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López Cuenca - Desacuerdos - Making Art History in Europe After 1945-014

This document summarizes an exhibition titled "Before and After the Enthusiasm. 72–1992" curated by José Luis Brea in 1989. The exhibition aimed to highlight artistic practices in Spain from 1972-1979 and 1987-1992 that challenged the mainstream celebration of painting in the 1980s. Specifically, it highlighted works that explored radical artistic research and sought to intervene in the public sphere, contrasting them with the "conservative, formalist" works and criticism prevalent during Spain's period of art world "enthusiasm" from 1982-1988. A key difference from later projects like Desacuerdos was that it focused only on constructing an alternative chronology of Spanish art, rather than directly intervening in contemporary political debates

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Luz Leuk
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0% found this document useful (0 votes)
51 views18 pages

López Cuenca - Desacuerdos - Making Art History in Europe After 1945-014

This document summarizes an exhibition titled "Before and After the Enthusiasm. 72–1992" curated by José Luis Brea in 1989. The exhibition aimed to highlight artistic practices in Spain from 1972-1979 and 1987-1992 that challenged the mainstream celebration of painting in the 1980s. Specifically, it highlighted works that explored radical artistic research and sought to intervene in the public sphere, contrasting them with the "conservative, formalist" works and criticism prevalent during Spain's period of art world "enthusiasm" from 1982-1988. A key difference from later projects like Desacuerdos was that it focused only on constructing an alternative chronology of Spanish art, rather than directly intervening in contemporary political debates

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Luz Leuk
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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14 Narrating Dissident Art in Spain

The Case of Desacuerdos. Sobre


Arte, Políticas y Esfera Pública
(2003–2005)
Alberto López Cuenca

For E. and R., who never give up on the conversation.

“The worst trend of the season,” wrote the influential art critic Juan Manuel Bonet in
1991 about a number of exhibitions featuring works by Marcelo Expósito, Estrujen-
bank, Agustín Parejo School, and Pedro G. Romero, among others.1 Bonet described
the “sad feeling of boredom” that the “accumulation of calls by ‘engaged art’ in
Spain” at the time instilled in him. His negative opinion would be of no interest
nowadays if not by the fact that Bonet became, from 2000 until 2004, the director of
the most prominent institution in Spain devoted to modern and contemporary art, the
Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (MNCARS) and that those politicised
works previously disparaged by him for their “little aesthetic weight” ended up gain-
ing a proper place in this very museum. They were included in the 2013 exhibition
Minimal Resistance. Between Late Modernism and Globalisation: Artistic Practices
during the 80s and 90s, that served as a preamble for a reorganisation of the Muse-
um’s permanent collection.2 What has happened in scarcely 22 years to have “the
worst trend of the season” now parading into the most prestigious museographic nar-
rative of Spanish contemporary art?
In what follows, I reflect on the construction of a new narrative of what I will call
‘dissident art’ from contemporary Spain. This label refers to artistic practices that
unfolded since the 1960s up until the 1990s, which were loosely related to the tactics
of conceptual art and social and media activism. Until recently, such practices and
tactics were excluded from the hegemonic academic or museographic narratives. By
‘dissident art’ I do not mean to suggest that there is something specifically confronta-
tional as a common thread to these practices. Although typically the ones considered
here did run against or openly avoided the mainstream understanding and procedures
of the art system of the time, what concerns me is the emergence of a historiography
that invokes them so as to challenge the dominant narrative of Spanish art. I will
focus specifically in Desacuerdos. Sobre arte, políticas y esfera pública en el estado
español (Disagreements. On Art, Politics and Public Sphere in Spain), an interinstitu-
tional research project launched in 2003 that sought to construct a historiographical
counter-­model in order to explore the links between artistic practices and the public
sphere in Spain since the late 1960s.3 Unlike previous attempts to destabilise institu-
tionalised narratives, this ‘dissident’ historiography has been promoted by an unprec-
edented network of exhibitions, seminars, periodicals, electronic resources, and the
work of academic and non-­academic research groups. I will relate Desacuerdos to

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252 Alberto López Cuenca
previous projects to which it is linked, and I will argue that in view of such links
Desacuerdos appears as a complex network of practices that goes beyond the fields
of museography, historiography, or academia. The actors Desacuerdos enrolled and
the ways in which they interacted would crisscross the traditional boundaries of these
institutional forms.4 As I will underline, these disciplinary intersections were the result
of a conscious attempt to make Desacuerdos an intervention in the global and local
political situation of the time.
A key factor contributing to the enactment of this dissident narrative has less to
do with art and its institutions than with the antiglobalisation movement and its
aftermath—from the 1994 uprising of EZLN in Chiapas in Mexico to its peak and
downfall in the Genoa demonstrations of 2001. I will refer to this process as well as
to documenta X (1997), the reception of Postmarxist and Italian Post-­operaist think-
ing in Spain and the wave of ‘new institutionalism’ in artistic venues in Europe to
characterise the momentum that made Desacuerdos possible. By doing this, I intend
to show that a conception of the political implications of artistic practices was invigo-
rated in Spain at the time. As we will see, one of the figures in this endeavour was
Manuel Borja-­Villel, who recalls about his tenure as director of the Museu d’Art
Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) in the late 1990s: “some of us felt the neces-
sity to reconsider twentieth-­century art history by taking into account the whole of
the political history of that century. We thought that we also must relate that way of
thinking with the emerging social movements.”5 Thus, producing a new account of
Spanish art was not so much a way of recounting past facts as of intervening in a pres-
ent struggle. Since 1996, a right wing government was in power in Spain, implement-
ing drastic neoliberal economic policies and eventually backing a hugely unpopular
military invasion of Iraq in 2003. This decision to join the Iraq war led to a wave of
demonstrations all over the country in which different manifestations of social dis-
content converged. Desacuerdos and its enactment of a counter hegemonic art history
should be located within these political tensions. As Borja-­Villel adds: “Art history
is a space in which a political fight between narratives takes place. Artistic images
and the narrative they project are a battlefield for hegemony.”6 For those involved in
Desacuerdos, this meant challenging and modifying the institutions and locations in
which art history had traditionally been deployed.

Dissidences Before Disagreements


Before Desacuerdos invoked the political commitment of contemporary artistic prac-
tices in Spain, there had been several attempts at challenging the conventional wis-
dom on contemporary Spanish art.7 It is worth paying attention to at least two of
these proposals in order to stress the differences with Desacuerdos.8 They present two
important points: on the one hand, a chronology to organise Spanish art since the
1970s around its capacity to enact a tension with the institutional environment and,
on the other hand, criteria to gather projects whose goal is to intervene in the public
sphere.
The exhibition Before and After the Enthusiasm. 72–1992 took place at the Kunst-
Rai 89 art fair in Amsterdam and was curated by José Luis Brea in 1989. Its narrative
assembled artistic practices that had been marginalised by the ‘enthusiastic’ celebra-
tion of painting in the 1980s.9 Brea argued for the link between two periods of con-
temporary Spanish art via “the transmission of findings in the recent most radicalised

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Narrating Dissident Art in Spain 253
research in the artistic field.” He characterised the age of “enthusiasm” (1982–1988)
10

as that of the wrongly understood success of Spanish art in the international arena.
It was the golden age of painters and sculptors such as Miquel Barceló, José María
Sicilia, and Txomin Badiola, who were heralded by critics such as Juan Manuel Bonet
and Francisco Calvo Serraller. In Brea’s view, the ‘success’ of such artists and crit-
ics was no more than “the fruit of a conservative, formalist ideology of a return to
the order filtered by a localist, aestheticising inheritance.”11 The purpose of his own
exhibition was to show how at least two periods in the recent history of Spanish art
had avoided the uncritical enthusiasm of the 1980s. The first period (1972–1979) had
“escaped the pure and tedious reiteration of the formula in force internationally.”12 It
did so at events such as the Pamplona Encounters of 1972 and the series New Artistic
Behaviours organised by Simón Marchán Fiz in 1974 besides works by Eva Lootz,
Adolfo Schlosser, and Nacho Criado. The second period, the one ‘after’ the enthu-
siasm (1987–1992), was one of “an attitude of self-­questioning of the very space of
the event.”13 Citing works by Pepe Espaliú, Federico Guzmán, Pedro G. Romero, and
Rogelio López Cuenca, Brea writes:

