sidney Biennale (2006),Seville Biennale (2006), and the Torino Trienniale(2005). Khan’s album tabla dubb is available on the100Copies Label. His Nine Lessons Learned romSheri El-Azma was published by the CiC (2009),while his book 17 and in AUC was published byMerz and Crousel (2004).

Introduction

A question lies behind the choice o title used here – a ques-tion that hung over me as I kept trying to write, and thenwrote and re-wrote, this text. Actually it is a question that I nd dicult to even articulate. The question is ironically

the one that may be most expected at this moment – the onethat, at this point in time, critics, curators and editors will askartists who come rom Egypt. The question has, o course, todo with how an artist, operating at a historical moment, dealswith an event whose proportions and orm dey all expecta-tions. The question is usually ollowed by enquiries about whether your practice has changed ollowing such events, i you eel that you have a new responsibility as an artist, i yourunderstanding o art has changed.

Cover o the book TheMystery o the Black Bag ,adventure number 16in the ‘police adven-tures or boys’ seriespublished in the eighties by Dar El Maara in Cairo (Egypt).

Artistic Research



Well, the answer to that in my case is quite simply‘No’. However, the act that the question rears its head soinsistently in this context is a compelling argument orsome kind o explanation o why that is so.

Last year the artist Wael Shawky and I nally, ater sev-eral years o toying with the idea, and ater our highly polit-icised shared experience o serving on the jury o the 20th Youth Salon in Cairo,2 decided to take active steps towardsrealising an exhibition together. The signicance o thisdecision immediately became clear to us as we talked about our ideas; the conversation was very smooth. We describeda series o works to each other that we imagined would beshown collectively in a twenty-metre-long vitrine. Theworks, very dierent in tone and tenor, shared somethingthat Wael and I had ound to be important. In a sense it elt as i we were, in our own ways, shovelling hard, crystal-lised ully ormed pieces out o our memories. These pieceswere not memories, though; they were transormations.They were pieces that were not gments o the imagination, but rather actual things rom a collective landscape that werom our respective backgrounds were part o, belonged toand drank rom.

The rst lesson I remember learning, which may not be the rst lesson I actually learnt, is that humiliation exists.This is something that I absorbed deeply as a child. Mymother, in a way I suspect she was not ully conscious o,constantly pointed out to me this condition in the world.Last year, through working on that show that in the end didnot take place, I realised in a personally involved way that Ihad learnt this lesson in a proound and deeply-elt ashionmany years beore. This was the rst time that somethingthat has always been clear was nally stated, whispered backas a secret thought.

To put it simply, that collective landscape (deeply

infuenced i not completely shaped by the lesson learnt allthese years ago) has been the source o my work. It is alsowhere the answers to the questions about how an artist should respond to the revolution that are being and willcontinue to be raised by the art community, both locallyand internationally, lie. I thus thought it best to present here one o these sublimations, one o these charged aes-thetic acts, as an answer that one nds less problematic andultimately more useul than any explanation. For I believeexplanations are now not necessary unless they serve therevolution in a direct and practical ashion; anything else isetish and representation and counter-revolution.

The short story that ollows this introduction hasdeveloped out o one o those transormations.

I wrote a ragment o this text in mid-2010, in a stylisedaccented Arabic that reerred to the popular literary style o cheap paperback novels. The piece was based on my memoryo reading and collecting as a child a series o pulp novellasor young boys. These novellas were roughly based on EnidBlyton’s renowned Famous Five series. In Arabic the subti-tle o the books was Police Adventures or Boys. I remember

hungrily reading these novellas, though I do not remany o the details o the many adventures that I consuFunnily enough, the one description that keeps returing to me regularly over the years is one that reappearmany o the dierent novellas; it describes the ve yoriends, usually in a car speeding through the night. Mit’s a police car and they are heading out in it to catch whose identity they have managed to uncover. The cdescribed (and here I am translating quite roughly) asetrating the quiet suburbs o Maadi’. For some reasonwords have remained with me through the years. Thmust thereore mean something but I am not sure whis exactly. To this day those words sometimes ring oumy head when, late at night, I am in a car that is smoospeeding through the empty streets o Zamalek, or soleay, quiet street in Maadi. I remember this sentencethis city had lived its days under a sign that I did not k Whenever it returns to me I have a distinct eeling thcutting through the streets o another city unknown but that is still mine.

The idea or the exhibition piece was to write a ment rom a novel and to print it on three pages torn

o one o The Five Adventurers novellas I used to collexactly the same ont and layout. I have already produourteen pages in Arabic; the piece is called Mystery. purposes o the text here I have written a slightly diversion in English.

Mystery: A Short Story Based upon a Distant Memory

a Long Imagined Musical Interlude.

Dr Mahmoud looked down at the cheap notebook th

had just ound in one o the drawers o the second-hdesk he had bought recently. He opened the notebooslowly and let the pages all open randomly. And as hstanding up, began to read the rst page his eyes ell uhe noticed that the handwriting was very neat and caIt seemed that there was a level o deliberation behinwords. This is what Dr Mahmoud read rst.

