VIVID [RADICAL] MEMORY

Collecting of the information and documentation
The process of collecting information and documentation was done in the planned time slots and is still going on at the moment of preparing the report. Since the beginning, we noticed a considerable lack of studies, essays, monographic works, research lines, publications, etc. dedicated to the subject of study of our project.

 

Processing and classification of the information and documentation
This task was conditioned by the lack of a specific historiography about the social and political conceptual art from the East and the South during the sixties and seventies under non-democratic regimes. Despite this inconvenience, the task was carried out successfully.

 

Digitization of the information and documentation
The conversion of the information and documentation from analogue to digital was difficult by the lack of texts in general, but particularly in English, about the artistic production from the East and the South. This was an important aspect that has unbalanced the forecasts.

 

Creation of the thesaurus
The creation of the thesaurus has been a difficult task. The lack of precedents like the kind of approaches that has inspired the VRM Project, made it a more extended effort to search and research to build the thesaurus. In the end we reached a reasonable amount of 104 items organized in 14 categories. A circuit of access and discussion of the different items of the wiki was designed in a participatory way.

 

Workshop with experts
VRM Project found a field of non-structured work, and was initially affected by the lack of interrelation and connections. We realized that our task would only be feasible if the contacts were intensified, if intercommunication ways were opened and if appropriate bases for the establishment of a network were created.  The most suitable way to do this was face-to-face contact and teamwork, and this was only possible by increasing the intensity and quality of the meetings, and strengthening the communication between experts and specialists. For this reason, the only workshop that was planned in Barcelona was extended to two more workshops both in Stuttgart and in Budapest.

 

The Barcelona Workshop happened according to plan. It took place in the auditorium of the Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona (MACBA) from the 9th to the 11th of May 2007. We decided to choose this formula: Work meeting with experts and open seminar for the public. In the workshop 24 experts participated. They worked very as a team; 17 of them got involved in the organization and carrying out of the project. 120 people attend the open sesions.

 

The Stuttgart Workshop (not planned) took place from 28th to the 30th of September 2007 in the Württembergischer Kunstverein Stuttgart. 15 guests and active participants attend this workshop; 5 of them participated in the technical aspects of the project. The announcement of the workshop was “Conceptual practices from the 1960s to the 1980s under the conditions of communist regimes and military dictatorships in Europe and Latin America”.

 

The Budapest Workshop was the most attented workshop with a total of 400 people (50 people in the symposium, excluding the participant and organizers, which is another 20; in the exhibition opening 200 people; in Altorjay's action approx 100-120. The announcement of this was “The Time of an Artwork / The Artwork through Time”. It took place from 11th to 13th of October, 2007 in the Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts and in the gallery Labor.

 

The balance of the workshops was positive in that they made it possible for collectives and individuals with common interests to meet each other, to see their own work in perspective, and to work together.

 

The workshops have generated the establishment of a network that  began in May, 2007 with a mailing list and the access of the database management.

 

 

Webpage +  specific blog
The creation, design and re-structuring  of the web of the project have been key points for its development. Here, a fair number of experts of the project were involved in making it possible to reach an efficient and operative result.

 

The web flowchart in the original version—the second one— presents a database articulated in three basic elements: productions, authorships and documentary environments (in the first version these elements were: works, authors and texts). This web includes a search system with different levels and a wiki circuit that allows contributions from the users that connect all the metadata of the thesaurus.

 

A good option for the future of this web is the blog, which is open for the participation of experts, participants, collaborators, etc.  Other complements of the web are direct accesses to the documents of the project and documents of the three workshops. 

 

The ‘spirit’ of the web can be defined as a philosophy of documentary environments, like the attitude ofcreation and integrationin the database, especially the part dedicated to provide context and reflection. This also includes giving value to a pluralistic model where the environment is considered as a ‘whole’, more than something individual.

 

The VRM web is the meeting point of interests and aspirations of all the people who work on the revision of social and political conceptual art developed in the ‘non-democracies’ of the South and East of Europe and in Latin America from the sixties onwards.

 

Exhibitions
Four exhibitions were held on three locations, each of them from different perspectives. Some of them where in the documentary exhibition (Barcelona, Stuttgart) and others had their own original approach of the sixties and seventies: they included the exhibition of works in the Labor  and the presentation of live artistic actions in the Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts of Budapest. All four of them took place in the corresponding workshops.

 

The utility was contrasted and valued by the experts, therefore it gave access to information and exclusive documents from different destinations. Most of the exhibited material does not belong to archives, libraries or accessible collections. We were able to show documents from Latin America that were not exhibited before and the experts could not consult them in their origin countries.

 

'Product' in the framework of the project
We hereby attach the list of the main essays that were produced by the involved expert-participants of which we think give a qualitative measure of the developed work. (see workshops)

 

Emphasized work lines:

 

1. Art and politics in artistic behaviours of 60’s and 70’s: Ideological and / or linguistic?
   (The social and the political)
   
2. Historiographic, geopolitical and economic strategies for documentation
   (The South and the East
   
3. Vivid cultural heritage and cultural dissemination
   (The connection with current situation)

 

Continuity of the Project
The following actions, strategies and events are planned for the maintenance and further extension of the project/network:

 

• Enhancement of the weblog and the wiki
• Maintenance of the database
• Trilingual publication in the Journal Papers d’Art Nº 93. Girona, Spain (February/March 2008)
• An expert meeting in Latin America Conceptualismos in Sao Paulo (April 2008): organised by the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo of the University of Sao Paulo
• Exhibition in WKV and WMMB autumn 2008 - spring 2009)

 

List of institutions involved in the Project

More than the organizer institutions, we have been in contact and in collaboration with: 

• AECI (Spanish Agency for International Cooperation)
• CIDEA Center of Innovation and Economical Development of the Art (Barcelona)
• CATLAB Catalonian Laboratory (Barcelona)
• Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts
• AAVC (Association of visual artists of Catalonia)
• Young Artist’ Studio (Budapest)
• Kunstlerhaus Stuttgart
• MACBA Museum for Contemporary Art Barcelona
• Museum for Contemporary Art in Sao Paulo
• Research Centre for Artists' Publications at Weserburg
• Museum for Modern Art Bremen, Germany
• NCCA National Centre for Contemporary Art (Moscow)
• Municipal Gallery / Museum of Kiscell (Budapest)
• National Museum of Fine Arts (Santiago de Chile)
• Foundation of Serralves (Porto, Portugal)
• Journal Papers d’Art (Girona, Spain)
• Newspaper AVUI (Barcelona)
• Tristestópicos http://www.tristestopicos.org/

 

 

Universities of:

 

INTRO:CAT - SPA - ENG

 

ABOUT:CAT - SPA - ENG

 

PLANNED:CAT - SPA - ENG

 

IMPLEMENTED:CAT - SPA - ENG

 

FINAL:CAT - SPA - ENG

CREDITS

Organiser:

Co-organisers:

 

With special collaboration of MACBA

Special thanks to:
Universidad de Buenos Aires
Universidad Nacional de Rosario
Centro Cultural de España en Lima, Perú (AECI)
National Centre for Contemporary Arts, Moscow

 

Developed by: