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Ireland's political and cultural magazine
50 February 2015
‘My definition of art has always been the
same. It is about freedom of expression,
a new way of communication. It is never
about exhibiting in museums or about
hanging it on the wall. Art should live in
the heart of the people. Ordinary people
should have the same ability to under-
stand art as anybody else. I don’t think
art is elite or mysterious. I don’t think
anyone can separate art from politics.
The intention to separate art from poli-
tics is itself a very political intention’
Ai Weiwei (2011)
S
O does art have the capac-
ity to offer an alternative way
of thinking to the dominant
western social, political and
economic order that is neo-
liberal democracy? The answer to this
question I believe is to be found some-
where between the fields of art and
pol it ic s. The re a re m any t er ms u sed wh ich
encompass the genre of Art activism such
as Critical Art, Socially Engaged Art,
Social Practice Art, Artivism, Political
Art and forms of both Participatory and
Collaborative Art.
Art activism is a form of art that overtly
aspires to effect change in the prevailing
social and political order. For change to
happen it must take place outside of the
existing established order and institu-
tions otherwise any attempt to change
will in itself be appropriated by the estab-
lishment. It takes the form of collective
acts with the public as its medium.
Contemporary art has moved away
from the formalism of the twentieth cen-
tury where real innovative success lay in
the development of a new genre that dis-
placed conventions of tradition.
Contemporary art now looks to dis-
place instead the structures and system
of the society in which it exists, the rules
that determine what is appropriate in the
way that we relate to each other.
Contemporary art activism is accord-
ing to Allan Sekula characterised by the
following features:
1. Ther e i s a c o n ne c t i o n b et w e en r e a l com-
munities and cyber-communities;
2. It is anti-capitalist /anti-neo liberalism
and their intangibilities;
3. It is carnivalesque in nature and
aesthetic.
The Zapatista movement has strongly
influenced contemporary art activism
since the 1990s. In 1994 the Zapatista
Army of National Liberation movement
of the Mexican Chiapas province emerged
demanding autonomy. They broadcast
their message in a media savvy way that
was fresh and interesting, and drew
unprecedented international support.
They approached their objective through
the use of the internet and social network-
ing culture with a poetic and exciting
carnivalesque flavour to their activities.
The Zapatista movement is character-
ised by the organising of dances, rock
concerts, poetry sessions and sports
tournaments. The movement ritualises
‘alegria’ (joy) through celebrations which
inspires participation. Zapatista commu-
nications captured the imaginations of
many, internationally.
Lieven De Cauter in Art and Activism
in the Age of Globalisation talks about
‘subversion’ and distinguishing ‘subver-
sivity’ from political subversion. Rather
than overthrowing the system as politi-
cal subversion aims to do subversivity is
a ‘disruptive attitude that tries to create
CULTURE
Also in this section:
Shirley Clerkin 53
Arts Council 54
Artists should seek change,
but not collaborate
Though theorists champion it as a
model, Barcelona’s Las Agencias
was a covered-up disaster.
By Nicola Carroll
February 2015 51
openings, possibilities in the ‘closedness’
of a system’. Subversivity questions rigid
belief systems. Subversivity is eccen-
tricity, a desire to break away from
conformity and convention disrupting
the tradition. Subversivity does not nec-
essarily want to overthrow the system
but it has an aversion to consensus. It
is not revolutionary thinking but seeks
temporary disruptions.
De Cauter maintains that we seem to
have lost any desire to negate or criticise
and that we are witnessing the end of a
tradition of dissent. That even the youth
and subcultures have not surfaced since
punk.
Chantal Mouffe, a Belgian political
theorist, advocates the collaborative
approach of artists’ ‘engagement with’
the art institution. Her argument is
that change must come from within the
existing hegemonic order of the art insti-
tution. She sees critical art as a way that
artistic practices can “contribute to the
unsettling of the existing hegemony”.
She is also sceptical about demonstration
without structures, pointing to the suc-
cess of the Indignado protests in Spain
and how they undermined the Socialist
Party only to let in the right wing. She
would have preferred collaboration with
appropriate political parties.
Mouffe uses the Museu D’Art
Contemporani De Barcelona (MACBA) in
Spain as an example of how engagement
with the art institution by art activists
can successfully change the hegemonic
order of the art institution.
But close research suggests even here
the experience was negative and the
depressing denouement covered up.