Set the date around 1987–92, for example, and situate yourself in the slow emer-
gence of a group of new reflexive activities which could equally refer to a certain
neoconceptual field, always provided this does not include any kind of narrow
stylistic academicism, but instead basically an attitude of self-­questioning of the
very space of the event: the recognition of a condition of confinement in a com-
plex stage of the representation space, in which all strategy development should
contemplate the construction of a reflexive tension capable of offering a direction
of resistance to the pure systematic efficiency of already established enunciative
resources.14

These artistic practices Brea is invoking before and after the 1980s were not sup-
posed to be part of recent history.15 There are enough reasons for this and so many
other exclusions.16 Among them is the tendency of some of these practices to avoid
the institutional framework that legitimised art during that period; their mass media
influenced strategies that made them interact with a public that was not always the
narrow and elitist one of the art world and their frequent alignment with social strug-
gles that seemed to dissolve art into everyday life and politics. On the other hand,
the narratives that were supposed to give an account of them were either marked by
a conceptual blindness from historians and critics or by overtly narrow stances that
despised them in favour of more reassuring media such as painting in a supposedly
nascent art market. As a general background for this notorious conservativeness, it
should be noted that there was a growing perception after Franco’s death in 1975
that culture was just official culture—the one sanctioned and promoted by public and
private formal institutions—and, as a consequence of this idea, that culture was the
location of consensus, not of conflict or disagreement in the newly reinstated demo-
cratic regime.17
The second curatorial attempt at presenting dissident art in Spain worth mention-
ing was the 1991 exhibition El sueño imperativo (The Imperative Dream), organised
at Círculo de Bellas Artes in Madrid and curated by Mar Villaespesa. Although it
presented works by Francesc Torres, Pedro G. Romero, and Rogelio López Cuenca
alongside projects by Krzysztof Wodiczko, Nancy Spero, and Chris Burden, among

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254 Alberto López Cuenca
others, it did not intend to be a review of recent political art in Spain. Rather, it was an
attempt to locate some contemporary Spanish artists within an international frame-
work so as to prove their actual capacity to intervene in a broader social context. This
is clearly revealed in most of the texts included in the catalogue—especially in those
by Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, José María Parreño, and África Vidal. These texts
provided historical and wide ranging definitions of ‘critical art’ within which certain
contemporary Spanish art could be reckoned. The featured projects were site-­specific
interventions either on the Círculo de Bellas Artes’ building or directly on the streets
of Madrid. The idea of art as a vehicle for social change was supposed to be shared
by all the artists working in The Imperative Dream. For curator Mar Villaespesa this
meant that the exhibition embodied a consciousness of the shortcomings of cultural
practices in Spain as well as the urge to act politically:

However, the precarious cultural panorama in our country during this century,
due to the reasons we pointed out earlier, has robbed Spanish artists of the oppor-
tunity to contemplate art that goes beyond the limits of art as objects. They
have not had the possibility of developing their work in a variety of fronts or of
expanding their interaction with society.18

After mentioning some exceptions such as Equipo Crónica’s work of the 1960s and
that of “a group of young Catalan conceptual artists” (i.e. Grup de Treball), Villaes-
pesa concludes that “[n]one of these phenomena has been debated or analysed criti-
cally, nor has the role of the artist in our society been discussed.”19 At least part of the
critical reception of the exhibition agreed on its relevance. Esteban Pujals considered
that the texts included in the catalogue put forward an “extraordinarily honest self-­
criticism” when illuminating the problems of today’s art, namely, “[h]ow can critical
art be sponsored by the same structures against wich it is adressed?”20 For Pujals this
awareness makes it neccesary “to refer to El sueño imperativo as an event literally
unprecedented in the artistic history of our country.”21
Although these exhibitions introduced conflicting perspectives from that of the
mainstream narrative of Spanish contemporary art of the 1980s, their influence was
limited.22 They actually provided institutional spots for emerging and dissenting prac-
tices that reclaimed a conceptual and political twist for contemporary art that would
remain visible up until today. However, it can hardly be said that they managed to
articulate any lasting narrative of contemporary art in Spain. With their proposals
they were rejecting widespread views at the time, yet conventional wisdom was not
seriously challenged.

The Paved Path Into Desacuerdos


In order to construct and disseminate a successful dissident narrative a different set of
practices beyond that of the exhibition space and its catalogues had to be developed.
It was precisely the question of the institution’s role in this operation that was at the
forefront of Desacuerdos since its inception in 2003. It undertook both the task of
elaborating a new narrative and of reconfiguring the practices that would produce
and spread it. Desacuerdos was meant to provide a conceptual grid that organised
contemporary Spanish art around the idea of enacting a tension within the institu-
tional environment in order to overflow such an environment and reach a broader

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Narrating Dissident Art in Spain 255
social arena. As one of the actors in this complex network, Santi Eraso has noted
Desacuerdos was to be seen as an opportunity to modify anachronistic organisational
models in the artistic field that relied on limited notions of exhibition, curator, and
workshop.23 “Desacuerdos cannot just be a picture of the situation; it cannot just AuQ27
work to confirm a certain reality. Quite the opposite, it has to be useful in transform-
ing the reality in which we act.”24 The artistic practices reviewed were as dissident as
the very demand Desacuerdos posed to the conventional wisdom and, specially, the
way it had been established.
Desacuerdos was an interinstitutional research project featuring exhibitions,
seminars, publications, and a web-­based archive seeking to explore the connections
between artistic practices and the public sphere since the late 1960s. It was a col-
laboration between the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, Arteleku in San
Sebastián, and the arteypensamiento (artandthinking) program at the Universidad
Internacional de Andalucía in Sevilla. For the exhibitions and the public programme
of seminars and conferences that would follow in 2005 they were joined by the Cen-
tro José Guerrero in Granada. A network of institutions was then temporarily set up
to put Desacuerdos in motion.25
The project was not, however, led by either a curator or a precise academic research
group. Given the heterogenous realm of practices that were to be mapped—v. g. visual
poetry, activism, and the rise of the creative city—it required an unusual strategy.26 As
the introduction to Desacuerdos states: AuQ28

In this respect, we believed it was fundamental to develop an investigation process


with a decentralised structure and a network of collaborating cultural institutions
of various kinds developing projects which went beyond the institutional limits,
thus enabling other critical sectors of culture to operate without being subsumed
or conditioned.27

That decentralised structure was manifest, first of all, in the interinstitutional coordi-
nation and sponsorship of the research project. It is worth noting the peripheral status
of these three institutions with respect to the mainstream discourse and institutional
framework of Spanish contemporary art and the markedly different cultural settings
of each one of them: Andalucía, Catalunya, and Euskadi.28 Besides, a number of up to
38 independent and academic researchers, activists, and artists were involved cover-
ing an extremely wide range of topics. At the centre was 1969-­. . . Algunas hipótesis
de ruptura para una historia política del arte en el estado español (1969-­. . . . A few
disruptive hypotheses for a political history of art in Spain), a collective research proj-
ect that, for some time then, artist and activist Marcelo Expósito had been promoting.
It was around it that Desacuerdos would originate—yet considerably expanding its
original scope.29
The structure of Desacuerdos was so defined around three main axes. The already
mentioned 1969-­. . . Algunas hipótesis de ruptura para una historia política del arte
en el estado español was coordinated by Marcelo Expósito and constituted by three
main areas: “Prácticas colectivas” (“Collective practices”); “Globalización desde
abajo” (“Globalisation from below”); and “Feminismos” (“Feminisms”). Work in
each of these three areas were developed by artists, researchers, and activists such as
Paloma Blanco, Carmen Navarrete, María Ruido, Fefa Vila, and Montse Romaní,
among many others. The second axis was Líneas de fuerza (Force Lines)30 that was

