Tombstones Are Not Flat by Carlos Fernández-Pello intertwines two research activities from the different fields of biology and architecture that point to the same place: imagining other possible ways of life. On the one hand, research by the biologist Anne Pringle into lichens based on the theory that they could be life forms tending towards immortality and conducted on tombstones in a cemetery. On the other hand, the post-modern architecture of Arakawa and Gins, which seeks to create “uncomfortable” spaces that supposedly would prolong the lives of those inhabiting them. The parallelism between lichens and architecture challenges us about the relationship that exists between bodies (organisms) and architecture (the environment in which they live). Understanding these forms of life leads us to question the notions of what we understand as death and life, individual and organism, body and ecosystem.

You can currently watch the movie online on demand and follow a live stream discussion on 21 December between the artist, Carlos Fernández-Pello, the exhibition curator, Caterina Almirall, and curator Julia Morandeira, who has also collaborated on previous occasions in this project by Carlos Fernández-Pello.

Please write to the following email address to register in advance: lacapella@bcn.cat

Nostalgia de la luz (Nostalgia for the Light)

Streaming of the film by Patricio Guzmán

Nostalgia de la luz (Nostalgia for the Light, 2010) is a film about the distance between heaven and earth, between the light of the cosmos and human beings, as well as the mysterious comings and goings generated between them. Astronomers from around the world meet at Atacama Desert to observe the stars in Chile at an altitude of three thousand metres. The transparency of the sky here helps them to view the confines of the universe. The dry land below preserves human remains intact: mummies, explorers, adventurers, natives, miners and bones of the dictatorship’s political prisoners. A group of women search for their relatives among the rocks as the astronomers search for extraterrestrial life.

VIDEOCLOOP Platform. In collaboration with LOOP Festival

Link to the streaming (only available on Saturday 14 and Sunday 15 November 2020)

https://loop-barcelona.com/activity/nostalgia-de-la-luz-es/

With the artistic project Serps d'aigua, we have identified the waterways that have naturally crossed the plain of Barcelona from the Collserola mountain range to the sea. All these waterways, in the form of streams or torrents, have been diverted, buried or annulled and their trace is only manifested in the names of the streets that still point to it. But its trace survives, the influence of the watercourse remains on the energy it moves and also on the erected constructions, the housed institutions or the events that have taken place around it.

To recognize the streams and torrents that cross the plain of Barcelona in its central part, we propose an exploration following Avinguda Diagonal, between the barracks of Pedralbes and Plaça de les Glòries.

At the crossroads between the waterways and the strict layout of the Diagonal on both sides of the plain, you can see some strengths of great relevance, the confluence of urban centers, the memory of remarkable events in the social history and the location of prominent institutions in the construction of the city. This avenue within the Cerdà plot has acted as a symbolic axis, but also from the urban and narrative staging of a hegemony still active. It is above other considerations the scene of social representation and the symbolic mark of bourgeois power that has defined Barcelona from the mid-nineteenth century to the present.

Being able to read this territory from the manifestation of waterways acts as a rescue that connects us with the natural force of torrents and streams, relativizing the social structures of power and highlighting the active potential of hidden water. Perceiving and recognizing this power means building a new relationship with the city following the current of the waters.

The route is by bicycle. Check the conditions at lacapella@bcn.cat

Saturday, October 17, from 4 p.m.

Meeting place: to be determined

Registration:

Prior registration is required by email: lacapella@bcn.cat

Conditions

It is mandatory to wear a mask, keep a safe distance of 1.5 m and follow the instructions of the organizing staff.

Approximate route: 4.5 km.

More information about the project:

http://rieresocultes.stream/

http://sitesize.net/

SYMBOLIC CORRESPONDENCES BETWEEN CATHOLIC FOLKLORE AND MÀKINA MUSIC IN THE OLD QUARTER IN BARCELONA

ACTIVITY 1/3

EXEGESIS. MUSICAL EXTRACTION / SYMBOLIC INSERTION

Talk

Following an initial analytical phase in which the three areas of interest for this research were mapped – Barcelona’s Catholic folklore, symbolic systems and màkina music – this activity marks the start of the second phase, in which we will be experimenting with the use of the identified symbolic systems, as a tool with hermeneutic potential for translating Catholic folklore into màkina music and vice versa.

