Murmurs | Activity | MACBA Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona

The program reflects on the constitutive force of gossip – that seemingly trivial word-of-mouth that weaves together a community, serving as a conduit for shared experiences and cultural preferences. This murmuring is what gives an aura of mystery to anonymous books and manuscripts cast adrift in bottles. It thrives around vanished artists, stolen artworks, unreleased records and censored films. It is the power of stories that outlive us.

The poetics of rumor challenge the mortuary solemnity of the museum, instead evoking the lightness of the unfinished, the undocumented and the unrealized. They open up spaces for imagination and conjecture. Rather than venerating a monolithic past that risks entombing us under its weight, these murmurs invite us to keep the intangible afloat.

Over twelve months, the program will bring together works shaped by rumour. Some of them revisit events that have assumed an almost legendary status within the local art scene, such as the collective rituals staged between 1969 and 1973 by Antoni Miralda, Dorothée Selz, Joan Rabascall, Jaume Xifra and Benet Rossell, or the enigmatic happening – an out-of-tune Bach sonata – conceived by Carles Santos and Pere Portabella during their imprisonment in La Model when it was still a gaol.

Curated by Sable Gavaldon and Alicia Escobio.