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256 Alberto López Cuenca
divided in three main topics: “Banalización” (“Trivialisation”), that focused on the
late 1970s and early 1980s cultural scene and La movida in Madrid (developed by
Teresa Vilarós, Cristina Moreiras, and Juan Pablo Wert); “Mercantilización” (“Com-
modification”), which took as its main concern the link between art and economy
in the 1980s (coordinated by Alberto López Cuenca); and “Espectacularización”
(“Spectacularisation”), which looked into the multimedia turn in art of the 1990s
(supervised by Gabriel Villota). The third axis was Casos de estudio (Case studies),31
and it called attention to specific events and strategies that had configured the artis-
tic scene in Spain since the 1970s up to 2004 that were considered not to have been
properly analysed. Some of the topics were cultural policy (taken up by Jorge Luis
Marzo and Amparo Lozano), the Pamplona Encounters of 1972 (by José Díaz Cuyás
and Carmen Pardo), the digital platform ALEPH as a space for alternative cultural
action (by Jesús Carrillo), Spanish visual poetry (by Esteban Pujals), and the branding
of cities such as Barcelona (by Mari Paz Balibrea).
The results of this complex research network were translated into different media:
two exhibitions bearing the name of the project gave a central role to documenta-
tion,32 public discussions and conferences,33 a printed journal,34 and a web page35
that made most of the research and documents available. Given its focus and reach
Desacuerdos not only required a plural research strategy, but it also needed a way of
making those different ways of doing research heterogeneously manifest.
As an implication of the ‘decentredness’ of the research process and the ways to
make it visible, the subjects of study were supposed to have a saying in that very
process—their voices had not only to be recorded but had to transform the very con-
ditions of the conversation. Desacuerdos aimed to tell a story that included the con-
tradictions and antagonisms inherent in the practices being considered. This was a
challenge the interinstitutional network had difficulties to deal with. It specially tested
the capacities of the institutions involved to translate the singularities of each research
into different media. As Jota Gracián wrote: “One of the difficulties is precisely that
of representing something that has been born from a vocation of irrepresentability,
from the will of breaking up from the given conditions.”36 Disputes arose among
researchers and artists and between them and the way their works were presented by
the institutions. Notoriously conflictive was the way the exhibition at MACBA dealt
with visual poetry and feminist strategies.37 Some of the researchers eventually quitted
the project and artists removed works from the exhibition.38 Criticisms were raised
because of the way works were displayed and fetishised.39 This was something that
the Desacuerdos’ “group of coordinators” could not but expect because there was a
previously paved path into these disagreements.
If Manuel Borja-­Villel reckons producing a new narrative as a struggle for hege-
mony then the institution is its battlefield.40 This bellicose allegory certainly applies
to the way Desacuerdos unfolded not only in its relation to the dominant history of
contemporary Spanish art at the time but within its own development. However, that
experience of artistic practice as a space of social conflict was not new. Not at least
for some of those directly involved in the production of that “counter-­hegemonic his-
toriography” Desacuerdos was seeking to promote.
Jorge Ribalta, who became director of Public Programs at MACBA since the arrival
of Borja-­Villel, was with him and Marcelo Expósito behind a series of initiatives
designed to make the museum a conflictive space for debate. “Our purpose,” Rib-
alta wrote, “is pushing the limits and contradictions of the institutional framework.

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Narrating Dissident Art in Spain 257
A museum is nothing other than what you do with it, the forms in which people appro-
priate it. This is our contribution to a radically political redefinition of artistic rela-
tionality.”41 They pushed the limits of the institutional framework of MACBA at least
through three projects that preceded Desacuerdos and made clear that enacting a new
narrative of Spanish contemporary art was an issue that reached far beyond historiog-
raphy, that is, it meant a local political intervention. The first one was the workshop
De la acción directa como una de las bellas artes (Direct Action as One of the Fine
Arts) in the Fall of 2000, an attempt to get together artistic collectives and local social
movements. The workshop invited collectives from around the world (French group
Ne pas plier devoted to education and popular struggles, the network of anti-­racist
Kein Mensch ist illegal from Germany, UK-­based media and activist group Reclaim
the Streets, the anti-­consumerist collective RTMark from the USA, and alternative
media Indymedia) with the purpose of connecting them with groups of activists and
artists in Barcelona dealing with issues such as precarious labour, migration, gentri-
fication, and direct political action. The goal was to “start certain kind of processes
or an articulation of local political struggles with artistic methods.”42 This workshop
was coordinated by Spanish art and activist group La Fiambrera Obrera.
La Fiambrera Obrera organised a more ambitious program at MACBA that
sprouted from this workshop a year later, Las agencias (Agencies). Ribalta recounts:

We had been dealing with this notion of “agency” in the museum for a while. It
has two meanings for us. One is that of empowerment, of giving agency to the
publics according to the idea of the plurality of productive forms of appropria-
tion of the museum I described before. And the other meaning is that of a sort
of micro-­institution, a kind of mediation organism between the museum and the
publics.
In order to understand the impact of Las Agencias it is important to keep in
mind the context in Barcelona in the months prior to the World Bank meeting,
scheduled for June 2001, but finally cancelled because the organizers feared the
possible violence it could generate in the city. [. . .] In Barcelona this moment was
the strongest one for what we call the anti-­globalization movement. A counter-­
campaign was organized in Barcelona, and Las Agencias played a central role in
it in terms of creating strategies of visibility, which transformed the traditional
methods in anti-­capitalist movements.43

Needless to say that Agencies was not just another workshop about art and activism.
It was the direct intervention of a museum to make connections between art and activ-
ism happen in a specific place an time.44 As the then director of MACBA, Borja-­Villel,
explains:

We agreed that its [Agencies’] working was autonomous, the management of the
Museum would not interfere in what was happening there, although obviously
the idea was to have a shared and continuous monitoring. The point was precisely
to experiment in practice how to build this kind of spaces of agency between the
institution and civil society.45

At the same time that Agencies was in process, the museum opened a ‘traditional’
exhibition that surveyed the relationships between art and political activism since the

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258 Alberto López Cuenca
1960s. Antagonismos. Casos de estudio (Antagonisms. Case studies) presented works
by Spanish and international artists such as Harun Farocki, Guerrilla Girls, Grup de
Treball, Hans Haacke, Rogelio López Cuenca, Gordon Matta-­Clark, Antoni Munta-
das, Lygia Pape, and Pedro G. Romero. The thesis was simple and clear: art can also
be a tool for social intervention. As the introductory text to the exhibition noted:

At a time when museums had lost much of their traditional social credibility as
spaces that bring together and legitimate the transformative power of art, Antag-
onisms explored concepts such as the occupation of the streets as a theatre for
spontaneous activities, art as service, fiction and the construction of historical
memory, the post-­functional object, activism and collaboration, the questioning
of the concept of authorship, alternative exhibition models, and the function of
artistic practice in the ideological domain.46

In different ways, these three projects marked how Desacuerdos would come into
existence and evolve. However, they need to be located within a larger context beyond
that of the Spanish artistic scene for its motivations to be grasped.

Framing Desacuerdos
It is important to frame these three projects organised by MACBA in at least four
moments that notably influenced the 1990s artistic scene that paved the way for the
unfolding of Desacuerdos. The first one was the impact of documenta X, which cer-
tainly revived the interest in political art worldwide. This exhibition held at Kassel in
1997 was curated by Catherine David. In the introduction of the exhibition’s guide,
David reclaimed the urgency and political import of contemporary art:

It may seem paradoxical or deliberately outrageous to envision a critical con-


frontation with the present in the framework of an institution that over the past
twenty years has become a Mecca for tourism and cultural consumption. Yet the
pressing issues of today make it equally presumptuous to abandon all ethical and
political demands. [. . .]
Overcoming the obstacle means seeking out the current manifestations and
underlying conditions of a critical art which does not fall into a precut academic
mold or let itself be summed up in a facile label. Such a project cannot ignore the
upheavals that have occurred both in documenta’s institutional and geopolitical
situation since the inaugural exhibition in 1955 and in the recent developments of
aesthetic forms and practices. Nor can it shirk the necessary ruptures and changes
in the structure of the event itself.47

The success of David’s project was notable for an endeavour that concerned itself with
the relationship between contemporary art and politics.48 The influence of documenta X
on Antagonisms and Desacuerdos is notorious. Actually, it is quite surprising that the
first issue of the journal Desacuerdos, which was entirely devoted to introducing its
“counter hegemonic historiography” of Spanish contemporary art, included an inter-
view with her, who was not involved in the project.49
The second moment that frames the impetus of those three projects promoted by
MACBA that notably influenced Desacuerdos was the antiglobalisation movement

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Narrating Dissident Art in Spain 259
that emerged during the 1990s. Since the insurgency of the EZLN in Chiapas in 1994,
the possibility of a global rebellion against neoliberalism started to take shape. The
surge of antiglobalisation demonstrations that took place in Madrid in 1994 against
the meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, in Seattle for
the World Trade Organisation’s meeting in 1999, in Prague in 2000, and Genoa in
2001 and the origins of the World Social Forum in its first meeting in 2001 in Porto
Alegre all inform the dissident turn in Spanish contemporary art historiography. Both
Ribalta and Expósito agree to locate all three projects as strategies to review and
make available artistic tools for social activism against globalisation and neoliberal
policies.50 In the 1990s several collectives that mixed artistic strategies and social and
media activism appeared, most notably, Preiswert Arbeitskollegen, La Fiambrera
Obrera, SEAC (Selección de Euskadi de Arte de Concepto), El Grupo Surrealista de
Madrid, Galería de arte contestatario, etc.51 Questioning its own institutional perspec-
tive, MACBA joined this surge in highly politicised artistic practices.
The third moment is the rising influence of Postmarxism and the revival of Italian
operaismo. Paradoxically, the 1990s also saw the birth and popularisation of the
discourse of creative industries as a new twist in the cultural logic of neoliberalism
that basically resorted to art as an economic expedient.52 In order to understand and
contest the expanded social role of culture in its new neoliberal appropriation, there
was a turn to the Postmarxist theory of Chantal Mouffe and Ernesto Laclau and to
the works of thinkers such as Paolo Virno, Toni Negri, and Franco ‘Bifo’ Berardi.53
Many of those who joined Desacuerdos read, discussed, or translated such works
into the artistic field and back into social activism. In a 1999 MACBA seminar on
Globalización y diferenciación cultural (Globalisation and cultural differentiation),
Mouffe delivered a speech entitled “For a democratic identity politics” that would
later be used as a text for Antagonisms, a concept that was obviously borrowed from
Mouffe’s work.54
Both projects, Antagonisms and Desacuerdos—the latter taking its name from Ran-
cière’s Disagreement: Politics and Philosophy—are imbued by a conceptual apparatus
derived from the local reception of Postmarxism. However, this connection between
radical political philosophy and contemporary art was not something just happen-
ing at MACBA. An important initiative in this sense was Universidad Nómada (The
Nomadic University) that since 2000 organised seminars, workshops, and books
presentations on these and related topics. In 2001 was published what could be
considered a text book for art and activism in Spain: Modos de hacer. Arte crítico,
esfera pública y acción directa (Ways of doing. Critical art, public sphere and direct
action).55 The profiles of the authors included in this compilation reveal its ambition:
Lucy Lippard, Douglas Crimp, Michel de Certeau, Brian Holmes, Reclaim the streets,
Ne pas plier, and La Fiambrera Obrera, among others. Another long term publishing
initiative seeking to take radical political thought into the analysis of contemporary
art began in 2002 when Darío Corbeira, Gabriel Villota, and Marcelo Expósito edited
the first issue of the journal Brumaria. Prácticas artísticas, estéticas y políticas (Bru-
maria. Artistic, Aesthetical and Political Practices), the stated purpose of which was
“to contribute to the restitution and strengthening of the links between artistic and
cultural practices and social and political practices that around us promote the con-
stitution of spaces of critical rationality, autonomy, and radical democracy.”56 Texts
by Maurizio Lazzarato, Gerald Raunig, Brian Holmes, Ana Longoni, Franco ‘Bifo’
Berardi, George Yúdice, and James Petras among so many others have been published

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260 Alberto López Cuenca
dealing with topics such as immaterial labour, radical political imagination, art and
revolution, or art and the Spanish transition to democracy. As of 2018, this publishing
project still carries on.
Finally, it is worth mentioning the role of Traficantes de sueños—a “multifarious
project” started in the mid 1990s—devoted to publishing, debates, and social activism
in the fields of ecology, feminism, and antiglobalisation. They have been of impor-
tance in the circulation of the works of authors such as Paolo Virno, Maurizio Laz-
zarato, Silvia Federici, Toni Negri, and Franco ‘Bifo’ Berardi, all of which besides
a now quite large catalogue of contemporary thinkers are available on line with a
Creative Commons License. The fourth and last moment that helps in framing the
three projects mentioned earlier is what has been called ‘new institutionalism.’ This
refers to the process of experimenting with the limits of artistic institutions by opening
them to civil society and its conflict.57 This was not just the case of MACBA but was
something that was happening internationally. Lucie Kolb and Gabriel Fluckiger men-
tion the process at MACBA next to the work of directors and curators Maria Lind,
Charles Esche, and Jonas Ekeberg and institutions such as the Rooseum in Malmö,
Garanti Contemporary Art Centre in Istanbul, the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, and the
Bergen Kunsthal. As such,

[t]he term new institutionalism describes a series of curatorial, art educational


as well as administrative practices that from the mid 1990s to the early 2000s
endeavored to reorganise the structures of mostly medium-­sized, publicly funded
contemporary art institutions, and to define alternatives forms of institutional
activity. At least on a discursive level, there occurred a shift away from the insti-
tutional framing of an art object as practiced since the 1920s with elements such
as the white cube, top-­down organization and insider audiences.58

Valentín Roma has called attention to this new institutionalism’s turn as a condi-
tion of possibility for the enactment of Desacuerdos.59 It was not just the artist who
was expected to be dissident but institutions themselves. The exhibitions that were
organised were far more than a display of critical works of art; they had to be sites of
resistance against the rationalities of contemporary art history. “This was something
that understandably placed the three institutions [MACBA, UNIA arteypensamiento
program, and Arteleku] on the fringes and in clear opposition to the predominant
trends of the time.”60 Borja-­Villel’s position about this point is neat: “What a public
museum has to do is to put itself at the service of the real complexity of society, help
to radicalise democracy through culture.”61

Is There a Future for Disagreement?


