Descripción de la Exposición ------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------- The project is based on an archive that Romero has been compiling since 1999. Within the archive are more than one thousand 'entries' linking the history (histories) of anticlerical iconoclasm in Spain-especially from the 1930s-with international positions of the modern avant-garde. That is, each individual iconoclastic image document to be found here is recorded under the name of an artist, a movement, an institution, or a work from the avant-garde. Furthermore, each entry comprises textual fragments of varying origin, which alternately allude to the iconoclastic act documented by the image and to the author or work named in the keyword. In so doing new associative chains are generated. Drawing from this continually expanding pool, Romero develops various ways of staging the Archivo F.X. that range from publications or multimedia objects to complex exhibition choreographies. These approaches also redraft the archive's conceptual framework from ever-new perspectives. The exhibition staging of the Archivo F.X.-specially conceptualized for the Württembergischer Kunstverein and subtitled Business, Economics, Conjuncture-is conceived as memory theater, archive, and imaginary museum in equal turn. Here the presentation predominantly revolves around the relations between iconoclasm and avant-garde, secularization and economics, money and the holy. Plundered churches, vandalized saints, or church-tower bells that have been smelted into weapons are related to Hugo Ball, VALIE EXPORT, or Joseph Beuys. A coin from which the word 'Catholic' has been removed meets anti-globalization opponents. A machine that converts five-cent coins into effigies of saints meets Georges Bataille. And banknotes that were once expressly printed to disseminate the change of city names, which formerly had religiously connotations, are here associated with Marcel Duchamp, Cildo Meireles, or Salvador Dalí. Taking the form of a walk-in montage-comprised of text-image-collages, photographs, audiovisual documents, objects, and all kinds of different artifacts-the Archivo F.X. interrelates the seemingly irreconcilable. In so doing, this veritable 'archive machine' sets into motion a steady reconfiguration of things: the reconsideration of existing conditions, which are literally made to dance. The exhibition fosters a special dialogue with the artists Hugo Ball and Emmy Ball-Hennings, Joseph Beuys and Alexander Kluge. Three rooms are dedicated to works by these artists, formally referencing the 'Salon' (Ball/Ball-Hennings), the 'White Cube' (Beuys), and the 'Black Box' (Kluge). However, only sections of these three rooms are present. In other words: situated at the margins of the actual exhibition space, these three rooms expand the space along the lines of an imaginary continuation. At the same time, they spare the exhibition's central area, which accommodates-again in a backstage-like situation-the various materials, objects, and arrangements of the Archivo F.X. Suspended between this 'center' and its 'peripheries' is a multifarious net of cross-references that evokes an interminable process of de- and recontextualization. The exhibition Archivo F.X.: Business, Economics, Conjuncture has been developed in close collaboration with Romero as well as with the co-curator Valentín Roma (Barcelona). Various publications will be issued in conjunction with the exhibition.
