On 6 November 2012, the fifth installment of 18 pictures and 18 stories will take place at BNV Producciones, Seville. Speakers Pedro G. Romero, Isaías Griñolo, and Miren Jaio will each tell a story on the basis of one photograph from 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 fifth 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 Playground Festival/STUK in Leuven, and the Museum of Contemporary Art of the University of São Paulo.

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 BNV Producciones: Pedro G. Romero, Isaías Griñolo, and Miren Jaio

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.

Pedro G. Romero (Aracena, 1964) has worked as an artist since 1985. He forms part of PRPC (Plataforma de Reflexión de Políticas Culturales – Platform for Reflection on Cultural Policies) in Seville and is a member of the content team of UNIA arteypensamiento. Since 2007, he has directed the project de rasgos árabes… (Buenos Aires, Sao Paulo, Santiago de Chile, San Salvador and México D.F). Since the late ’90s he has been working on the F. X. Archive and P.H. Machine.

Miren Jaio (Bermeo, 1968) is an art critic. Since 2010 she is a member of the office for art and knowledge Bulegoa z/b, together with Beatriz Cavia, Isabel de Naverán and Leire Vergara. She is a lecturer in Art History at the Fine Arts Faculty of the Universidad del País Vasco, EHU/ UPV where she’s currently writing her PhD.

Isaías Griñolo (Bonares, 1963) is a visual artist who lives and works in Seville, Huelva and Badajoz. He is a member of PRPC (Plataforma de Reflexión de Políticas Culturales – Platform for the Reflection on Cultural Policies) and works on projects concerning memory, ecology, economy, art and poetry. Some of them are Asuntos Internos. La Cultura como cortina de humo; (Internal Affairs. Culture as smokescreen), Desmemoria. 14 documentos sobre un lugar de olvido (Dis-forgetfulness, 14 documents about a place of oblivion) (Barcelona / Santiago de Chile, 2006 – 2008) and Escombros: imágenes, relatos y discursos de las prácticas ecologistas, (Rubble: images, stories and discourses of ecologists practices), and an ongoing project (2002 – 2012) on the relationship between financial flows and territory. Since 2006 he collaborates in Sobre capital y territorio II (On capital and territory) (UNIA, arteypensamiento, Sevilla), poetry readings (Paisajes de escombros) (Landscapes of rubble), workshop ¿La construcción de un sueño? (The construction of a dream?), and with the laboratory Sobre Leviatán (detener el tren de la historia) (On Leviathan (to stop the train of history)).