In a 2007 article by a key figure in the trend to institutionalise criticism, Nina Mönt-
mann expressed a gloomy concern regarding the future of this approach: “things have
changed dramatically.”62 And Roma seems to agree with her:

Within the current Spanish context—a context characterised by the self-­absorption


of most institutions, almost exclusively concerned with their own financial prob-
lems and conditions of survival—there is a risk that the critical narratives put
forward by ‘Desacuerdos’ might become only a pause, a hiatus in the articulation

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Narrating Dissident Art in Spain 261
of a critical interaction between museums and antagonistic practices, or perhaps
even a hiatus absorbed as part of hegemonic institutional narratives.63

Things have certainly changed since Desacuerdos started in 2003. Most notoriously
a “financial crisis” has provoked a wave of cuts in public spending that have severely
hit cultural institutions. In Spain, many of them have been emptied of any content
or public mission and have been reduced to mere tourist attractions.64 On the other
hand, since 2011 there has been a tide of civil disobedience and activism around the
15M movement that has led to the appearance of a promising political organisation
rooted in civil society—Podemos—that seeks to challenge the political order settled in
Spain since Franco’s death in 1975. In this situation, what sort of new narrative would
be worth devising and how should it be done?
Desacuerdos was conceived to critically intervene in the present through a plural
research on dissident contemporary art in Spain. The global and local political cir-
cumstances in which institutions sponsoring the project were embedded were also
at stake. As has already been noted, the artistic practices reviewed were dissident as
much as the very demand Desacuerdos posed to the conventional wisdom regarding
how to narrate art at the time. That conventional wisdom has certainly changed. And
Desacuerdos has played a part in this happening.65 Why and how it managed a change
to come about in the narrative of Spanish contemporary art have been expounded
earlier. There are, however, some lessons for the present that can be drawn from the
construction of Desacuerdos’ counter hegemonic narrative.
One of the key aspects of the working of Desacuerdos certainly was its decen-
tred research groups. This is something that has been continued in a larger scale
in MNCARS, where Borja-­Villel moved in 2008, and UNIA arteypensamiento and
seems to be having some interesting outcomes, although they are quite often just com-
fortably located within the artistic institutions, lacking a clear outreach. It is worth
mentioning the creation of the “Red Conceptualismos del Sur” (Southern Conceptu-
alisms Network) in 2007. This is an international group made up by researchers from
Latin America—Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, México, Perú, etc.—devoted to
critically map and analyse practices related to conceptual art practices and social
activism in the region. Among its results, there are exhibitions, conferences, and pub-
lications.66 In 2009, “L’Internationale,” a new interinstitutional network, was created
as “a space for art within a non-­hierarchical and decentralised internationalism, based
on the value of difference and horizontal exchange among a constellation of cultural
agents, locally rooted and globally connected.”67 This network includes the Moderna
galerija in Ljubljana, SALT in Istanbul, MNCARS in Madrid, MACBA in Barcelona,
the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, and the Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst in Ant-
werp (MHKA). Among their activities, there are exhibitions, seminars, and a digital
database.68 What it is not always clear is how this network relates to larger groups of
civil society and in what terms.
At first glance disputes and controversies arising within Desacuerdos can be seen
as a failure—history, after all, is still supposed to provide us with sound and unques-
tionable stories. However, the debates and disagreements regarding the process and
narrative Desacuerdos enacted are probably its biggest success. It inaugurated a space
for discussion on contemporary Spanish art and its political impulses that did not
previously exist. This has no doubt shaken the mainstream narrative and made sense
of other sorts of artistic practices. Desacuerdos has certainly had a discernible impact

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262 Alberto López Cuenca
on curatorial discourses. However, one of its weaker points has precisely been the
translation of the research project into exhibitions. A surprisingly fetishistic approach
to works and also the inability to properly put them into context have sometimes
resulted in a trivialisation of many practices, as a 2016 solo exhibition about collec-
tive Agustín Parejo School (APS) dishearteningly proved.69 APS featured centrally in
the 1980s narrative of Antagonisms and Desacuerdos for its public performances,
graffiti, and media interventions. After the visibility gained for being included in those
exhibitions, the Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo in Sevilla organised a show
with more than a hundred items—collages, video, installations, paintings, etc. The
display basically focused on objects without any discernible discourse articulating
them. There was a scarce and vague introduction to the show, absolutely no debate or
public presentation to discuss what all that was about, nor even a publication. Prob-
ably none of these could have helped much since the triumphalist curatorial approach
to APS was summarised as “el gusto es nuestro” (that can be translated as both “taste
belongs to us” and also “we are pleased”),70 meaning that it was victory time for APS
since its once dissident works were now sanctioned by a formal artistic institution.
This is obviously an unwanted side effect of Desacuerdos, which has made it possible
to expand some institutions’ narrative to include dissident art without the slightest
consideration of its social role being raised.
Finally, a quite significant implication of Desacuerdos has been to introduce topics
for a political approach to contemporary art history in Spain that were previously
inaccessible for research and educative programs at universities.71 The contents and
strategies of Desacuerdos have been closely related to the development of the Pro-
grama de Estudios Independientes (Program of Independent Studies) at MACBA
since 2006 and the interinstitutional Master Program on Contemporary Art and
Visual Culture at MNCARS since 2010.72 Researchers, courses, and dissertations
related to the topics dealt with by Desacuerdos have become more frequent for
the last few years in these academic programs. In this sense, despite the fact that
Desacuerdos originated outside the university, there certainly has been a Desacu-
erdos‘ effect in recent academic historiography. Yet, it can hardly be said that its
reception has meant a relevant challenge to the way research is generally undertaken
in the academia. There has been no new institutionalism’s turn happening at the
university because of the topics put on the table by Desacuerdos. Actually, a proper
scrutiny of Desacuerdos’ impact in scholarly publications is still to be developed. A
notoriously weak point in this scholarly literature is the lack of in depth research
on Desacuerdos produced by academics unrelated to it.73 Nevertheless a monu-
mental recent book on Spanish art between 1939 and 2015 by Patricia Mayayo
and Jorge Luis Marzo presents itself as a “deepening” in the work developed by
Desacuerdos.74
One can make sense of Desacuerdos only if it is properly located within the political
and cultural struggles griping contemporary art institutions and its discourses in Spain
and globally at the time. Doing this has been the point of this chapter. Desacuerdos
certainly challenged the conventional wisdom regarding the history of contemporary
Spanish art. And more significantly, it showed that any other history worth the name
should be narrated by means of a pluralistic and antagonistic undertaking. All things
considered, the most lasting lesson from Desacuerdos for Spanish art historiography
may have been proving in practice that producing any counter-­narrative also requires
devising new institutional forms.75