MACBA opened in November 1995 in
the Raval district of Barcelona. In order
to build the institution, an area of the
Raval district was cleared and a number
of residents were relocated. The Raval,
once a traditional working class area of
the city has since gone through a process
of gentrification
The civil demonstrations and protests
in Seattle in 1999 sought to confront
neo-liberalism and much of this hap-
pened through performance and activist
art. The impact of the ‘Battle for Seattle’
spread across the world. MACBA wanted
to create a network of social groups that
would become a part of the anti-globali-
sation movement.
In the spring of 1999 MACBA made
contact with the art activist collective
Fiambrera Obrera, which had been active
in Seville and Madrid throughout the
1990s, proposing that they organise a
workshop at MACBA to which they would
invite various well known and respected
art activists groups, such as ‘Reclaim the
Streets’, from around Europe to collabo-
rate in a project called ‘’Direct Action as
one of the Fine Arts’’. MACBA’s original
idea was, according to the Fiambreras, to
hold a ‘classic museum-workshop’ where
small groups of up to thirty people would
be charged an entrance fee and would
then sit around and discuss particular
subjects around art and activism.
The Fiambreras declined MACBA’s
invitation initially responding that this
was not ‘their model’. In fact they didn’t
have a ‘model’ at all but they saw an
opportunity to create one in the MACBA
invitation. The Fiambreras told MACBA
that they were not in favour of inviting
a handful of famous art activists from
around Europe to spend a few days in
Barcelona – the Fiambreras’ vision was
to create functioning teams of people
who were capable of establishing real
working relationships with the already
existing groups of activists working in
Barcelona.
The management of MACBA accepted
this proposal and gave the Fiambreras
the resources but also the autonomy to
get on with the project. The Fiambreras
spent the summer of 1999 introducing
and connecting the visiting art activists
with the corresponding local activist
groups in Barcelona.
Workshops were organised into five
main areas of work. They were:
1. Underemployment and precarious
labour;
2. Border and migrations;
3. Property speculation and gent-
rification;
4. Media and new independent autono-
mous communication networks;
5. Empowerment, ‘agency’ and policies
of direct action.
The workshops had exciting interna-
tional collaborators such as the group
Ne Pas Plier from Paris, known for their
innovative communication through
design . This group collaborated with the
underemployed and unemployed work-
shop to start a new local publication in
Barcelona – Kein Mensch ist illegal (No
one is illegal). Members joined a debate
on the rights of illegal immigrants which
culminated in Border Camps being set up
in the South of Spain in 2001.
Fiambrera Obrera co-ordinated the
property speculation and gentrification
workshop and worked with the ‘Reclaim
the Streets’ group known for their carni-
valesque interventions in public spaces
in England.
The media was a strong theme through-
out. The media workshop worked with
‘RTMark’ (later to become the Yes Men)
who infiltrated malfeasant compa-
nies’ public meetings. The influence of
the RTMark particular style of tactical
embarrassment by the distortion of cor-
porate communication strategies became
fully absorbed into the modus operandi
of Spanish art activism.
The workshops posed challenges for
the participants and art activist collab-
orators as well as for the museum. There
was a clash of values for many people who
supported the Barcelona squatter move-
ment (Okupas) to find themselves working
with MACBA which was for many a sym-
bol of property speculation in Barcelona.
This meant that events and meetings
often had to take place off site. There
were difficulties for the museum man-
agement concerning health and safety,
as the participants got keys cut to MACBA
premises and distributed them amongst
themselves without permission.
By the end of the Year 2000 the
art activist collective ‘Las Agencias’
(Agencies) was formed as a result of the
workshops . It was a broad collaborative
network of professional and amateur art-
ists and graphic designers.
In the spring of 2001 the media began
to report that MACBA was financing and
Contemporary
art now looks
to displace
instead the
structures
and system of
the society in
which it exists
“
headquarters, Las Agencias
52 February 2015
the building, there was a private security
guard at the door, clearly with the inten-
tion of making them leave.
Las Agencias subsisted for a while but
with a much smaller group, in a rented
space and with no budget to work with.
The Fiambreras from Madrid stayed in
contact with Las Agencias and worked
with them on projects such as YOMANGO
etc.
The result of this experience has been
that in general Spanish art activism is
now practised at a ‘necessary distance’
from state institutions.
There is very little material or informa-
tion in the MACBA archives in Barcelona
to describe the events of 2001 and Las
Agencias activities and collaboration
with the Institution. The archivist at
MACBA, Estel Fabregat, told me that
all other projects at MACBA have been
meticulously archived and written about
extensively and she expressed surprise
that there was so little about Las Agencias
and in particular about how the rela-
tionship between the institute and Las
Agencias ended. She described the Las
Agencias project as ‘delicate’. There is also
no mention of the Las Agencias project on
the MACBA website either while infor-
mation on all other projects can be found
there.
