Catalan Pavilion
La comunitat inconfessable
(The Unavowable Community)
A project by Valentín Roma with:
Joan Vila-Puig and Elvira Pujol/Sitesize
Daniel G. Andújar/
Technologies To The People
Pedro G. Romero/Archivo F.X.
http://www.lacomunitatinconfessable.cat
Based on the book of the same name by Maurice Blanchot, The Unavowable Community is a proposal that explores the types of social intervention adopted by various artistic practices that are developed around the idea of the communal.
Three different projects have been selected to form part of this project: Sitesize by Joan Vila-Puig and Elvira Pujol, Technologies To The People by Daniel G. Andújar, and Arxiu F.X. by Pedro G. Romero. These projects share communal strategies of transversality and antagonism, in a territory that is difficult to chart, found in the cracks in both the institution of art and models of cultural productivity. (100)
The project. Concept
This artistic idea - which takes its name from the book of the same title by Maurice Blanchot, and from his interpretation of communism as "something that creates a community"- constitutes, therefore, an investigation into the possible meanings of the nature of communal works in the sphere of art, focusing its analysis on attempts to glimpse the possible forms of collective action this entity might suggest to us.
For this he has selected three projects (Sitesize, Technologies To The People and Archivo F.X.) which, in spite of operating from different perspectives, share the same strategies of a cross-cutting approach, antagonism, supplantation and interference, which forces them to place themselves in a territory that is difficult to map out, situated between the cracks of both the institution of art and the models of cultural productivity.
An important link between the ideas forming La comunitat inconfessable is their questioning of the notion of a single and, even, recognisable authorship. In this same direction, the ambiguous character of these projects and their non-exemplifying nature mean they are located beyond certain decision-making monopolies, re-using pre-existing action devices, taking advantage of, or re-orienting, communication nodes, parasitising consolidated structures, configuring new archives and, in short, placing them amidst the tension of that General Intellect of which Marx spoke; that social brain which is, at the same time, a productive force and a principle of citizen organisation.
The project. Lines of work:
1. An exhibition presenting the ideas generated by each of the participants using the metaphor of a library as a reference point or visual interface. Thus, each intervention constitutes a "deconstructed" approach -i.e., distorted, unconstructed, destroyed or under construction- to this space of knowledge, learning and theatricality that is Borges' interminable library, which functions here as a sort of meeting point of the "community of readers" urged by Blanchot.
2. A book constituting a kind of polyphony of essays using texts by Maurice Blanchot, Giorgio Agamben, Jean Luc Nancy, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, Lars Iyer, Peter Pál Pelbart and Marina Garcés that were published in different contexts, periods and media, but which, never the less, pose shared questions such as: What is the common? In which political or mental space is the notion of community developed? With which elements is it confronted? On which does it feed?
3.. A website that will document it visually and textually, and operate as a vast archival collection around the notion of the communal from the perspective of philosophy, anthropology, the social sciences and art, among other disciplines..
http://www.lacomunitatinconfessable.cat
La comunitat inconfessable (The Unavowable Community)
Dates: 7 June - 22 November, 2009 (Vernissage; 4, 5, 6 June)
Opening: 5th June, 6.30 pm
Opening hours: 10 am – 6 pm
Closed Mondays
Magazzino del Sale, n. 3
Dorsoduro 264
30123 Venice
www.veneziacatalunya2009.cat