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Narrating Dissident Art in Spain 263
Notes
1. Juan Manuel Bonet, “El nuevo realismo social,” CYAN. Revista internacional de arte con-
temporáneo, no. 20 (1991): 9. Unless otherwise noted, all translations from Spanish are
made by the author.
2. Iker Seisdedos, “El Reina Sofía acaba con el arte del siglo XX,” El País, 13 October 2013.
3. Desacuerdos was sponsored by Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, Arteleku-­
Diputación foral de Gipuzkoa and the arteypensamiento programme at the Universidad
Internacional de Andalucía from 2003 to 2005, while the exhibition and the public pro-
gramme of seminars and conferences were organised by these institutions and Centro José
Guerrero. For more details of the project and access to some resources see http://ayp.
unia.es/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=23&Itemid=141&Itemid=141
[Accessed: 07/07/2018].
4. Iñaki Estella has convincingly pictured the struggle between the academia and the museum
in defining the historiography of contemporary Spanish art. For him, the museum took
the lead in that conflict in the 1980s. His argument figures out the role of Desacuerdos
in that historiographic struggle and concludes that “the historiographic reconstruction
[of Desacuerdos’] did not speak to the academia” but was seeking to provoke a turn in
the institutional landscape by means of a parallel academic research [investigación para-­
académica]. “Dispositivos historiográficos entre la universidad y el museo,” in La Historia
del Arte en España. Devenir, discursos y propuestas, ed. Álvaro Molina (Madrid: Ediciones
Polifemo/UAM, 2016), 536–537.
5. Marcelo Expósito, Entrevista con Manuel Borja-­Villel (Madrid: Turpial, 2015), 115.
6. Expósito, Entrevista con Manuel Borja-­Villel, 103.
7. It is important to note that the hegemonic stance was not epitomised by one person’s or
institution’s historiographic discourse but by a “conventional wisdom.” That conventional
wisdom in the 1980s was characterised by a certain vocabulary (“painting,” “solo show,”
“artist,” “art gallery,” “success,” “young,” “sales”) that was common currency for spheres
that ranged from Art History to art criticism and art fairs and the media. Noemí de Haro
García has suggestively described how by the early 1980s other possible vocabularies and
the struggle between them were being put aside in a “general amnesty in Art History.”
Noemí de Haro García, “La historia del arte español de la transición: consecuencias políti-
cas de una representación,” in Arte y transición, ed. Juan Albarrán (Madrid: Brumaria,
2012), 245. The hegemonic stance that resulted from this amnesty is manifest in books
such as Francisco Calvo Serraller, España, medio siglo de arte de vanguardia, 1939–1985
(Madrid: Santillana, 1985). As well as in exhibitions, especially those organised by the
Centro Nacional de Exposiones (National Centre of Exhibitions) under the management of
Carmen Giménez devoted to Spanish painters such as Miquel Barceló (1985), José María
Sicilia (1988) and Ferrán García Sevilla (1989). Also the Programa Español de Acción
Cultural en el Exterior (Spanish Program of Foreign Cultural Action) organised several
exhibitions to promote what was considered to be the most representative of contemporary
Spanish art, basically painting and sculpture, such as Art Espagnol Actuel (Current Spanish
Art) that was shown in France in 1984 or Spanisches Kaleidoskop (Spanish Kaleidoscope)
that went to Germany in 1984, among others. For a general picture of the period see Anna
María Guasch, “El arte español en la era del entusiasmo,” in Arte último del siglo XX. Del
posminimalismo a lo multicultural (Madrid: Alianza forma, 2000), 297–340. In my view, a
powerful aspect in the construction of this conventional wisdom was the hugely promoted
Feria de Arte Contemporáneo (ARCO) in the massmedia. For this, see Alberto López
Cuenca, “ARCO en la distancia: posfordismo, internacionalismo e imaginario mediático,”
in Panorama. New Economy, edited Mira Bernabeú (Madrid: Universidad Complutense
de Madrid, 2011). It is worth mentioning that Juan Albarrán has called attention to the
process of oblivion of certain practices related to conceptual art and the rise of a trium-
phant and depoliticised narrative related to the boom of painting in the 1980s in Juan
Albarrán, “Del ‘desarrollismo’ al ‘entusiasmo’: notas sobre el arte español en tiempos de
transición,” Foro de Educación, no. 10 (2008): 167–184. For Albarrán, Juan Manuel
Bonet was responsible for burying the memory of conceptualist strategies from the 1970s:
“Bonet purposely distorted, trivialised and simplified the true aesthetic, political and social

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264 Alberto López Cuenca
goals of conceptual art . . . ” (Albarrán, “Del ‘desarrollismo’ al ‘entusiasmo’,” 175). For a
consideration of how this conventional wisdom was still preponderant when Desacuerdos
was under way see Valentín Roma, “A Critical Approach to the Project Desacuerdos,”
Afterall: A Journal of Art, Context and Enquiry, no. 33 (2013): 122–126.
8. There has obviously been other exhibitions and publications that in one way or another
have surveyed artistic practices that had been either out of the mainstream or overtly politi-
cal. Since Fuera de formato that took place at the Centro cultural de la Villa de Madrid in
1983 and was curated by Concha Jerez, Teresa Camps and Nacho Criado devoted to con-
ceptual art from the 1970s to Art concepte: la década de los setenta en Cataluña, curated
by Glòria Picazo at Galería Alfonso Alcolea in 1990; Cambio de sentido, curated by Dioni-
sio Cañas in the village of Cinco Casas, Ciudad Real, in 1991; Idees i actituds. En torn de
l’art conceptual a Catalunya, 1964–1980, Centro de Arte Santa Mónica, 1992, curated by
Pilar Parcerisas; Los 90: cambio de marcha en el arte español, curated by José Luis Brea at
Galería Juana Mordó, Madrid, in 1993.
9. Brea would devote other exhibitions to review or contextualise contemporary Spanish art
beyond the pictorial horizon that dominated the 1980s: Los últimos días (Salas del Arenal,
1992), Iluminaciones profanas (Arteleku, 1993), Anys 90. Distància zero (Centro de arte
Santa Mónica, 1994) and El punto ciego. Arte español de los años 90 (Kunstraum Inns-
bruck, 1999). However, Before and after the Enthusiasm was the only exhibition inspired
by a more ambitious historical scope.
10. José Luis Brea, “The Walls of My Homeland,” in Before and After the Enthusiasm 72 1992
(The Hague: SDU Publishers, 1989), 48.
11. Brea, “The Walls of My Homeland,” 52.
12. Brea, “The Walls of My Homeland,” 49.
13. Brea, “The Walls of My Homeland,” 52.
14. Brea, “The Walls of My Homeland,” 52.
15. Patricia Mayayo and Jorge Luis Marzo suggest that Brea does not really put forward a
historiographic argument in this exhibition since the works chosen seem to be mentioned
just to “‘illustrate a previously elaborated theory.” Patrica Mayayo and Jorge Luis Marzo,
Arte en España (1939–2015). Ideas, prácticas, políticas (Madrid: Cátedra, 2015), 666.
16. I agree with the arguments Jesús Carrillo puts forward in “Amnesia y Desacuerdos. Notas
acerca de los lugares de la memoria de las prácticas artístico-­críticas del tardofranquismo,”
Arte y políticas de identidad, no. 1 (2009) regarding the reasons for this exclusion and
the different processes initiated to get them back into the centre of Spanish contemporary
Art History. However, departing from Carrillo’s more descriptive perspective, I will con-
centrate on the complex performative dimension and institutional challenges of this his-
toriographic overhaul by Desacuerdos that connects academic, museographic and activist
strategies.
17. For a development of this argument see Teresa M. Vilarós, El mono del desencanto: una
crítica cultural de la transición española (1973–1993) (Madrid: Siglo XXI, 1998); Alberto
López Cuenca, “El traje del emperador. La mercantilización del arte en la España de los
80,” Revista de Occidente, no. 273 (2004): 29–41; Jorge Luis Marzo, “El concepto de
ciudadanía como motor de la política artística española,” last modified 2011, www.soy-
menos.net/ciudadania.pdf [Accessed: 07/07/2018]; Guillem Martínez, “El concepto CT,”
en CT o la Cultura de la Transición (Barcelona: Random House Mondadori, 2012).
18. Mar Villaespesa, “The Imperative Dream,” in El sueño imperativo, trans. Cynthia Migué-
lez (Madrid: Círculo de Bellas Artes, 1991), 112.
19. Villaespesa, “The Imperative Dream,”112.
20. Esteban Pujals, “Marcos, molduras, espejismos,” Subrosa, no. 2 (1991–1992): 68.
21. Pujals, “Marcos, molduras, espejismos,” 68.
22. It is worth noting that the work of Brea and Villaespesa was not deployed just in the gal-
lery space. Both of them (alongside critic and curator Kevin Power) had worked together
as directors of Arena internacional del arte, a short-­lived journal that lasted just the year
1989 during which 5 issues were printed. Arena was a platform for the review of practices
loosely related to conceptual art and a testing ground for a generation of new younger crit-
ics. Revealing of its stance is that in its very first issue from January 1989, works by Eva
Lootz, Agustín Parejo School and Pedro G. Romero were featured.