Thursday / Midnight / Diary entry no. 26

It’s a really hot night and I don’t want to switch oair conditioning, I am thereore sweating heavilykind o like it like this. I eel like someone with an ent ever who as much as they want it to disappeamiss it when it’s gone deeply and with great longimight have something to do with the strange momI experienced today while driving back home rom

frst meeting with Dr Seddiq. It was a difcult andmoment. But it was also, unexpectedly tender at thtime. I was driving my car, it was midday and the

elt strangely empty, when I was suddenly overw



26

by the desire to stop the car and rest or a moment. Likethat, in the middle o the street, suddenly and without any hesitation, to stop or a second. I elt slightly unbal-anced. I had to stop the car but didn’t know exactlywhy, so I just did, suddenly, in the middle o the road.But I was immediately interrupted by the loud ag-

gressive honking o the microbus behind me. I elt anelectric surge o anger. I wanted to step out, walk back,open the door, grab the driver by the head and snaphis neck, but then immediately I was gripped by a deepand ancient exhaustion. So I started the car and drovehome.

Dr Mahmoud, who had by now seated himsel comort-ably in his sot, expensive easy chair, raised his eyes romthe pages o the notebook, closed it and turned the diaryround, noticing on the top right corner the name ‘MohsenEl Bana’ elegantly, almost pretentiously, printed. Helooked deeply into his wie Nevine’s ace – she seemedoblivious to his intense gaze as she fipped through a prop-erty brochure – he returned to the pages in ront o himand continued reading.

Sunday / 2 am / Diary entry no. 34

The night is quiet and I have switched o all the lightsin the at. However, the air conditioning is on and it’s

quite comortable. It has been an exhausting evening. I went to dinner at a new, trendy Thai place wTarek Selim, Yehia El Nady and his girlriend HebEl Wakil. I realised that I hadn’t seen these guys oat least a couple o years, since we all hung out thsummer when Basil Mortada came back rom the

beore leaving again in September. I eel content bbit worried. Something is wrong. I don’t know whexactly. Throughout the evening I couldn’t reallyon the chit-chat, being constantly distracted by thimage o Dr Seddiq’s smug hal-smile. That moth

ucker always employed it with such deadly precision. Whenever I reerred to a new work strategy,even when making a joke about the colour o the car I had just bought, whenever I started speakingEnglish. Dr Seddiq’s shrug and smile always manto throw me o balance. I can’t understand how ignorant bastard manages to pull this o ever y sitime. Today as we sat in his ofce I began sweatinheavily – me sweating like a nervous novice. I looat Lamia at that moment, but she careully lookedother way. I could tell she wanted to laugh at me.Dr Seddiq’s empire o private schools, ake academand bus transport companies cannot hide the ache is an ignorant overdressed oa. It defnitely didstop him rom dismissing my requests or a highesalary in ront o everyone! Everything I had gain

Hassan Khan, pages 71and 72 rom Mystery,2011. Short story writ-ten by the artist printedon ourteen pages tornrom dierent books

rom the monthly serieso pulp novellas titledThe Five Adventurers:Police Adventure or Boys, 16 × 11 cm. Courtesyo the artist.



attempt to emulate his seemingly class-ree motherhad begun with Nasser, the son o the bawwab, whin a tight smelly room with his mother and sister. Nather, the bawwab, was mostly absent, caught up indrama o, it was whispered, abandonment and secomarriage. The young Dr Mahmoud, who had collecta large amount o the novellas and stored them in a black plastic bag, would regularly carr y them down six storeys to sit with Nasser and exchange some o those that Nasser had collected. They discussed the exploits o the ve adventurers they read about. As he remembered there was nothing especially intereexciting in those encounters. They were not exotic oo the ordinary in any way – i anything, these encouwith Nasser the bawwab’s son were probably colou by some sort o dumb, childish unctionalism moreanything else. He also remembered the extreme reache aced when he told his riends at the English-lanschool in the quiet suburb o the busy city about hisclub, about the daily comings and goings between thfoor and the room in the basement. His classmates’o bewilderment and surprise surprised him – but n

entirely. Things were much clearer now that he in a understood how things actually operated.

Dr Mahmoud suddenly realised that he had bedaydreaming while staring blankly at the pages o thnotebook. He continued reading.

