BCN Producció'10
BCN Producció is an open call for all artistic projects looking for production support. In each edition, a jury selects up to five projects. The call is aimed at the entire artistic community of Barcelona and projects are evaluated solely on their interest and the risk involved; criteria such as age or type of medium used are not considered. Project selection is a two-fold process: first, projects are pre-selected based on project outlines that the artists present; next, the artists are interviewed to determine the communicative potential of each of them.
The specificity of this call, besides providing 8000 euros for the realisation of each project (divided between fees and production costs) and that it takes place over six months, lies in the complicity established between the jury and each of the selected artists. This translates to a continuous follow-up of the projects, focusing on technical issues (tied to the production and management of the projects) and sustaining a theoretical dialogue to contextualise the work, as well as offering critical support in the artistic decision-making process. This is one of the aspects the call emphasises when discussing production. In this edition, La Capella is working with Hangar and Can Xalant to sign an agreement giving greater access to the resources both production centres have to offer.
The programme concludes with an exhibition and the publication of a catalogue. Although many of the projects supported by the call go on much longer journeys and take unexpected turns, the objective of this publication is to record and make a part of the work process more clear, providing a context for the discussion around each project through interviews with each of the artists and a series of graphic representations created specifically for the edition. Furthermore, the goal is to bring out general opinions about the call and to discuss certain ideas about production.
In addition to this framework, which is adjusted to a call structure for contemporary art production, BCN Producció cannot and should not stray far from the diverse transformations of paradigm that, generally speaking, the cultural production domain has experienced over the last decade. This means that the art world cannot ignore the aesthetic-social evolution taking place in the world after reaching the third millennium.
In the last few years, understanding creative work as a comprehensive, holistic and open process (in which each of its phases – research, production, exhibition and communication – must be interpreted as a whole) has become a cultural model that inevitably affects artistic activity. From here, reducing the opening act to conclusive sublimation of the artistic practice, for example, or making the artistic object itself intangible using empirical means are clear indicators of a new categorisation of the objectives of artistic investigation. In other words, the evolution of contemporary artistic practice is not formal but structural. It is therefore pertinent to question research, production and communication methods of this practice, rather than the concrete results obtained from it. More concretely, at the beginning of the 21st century, art is not a discipline but a context, one that is not indebted to artists or the art world, but rather that uses them (and others).
In line with this last point and as in previous editions, BCN Producció 2010 thoughtfully brings together artists from diverse worlds, such as fashion, photography, experimental cinema, the underground music scene and tradition in the visual arts. A many-layered spectrum of production codes and analysis viewpoints make the exhibition a multifaceted show of the present and of cultural investigation, maintaining the interest for the conceptual background rather than the work's concrete aspects as the minimum common denominator.
BCN Producció 2010 considers one of its priorities to be the regard for other frameworks of possibility, which go beyond the geographical limits of La Capella. In the same way that the execution processes complete each other through collaboration with different visual arts production centres, extending research or exhibition processes to diverse situations is a logical consequence of this policy. Thus, for the internal coherence of each proposal, the projects' extension to environments other than the usual exhibition and editorial forms has been encouraged.
In this way, BCN Producció 2010's path crosses diverse planes: the preoccupation for Albert Triviño's film ontology, through a proposal that acts as a phantasmagoria of what exists and what is projected; the step before commercialising an idea by Marc Serra, who introduced himself to the art world as a business card for the scientific (and cynical) sphere; the eruptive exhibitions of Esther Planas that, using expressionist imagery and various means of expression such as performance, music, video, painting, etc., seek to capture, albeit quite subjectively, the historic memory of the Chinese neighbourhood of Barcelona; the relational architecture that Jaume Ferrete constructs based on an auditive game of mirrors, mnemonics and voices with the collective "other"; or the means of examination re-created by Luz Broto that without a doubt need the implication/complicity of any tangential public.
Although it is difficult to satisfy all the expectations that a project such as this creates in a place such as Barcelona, after four editions the volume and quality of the projects received by BCN Produccióappear to confirm that the call plays a clear role in providing resources for artistic production in the city. And, as members of the current edition's jury (and even though it may not be our area of competence), we consider it to be stimulating and absolutely essential to rethink or redefine the structure of the "project" within which BCN Producció operates, making it clear that the resources a public call as this offers to the artistic community are entirely necessary.
Artists
Luz Broto / Right cube_04; dar paso a lo desconocido
Jaume Ferrete / Treinta textos
Esther Planas / Time theft E2162
Marc Serra / Inexplicable odeur
Albert Triviño / Escultura Loop
Collaborate
Produces
Sponsor