INTRODUCTION From February 11 to April 29, 2012 the Württembergischer Kunstverein is presenting the project Archivo F.X. by Spanish artist Pedro G. Romero. The project is based on an archive that Romero has been compiling since 1999. Within the archive are more than one thousand documents linking the history (histories) of anticlerical iconoclasm in Spain (between 1845 and 1945) with international positions of the modern avant-garde. Drawing from this continually expanding pool, Romero develops various ways of staging the Archivo F.X. that range from publications or multimedia objects to complex exhibition choreographies. These approaches also redraft the archive’s conceptual framework from ever-new perspectives, such as city, knowledge, community, or economy. The exhibition staging of the Archivo F.X.—specially conceptualized for the Württembergischer Kunstverein and subtitled Business, Economics, Conjuncture—is conceived as memory theater, archive, and imaginary museum in equal turn. Here the presentation predominantly revolves around the relations between iconoclasm and avant-garde, secularization and economics, money and the holy. Plundered churches, vandalized saints, or church-tower bells that have been smelted into weapons are related to Hugo Ball, Valie Export, or Joseph Beuys. A coin from which the word “Catholic” has been removed meets anti-globalization opponents. A machine that converts five cent coins into effigies of saints meets Georges Bataille. And banknotes that were once expressly printed to disseminate the change of city names which formerly had been religiously connotated are here associated with Marcel Duchamp, Cildo Meireles, or Salvador Dalí. Taking the form of a walk-in montage—comprised of text-image-collages, photographs, audiovisual documents, objects, and all kinds of different artifacts—the Archivo F.X. interrelates the seemingly irreconcilable. In so doing, this veritable “archive machine” sets into motion a steady reconfiguration of things: the reconsideration of existing conditions, which are literally made to dance. The exhibition fosters a special dialogue with the artists Hugo Ball and Emmy Ball-Hennings, Joseph Beuys and Alexander Kluge. Three rooms are dedicated to works by these artists, formally referencing the “Salon” (Ball/Ball-Hennings), the “White Cube” (Beuys), and the “Black Box” (Kluge). However, only sections of these three rooms are present. In other words: situated at the margins of the actual exhibition space, these three rooms expand the space along the lines of an imaginary continuation. At the same time, they spare the exhibition’s central area, which accommodates—again in a backstage-like situation—the various materials, objects, and arrangements of the Archivo F.X. Suspended between this “center” and its “peripheries” is a multifarious net of cross-references that evokes an interminable process of de- and recontextualization. In this respect, the exhibition—which, considering its abundance and density of material, can hardly be grasped in all its entirety—may be viewed as an opportunity to enter into this game of reconfiguring things far beyond any claim to being exhaustive. For the Archivo F.X. itself contradicts the idea of completeness; it has been deliberately designed as an interminable project—a project under permanent construction. This is ultimately mirrored in the exhibition architecture, which references the space of potentiality expanding beyond the situation at hand. The exhibition Archivo F.X.: Business, Economics, Conjuncture has been developed in close collaboration with Romero as well as with the co-curator Valentín Roma (Barcelona). Various publications will be issued in conjunction with the exhibition. THE FILES he project Archivo F.X. started by Romero in 1999, is based on a continually expanding collection of various materials—photos, texts, audiovisual documents—on anticlerical iconoclasm in Spain. The documents originate from the century spanning between 1845 and 1945, with a particular focus on the nineteen-thirties (Second Spanish Republic and Spanish Civil War). They show destroyed sculptures and altars, as well as churches that were expropriated, plundered, or subjected to other functions, taken apart stone for stone or burned to the ground. Contained in the archive are photos of stolen liturgical items or of statues of Christ displaying the initials of Spain’s anarcho-syndicalist union, the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT). Forming the background for such widespread anticlerical activities were the societal, political, and ideological conflicts within the country, which in 1936 culminated in the Civil War. What sets Archivo F.X. apart is its classification concept, which associates what at first glance appears to be two disconnected contexts: here political, anticlerical iconoclasm in Spain is contrasted with positions from the international avant-gardes from the realms of visual arts, literature, theory, et cetera. This means that each individual iconoclastic image document is recorded under the name of an artist, an artists’ group, a movement, an art institution, art magazine, or a work title from the avant-garde. For example, the façade of a church dispossessed in 1936 in the Catalan city of Olot has been titled “Critique of German Intelligence” as an allusion to a work by Hugo Ball. An effigy of a saint whose eyes are cutted out has in turn been named after artist Hannah