On 11 November 2012, the sixth installment of 18 pictures and 18 stories will take place at Playground Festival/STUK in Leuven. Speakers Koen Brams, Dora García, and Myriam Van Imschoot will each tell a story on the basis of one photograph from Isidoro Valcárcel Medina’s new work Performance in Resistance. During the presentations, Valcárcel Medina is available on the phone for any question the audience or speaker might want to ask him. After this sixth event, the final installment of 18 pictures and 18 stories will take place at the Museum of Contemporary Art of the University of São Paulo on 27 November 2012, with speakers Juan Domínguez, Cristina Freire, and Carla Zaccagnini.

One year ago, If I Can’t Dance invited Valcárcel 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. Valcárcel 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 Valcárcel Medina
Commissioner: If I Can’t Dance
Storytellers Playground Festival/STUK: Koen Brams, Dora García, and Myriam Van Imschoot

Performance in Resistance
Isidoro Valcárcel 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 Valcárcel 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 Valcárcel 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.

Koen Brams is a freelance researcher and writer. He is the former editor-in-chief of De Witte Raaf (1992 – 2000) and former director of the Jan van Eyck Academie (2000 – 2011). Together with Dirk Pültau he conducts a research project about art in Belgium since 1945. Recent publications: The Encyclopedia of Fictional Artists (JRP Ringier, 2010); The clandestine in the work of Jef Cornelis (together with Dirk Pültau), Argos/ De Witte Raaf /Jan van Eyck Academie/ Marcelum Boxtareos, 2010; Matt Mullican: Im Gespräch/ Conversations (together with Dirk Pültau), DuMont, Köln, 2011; and two issues of De Witte Raaf about the ‘arrival’, the ‘assimilation’ and the ‘farewell’ of postmodernism in Belgium and The Netherlands (nr. 155, january – february 2012 & nr. 156, march – april 2012).

Dora García lives and works in Barcelona. She studied at Rijksakademie, Amsterdam, and has had solo exhibitions at the Kunsthalle Bern (2010), the Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst, Leipzig (2007), the Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid (2005 – 06) and in SMAK, Ghent (2006), curated by Eva Wittockx. García has participated in the Biennale di Venezia (2011), the Bienal de São Paulo (2010), the Biennale of Sydney (2008), and Skulptur Projekte Münster (2007).

Myriam Van Imschoot is a writer and performance artist based in Brussels. She works in various media with archives, voice, memory and landscape. At the moment Van Imschoot makes a cycle of works dedicated to voice and landscape projects, with the support of a trajectory grant of the Flemish Community Commission. Her interest is in modes of communication that stretch time and space. Drawn to art on the brink of ephemerality, she is equally curious about what persists notwithstanding – in the form of traces, debris, echoes. Her work was rewarded with research grants from Die Höge, Bellagio Foundation, Flemish Community Commission and Jan van Eyck Academie. She regularly shows her work in festivals, exhibitions, galleries and art venues, like Kaaitheater, Playground at Stuk, Buda, Binaural Sound Arts Center, Intimate Strangers Festival, Working Title, Recyclart, etc.