16 Mar 2011

La Virreina Centre de la Imatge: '1979. A monument to radical instants'

Between 1968 and 1989 comes 1979 – just another year. Nothing appears to suggest that this date is any more significant than any other. But if we look more closely at some of the events from this year, a constellation of facts, works, data, texts, images, films, songs and objects soon starts to emerge. At first sight these might not seem to share anything in common other than the date, but there is in fact an underlying historical turning point. This year saw Margaret Thatcher come to power, an intense decade came to a close in Italy with the imprisonment of figures like Antonio Negri, and two key revolutions took place in Nicaragua and Iran whose effects are still felt today – not to mention a long list of micro-events that could have been captured and saved on camera. This exhibition has been put together as an historical essay that eschews a single, succinct image of this year. In fact, it deliberately sets out to represent the heterogeneous nature of the events in question – as if history, in retrospect, could still point in many different directions and suggest different lines of events. We are clearly not talking about a year picked at random, however. 1979 was also the year that marked a turning point for Postfordism, the year when a city survey was carried out in Barcelona that would lay the foundations for the city's future, the year that, in short, can help us reinterpret our immediate past whilst avoiding precooked narratives. The exhibition is structured around documentary materials, including those from the archive of Peter Weiss, author of the novel The Aesthetics of Resistance (1975-1981).

MANEL ARMENGOL / ART & LANGUAGE / JESÚS ATIENZA / PILAR AYMERICH / JULI AZCUNCE / CARLO BAVAGNOLI / BESTUÉ-VIVES / JOSEPH BEUYS / BRASSAÏ / MARCELO BRODSKY / NORBERT BUNGE / LLUIS CASALS / JAUME CODINA / COLITA / ELEANOR COPPOLA / JOSEP CUNTIES / CZIBOR / PATRICIA DAUDER / CARLES DURAN / MARGUERITE DURAS / PEPE ENCINAS / EUROPA PRESS / JACQUES GRANDCLAUDE / ION GRIGORESCU / HARUN FAROCKI / CHRISTINE FISCHER-DEFOY / FRANCIS FORD COPPOLA / BILL GANZEL / ALBERTO GARCÍA-ALIX / IÑAKI GARMENDIA / HANS HAACKE / MANFRED HAIDUK / GEORGE HICKENLOOPER / MARINE HUGONNIER / BILLY & BENNO / JOAQUÍN JORDÀ / ROBERT KOEHLER / MANOLO LAGUILLO / STAFFAN LAMM / DOROTHEA LANGE / CLAUDE LANZMANN / LARS LAUMANN / JÜRGEN LODEMANN / KIM MANRESA / JAUME MAYMÓ / SUSAN MEISELAS / NICHOLAS NIXON / XAVIER OLIVA / PEREJAUME / PEREZ DE ROZAS / XAVIER RIBAS / HUMBERTO RIVAS / MARC ROIG BLESA / ROBERTO ROSSELLINI / THOMAS RUFF / ALLAN SEKULA / SERGIO / CINDY SHERMAN / LLORENÇ SOLER / JOAN FRANCESC SOLIVELLES / EDUARDO SUBIAS / PHILIPPE VAN SNICK / VIDEO NOU / ADOLPH VON MENZEL / MADELON VRIESENDORP / PETER WEISS / ANDREAS WUTZ / ANDRZEJ ZAJACZKOWSKI Y ANDRZEJ CHODAKOWSKI

During the months the exhibition is on, La Virreina Centre de la Imatge will offer a series of complementary activities on 1979. A Monument to Radical Moments, including seminars, talks, guided tours and screenings. This project is a La Virreina Centre de la Imatge production.