Höch. Romero thus interlinks radical forms of anticlerical image destruction with equally radical twentieth- and twenty-first-century art practices—which, iconoclastic in their own way, oppose the existing systems of representation. Though, iconoclasm, as interpreted by the artist, implies not so much a negation of the image or of the art itself, but instead an actual validation of its symbolic function. Each of the aforementioned image-keyword combinations—which introduce the different Archivo F.X. “files”—are followed by textual fragments of varying origin, which alternately allude to the iconoclastic act documented by the image and to the author or work named in the keyword—thus generating new and surprising chains of associations. As such, the Archivo F.X. files emerge as dense image-text fabrics that activate—both individually and reciprocally—a multifaceted process of de- and recontextualization. This process also affects the different stagings of the Archivo F.X., generated in ever-new ways. For the files merely form the foundation or “toolbox” (Romero) for the diverse variety of forms taken by the Archivo F.X., including workshops, publications, objects, installations, audiovisual works, and so forth, with new referential areas of content being integrated again and again throughout the process. Romero’s project thus entails far more than just a simple juxtaposition of concrete examples of iconoclastic encroachments and radical artistic practices. It moreover invokes these so as to create a widely ramified, rhizomatic rereading of a political, ideological, and aesthetic narrative: an undertaking that, according to the artist himself, is localized “somewhere between documentation and dance.” In terms of his methodological approaches—montage, rereading, citation, the idea of the interminable work, and the idea of the archive as a machine—Romero explicitly makes reference to the methods of Walter Benjamin (Arcades Project), Aby Warburg (Mnemosyne-Atlas), and Georges Bataille (Documents). The artist himself considers his project an endeavor to “urbanize the province of nihilism” (as inspired by Jürgen Habermas). THE EXHIBITION This exhibition at the Württembergischer Kunstverein, for which a complex exhibition architecture has been specially designed, is based upon a selection of “files” originating from the Archivo F.X. that revolve around issues related to economics. A setting that merges memory theater, archive, and imaginary museum facilitates opportunities for fathoming correlations between iconoclasm, secularization, and economics. The exhibition approaches the term economics from different vantage points that range from common parlance (in terms of frugal usage) to terminology used in political economics. Here economics is not merely negotiated as a value exchange, but also with a view to the general distribution of things and to the inclusions and exclusions this entails. The exhibition enters into unique dialogue with four artists—Hugo Ball and Emmy Ball-Hennings, Joseph Beuys and Alexander Kluge—with three rooms specially configured for their works. The design of these spaces is aligned to the model of the “Salon” (Ball/Ball-Hennings), the “White Cube” (Beuys), and the “Black Box” (Kluge) respectively. Yet these are in fact rooms that only partially occupy existing area, for they extend beyond the tangible exhibition rooms, meaning they continue as imaginary spaces. Situated at the margins of the exhibition space, these rooms spare the exhibition’s central area, which is in turn inverted into a backstage-like situation, where various materials (objects, texts, books, images, installations, etc.) from the Archivo F.X. are to be found. Salon d’Or: Dada Various different works and documents by Hugo Ball and Emmy Ball-Hennings are presented here, ones that trace the path taken by the two artists from Dadaism to Catholocism and mysticism. Included here is documentation on their performances at the Cabaret Voltaire, as well as an interpretation of Ball’s sound poem Totenklage (Elegy), which was produced by the Stuttgart group EXVOCO in 1978, a variety of first editions from their written works from the nineteen-tens to the fifties, and memorabilia like Hugo Ball’s death mask. White Cube: Joseph Beuys Next to documentation and editions on Joseph Beuys’s action Wandlung (Transformation) at Documenta 7, during which he morphed the czar’s crown into a “peace rabbit,” and also on its current presentation at the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, shown here are various editions by Beuys that revolve around money or capita Black Box: Alexander Kluge Finally, the exhibition presents Alexander Kluge’s film Nachrichten aus der ideologischen Antike (News from Ideological Antiquity[dmd2] ), with a running time of nearly ten hours. This film ties into Sergei Eisenstein’s (unrealized) project of filming Capital (after the literary model of James Joyce’s Ulysses). Through a dense nexus of conversations, typefaces, scenes, film clips, documents, musical pieces, and more, the film takes different perspectives in circumscribing the present-day proximity and distance to Marx—he brings Marx into play as a “scout” who “can lead us through a highly complex world” (Kluge).
Exposición. 19 nov de 2024 - 02 mar de 2025 / Museo Nacional del Prado / Madrid, España
Formación. 23 nov de 2024 - 29 nov de 2024 / Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (MNCARS) / Madrid, España
