Island in the Sky, Cypress Gardens, Florida, postcard, n.d.
Held on 19 sep 2024
The sixth edition of Art and Tourism Imaginaries, an encounter series organised with the research group TURICOM, sets forth a study which explores the phenomenon of postcards and their impact on shaping the themes and stereotypes which have formed the collective imaginary of geographies, peoples and consumer habits in contemporary visual culture.
The use of postcards became widespread in the late nineteenth century, coinciding with the dawn of mass consumer culture. Their central qualities of speed, concision and cheapness chimed with a paradigm of thought shaped by utilitarianism. They came into being as commercial or personal textual notifications which tended to be very short and became standardised owing to their public nature, yet the introduction of the image in the early twentieth century denoted a relinquishment of their initial functional austerity and their transformation into a fully modern product. On a small scale, the development of the tourist postcard corresponds to the development of the capitalist production system as the format gradually faded away as a simple messaging item to become a hybrid picture card encompassing at once the attraction to the place it showed and a souvenir: a private message that draws from a commercial and advertising rhetoric, thereby assuming a mainstream quality. Halfway between media and a visual commodity, between an abbreviated letter and a standardised panorama, the postcard is a choice object for understanding how the cultural dynamics of stereotype are created and perpetuated through the way in which they often represent idealised and standardised images of places and situations. As a commodity, the postcard is laden with the dominant discourse of modernity, according to which the cost of progress means a loss of authenticity, a quality that is demoted to the outside or the distant, to far-flung places or a past time. Therefore, the postcard is a striking reflection and agent of this modernising project as it is specifically equipped to build cultural stereotypes and the nostalgic invocation of lost authenticity.
Setting out from this premise, the activity explores the postcard as a vehicle for and manufacturer of clichés from the perspective of authenticity, a key concept for consumer discourses and increasingly for politics. Inside a context of culture wars based on a stereotyped rhetoric, on clichés and short messages, this humble newsstand memento could possibly teach us valuable lessons on the relationships between the stereotyped and the authentic.
This is the final encounter in a six-year collaboration between the Museo Reina Sofía and research group TURICOM which has given rise to critical reflections on the tourist subject, leisure time and contemporary art.
Acknowledgements
Organised by
Museo Reina Sofía y TURICOM. La modernidad paradójica, PGC2018-093422-B-I00
Collaboration
illycaffèAgenda
jueves 19 sep 2024 a las 17:00
Presentation
—By José Díaz Cuyás
jueves 19 sep 2024 a las 17:10
Real Colour. Two Hundred and Forty-Three Postcards by Georges Perec
—By Julián Díaz Sánchez
“Two Hundred and Forty-Three Postcards in Real Colour” (1978) is a text by Georges Perec that explores the notion of authenticity by way of imageless postcard texts that can evoke an almost ideal tourist landscape. The intervention sees Julián Díaz Sánchez contrast Perec’s notion of authenticity with that of Gilles Lipovetsky, who demonstrates the expansion of the concept of a Disneyfied world.
jueves 19 sep 2024 a las 17:25
Greetings from. On Different Uses of the Postcard in Contemporary Artistic Practices
—By Rogelio López Cuenca
Stretching beyond its presence in the Mail Art tradition, the postcard has been employed by contemporary artists to critically or parodically allude to its role inside tourist culture and tap into its communicative possibilities. Therefore, this session introduces such examples, showing the diversity of strategies and objectives in either its specific use or in combination with other media. For instance: Marina Seascape (1998) and Malagana (2000), by Rogelio López Cuenca; ¡Desengánchate!N and ¡Apostata! (1991), by Agustín Parejo School; ¡Visite Ciudad Juárez! (2003-2011), by Ambra Polidori; Zaidín Monumental (2000), by Javier Longobardo; Paisatges Fragmentats (2017), by Laura Marte; and Conflictes Urban (2002), by Arquitectes Sense Fronteres - Plataforma veïnal contra l’especulació.
jueves 19 sep 2024 a las 17:40
Postcards in Art. Inciting Stereotypes
—By José Díaz Cuyás
Since the early twentieth century, the postcard has been a paradigm of the mass-culture stereotype. In its artistic use, the postcard and platitudes, en masse, play a transgressive role, akin to works within Surrealism and Pop Art. From the perspective of rhetoric, the value of authenticity we attribute to transgression lies in the very act of violating, when it is perceived as an unmasking. In this talk, José Díaz Cuyás invites us to ask questions around the provocative, elusive power of stereotypes, particularly today, when clichés have become algorithmic.
jueves 19 sep 2024 a las 17:55
Postcard Fictions
—By Cristina Arribas and Carmelo Vega
What makes Spanish tourist boom postcards so different and attractive? Through two exhibition projects — Diálogo de postales (Postcard Dialogue, Museo de Historia y Antropología de Tenerife, 2023–2024) and Discursos postales (Postcard Discourses, Centro Andaluz de la Fotografía, 2024) — and from a perspective on the theory of the tourist image, this talk puts forward keys to resolving such an enigma. The true value of postcards lies not only in their vast structural and visual power as contemporary flash fictions of tourism, but also primarily in their capacity to create formal and conceptual solutions that defy all conventional logic. Far from documenting the phenomenon they illustrate, postcards build their own idiosyncratic fictional realities.
