Gilbert Fastenaekens, Kisses, winter, 1989-1990
The city seen from the peripheries as a counter-discourse | Activity
Activity
Thursday December 12, 2024
Round table with Josep Lluís Mateo, Manuel Borja-Villel and Joan Roca
Presentation of various photographic projects by those responsible for them. Josep Lluís Mateo will give an introduction to his photographic survey from 1989–1990 for the journal of the Col·legi d’Arquitectes de Catalunya. Manuel Borja-Villel will talk about the exhibition The City of the Peoplestaged at the Fundació Tàpies in 1995–1996. And John Rock will discuss the exhibition Barcelona Seen from the Besòs (2000–2004). Presented and moderated by Jorge Ribalta.
By presenting different photographic projects carried out in Barcelona between 1992 and 2004this round table sets out to trace a route through a particular critical photographic tradition.
In the year 1992 major events took place in several Spanish cities. Barcelona hosted the Olympic Games and Madrid was the European Capital of Culture. In this context of big urban changes accompanied by a whole propaganda structure, some photographic projects set out to portray aspects covered up by the promotional marketingas a kind of off-screen alternative to the idealized representations of both cities. These projects were deliberately peripheral representations, both avoiding the media spotlight and paying attention to the historically marginal neighborhoods and areas in the respective cities. They stressed interpreting the periphery as an advance on the future.
In Barcelona at the time, the architect Josep Lluís Mateo together with several photographers set up a survey for the journal of the Col·legi d’Arquitectes de Catalunya. And in Madrid, Juan Herreros and Iñaki Ábalos conducted another about the outskirts. In the mid-nineties, Manuel Borja-Villelthe recently-appointed director of the Fundació Tàpies in Barcelona, undertook, together with the British artist Craigie Horsfieldanother project featuring a report on the neighborhood movement in Nou Barris which explored the possibility of constructing an image of the city from the point of view of its historic periphery. This approach was continued in the prolonged observation carried out by the Parisian photographer Patrick Faigenbaumtogether with the local historian John Rocaof the transformation of the neighborhoods on the river Besòs affected by the redevelopment associated with the Universal Forum of Cultures 2004.
The exhibition Unknown City Beneath the Mist is part of the tradition established by these projects, which are now historic.
exhibition
From June 21, 2024, to January 12, 2025
Unknown City Beneath the Mist. New Images from Barcelona’s Peripheries
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