Tuesday / 1 am / Diary entry no. 43

It’s a relatively cool evening with a nice breeze, tconies are open and there are kids playing ootbthe street. Today I had another upsetting meetinDr Seddiq at his ofce. He had me sitting there in

o him or hal an hour to tell me about how thinshould be done in his system. He was careul notme that I worked or him, but he never ailed to pout that this was his business. And as he droned and on I realised that I actually admired this corignorant man, or to him at least things were cleknew in a way that involved no shame, in a waybroke everything that came in ront o him, thatwas all in the end an elaborate pretence. That wcaught in a banal game o alignments and that twords he used, the tone they were said in, the smcame to him naturally as he told a joke or the roon his sot ace when he barked or his driver ancar, the courteous way he received people he neethings rom, the casual way he despised the worhe relished it, were all ultimately things that didany way aect how he saw himsel. I suddenly that moment that I wanted to shout out loud wiembarrassment or hesitation. I saw mysel sittinthe over-decorated chair, in my tasteul shoes anmy trimmed goatee, with my opinions that I wo

disappeared in his simple arrogant gestures. This manonly eigned respect or others or his own reasons.Doesn’t he realise who he’s dealing with, the quality o the person sitting in ront o him? We were suddenlytwo uneasy monsters looking at each other across theroom. He was a monster who could draw upon enor-mous resources and didn’t care what others thought, I was a monster begging or recognition, or the personin ront o me to admit that I was not o his ilk. And all he had to do was look at me as i we were riends but not exactly – a slight smug smile told me that he knewexactly what I could really aord and what I couldn’t.He had called my blu.

Dr Mahmoud raised his eyes rom the pages o the diaryo Mohsen El Bana and looked again, deeply, into his wieNevine’s ace. She remained oblivious and was now casuallychecking her Facebook page. Dr Mahmoud elt unsettled but he couldn’t place his nger on the reason why exactly.It seemed that these direct simple sentences had aectedhim deeply. He elt slightly and in a subtle ashion sad but couldn’t really tell why.

The sounds o the hysterical beats and the plasticseesaw synth o the music that had taken over the streetso the city wated in through the open window, and helooked up with consternation. He had wanted to abandonthe city this summer – to place a distance between himsel and this place, this angry, dirty, crowded mishmash o buildings and intentions. For here the days passed without understanding the meaning o the days – except maybe,and here he thought to himsel with a slight twinkle, veryslightly. Suddenly and without warning he rememberedthe mystery novellas o his childhood.

As a child Dr Mahmoud read a lot o police adven-

tures or boys, in the mid-range eighties apartment, on theaux leather couch, in the heat o the summer hungrilyreading page ater page, ollowing how Takh Takh, Nousaand their riends always solved the case. Each time heound a strange excitement in the description o a car that carried the ve young sleuths cutting through the calmsuburbs o Maadi. The suburbs. It was strange, he thought to himsel, how not a single detail remained rom thosetales o mystery and innocent crimes cracked by a groupo seemingly ree-spirited boys and girls in shorts, movingthrough a strangely empty, calm, harmonious city that hedidn’t know. Even then, even in his childhood. His mother,then young and to his eyes absolutely radical, a psycho-logical orce o nature, was studying or her high-schooldiploma with the daughter o the bawwab, the doorkeepero the vaguely upper-middle class yet mid-range apart-ment building. She had taught him to recognise humilia-tion in the world around him – to see how it worked, howpeople used it and what it made o them. And maybe moreimportantly what it made o him. Dr Mahmoud suddenlyremembered the book club that, maybe in an unconscious



28

ÍNDEX Number 0 included contributiofrom Xavier Antich, Julie Ault, JohannBurton, Elizabeth Suzanne Kassab,Bartomeu Marí, Chus Martínez, ChristMenke, Piotr Piotrowski and NataschaHaghighian.

ÍNDEX Number 1 included contributiofrom Fr anco Berardi, Nat aša Ili c, ChusMartínez, Reza Negarestani, The OtolGroup and José Luis Pardo.

1 An earlier, slightly dierent version o this text was premiered as a live lecture-perormance under the title A Short Story Based on a Distant Memory with aLong Musical Interlude at Objecti Exhibitions in Antwerp on 6 May 2011. Theshort story included here also exists in Arabic as an art-piece called Mystery (2011) that was rst shown at the Beirut Art Center in the group show Image inthe Atermath, which opened on 17 May 2011.

2 Please reer to the ollowing links or in-depth coverage o this event and itspolitics:http://www.e-fux.com/journal/view/70http://universes-in-universe.org/eng/naas/articles/2009/20_salon_o_youth_cairo

an expensive jacket. I saw mysel and I wanted to pushmysel out. I wanted to stop the people walking in thestreets, to stand in ront o them as they insulted eachother in the most poignantly poisonous ashion. For I was also one o those who said ‘ Ya waty’ who shouted ‘Yalla’. I drank their water and ate their ood. I can’t remember what I was thinking when I stepped out o that ofce, though. What was I thinking when I got intomy car and drove back to Maadi? What was I thinking then? Why am I writing this now?

Dr Mahmoud suddenly stopped reading to nd that hewas completely alone in his living room. Nevine had goneto bed and he was conused.



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Í d i il bl t

‘To uphold the absurd in the framework of thisimpugnation of totalitarian rationality is to endorseother, essentially dissolutive formulas capable of inhabiting the gaps in the system and, on the basis of the minutest form of resistance or sabotage, to imagineand shape other possible scenarios.’ Xavier Antich

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work as an artist.” That was the beginning of the TimeDivisa project.’ José Antonio Vega Macotela

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