jueves 19 sep 2024 a las 18:10
Break
jueves 19 sep 2024 a las 18:30
Presentation of Casa Planas
—By Alelí Mirelman and Marina Planas
The Casa Planas project is a collective, non-profit organisation founded by artist Marina Planas in 2015 in response to the urgent need for an interdisciplinary centre for contemporary creation and the interpretation of tourism on the Balearic Islands. Alelí Mirelman is a project director at Casa Planas and the coordinator of the COSTA Tourist Image Observatory.
jueves 19 sep 2024 a las 18:50
Review and Debate
—Moderated by Alicia Fuentes
Participants
Cristina Arribas
works as an architect and urban planner for Badalona Council, and is also a lecturer in the Department of Theory and History at the Escola Tècnica Superior d'Arquitectura de Barcelona (ETSAB). Her most recent publications most notably include the essays “El nuevo paisaje turístico español a través de las tarjetas postales de los años 60”, in Sobre, no. 5 (2018) and “La puesta en escena del paisaje turístico español en el boom desarrollista”, in La ciudad en el cine (Asimétricas, 2022), and the book Greetings from the USA. Saludos desde España (Concreta, 2023).
José Díaz Cuyás
is a professor of Aesthetics and Art Theory at the University of La Laguna. He also coordinates the TURICOM group, and was previously the director of Acto ediciones. His most recent publications include Encuentros salvajes: arte, consumo y turismo caníbal (Concreta, 2022), which includes his text “Arte, consumo y transgresión caníbal: a propósito de Yves Klein, Tennessee Williams y el cine exploitation”.
Julián Díaz Sánchez
is a lecturer in Art History at the University of Castilla-La Mancha (UCLM). He is the author of, among other works, Políticas, poéticas y prácticas artísticas. Apuntes para una historia del arte (Catarata, 2009), La idea de arte abstracto en la España de Franco (Cátedra, 2013) and Pensar la historia del arte. Viejas y nuevas propuestas (University of Zaragoza, 2021).
Alicia Fuentes Vega
is a lecturer in the Department of Art History at the Complutense University of Madrid, where she jointly directs the research group IMAGINARIOS and has coordinated, since 2023, the MA in Contemporary Art History and Visual Culture (UCM, UAM and Museo Reina Sofía). Her publications include articles in academic journals such as the Journal of Tourism History, Iberoamericana and Art in Translation, and she is the author of Bienvenido, Mr. Turismo. Cultura visual del boom (Cátedra, 2017).
Rogelio López Cuenca
is an artist who combines visual art methods and customary processes of literature and social sciences. One of his main working strands deals with the representation and construction of the identity of the other, in relation to individual and collective identity in the West. He received Spain’s National Award for Plastic Arts in 2022 and has held solo shows in Es Baluard (2021), the Museo Reina Sofía (2019), Sala Alcalá 31 (2016), IVAM (2015) and La Panera (2012). His work is also part of the Museo Reina Sofía, MACBA, ARTIUM and Banco de España collections.
Casa Planas
is a collective organisation founded by the artist Marina Planas in 2015 in Palma de Mallorca. As an independent, non-profit project, it came into being in response to the need for an interdisciplinary centre for contemporary creation and the interpretation of tourism on the Balearic Islands. Its collection includes the biggest photographic archive in Europe on mass tourism.
![Miguel Brieva, ilustración de la novela infantil Manuela y los Cakirukos (Reservoir Books, 2022) [izquierda] y Cibeles no conduzcas, 2023 [derecha]. Cortesía del artista](https://recursos.museoreinasofia.es/styles/small_landscape/public/Actividades/ecologias_del_deseo_utopico.jpg.webp)
![Ángel Alonso, Charbon [Carbón], 1964. Museo Reina Sofía](https://recursos.museoreinasofia.es/styles/small_landscape/public/Actividades/perspectivas_ecoambientales.jpg.webp)
Más actividades
Christian Nyampeta and the École du soir
13, 14, 15 NOV, 11, 12, 13 DIC 2025
Christian Nyampeta is a Rwandan artist, musician and film-maker whose work encompasses pedagogies and community forms of knowledge production and transmission. His Ècole du soir (Evening School) is an art project conceived as a mobile space of collective learning and is named in homage to Ousmane Sembène (1923–2007), a pioneer of African cinema who defined his films as “evening classes” for the people, a medium of education and emancipation through culture.
This block is made up of three double sessions: the video work of Christian Nyampeta, the films of École du soir and one of Ousmane Sèmbene’s feature-length films. Nyampeta will introduce all three first sessions.
