Dates: September 22 — December 21, 2010
Place: Sabatini Garden
Organisation: Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía
Related text:
Autumn 2010. Valcárcel Medina
A year ago, an intervention by Valcárcel Medina announced Autumn 2009, a series of actions and disruptions—circumstances, as Valcárcel himself put it—which presented the museum as a kind of machinery for exhibition, collecting and communication. Taking this as our starting point, at some midway point between reference and habit, Autumn 2010 again entrusts four interventions to the charge of Atelier Bonanova, Pedro Bericat, Trinidad Irisarri and Domingo Mestre, to participate once more in the modes of relations that exist between the museum—its circumstances—and the public.
Valcárcel Medina has written of how it is possible to see what is happening here as a way of making the most of the (recurrent) change in the seasons in order to plan for a change in art—an (ever necessary) change, which at this particular time is also something to be desired.
The works of the artists taking part in Autumn 2010 can be discussed—using Valcárcel Medina’s own words—as four sets of coordinates that may represent necessary, yet disposable frames of reference; allusive designs, but nothing fixed in place that can be reckoned; pure circumstance, in a word. This project does not issue directives, nor does it indicate a set of procedures; the useful thing that may emerge from it will be to determine if habits can be broken, or if they are, regrettably, the only imperative that exists within the sphere of contemplative art.
Interventions
Atelier Bonanova (Mallorca, 1974)
Presenting Hora Solar. Una esgarrifança per la tardor (Sundial. A Shivering For Autumn); a sound installation in the gardens of the Sabatini Building, which reclaims the sundial as a way of measuring time that is quite different from standard horological practice.
Atelier Bonanova consists of José Luis Mata and Antonia Payero. Through its works, the Atelier Bonanova questions the pertinent uses and abuses of criticism, as well as the market and the politics of art, in an attempt to question the structures of power, both political and economic.
Pedro Bericat (Zaragoza, 1955)
This artist prefers to reveal nothing about his contribution to Autumn 2010, so that visitors will have to discover it for themselves.
Pedro Bericat has been working since the nineteen eighties in the fields of installation, mail art and sound art, and he is particularly interested in global intercommunication and global non-communication.
Trinidad Irisarri (Madrid, 1959)
Presenting Tardecer (Dusk); a projection situated in the vestibule of level one of the New Building which plays back in real time a repeat of the view of the sunset as seen from the museum.
Furthermore, information screens located at different points within the building will broadcast Midiendo el otoño (Measuring Autumn), a piece in which the artist proposes to quantify the volume of leaves and branches that fall in the gardens of the museum and the Parque de El Retiro during the course of that season.
Trinidad Irisarri works at the limits of art, halfway between that which would be designated as art and that which goes unnoticed.
Measuring Autumn
Each day of autumn of 2010, the artist Trinidad Irisarri measured the amount of fallen leaves and twigs in the gardens of Museo Reina Sofía and in Madrid's largest and best-known park, Parque del Buen Retiro.
The total amount of leaves gathered in the gardens of Museo Reina Sofia was 19.19 m3, with an approximate weight of 439.35 kg.
In Parque del Buen Retiro the total was 2806 m3, with an approximate weight of 366,000 kg. The total volume of autumn is thus 2825 m3.
The fallen leaves could be made into a cube measuring 14 m. in length. The total weight of autumn is 366,309 kg., the equivalent of a 2.5 m. cube of the densest mineral known (iridium).
Such a quantity of fallen leaves could produce energy in the amount of 104 kw/h., enough to supply electricity to Museo Reina Sofia for 45 minutes.
Domingo Mestre (Valencia, 1960)
Domingo Mestre will moderate Art, Culture and Deception (as also seen in the Museum), a round table discussion about action, activism and representation in Spain and Argentina, involving activist collectives with links to public art.
Domingo Mestre is a visual artist, researcher and cultural activist who has, since the start of the nineties, been promoting or taking part in programmes that relate to action art, activism and the new technologies, cultural politics and citizen participation.
