September 2014
by Caterina Almirall (El Passadís)

Everything starts with a map. The map should lead me around, it should help me to get organized in order not to get lost and in order to miss nothing. The new season in Barcelona’s galleries begins. The route is not erratic, however it is quite frenetic. Before I begin, the map has been flooded with coffee. The friend who comes with me, the one who spilled the coffee on my map, is very happy with the show by Jonathan Millán in Estrany de la Mota.We pay attention to the postures that Jonathan makes on the raft, we laugh, and we feel identified with his teen dramas. In other places we see things that we don’t like so much, we criticise them and we leave banging the door, ha! I take a new map and we start again. I go down a few streets and things start to happen, you know what I mean. It is the end of the sales period and everyone is madly after the new thing, or in better words, the next tendency. They are fed up of being emerging, however since it is offered to them, they take it. It is in the news on television; they say they want to give an opportunity to the youngsters and all these things that always sound so proper. Luz Broto, as usual, plays a trick on us; she makes us turn. Even though my sunglasses break right in front of ADN gallery, I think it is right she has won the price. However, what do they sell in this gallery? In Cyan Gallery there is a real plant, porcelain boats and cassettes by Aziz, a Bulgarian pop idol who plays a type of music called turbo folk, a transvestite whose love is in dispute between the mafia, homophobic Nazis and homosexuals… who would miss the chance to see this? In EtHall, such a tiny place, it takes me a while until I see it,                                 … When I leave my eyes wink. At the end of Joaquin Costa there is a banner that says Raval is not for sale, it is partying. It must be because they have already sold the neighbourhood, isn´t it? They sold it long ago, ask MACBA now that it has an exhibition about monuments, I mean, nonuments. Even if it is quite a ridiculous word, I enter into Capella dels Àngels, I read the press release “monuments hide a certain appropriation of the collective space…” I find it a very soft sentence to note that, surely, who writes this has forgotten that the mega-example is right in front of his/her face! Mery Cuesta, who is on tv, says she overheard someone saying ‘bronze is the plasticine of the rulers’; squares and marbled museums, the harbour and the Rambles too. Miquel Garcia wants us to organize meetings in Àngels Barcelona gallery where he has placed small white chairs, however we decide to have the meeting at home since I have the same Ikea chairs in my living room. The people in BAR have organized a presentation about the new residents of the season, and we have talked about witches, ghosts and seers, some fresh air. The people from Art Nou also did a talk, but we have ended up asking ourselves the same questions as last year, this is more disconcerting than the ghosts and the witches. A gallery makes one freer from open-calls? Or is it the opposite? Are we too dependent on the “audience”? Are we precarious? Are we free? Are we artists? Are we Barcelona? Are we fed with air? Do you have a rich father? Have you emigrated yet? How’s the summer been? What are you doing now? Well, I am looking for a job, and I have a job invigilating the rooms in Mnac, I work in Desigual, man. Barcelona is small but the calendar is infinite. When I look at it again, the calendar, it is full again. Oh blessed back to school, it felt so good to be on holidays, but we soon forget about it. By the way, talking about maps and with the inertia of this cultural marathon I’ve gone to Renoir cinemas to see the one by Houllebecq, on Wednesday the entrance is 3€. Apparently he is kidnapped. This French writer is a very unpleasant character, I don’t think anyone would really want to pay for his rescue. However, a few years ago he wrote a book called The map and the territory.

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Text by Caterina Almirall (El Passadís) for GRAF