Long Live L’Abo! Celluloid and Activism
4, 5, 6 DIC 2025
L’Abominable is a collective film laboratory founded in La Courneuve (Paris, France) in 1996. It came into being in response to the disappearing infrastructures in artisan film-making and to provide artists and film-makers with a self-managed space from which to produce, develop and screen films in analogue formats such as Super 8, 16mm and 35mm. Anchored in this premise, the community promotes aesthetic and political experimentation in analogue film opposite digital hegemony. Over the years, L’Abominable, better known as L’Abo, has accompanied different generations of film-makers, upholding an international movement of independent film practices.
This third segment is structured in three sessions: a lecture on L’Abo given by Pilar Monsell and Camilo Restrepo; a session of short films in 16mm produced in L’Abo; and the feature-length film Une isle, une nuit, made by the Les Pirates des Lentillères collective.
UP/ROOTING
11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 NOV 2025
Museo Reina Sofía and MACBA Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) invite applications for the 2025 iteration of the School of Common Knowledge, which will take place from November 11th to 16th in Madrid and Barcelona.
The School of Common Knowledge (SCK) draws on the network, knowledge and experience of L’Internationale, a confederation of museums, art organizations and universities that strives to reimagine and practice internationalism, solidarity and communality within the cultural field. This year, the SCK program focuses on the contested and dynamic notions of rooting and uprooting in the framework of present —colonial, migrant, situated, and ecological— complexities.
Building on the legacy of the Glossary of Common Knowledge and the current European program Museum of the Commons, the SCK invites participants to reflect on the power of language to shape our understanding of art and society through a co-learning methodology. Its ambition is to be both nomadic and situated, looking at specific cultural and geopolitical situations while exploring their relations and interdependencies with the rest of the world.
In the current context fraught with war and genocide, the criminalization of migration and hyper-identitarianism, concepts such as un/belonging become unstable and in need of collective rethinking:
How can we reframe the sense and practice of belonging away from reductive nationalist paradigms or the violence of displacement? How to critically hold the entanglement of the colonial routes and the cultural roots we are part of? What do we do with the toxic legacies we inherit? And with the emancipatory genealogies and practices that we choose to align with? Can a renewed practice of belonging and coalition-making through affinity be part of a process of dis/identification? What geographies —cultural, artistic, political— do these practices of de/centering, up/rooting, un/belonging and dis/alignment designate?
Departing from these questions, the program consists of a series of visits to situated initiatives (including Museo Situado, Paisanaje and MACBA's Kitchen, to name a few), engagements with the exhibitions and projects on view (Project a Black Planet: The Art and Culture from Panafrica), a keynote lecture by Stefano Harney and Fred Moten, as well as daily reading and discussion gatherings, editorial harvest sessions, and conviviality moments.
Ylia and Marta Pang
Thursday, 6 November - 8pm
The encounter between Spanish DJ and producer Ylia and visual artist Marta Pang is presented in the form of a premiere in the Museo Reina Sofía. Both artists converge from divergent trajectories to give form to a new project conceived specifically for this series, which aims to create new stage projects by setting out from the friction between artists and dialogue between disciplines.
On the Art of Occupying Spaces and Curating Film Programmes
23, 24, 25, 30, 31 OCT 2025
On the Art of Occupying Spaces and Curating Film Programmes is a film programme overseen by Miriam Martín and Ana Useros, and the first within the project The Cinema and Sound Commons. The activity includes a lecture and two films screened twice in two different sessions: John Ford’s Fort Apache (1948) and John Gianvito’s The Mad Songs of Fernanda Hussein (2001).
“By virtue of a group of film curator enthusiasts, small plazas and vacant lots in Madrid’s Lavapiés neighbourhood became cinemas with the arrival of summer. The city streets made room for everyone: the local residents who came down with their seats tucked under their arms, or those who simply came across the Lavapiés Film Festival with no prior knowledge of it, but knowing how to recognise a free and convivial film screening, as enticing as light is to moths. The Festival’s film curators had to first reach a consensus with one another, by assembly, and then with others, addressing issues ranging from electricity to the transfer of rights to show the films.
Whereas the annually organised Festival resembled a camp, the weekly CSOA (Squatted Self-managed Social Centre) La Morada film society looked more like a settlement. In each squatted social centre, a micro civilisation is founded, and nestled among its infrastructures is always a film society. Why? We’ll see. A direct outcome of the 15M anti-austerity movement, this film society was contentless in form (the content, the films, were decided upon from session to session). Anyone was free to enter, and therefore free to curate the line-up, although not haphazardly — there was a method, ultimately devised so the community would not close, so it would never have one set image of itself.
Part of this method entailed relating the film from the following week to the recently viewed one, and the same method has gone into putting together this two-session programme. The Festival and the film society were, moreover, attempts at rectification: the festival logic and the very same film-club logic, according to which film boils down to an excuse for debating serious issues. There would be nothing to debate but much to ponder. For instance, about the manufacturing of enemies by a nation that chooses enemies in the world, with one film from the year the State of Israel was proclaimed and another from the year the Twin Towers were razed to the ground. The USA manufactures functional enemies and heroes and American cinema, in addition to showing us this, manufactures unforgettable characters: the Apache chief, Cochise, and mother courage, Fernanda Hussein. We’ll see”.
Miriam Martín and Ana Useros