Un martillo y mala hierba — Punk, techno y nuevos naturalismos relacionales
An action that brings together the academic format of the round table and the performative format of the happening, moving a critical and theoretical approach towards a more relational position: one that sets in motion engines of collective decision-making, aiming at an emancipated identity for the sake of a self-governance of the aesthetic.
Days of reflection on some of the limits of being brought about by technologies.
- Role
- Curator · Essay and curatorial proposal (MA thesis)
- Programme
- MA Digital Art & New Media Curatorship — ESDi · URL
- Tutor
- Óscar Abril Ascaso
- Coordination & jury
- Bani Brusadin · Clara Laguillo · Victoria Saco Monje
- Artists
- Arnau Sala Saez · Candela Capitán · Huaquian Zang · Lolo & Sosaku · Víctor Pallarés
- Academics
- Chantal Maillard · David G. Torres · Oriol Rosell · Óscar Abril Ascaso · Paul B. Preciado · Servando Rocha
If gender theories have moved beyond rhetorical frameworks and political struggles to become philosophical positions in their own right, art offers a space in which their epistemological potential can be explored. This work examines the relationships between the present and its historical references.
Music and listening resist being reduced to a stable, autonomous field of study. This exhibition brings together the agents, spaces and institutions that shape artistic culture, often disconnected from their social and cultural contexts. It explores the relationships between technology and art, science and anthropology, ethics and aesthetics, approaching music as an anthropological expression of the bonds between human beings and their environments.
Media are not merely technical or technological tools; they also shape the ways in which knowledge is produced and understood. Music, in particular, can challenge established categories and open up new ways of thinking. Drawing on Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of the “tangle of aberrant lines”, music becomes a medium through which to question established ideas of beauty and explore forms of experience that exist beyond normative frameworks.
The question is not whether techno or punk can survive as fashion, but how they might function as aesthetic practices in the service of politics, philosophy and anthropology. By examining the networks of relations between human and non-human agents, we can better understand how aesthetic and political forms emerge and transform. Such an approach may offer new ways of thinking about coexistence beyond the human-centred perspective.
The aim is to approach art as a living, relational practice: one that, beyond proposing, becomes a space of reference for the problems and possibilities that shape life, always collective.
Wall text — Dan Aparicio, ESDi, Barcelona, 18 January 2023
Interlocutors
Chantal Maillard: for her contribution towards a political-aesthetic resolution of conflict.
Glitch minimalism and its articulation as an existential device in the sound work of Arnau Sala Saez.
David G. Torres: as a critic specialising in punk aesthetics and a curator with direct experience of a curatorial proposal on the theme of this exhibition.
On the relationship between the theory of the body without organs and the new epistemologies of gender, and its bearing on the work of Candela Capitán.
Oriol Rosell: for his knowledge of today's music scene and of the various tangential philosophical theories.
On the Fun Palace by Huaquian Zang and its relationship with the aesthetics of experimental and political play.
Óscar Abril Ascaso: as the master's tutor, as head of the table of the gastronomic-table device, and for his curatorial experience and knowledge of performance art and electronic music.
On the sculptural, architectural and media dimensions of sound in the work of Lolo & Sosaku.
Paul B. Preciado: for his sharp political and epistemological analysis of the present.
On the antithesis of punk as accelerationist and anti-system theory in the work of Victor Pallarés.
Servando Rocha: for his archaeology of dissident movements as an essential element in articulating the invisible hammer that is art.