PRESENTATION

PRESENTATION

The aim is to set certain collective knowledge mechanisms, known in certain circles as the general intellect, in motion. The fact that in this case the impulse is provided by an iconoclastic gesture is in line with the objectives of the work carried out by F.X. Archive while also investigating depth the relationship established, at this very moment in time, between the world and the images used to represent it.

Let us take a recent series of historic events: the destruction of the Buddhas at Bamiyan, the attack on the Twin Towers, and the fall of Saddam's statue in one of the suburbs of Baghdad. Never until the present moment had the iconoclastic gesture been so powerful, so powerful indeed that it becomes a substitute for the act itself, setting the seal on historical events, a haunting threat hanging over the promise of a community's happiness. The new idol is the fallen idol.

Moreover today it is the image and not the word that is made flesh, something we cannot forget. Nobody can deny, however empty certain words may sound before a certain type of rhetorical grandiloquence, that images have become one of the main instruments of bio-political control of the social body.

How should we present formulas of knowledge to help us overcome this paradox, tools that are able to turn this selfsame paradox against the water line of power that these new idols wield, political tools to dissuade the single version of history as written by capital, science and technology and the media?

As we are dealing principally with iconic constructs, it would seem logical to search for such tools in the field of visual arts. Fortunately it is quite a while since images were the exclusive preserve of artists and other agents working within the ambit of visual culture. It is the community as a whole that administers and is administered by images; the practises and law of the visual empire.

The laboratories of F.X. Archive aims, in one way or another, to return work to the community in which they operate. We are in a permanent dialogue with Seville, the city from which our archives originate. We intend to move in two directions. The first will be forwards, aiming with T.V. Laboratory to gather together several of the community's unique features in order to construct a knowledge mechanism concerning the iconoclastic images that govern our iconosphere. The second movement will be backwards, in which Seville Laboratory will recover a collection of approximations which from the viewpoint of modern and vanguard art re-define the relationships between the sacred and the city.

Sé-villa!¹ Turn yourself into a city! It would seem that Seville, confronted with this imperative, might be a good example of the dimension of a community that at a moment in time represented the modern city. The fame of Seville as a city that venerates its religious images is a legend that can also be instrumental in helping us. It is a legend that is fed by the same iconophilia - iconophobia paradox.

Similarly, in his Panegyric Guy Debord acclaims Seville as an exemplary testing ground to find formulas for resisting spectacles. In The Multitude and the Metropolis Toni Negri sees Seville as a laboratory for creating new formulas in the political struggle. We who live here are suspicious when faced with so much enthusiasm yet this does not mean that we turn our back on our work with the coming community.

F.X. Archive develops diverse knowledge mechanics, artistic practises and political tools centred on an archive of violent iconoclastic images of a political and anti-Sacramental nature in Spain from 1868 and 1945. They are classified in terms springing from the wide semantic field of modern and vanguard visual arts - works, events, movements, groups, collectives, institutions reviews, artists etc. - in their most radical expression.

This second edition presents T.V. Laboratory and Seville Laboratory, both of which are the result of work carried out in the last few years.

T.V. Laboratory
A series of video programmes based on the archives of Canal Sur Televisión which has ceded its iconoclasm-related images dating from when it began broadcasting in 1989 up to 2004. These images are the basis for an analytical mechanism involving several aspects of its protagonist, the city of Seville: art, history, philosophy, documentation, philology, Flamenco etc.

Several subjectivities of these spheres of knowledge are evoked in order for the different blocks of images to be analysed and presented to the public

The resulting images, texts and recordings will be published on CD-ROM.

Seville Laboratory
This deals with the preparation and publication of a map-guide of Seville and its public presentation in the city. The map-guide aims to be the confluence in the city of Seville of several modern vanguard texts dealing with the sacred. Seville is used as an example, being as it is, a typical city, presented in a map of sacred territory with approximations from linguistic experimentation, attempting to re-situate the sacred within the environment of a modern city.

Sacer, fugas sobre lo sagrado y la vanguardia en Sevilla, [Sacer, Fugues on the Sacred and the Vanguard in Seville] aims to publish some of the texts contained in Archivo F.X.'s funds. David González Romero has written the prologue and the presentation while the public readings will be performed by the actors Mercedes Bernal, Javier Centeno y José Ramón Muñoz.

The book containing the map-guide will be distributed in the city's main bookshops.

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1.- Translator's Note: the Spanish name for Seville, Sevilla, is here the subject of an ingenious pun; when divided into Sé and villa, it becomes an imperative literally meaning Be (sé) a town (villa)

PROGRAMME

PROGRAMME

T.V. LABORATORY
Sessions in which the texts will be presented and images projected, followed by a debate.

