Living in Babylon (BAC! part 1)
|
While in Barcelona i visited BAC!, the contemporary art festival located mainly at the CCCB center.
This year the theme "Babylon" aims to draw parallels between today's city and the ancient Babylon, which used to be the largest city in the world from ca. 1770 to 1670 BC, and again between ca. 612 and 320 BC. This year BAC! Festival attempts a radiography of modern Babylon, where multiculturalism, grand offers and good restaurants coexist harmoniously alongside social inequality, poorness, ghettos, marginalization, housing and mortgage problems. A handful of installations, plenty of photographic works and video art pieces. My selection is below but if you want to read more about the exhibition, BAC! generously put the whole catalog online for you to download, browse and read. It's in castellano and catalan, with english translation at the end of the PDF booklet.
I was fascinated by Julio Soto Gurpide's photo series On Common Grounds which portrays places that symbolize fallen modern utopias.
Brazil: Despite their promise to bring prosperity to the jungle zone, the petrolific landscapes of Cubatao have resulted into a contaminated area where it is impossible to breathe.
Fran Meana was showing documents and artefacts from Paisaje para cámaras de seguridad (Landscape for security cameras), an intervention which turns the landscape into a weapon. The artist uses play as a critical strategy in order to generate a space of possibilities. Maena created some tiny models of landscape, placed them on the top of a big pole which he held under the gaze of surveillance cameras. Something apparently as inoffensive as landscape allows for a deactivation of the control system.
The EuroAfricans notes are made of recycled materials found in the region (soap, bits of plastic carriers, bird feet, sole of sandals, etc.) and they feature the sign €A. When it was created off New York at the very beginning of the twentieth century, Coney Island was considered a summertime heaven on earth. Peter Granser's photographic portrait of Coney Island shows a very dilapidated beach eldorado.
Extract from the catalog: Andreas Lang on the "Aion II�? series: When 9/11 happened, I was just visiting Rome and its surrounding area, photographing places of early Christianity and the Roman Empire. The atmosphere at that time was so gloomy and the sudden fall of the twin towers so apocalyptic in its dimension, that it was imprinted onto my memory. Later in 2003, when I was visiting New York for the first time, the atmosphere was similar, with heavy winds and ghostly fogs blowing through the streets of Manhattan. The memory of those days in Rome re-appeared in my perception and influenced the pictures I was taking in New York.
The curators must recognize plenty of Balylon-like characteristics in New York city because many of the works selected showed New York in a gloomy light. Arnau Blanch took his camera to uncover New York city and compose a picture diary to remind him how the city looks like the one he discovered in movie theatres, and what he describes as a sensation of stumbling at every corner over the false promises of liberty and security.
Living in Babylon (BAC! part 2) Related: Review of Global Cities. |
A documentary film and installation by Spanish artist Luis Vidal, 
The aim is to exchange 600 Euroafrican notes in Spain for their value in euros, and then reinvest them for the benefit of the populations of the areas of their origin. More generally, the project aspires to awaken the awareness of the audience on the needs of this region, reducing at the same time the economic barrier that separates the north hemisphere from the south. 
Leave a comment