Coinciding with the Feast Day of the Guardian Angels, we invite you to be living witnesses of an oral exegesis in real time in which, with an always unconcluded speculative approach and the help of some sound sequencing equipment, we will decode and reproduce possible musical materials based on elements chosen from among the local Catholic iconography.

Using culturally divergent artistic languages, this para-performative event will be exploring in a practical way the political contradiction that arises from, on the one hand, wanting to understand Tradition through a fragmentary praxis and, on the other, wanting to understand contemporary times through an essentialist logic.

Limited capacity

Prior registration is required, send an email to: lacapella@bcn.cat

#csfcmmcab

Conversation between Rosa Maria Subirana Torrent and Lola Lasurt

Moderator: Ángel Calvo Ulloa

As part of the exhibition Children’s Game, Lola Lasurt will be in conversation with Rosa Maria Subirana Torrent, curator of the Museums of the City of Barcelona during the final years of the dictatorship and first-hand witness to the beginning of institutional management of contemporary art in the country.

Under the instruction of the Barcelona City Council, Subirana meticulously inventoried the holdings of the first collections of contemporary art donated to the city and coordinated Miró Year, which included the organisation of the retrospective exhibition on the grounds of the former Hospital de la Santa Creu in 1968, as well as other activities, such as the placement of a plaque in the Passatge del Crèdit (where Miró was born in 1893) and the Joan Miró Prize for children.

Miró donated part of the works presented in the exhibition to the city; they were then moved to the MNAC to be inventoried and to form the future collection of the Centre d’Estudis d’Art Contemporani (CEAC), the building designed by Josep Lluís Sert which opened on Montjuïc in 1975.

Date: Tuesday 15 September 2020 from 7.00 p.m. to 9.00 p.m. Includes a guided tour to the Children’s Game exhibition from 7.00 to 7.30 p.m.

Watch the conversation here (v.o. catalan)

Art Nou Award ceremony 2020. Awarded by La Capella and selected by a jury formed by David Bestué, Alan Carrasco and Carolina Jiménez

Friday, 4 September 2020, 7.30 p.m.

Jardins de Rubió i Lluch / Old Massana School Courtyard (entrance through Carrer de l’Hospital, 56)

To ensure everyone’s safety, this will be the security protocol:

• The event will take place in an open space for a maximum of 150 people, seated in chairs with the necessary distance between them.
• There will be no admittance to the event after 8.00 p.m.
• The use of a mask is compulsory at all times, a distance of 2 metres between people must be maintained, and hydroalcoholic gel will be available.
• You must follow the organizers’ instructions to move through the space at all times, and you may not change the seat assigned to you.
• No beverages will be served during the event.

Should the event have to be modified due to the public health situation, you will be notified.

Please send any queries to info@artbarcelona.es.

Art Nou is an initiative by Art Barcelona- Associació de galeries.

Event organized by the Art Barcelona Association of Art Galleries with support from La Capella – ICUB and the Ministry of Culture of the Government of Catalonia

Beyond the face-to-face activities targeted at different audiences, εξέδρα, Barcelona Producció 2020’s mediation programme, is being reformulated with a new approach to the Raval neighbourhood with a view to mediating the exhibitions vis-à-vis a potential future scenario with new confinements.

Based on Lola Lasurt’s solo exhibition Children’s Game, εξέδρα has developed a series of relocations of exhibition elements to public and private locations in the Raval neighbourhood that are not affected by the confinement regulations and protocols.

Estanc Carme 15 – Carrer del Carme, 15

Animated Painting. Floquet de Neu, a Marcel Proust Character? Tele/eXpres, 22 January 1969

One of Lola Lasurt’s first works was Expendeduría 193 (2008), a documentary film portraying day-to-day life in a tobacco shop with ties to the artist’s family featuring its owners and customers. Children’s Game thus incorporates a small tribute to this work with the relocation of one of its animated paintings to Estanc Carme 15 on Carrer del Carme.

Different spaces in the Raval neighbourhood

Posters with archival material from the 1969 state of exception

Over the course of the Children’s Game exhibition period, different spaces in the Raval neighbourhood are showing enlarged reproductions of newspaper pages from the 1969 state of exception. You will find the main collection of this content in the display windows of the Escola Massana and the Sant Pau-Santa Creu Library. The size of the posters and the spaces’ relationship with the street enable you to see and read the posters without having to enter the buildings.

Balcony in the Ciutat Vella district

We are looking for a balcony in the Ciutat Vella district for displaying a work by Lola Lasurt in banner format until the end of the exhibition.

