In collaboration with Helena Vinent and Carlota Fuentevilla

The project is enunciated as a critical-sarcastic response of the exhibition ‘PUNK. His traces in contemporary art ‘performed at the Macba between May 13 and September 25, 2016. We start from the construction of an alternative-fake closure to show how the phagocyte museum and uses countercultural expressions to endow itself with a Certain subversive image. Undoubtedly, beyond the underlying intention in the concept of the Macba exhibition and the works that are articulated in it, the function that it fulfills within the museum within the framework of the current Barcelona is to occur as a representation of the moment politician in which we are. The need for a rebel face as a synonym for extensive cultural policies to a general political representation, misrepresenting subversion in mirage and spectacle. The project also wanted to point out how the use of the word PUNK works in an essentialist way as an advertising claim and that, therefore, gives rise to a biased vision in which punk belongs to a happy speech that is fortunate to take the form of a stereotype provocative. This alternative-fake closure materializes with an event that occurred on the same day that the official Macba exhibition ends, in a squatted and self-managed Sala Usurpada.

The appropriation project is articulated in two axes:

First, parasitizing the official dissemination that had been carried out through posters, flyers and social networks, we constructed the graphic material of the alternative closing event respecting all the original elements. As a key element we substitute the image used iconically for the exposition of the Macba of the face of Queen Elizabeth II on a five-dollar bill (belonging to the work “5 Pound Bill with Red Nose” by Hans-Peter Feldmann) by Ada Colau (the mayor of the city) in a twenty euros bill. Within this dynamic of parasitization we create a page on the Facebook platform (Macba Museu d’Art Conspiranoic de Barcelona) and a tumblr (la-gran-clausura-punk.tumblr.com) with the plagiarized appearance of the official website. Through this tumblr the location where it took place was revealed on the same day of the alternative closing event, with the purpose of maintaining the confusion of the fake until the last moment.

In the closing event that took place on the same day that the exhibition ended at the Macba, people were part of the various punk scenes of current Barcelona, ​​active at a creative and activist level. In it different forms of expression hatched like concerts, talks, performances and a collective exhibition. This event was intended to realize that punk is more than the reflection of a concern emptied by time or that the provocation turned into a mass consumption format. It is important to note that this alternative event that took place was part of the fake project but it worked with politicalautonomy given its self-managed, collaborative characteristics, due to the involvement of the people who participated in it.

(Text credits, Helena Vinent. Translation by Dorothy spencer and Joan Pallé)