Monday, 9th February 2004
· 19:00 h.
Documents and Television.
Chelo Gutiérrez, Inmaculada Domínguez Moreno & Diana López Gamboa and Mac de Paz

Tuesday, 10th February 2004
· 12:00 h.
The City and Society.
Curro Aix, David Gómez and José Pérez de Lama

· 19:00 h.
Critique and Culture.
Mar Villaespesa, José Yñiguez and José Lebrero Stals

Wednesday, 11th February 2004
· 12:00 h.
Practice and Arts.
Salud López, Isaías Griñolo and Santiago Barber

· 19:00 h.
History and Memory.
Francisco Espinosa, José Luis Gutiérrez Molina and Custodio Velasco

Thursday, 12th February 2004
· 12:00 h.
Language and Translation.
Nadine Janssens, Carlos Iniesta and Antonio Orihuela

· 19:00 h.
Philosophy and Aesthetics.
Manuel Barrios, Juan Bosco Díaz Urmeneta and Juan Antonio Rodríguez Tous

Friday, 13th Fabruary 2004
· 12:00 h.
Anthropology and Community.
Ángel del Río, José María Valcuende and Manuel Losada & Marcos Crespo

· 19:00 h.
Flamenco and Others.
José Luis Ortiz Nuevo, Luis Clemente and Juan Vergillos

[All of the sessions will be videotaped]

Venue:
The Rector´s lecture room of the International University of Andalusia at the Monastery of Santa María de las Cuevas localet on the Isla de Cartuja in Seville.

SEVILLE LABORATORY
Presentations of the book and guide Sacer, fugas sobre lo sagrado y la vanguardia en Sevilla.

Friday, 5th March 2004
· 20:00 h.
Casa del libro
C/ Velázquez, nº 8
Presented by Mercedes Bernal as "el Público".

Friday, 12th March 2004
· 20:00 h.
Librería Céfiro
Escuela de Estudios Hispano-americanos, C/ Alfonso XII, nº 16
Presented by José Ramón Muñoz as "la Universidad".

Friday, 19th March 2004
· 20:00 h.
Mundo Cofrade
C/ Jesús del Gran Poder, nº 5
Presented by Javier Centeno as "el sevillano".

[All the sessions and presentations will be fully open to the public]

GUESTS

GUESTS

Pedro G. Romero, Director, F.X. Archive

Curro Aix, artist, studying for a PhD. In sociology.
Santiago Barber, artist/activist.
Manuel Barrios, lecturer of Philosophy at the University of Seville.
Mercedes Bernal, actress.
Javier Centeno, actor.
Luis Clemente, music critic, author, among other publications, of Flamenco!!! De evolución.
Juan Bosco Díaz Urmeneta, lecturer of Aesthetics at the University of Seville.
Inmaculada Domínguez & Diana López Gamboa, television researchers working for Canal Sur Televisión.
Francisco Espinosa, historian specialising in the Spanish Civil War and the Repression..
David Gómez, urban activist his work has been centred on the Alameda-Pumarejo area of the city.
David González Romero, editor, journalist.
Isaias Griñolo, artist.
Chelo Gutiérrez, journalist specialising in cultural affairs.
José Luis Gutiérrez Molina, historian, specialising in anarchism and social and economic history in 20th-century Spain.
Carlos Iniesta, doctor in Classical Philology, translator of Greek, German and Russian.
Nadine Janssens, historian, writer, translator.
José Lebrero Stals, art critic, exhibitions curator, director of the Andalusian Centre of Contemporary Art.
Salud López, ballerina, choreographer, for the Compañía Octubre, artistic director for the Endanza creative space.
Manuel Losada & Marcos Crespo, graduates in Geography and History and Anthropology and in Philosophy and Anthropology respectively. They are researching into insults of Religious Images and the Celebratory Spaces in Seville.
José Ramón Muñoz, actor.
Antonio Orihuela, doctor of History, poet.
José Luis Ortiz Nuevo, flamenco artist, poet, founder of the Seville Flamenco Biennial.
Mac de Paz, video editor, collaborator in new audiovisual proposals.
José Pérez de Lama, associate lecturer of Architectural Theory at the University of Seville. He is part of hackitectura.net, indymedia madiaq and the Seville Social Forum.
Ángel del Río, anthropologist specialising in social movements.
Juan Antonio Rodríguez Tous, lecturer of Contemporary Philosophy at Pompeu Fabra University.
José María Valcuende, lecturer of Anthropology at Pablo de Olavide University.
Custodio Velasco, doctor of History specialising in contemporary social history and in discourse analysis.
Juan Vergillos, novelist, essayist and music critic.
Mar Villaespesa, art citric, independent curator.
José Yñiguez, historian and art citric, independent exhibitions curator.