The CEO of MACBA between 1997 and
2002, an American citizen called John
Zvereff, wrote a letter in 2010 to the
current Director of MACBA Bartomeu
Mari. This letter has perhaps uninten-
tionally found its way into the archives
at MACBA. It describes the experience
with Las Agencias as ‘disastrous’ and
says the project was ‘‘at one point about
to cost Jorge his job’’ (presumably refer-
ring to Jorge Ribalta Director of Public
Programmes at MACBA). Zvereff goes
on to say in this letter that in his opinion
the movement “lost its meaning once it
was given a home and resources when it
was its very mobility and creation of fund
raising strategies which defined it’’.
Zvereff describes the end of the rela-
tionship between MACBA and Las
Agencias as a ‘nightmare’ which he found
himself having to clean up. All of the man-
agement of MACBA surprisingly did in
fact keep their jobs but Las Agencias was
the sacrificial lamb. MACBA went on to
work with some art activist collectives
after 2001 but on a far more restric-
tive basis. Many of those involved in Las
Agencias refused to work with MACBA in
any capacity again.
MACBA went on in the autumn of 2003
to set up a collaboration network with
anti-Forum movements along the same
model as Las Agencias but far more con-
trolled centrally by the museum. This
collaboration was what MACBA called “a
temporary public counter-sphere in the
context of a city subject to an all-pervad-
ing institutional propaganda machine”.
The collaboration was a failure, despite
the involvement of excellent people,
despite the fact that Catalan regional
governance allowed MACBA unusual
autonomy, despite the fact that Catalonia
has a long tradition of a politicised social
groups making the public open to par-
ticipation in activities by art activists,
and despite the timing – in 1999-2003
when the anti-globalisation movement
was at its peak.
After the events of 2001 a new art-
ist collective called Enmedio formed
in Barcelona with a new approach. The
new collective does not work with any
institutions directly and keeps what one
member of Enmedio called a “necessary
distance”. It is this distance, withdrawal
or “exodus” from the art institution which
makes the existence of the collective pos-
sible and its success viable.
Barcelona fifteen years ago was a cock-
pit of art activism and clear lessons are
evoked. Mouffe’s theory that collabo-
ration worked there – and so will work
elsewhere – does not stand up. If Irish art-
ists are serious about change they must
protest through their work, but maintain
their independence. •
organising workshops on ‘civil disobe-
dience’ as part of the anti-globalisation
movement. It was also reported in the
media that there were plans afoot to con-
front the police with ‘some sort of special
clothing and with shields’. The police
investigated the activities of Las Agencias
and concluded that it was not possible to
distinguish between the ‘artists’ and the
militants of the anti-globalisation move-
ment. Tensions were building.
The World Bank Summit which was
scheduled to take place in Barcelona in
July 2001 was dramatically cancelled
by the organisers due to fears of a vio-
lent protest in the city. There had already
been anti-globalisation demonstrations
in Prague and Gothenburg that sum-
mer. It was decided by the ‘assembly’
which consisted of the management of
MACBA and Las Agencias, that the coun-
ter-summit was to go ahead anyway in
Barcelona.
Las Agencias organised an anti-glo-
balisation demonstration for June 24,
2001 in the centre of Barcelona.
The atmosphere was carnivalesque
with 500,000 people on the streets
many wearing the ‘Pret a Revolter’ cos-
tumes designed by Las Agencias. There
was a police charge generating com-
plete chaos as people were arrested and
detained. The police destroyed the bar at
MACBA and they smashed the glass of the
main door of the museum. Rubber bul-
lets were fired. MACBA had been getting
lots of complaints from the local govern-
ment (ayuntamiento) and Mayor Clos of
Barcelona who were all asking “what the
f*** are you doing with our money?”
The right wing was fighting back.
Las Agenicas and MACBA had meet-
ings once a week – assemblies
– where the group and
the Director would
meet and talk about
what money would
go to each project.
MACBA dealt with
the group never
with individuals.
Later in the sum-
mer of 2001 MACBA
came back to Las Agencias
with suggestions about how to continue
the collaboration - that would have meant
the activists losing autonomy. Even
though the project officially was to con-
tinue until October, MACBA started to
make things difficult for Las Agencias.
They couldn’t work at night time, only
one or two people could have the key to
CULTURE ART ACTIVISM
Subversivity
is not
revolutionary
thinking
but seeks
temporary
disruptions
“
Las Agencias poster for Genoa 2001 showing Pret a Revolter
