On Friday 6 July at 6pm, the third installment of 18 pictures and 18 stories will take place at Fundació Antoni Tàpies in Barcelona. Speakers Nuria Enguita Mayo, Aimar Pérez-Gali, and Manuel Martínez Ribas will each tell a story on the basis of one photograph from Valcàrcel Medina’s new work Performance in Resistance, which will be on view at the Fundació Antoni Tàpies. During the presentations, Valcàrcel Medina is available on the phone for any question the audience or speaker might want to ask him.

This is the third installment of 18 pictures and 18 stories, which started off at Het Veem Theater in Amsterdam on 26 February, and was followed by a second presentation at Bulegoa z/b on 20 April. After this third event, 18 pictures and 18 stories will engage new speakers in the new installments in the fall, until all 18 stories are told. Upcoming presentations take place at CAC Brétigny (France), BNV Producciones in Seville (Spain), and the Museum of Contemporary Art of the University of São Paulo (MAC USP).

One year ago, If I Can’t Dance invited Valcàrcel Medina and Bilbao-based collaborative initiative Bulegoa z/b to partake in a comprehensive research project as part of the programme Performance in Residence. With this programme, If I Can’t Dance considers past performances in the light of current artistic practice. Valcàrcel Medina immediately responded to our invitation with Performance in Resistance, a series of 18 photographs that dislodge his past performances from their historical frame. In the photographs, he presents 18 different actions he performed in different cities between 1965 and 1993. Many of these actions were never documented, and thus the new work addresses the frictions between the live moment and the document, past and present, fact and fiction. The stories will be collected in a publication that offers host to all the voices, interpretations, facts and fictions that are told during the tour of 18 pictures and 18 stories.

18 pictures and 18 stories
Concept: Bulegoa z/b and Isidoro Valàrcel Medina
Commissioner: If I Can’t Dance
Storytellers Barcelona: Nuria Enguita Mayo, Aimar Pérez-Gali, and Manuel Martínez Ribas
Storytellers Bilbao: Azucena Vieites, José Díaz Cuyás, and Jaime Vallaure
Storytellers Amsterdam: Moosje Goosen, Esteban Pujals Gesalí, and Emilio Moreno

Performance in Resistance
Isidoro Valcàrcel Medina
Photography: Rocío Areán Gutiérrez, student of Fine Arts at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, London
The start of the research project by Bulegoa z/b and Isidoro Valcàrcel Medina for Performance in Residence took place in Het Veem Theater in February 2011. Click here for information and pictures of the evening.

18 pictures and 18 stories is co-produced by BNV Producciones, Seville; CAC Brétigny, Greater Paris; If I Can't Dance, I Don't Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution, Amsterdam; the Museum of Contemporary Art of the University of São Paulo (MAC USP); Playground Festival in STUK/Museum M, Leuven; Tàpies Foundation, Barcelona; Tate Modern, London; and Het Veem Theater, Amsterdam.

The publication and the performances are realized with the support of Corpus: a network for performance practice (CAC Brétigny, Greater Paris; If I Can't Dance, I Don't Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution, Amsterdam; Playground Festival in STUK arts centre/Museum M, Leuven; Tate Modern, London) financed by the European Union. 

Biographies
Isidoro Valcàrcel Medina (Murcia, 1937) is an important representative of conceptual art in Spain, hardly known outside of Spanish speaking countries. His body of work includes performances, sound pieces, architectural projects, installations and books. From his early practice up to the present day, he has asserted a critical attitude towards both art institutions and the art market, developing instead situations and scenarios that allow him to engage in a more directly affective relation with his audience.

Bulegoa z/b is a collaborative initiative based in Bilbao, Spain. Its members, Beatriz Cavia, Miren Jaio, Isabel de Naveràn and Leire Vergara come from backgrounds in both visual arts and social theory. Their initiative, an ‘office for art and knowledge’ is created around a common interest in processes of historization, cultural translation, performativity, the body, postcolonialism, social theory, archival strategies and education. Their varied professional backgrounds allow for a myriad of methodologies within their many projects. Bulegoa z/b has conceptualized the curatorial format for 18 pictures and 18 stories.

Nuria Enguita Mayo (Madrid 1967) is co-editor of the journal Afterall and a member of the board of directors of arteypensamiento at the Universidad Internacional de Andaluciía – UNIA, where she runs Narrativas de Fuga, a programme of seminars with artists, including Alice Creischer (on Principio Potosií), Eduardo Molinari/Archivo Caminante and Pedro Costa. She is co-curator of the Encuentro Internacional de Medellín MDE11, and is currently working on a retrospective exhibition of Luiís Claramunt for MACBA/Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona. She is cultural advisor for the Basque Government. In the last two years she has curated exhibitions of Eulàlia Valldosera and Ibon Aranberri at the MNCARS-Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid. From June 1998 to September 2008, she was chief curator at the Fundació Antoni Tàpies. For 20 years she has been active in writing in several platforms as well as in lecturing in Spain and other European and Latin-American countries, both in educational and museum contexts. She has directed seminars and other courses in universities on curating and other topics.

Aimar Pérez-Gali (Barcelona, 1982) works in the field of dance and performing arts as a dancer, performer, pedagogue, maker and writer. Graduated from the Modern Dance Department of the Amsterdam School of the Arts, he worked in The Netherlands for a few years and currently is developing his professional career in Spain. His work moves through the research of the relations between dance, movement, pedagogy and the development of new process like approaches towards performative practice. Among his last performing works we find The Pandora Project, Declarando Amor and The Golden Variations. He collaborates and has collaborated with makers such as Xavier Le Roy, Nicole Beutler, Nora Heilmann, Andrea Boziç, David Zambrano and Silvia Sant Funk. He is currently a member of the collective Las Calaveras de Cher, co-responsible for Espacio Practico and associated artist of La Poderosa.

Manuel Martínez Ribas (Barcelona, 1965) is a lawyer specialized in Intellectual Property and Information Technology law, and since 1991 when he co-founded his own legal practice, built up a broad experience in legal transactions and litigation relating to copyright, computers, privacy and e-commerce issues, including electronic invoicing, DRMS, phishing, corporate governance liability, RFID, computer forensics and open source / free software. At national and international level, he has not only participated in various R+D projects, but also written and lectured extensively on all aspects of Intellectual Property and Information Technology legislation. Among others, he has been speaker in the 3rd International GPLv3 conference and at the Internet Global Congress for 5 years now. He also has experience as a music performer.