18 pictures and 18 stories
“18 pictures and 18 stories”: sixth stage of “Performance in Resistance”* by Isidoro Valcárcel Medina at Playground Festival at STUK, Leuven
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18 pictures and 18 stories is a project of Bulegoa z/b, realized in collaboration with If I Can’t Dance I Don’t Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution of Amsterdam, that presents and accompanies Performance in Resistance by Isidoro Valcárcel Medina through 18 stories and on a journey to 7 cities.
In Autumn 2010, If I Can’t Dance invited Valcárcel Medina and Bulegoa z/b to take part in Performance in Residence, a program that studies and researches performances from the past from the perspective of current artistic practice, and that includes the participation of Flávio de Carvalho e Inti Guerrero, Guy de Cointet and Marie de Brugerolle, Matt Mullican and Vanessa Desclaux. Valcárcel Medina responded to the invitation with Performance in Resistance, 18 photographs mounted on passe-partout that show as many actions carried out by the artist in different cities between 1965 and 1993. The resulting set of images blurs the limits between the lived moment and the document, between what happened and fiction. Performance in Resistance also shows the guiding principle of Valcárcel Medina’s practice, his refusal to submit to the conventions of any institution or discipline, including the discipline of history. Such performative resistance arises from the artist’s conviction that his only material is his historical time, and that the imagination “hides a wealth which drives the world”.
18 pictures and 18 stories conceives investigation as an imaginative practice which can transform and reactivate its objects of study. The work takes the form of an itinerant framework which produces narratives. 18 different people have been invited to take one of the 18 photographs that make up Performance in Resistance and propose a story.
The first stage of this specifically-conceived work by Valcárcel Medina was the Hetveem Theater, Amsterdam, in February 2012. There, three narrators, Moosje Goosen, Emilio Moreno and Esteban Pujals Gesalí, told 3 stories based on 3 of the set of photographs: Campaña 1969 (Campaign 1969, Madrid, Murcia, 1969) S/T. Herramientas de Precisión (Untitled. Precision Tools, Milano, 1987) and 136 manzanas de Asunción (136 blocks of Asunción, Asunción, 1976).
At the second stage, on 20th April at Bulegoa z/b, José Díaz Cuyás, Jaime Vallaure and Azucena Vieites told 3 stories based on Peón al Rey (King’s Pawn Game, Murcia, 1965), Retratos callejeros (Street portraits, Barcelona, 1975), and El discurso sigue… su curso (The discourse continues… its course, Granada, 1993).
In its third stage, Performance in Resistance traveled to the Fundació Tàpies, Barcelona, on 6 June 2012. Nuria Enguita, Aimar Pérez and Manuel Martínez retold El cuadro (Madrid, 1969), La Visita (many cities, 1974) and El Sena por París (Paris, 1975), respectively.
In the fourth stage, at CAC Brétigny, on 27 October, Esther Ferrer talked about El Sena por París (Paris, 1975), Jon Mikel Euba about El hombre de la capa (New York, 1967), and Pierre Bal-Blanc about Maratón (Madrid, 1981).
At the fifth stage at BNV Producciones, Seville, on 6 November, Pedro G. Romero, Isaías Griñolo and Miren Jaio narrated Encuesta en la cola del besamanos del Cristo de Medinaceli (Madrid, 1978), El pintor en la calle (Madrid, 1978) and 12 ejercicios de medición sobre la ciudad de Córdoba (J) (Cordoba, 1974), respectively.
At the sixth stage at Playground Festival at STUK, Leuven on, 11 November, Koen Brams will talk about Retratos callejeros (Barcelona, 1975), Dora García about Hombres anuncio (Madrid, 1976) and Myriam Van Imschoot about S/T (known as Paso de peatones) (many cities, 1971).
18 pictures and 18 stories and Performance in Resistance finalize their journey on 29 November at MAC – Museum of Contemporary Art, University of Sâo Paulo. Performance in Resistance will be shown with A Cidade e o Estrangeiro (The City and the Foreigner). The exhibition, curated by Cristina Freire, recovers documentary registers of the monographic exhibition of the same name by Valcárcel Medina at the MAC in 1976.
Isidoro Valcárcel Medina will be available on the telephone to answer questions from the narrators or public.
*Photographs: Rocío Areán Gutiérrez, student at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, London.
Koen Brams is a freelance researcher and writer. He is the former editor-in-chief of De Witte Raaf (1992 – 2000) and former director of the Jan van Eyck Academie (2000 – 2011). Together with Dirk Pültau he conducts a research project about art in Belgium since 1945. Recent publications: The Encyclopedia of Fictional Artists (JRP Ringier, 2010); The clandestine in the work of Jef Cornelis (together with Dirk Pültau), Argos/ De Witte Raaf /Jan van Eyck Academie/ Marcelum Boxtareos, 2010; Matt Mullican: Im Gespräch/ Conversations (together with Dirk Pültau), DuMont, Köln, 2011; and two issues of De Witte Raaf about the ‘arrival’, the ‘assimilation’ and the ‘farewell’ of postmodernism in Belgium and The Netherlands (nr. 155, january – february 2012 & nr. 156, march – april 2012).
Dora García lives and works in Barcelona. She studied at Rijksakademie, Amsterdam, and has had solo exhibitions at the Kunsthalle Bern (2010), the Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst, Leipzig (2007), the Museo Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid (2005 – 06) and in SMAK, Ghent (2006), curated by Eva Wittockx. García has participated in the Biennale di Venezia (2011), the Bienal de São Paulo (2010), the Biennale of Sydney (2008), and Skulptur Projekte Münster (2007).
Myriam Van Imschoot is a writer and performance artist based in Brussels. She works in various media with archives, voice, memory and landscape. At the moment Van Imschoot makes a cycle of works dedicated to voice and landscape projects, with the support of a trajectory grant of the Flemish Community Commission. Her interest is in modes of communication that stretch time and space. Drawn to art on the brink of ephemerality, she is equally curious about what persists notwithstanding – in the form of traces, debris, echoes. Her work was rewarded with research grants from Die Höge, Bellagio Foundation, Flemish Community Commission and Jan van Eyck Academie. She regularly shows her work in festivals, exhibitions, galleries and art venues, like Kaaitheater, Playground at STUK, Buda, Binaural Sound Arts Center, Intimate Strangers Festival, Working Title, Recyclart, etc.
18 pictures and 18 stories is co-produced by BNV Producciones, Seville; CAC Brétigny, Greater Paris; If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution, Amsterdam; the Museum of Contemporary Art of the University of São Paulo (MAC USP); Playground Festival in STUK/Museum M, Leuven; Tàpies Foundation, Barcelona; Tate Modern, London; and Het Veem Theater, Amsterdam.
The publication and the performances are realized with the support of Corpus: a network for performance practice financed by the European Union.
