Barcelona Producció 2016

Latitudes tutored three projects during the tenth edition of Barcelona Producció, the yearly open-call of production grants funded by the Barcelona’s Institut de Cultura of the City Council.

Aimed at “the artistic community of Barcelona and its area of influence”, the 2016 edition enabled the production and presentation of three solo exhibitions at La Capella (Ricardo Trigo, El Palomar and Antoni Hervàs) and three projects for its Espai Cub (Pau Magrané, Anna Dot and Bárbara Sánchez Barroso) in addition to two off-site productions (Ariadna Parreu and Oriol Nogués) and a curatorial project (Joana Hurtado Matheu).

Nine projects were selected from a pool of 240 submissions by a jury formed by independent curators Glòria Picazo and David Armengol, artists Mireia Sallarès and Francesc Ruiz, and Latitudes. Throughout the season Latitudes mentored the projects “Demo” by Pau Magrané; “El Misterio de Caviria” by Antoni Hervàs, and the group exhibition “Nostalgic dissidence” by curator Joana Hurtado Matheu.

‘Demo’ by Pau Magrané transformed Espai Cub into an audio-visual instrument by means of an installation featuring 3D-printed sculptures and an immersive video game. Visitors were able to interact with a virtual 3D universe comprising objects reappropriated from an open-source internet archive. During the opening, Magrané staged a riotous performance demonstration of the software in the guise of PLOM, his amorphous entity for producing electronic music.

Antoni Hervàs’ project revolves around the legend of Jason and the Argonauts’ expedition in search of the Golden Fleece. His exhibition ‘The Mystery of Cabeiria’ was divided into eight chapters taking as their point of origin the section of the tale in which the expedition led by Jason stops for a few months in Lemnos, the island of fire, in the northern part of the Aegean Sea. Here lived a kind of tribe of Amazons organized under the gynaecocracy of Queen Hypsipyle who are keeping a grisly secret. Taking this fragment, Hervàs explored the transformist and genre-bending possibilities of drawing, a medium that enables him to unite two mythologies: the Cabeirian rites of Classical Greece and figures from Barcelona’s dwindling cabaret scene. Hervàs’ exhibition obtained the 2016 Premis Ciutat de Barcelona in the category of Visual Arts, and the 2016 Artistic Project award by the Associació Catalana de Crítics d’Art.

The group exhibition ‘Nostalgic dissidence’ curated by Joana Hurtado Matheu presented works by 15 artists who reflect on nostalgia as a critical and affective gesture to reflect upon history and memory, where the past is made present to impinge on the future. The programme was complemented by a screening programme at the Filmoteca de Catalunya (4, 5 and 6 April) and at the Zumzeig cinema (30 March and 13, 20 and 27 April), as well as a publication, activities and performances in and beyond the exhibition space. ‘Nostalgic dissidence’ was selected as one of the ten exhibitions of 2017 by the Butxaca magazine (the Cultural Agenda of Barcelona), and obtained the 2017 Núvol Prize, an award granted by the newspaper to creators under 40 years old.