If you live in the neighbourhood and would like to participate in the Children’s Game exhibition by displaying this piece on your balcony, please send an email to lacapella@bcn.cat.

Online activity

The Virtual Union of Mods project is a virtual association, i.e., non-existent, that is dedicated, firstly, to collecting, sorting and classifying mods (alterations made in video games by gamers), in particular those mods associated with the working class and social justice; and secondly to generating virtual spaces for discussion with the players, inviting academic experts to confront their theories on the employment crisis in practical terms.

Remedios Zafra

In this context, Remedios Zafra was invited to develop a talk on mods, work in the digital era, precariousness and community-based initiatives.

When: Tuesday 14 July at 8.00 p.m.

Where: https://youtu.be/r2B9D888rO4

Language: Spanish.

Live chat with Remedios Zafra and the Virtual Mods Syndicate.

Jamie Woodcock

Jamie Woodcock, author of the book Marx at the Arcade, will talk about the relationship between video games, class and political struggles and the origin of video games, which is closely related to hacker culture and mods.

When: Tuesday 28 July at 8.00 p.m.

Where: https://youtu.be/UHK_Fl2y5mQ

Language: English with Catalan and Spanish subtitles.

Live chat with Jamie Woodcock and the Virtual Union of Mods.

​​

How do we read? How do we write? How do we trace our movements? What tracks remain of our activity, of this conversation with the written word as artists or readers? What shapes or materialities can they take?

During his stay in Europe from 1974 to 1979, Argentine intellectual Oscar Masotta wrote letters that crossed the ocean, published books and also highlighted as many as had come to him as a reader. Through his strokes, his daughter Cloe Masotta gets closer to her father by transcribing the steps of her reading body in the family letters, while Guille Mongan, artist and historian of Argentine art, is fascinated by the highlighted text, the crossing out and the notes in the margins of the books Oscar Masotta read. Each of them chooses a path for approaching the materials from their different locations (in turn already working in collaboration), and the encounter between the two proposals gives rise to a cartography, a topography, a navigation chart to seemingly buried memory, recapturing S. Kracauer’s fine reflection on family photographs “buried as if under a layer of snow”.

In this jointly coordinated workshop, we invite you to investigate your marks in books, your prints written in notes, in forgotten jottings, your corpographies transcribed in media beyond imagination through which to investigate possible forms, rearrangements, disorganizations, visual narratives, cartographies and spatial, corporeal, objectual choreographies they may take.

The workshop is structured into three two-hour encounters:

Monday 20 July: Presentation, models and first proposal.

Wednesday 22 July: Sharing participant experiences and second proposal.

Thursday 30 July: Presentations and conclusions.

Format: online workshop.

Schedule: Monday 20 July, Wednesday 22 July and Thursday 30 July, from 6.00 p.m. to 8.00 p.m.

Workshop limited to 15 participants.

Advance registration via email to lacapella@bcn.cat. A brief motivation letter must be included with your request.

Saturday 11 July from 5.30 p.m. to 8.00 p.m.

Active tour of the headwaters of the Riera d’Horta between Sant Genís dels Agudells and the Parc del Laberint d’Horta.

Walk along the water

The Water Snakes. Hidden Streams of Barcelona project is a discovery of the waterways that cross the city’s landscape in a hidden way. The project to recover them is being undertaken through examination of documents and direct exploration of the territory, reading signs, observing traces and identifying effects.

The Riera d’Horta is one of the main waterways crossing the plain of Barcelona between Collserola and Camp de la Bota, now the Parc del Fòrum. In the Horta neighbourhood, this watercourse incorporates in a single point as many as ten streams that flow down from the valleys of the upper headwaters. The proposed tour crosses all of these streams at a higher level, revealing their contours on the terrain and describing some of the urban and landscape elements that have grown up around them. Multiple layers of meaning, a maze of details, complex semantics and symbolic realms. All of this forms a space with a unique character that is renewed in rereading it under the influence and power of the waterways that structure it.

Registration

Advance registration is required by email: lacapella@bcn.cat

Conditions to note

Capacity limited to 20.

You must wear a mask, observe the safety distance of 1.5 metres and follow the instructions of the event organizers.

Approximate tour length: 3 km.

Further information about the project at:

http://rieresocultes.stream/

Aigua primera (First Water) video:

https://vimeo.com/429340630