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Narrating Dissident Art in Spain 265
23. Montse Romaní, “Entrevista con Santiago Eraso.”
24. Romaní, “Entrevista con Santiago Eraso.”
25. The initiative, although institutionally originated in MACBA, gained a stronger and ampler
dimension once the other institutions joint the project—regarding topics, researchers, ven-
ues and economic resources. A very important actor in coordinating, producing and dis-
cussing contents was cultural mediation agency BNV Producciones from Sevilla.
26. There certainly was a group of coordinators but it did not directly engage in research:
Pedro G. Romero from UNIA, Santiago Eraso from Arteleku, Manuel Borja-­Villel from
MACBA and Yolanda Romero from Centro José Guerrero (Expósito, Conversación con
Manuel Borja-­Villel, 268). Their work had more to do with supervising the articulation of
the different lines of research and making sure that it “put into question some of their inner
working structures” (Romaní, “Entrevista a Santi Eraso”). Nonetheless, they did play a very
active role in the selection of works and materials to be included in the exhibitions in 2005.
27. UNIA, “Disagreements,” http://ayp.unia.es/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=503
[Accessed: 07/07/2018].
28. The institutional decentering for an antagonistic project such as this did not seem to hap-
pen by chance: the Spanish government and the regional and local governments in Madrid
had been for years controlled by conservative Partido Popular, a right wing pro-­neoliberal
policies party. As noted earlier, MNCARS, for instance, was directed in the 2000–2004
period by a notoriously conservative figure, Juan Manuel Bonet. Desacuerdos can hardly
not be seen as a challenge to this status quo invigorated from peripheral institutions. As
Eraso has noted, this interinstitutional collaboration had a political motivation: “the cre-
ation of an also different cartography of the [Spanish] State.” Romaní, “Entrevista con
Santi Eraso.”
29. Carrillo, “Amnesia y Desacuerdos,” 17. Pedro G. Romero states that the original project
1969-­. . . was “signed by Marcelo Expósito and Jorge Ribalta.” Jota Gracián, “Archivos,
capítulos, crisis, antagonismos, desacuerdos . . .,” unpublished interview with Pedro G.
Romero.
30. Líneas de fuerza were devoted to “the axial lines relating to trivialisation, commercialisa-
tion and theatricalisation; the descriptors specifying key mechanisms to be able to under-
stand, from within cultural hegemony, its motive powers.” UNIA, “Study Workshop.”
31. Case studies were devoted to “exceptions that mark paradoxes with which to critically
redirect the design of research and draw a map of impelling forces to complete ideological
currents and the instruments of previous fields of work.” UNIA, “Study Workshop.”
32. The exhibitions were held at MACBA from 4th March until 29th May 2005 and at Centro
José Guerrero from 9th March until 29th May 2005.
33. There were two previous general working meetings with many of the researchers in Artel-
eku in October 2003 and at UNIA in December of 2003. The public presentation of
Desacuerdos was made at MACBA with a series of 14 round tables by the general name
of La línea de sombra (The Shadow Line) between October and December 2003. It dealt
with topics such as “Política y cultura en la Transición” (“Politics and culture during
the Transition”), “Caso Guggenheim” (“The Guggenheim Case”) and “El nacimiento de
Arco” (“The Birth of Arco”). Public courses and conferences were organised that spanned
some of the research areas revised: “Las nuevas relaciones entre arte y economía” (New
Relations betweeen art and the economy), MACBA, February 2005; “Mutaciones del femi-
nismo: genealogías y prácticas artísticas” (Mutations of Feminism: Genealogies and Artis-
tic Practices), Arteleku, April 2005; “Redes: modos de acción y producción en la sociedad
global” (Networks: ways of acting and production in a global society), MACBA, April—
May 2005; “Medios de masas, multitud y prácticas antagónicas” (Mass media, multitude
and antagonistic practices), José Guerrero, April 2005.
34. Eight issues of a journal have been published since 2005 with a Creative Commons
License. The first three of them were devoted to make public the results of the research
axes mentioned above. The following ones were edited on specific topics—alternative cin-
ema, education, popular culture, art criticism—and are fully available on line. See www.
museoreinasofia.es/publicaciones/desacuerdos [Accessed: 07/07/2018].
35. www.desacuerdos.org was made available with plenty of information, video and audio
files and resources that had been used for the research. Quite surprisingly, the URL is

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266 Alberto López Cuenca
not operative as of July 2016. According to Iñaki Estella the web page suffered hack-
ing attacks and eventually was shot down (“Dispositivos historiográficos,” 339, note 33).
Some information is still accessible at the arteypensamiento programme at UNIA’s web
page (http://ayp.unia.es/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=503), MACBA’s
(www.macba.cat/en/desacuerdos) and Centro José Guerrero’s (www.centroguerrero.es/
desacuerdos/) [All accessed: 07/07/2016].
36. Gracián, “Archivos, capítulos, crisis, antagonismos, desacuerdos . . .”
37. One of the researchers on feminisms, artist María Ruido, complained that Desacuerdos
was not up to her expectations and that she found her research on feminism to be just
a complement for the project, especially regarding the exhibition. “Agendas diversas y
colaboraciones complejas: feminismos, representaciones y prácticas políticas durante los
90 (y algunos años más) en el estado español,” workandwords, (2006): 2, 18–19, www.
workandwords.net/uploads/files/post-­Desacuerdos06.pdf— [Accessed: 27/09/2017].
38. Jota Gracián, “Archivos, capítulos, crisis, antagonismos, desacuerdos . . . ”
39. Joan Casellas is too harsh when saying that Desacuerdos as a whole was an “exhibition-
ary absurdity,” provided he does not put forward any sustained argument to back his
assertion. Joan Casellas, “¿Desacuerdos? Sobre arte, política y esfera pública en el estado
español,” El Viejo Topo, no. 21 (2005): 81.
40. “Historiographic narratives, although they are based on facts, work as fictions. The sto-
ries that one builds as historian, with the mediation of institutions, are statements that
have effects on the reality of the present. They also modify the collective perception that
we have of the past. Fictions and discourse not only reflect the power structure but they
constitute the very power one fights for, especially today. We see, for instance, that the
relevance that politics has gained in our society takes the form of a dispute around which
story about the current situation manages to be hegemonic. Expósito, Entrevista con
Manuel Borja-­Villel, 104.
41. Jorge Ribalta, “Mediation and Construction of Publics. The MACBA Experience,” Trans-
versal (2004).
42. Ribalta, “Mediation,” 4.
43. Ribalta, “Mediation,” 5.
44. Jaime Vindel has analysed the overlappings of Las agencias between art and activism in
“Desplazamientos de la crítica: instituciones culturales y movimientos sociales entre finales
de los noventa y la actualidad,” Desacuerdos. Sobre arte, políticas y esfera pública, no. 8
(2014): 290–307.
45. Expósito, Entrevista con Manuel Borja-­Villel, 153. The police investigated the activities of
Las agencias and the director of the Museum was repeatedly contacted by the authorities
to cancel the involvement of MACBA in the project. “I explained to them,” Borja-­Villel
recounts, “that I considered those activities of Las agencias related to the education pro-
gram of MACBA. If you see, leaving aside the issue of the legality or illegality of what Las
agencias were doing, there was in that discussion a conflict about what the functions of a
museum are.” Expósito, Entrevista con Manuel Borja-­Villel, 155. Due to these conflicts
with the police and other disagreements between the museum and some of the collectives
gathered for Agencies the collaboration between them came to an end.
46. MACBA, “Antagonisms. Case studies,” www.macba.cat/en/exhibition-­ antagonisms
[Accessed: 07/07/2016].
47. Catherine David, “Introduction,” www.universes-­in-­universe.de/doc/e_press.htm [Accessed:
07/07/2016].
48. “documenta X was the first megaexhibition that explicitly created a dialogue between
critical theory and desires for artistic social intervention by making possible a constella-
tion of parallel events consisting of lectures, publications and performances exploring and
problematising processes related to economic globalisation and social inequality.” Panos
Kompatsiaris, “Curating Resistances. Crisis and the limits of the political turn in contem-
porary art biennials” (PhD Dissertation, University of Edinburgh, 2015), 2.
49. Jesús Carrillo, “Entrevista. Catherine David,” Desacuerdos. Sobre arte, políticas y esfera
pública, no. 1 (2005). Borja-­Villel notes his closeness to Catherine David’s work: “docu-
menta X proposed both a review of the political history of the 20th Century through
art and a new form to think the relations between culture and politics at the end of the

