A Curated Conference. On the Future of Collective Strength Within an Archive Dates: May 20 - August 30, 2010
Related Videos: Interview with Juan Luis Moraza and Rosa Barba
It is the aim of this conference to draw together a representation of artists of the 20th and 21st century, and bring their informed opinion to bear on the significant questions of art. A set of neat conclusions is neither expected nor desired. It is hoped that progress will be made in the exposure of hidden assumptions and in the uprooting of obsolete ideas, and in the framing of new questions and ageless urges. I have invited these artists, through their works, to take part in a conference on the collective consciousness within an archive. Many of these artists are not contemporaries; some are recent arrivals at the Reina Sofia, others have spent much of their existence here, but now find themselves performing together on the same stage. I would like these pieces to play out to each other and converse.
Perhaps then this ‘gathering together’ is a conference, but even more a choreographed session, closer to the arrangement of a performance, with the works reacting to each other in a rhythm of questions and answers. There will be difficulties. We are all trying to think aloud – and simultaneously trying to communicate with each other, trying to clarify things which have not been made clear before. The question is: what is essential in a work of art? This meeting is about realising a statement in a moment of truth without considering consequences - “What had to be said”. Each artist speaks with their own voice in their own language, temperament and volume. Their conference is an anarchic one, yet it is orchestrated like a concert, like a band that plays together or a choir joining together for a song. The archive as dateless individual expressions, choreographed like a musical score. Yet they can all raise their voices together for a relentless timelessness in art. Rosa Barba |