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Narrating Dissident Art in Spain 267
Century. The beginning of my directorship at MACBA was closely related to all that.”
Expósito, Entrevista con Manuel Borja-­Villel, 114–115.
50. Ribalta, “Mediation and Construction of Publics,” 5; Marcelo Expósito, “Lecciones de
historia. El arte, entre la experimentación institucional y las políticas de movimiento,”
Paper at VII Simposio Internacional de Teoría sobre Arte Contemporáneo, México D.F.,
30 January 2009. Borja-­Villel also agrees on this point (Expósito, Entrevista con Manuel
Borja-­Villel, 163–164).
51. See Paloma Blanco, “Prácticas artísticas colaborativas en la España de los noventa,” Desacu-
erdos. Sobre arte, política y esfera pública en el estado español, no. 2 (2005): 188–205.
52. See George Yúdice, The Expediency of Culture: Uses of Culture in the Global Era (Dur-
ham and London: Duke University Press, 2003).
53. It is not a coincidence the wave of publications that appeared during those years: Mouffe’s
The Return of the Political was published in 1993 (Spanish translation 1999 in Paidós) and
The Democratic Paradox in 2000 (translated into Spanish in 2003 in Gedisa). La mésen-
tente by Jacques Rancière came out in 1995 (in Spanish in 1996 in Nueva Visión) and Le
partage du sensible. Esthétique et politique in 2000 (Spanish translation dates from 2002
in Centro de arte de Salamanca). Negri’s Arte e multitudo is published in 1990 (in Spanish
in 2000 in Trotta) and Michael Hardt and Negri’s Empire was released in 2000 (the Span-
ish edition dates from 2002 in Paidós) as well as Paolo Virno’s Gramática de la multitud
(Grammar of the Multitude) in 2003 (Traficantes de sueños).
54. Expósito, Entrevista Manuel Borja-­Villel, 124. Mouffe, Rancière, Negri, Virno plus a long
list of Postmarxist and “radical left” thinkers were invited at MACBA during Borja-­Villel’s
tenure: Angela Davis, Gayatri C. Spivak, Immanuel Wallerstein, Judith Butler, Naomi
Klein, Brian Holmes, etc.
55. Jesús Carrillo, Jordi Claramonte, Marcelo Expósito and Paloma Blanco, eds., Modos de
hacer. Arte crítico, esfera pública y acción directa (Salamanca: Universidad de Salamanca,
2001). Jordi Claramonte, Paloma Blanco and Marcelo Expósito were in charge of Las
agencias at MACBA in 2000. Blanco, Expósito and Jesús Carrillo were part of the Desacu-
erdo’s team of researchers. According to Carrillo, this book came out as a way to theorise
public art strategies developed against the gentrification process that was taken place in
the area of Lavapiés in Madrid since the late 1990s (Jesús Carrillo, “Lavapiés-­Atocha, arte
público y política municipal,” in Arte en el espacio público: barrios artísticos y revital-
ización urbana, eds. Blanca Fernández and Jesús Pedro Lorente [Zaragoza: Prensas univer-
sitarias de Zaragoza, 2009], 199).
56. Brumaria, “A modo de introducción. Arte, estética y política: un trípode sobre la esfera de
lo real,” Brumaria. Prácticas artísticas, estéticas y políticas, no. 1 (2002): 7.
57. Jorge Ribalta wrote a text which title was quite revealing: “Experimentos para una nueva
institucionalidad” (Experiments for a new institutionality). He described in detail that
all that happened at MACBA between 2000 and 2008 was an institutional experiment of
regeneration. “What has come to be labelled ‘MACBA model’ has constituted a singular
understanding of the museum as a space of debate and conflict, a critical reinterpreta-
tion of the modern tradition that has articulated artistic strategies, social knowledge and
interventions in the social sphere as methods to reinvent the artistic field and provide
it with a new meaning and social legitimacy.” Jorge Ribalta, “Experimentos para una
nueva institucionalidad,” in Objetos relacionales. Colección MACBA 2002–2007 (Bar-
celona: MACBA, 2010), 225. This concern about the crisis and new possibilities of the
Museum was certainly one of Borja-­Villel’s, who in 1995 as director of Fundació Antoni
Tàpies had sponsored the exhibition and seminar Los límites del museo (The limits of the
museum) that dealt with this topic and was curated by John G. Hanhardt and Thomas
Keenan.
58. Lucie Kolb and Gabriel Flückiger, “New Institutionalism Revisited,” OnCurating, no. 21
(2013): 6.
59. Roma, “A Critical Approach to the Project Desacuerdos,” 122.
60. Roma, “A Critical Approach to the Project Desacuerdos,” 123.
61. Expósito, Entrevista a Manuel Borja-­Villel, 133.
62. “[ . . . ] although [new institutionalism has been] successful in terms of opening up to new
local publics and gaining international recognition in the art world, have been cut down to

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268 Alberto López Cuenca
size and things have changed dramatically.” Nina Möntmann, “The Rise and Fall of New
Institutionalism. Perspectives on a Possible Future,” Transversal (2007).
63. Roma, “A Critical Approach to the Project Desacuerdos,” 132.
64. See Alberto López Cuenca and Noemí de Haro García, “Arte contemporáneo, infraestruc-
tura y territorio en el estado de las autonomías,” in Por el Centro Guerrero (2009-­2011).
Política cultural, crisis institucional y compromiso ciudadano, ed. Antonio Collados
(Granada: Ciengramos), 11–18.
65. It is uncertain, however that, as Iñaki Estella asserts, the narrative put forward by Desacu-
erdos has become “hegemonic” (“Dispositivos historiográficos entre la universidad y el
museo,” 518, 522, 537, 546) to the point that it has “toppled” previous discourses on
contemporary art (546). This needs to be convincingly argued showing that there are sub-
stantial researches, dissertations, exhibitions, catalogues, conferences and media represen-
tations that have taken the work done in Desacuerdos as a starting point. In this regard,
the assertion that Desacuerdos’ narrative has become hegemonic still needs to be substan-
tiated. A quite different point is whether the decentered and collective working process
undertaken by Desacuerdos has been influential in the ways art history is produced in
Spain.
66. On the “Red Conceptualismos del Sur” see https://redcsur.net [Accessed: 07/07/2016].
67. About “L’Internationale” on the MNCARS website see www.museoreinasofia.es/en/
linternationale [Accessed: 07/07/2016].
68. About the activities of “L’Internationale” see www.internationaleonline.org [Accessed:
07/07/2016].
69. Agustín Parejo School, Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo, Sevilla, 30 January to 22
May 2016.
70. Jesús Alcaide, “El gusto es nuestro,” Diario Sur, 3 January 2016, 57.
71. “For those of us who studied in the late 1990s, it was impossible to imagine something like
this [the field of research developed in Desacuerdos] before it appeared. It was impossible
because before Desacuerdos Spanish art of the late Franco’s period was in a no man’s land
that very few researchers were reclaiming.” Iñaki Estella, “Dispositivos historiográficos
entre la universidad y el museo,” 511.
72. Máster en Historia del arte contemporáneo y cultura visual, promoted by the Universidad
Complutense, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid and Museo Nacional Centro de Arte
Reina Sofía.
73. The works mentioned here by Jesús Carrillo, Marcelo Expósito, Pedro G. Romero, Valentín
Roma, Iñaki Estella and myself are undertaken by people related in different degrees to
Desacuerdos.
74. After stressing that Desacuerdos had meant a “turning point” in the process of revising
contemporary art history in Spain and that the critical works of young art historians have
been related to it, they state that their “[b]ook aims at better publicising these works [. . .]
and deepening the historical revision undertaken by them,” Patricia Mayayo and Jorge
Luis Marzo, Arte en España (1939–2015). Ideas, prácticas, políticas (Madrid: Cátedra,
2015), 14.
75. This chapter was written within the framework of the research project Long Exposure:
the Narratives of Spanish Contemporary Art for ‘Wide Audiences’ (HAR2015–67059-­P
MINECO, FEDER).

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