Jeffrey M Swartz

This text was originally written in Catalan in 2014 in response to the acquisition, on the part of Barcelona's MACBA, of the facing building known as the Convent dels Àngels, across the Plaça dels Àngels square from the Richard Meier building. It addresses the museum's physical and symbolic control over the mentioned public square, while analysing the numerous squares, courtyards and patios in the immediate area near the museum. It also considers questions of urban geography and gentrification, as well as local communities. This is a new and revised English version of the text.
In 2019 the decision was made to build a further extension to MACBA in the south-west corner of the square, while allotting the historical religious building across Montalegre Street to a new public health clinic for the neighbourhood. These adjustments do not fundamentally alter the reflections set forth in the text.

In 1995 I invited Lebbeus Woods to prepare an exhibition for the Sala Montcada of the Fundació "la Caixa" in Barcelona, as part of a season I curated entitled "Volatile Sites". After spending time together in New York, he conceived the idea of creating a structure in the form of an island, a kind of scenographic float, to be built in the centre of the gallery space. He called this "The Wall" (in Catalan, La paret).
Woods' wall in fact had multiple surface planes, angling irregularly, in the temporal style of many of his drawings of the time. On this site of action he attached existing drawings and sculptures, as well as adding further pigments, 3D elements and new drawing to the surfaces themselves. Lebbeus spent many hours manually working the surface, in a rather expressionist spirit.
Lebbeus Woods (1940-2012) left a compelling legacy as an experimental architect. The project of The Wall, however, is still relatively unknown; the images of the installation scanned here have never before been made available online. I trust that this short and rather modest accompanying text, and the document of The Wall itself, might awaken new interest in lesser-known aspects of Woods' creative personality.

What would it mean today to speak of a critical gastronomy in the terms of design? Martí Guixé's exploration of the nexus between food and design is the focus of this essay, which appeared in the book dedicated to the Catalan designer, published by Corraini in 2010. Going back to the historical case of Grimod de la Reynière, the essay presents the motif of the host as a guiding point of reference for much of Guixé's work in critical food design.

What does it mean to speak of a cultural collective in anarchist terms? Originally prepared for the publication of a book by Barcelona-based art collective Sitesize (¡Cataluña termina aquí! ¡Aquí empieza Murcia!, 2014), this English version of the text examines what it means to apply the anarchist label to shared cultural practice. Factors such as stigmatization and use of euphemisms are considered. The essay introduces the problematic of a prefigurative practice for culture. Finally, collective practice is placed in contrast with the example of the late 19th century neo-impressionists, who explored a diversity of expressions for their engagé anarchism, including illustrated denoucement, indirect expression of its values and direct pictorial representation. Nevertheless, leading anarchist neo-impressionists like Pissarro and Signac insisted on returning to the priority of anarchist values in praxis, careful to not condition painting to its demands.

This paper considers the social and cultural debates around the Raval neighbourhood of Barcelona, analyzing the considerable symbolic interest the area has generated since the early 20th century. The bourgeois expansion of  Barcelona in the Eixample serves as the counterpoint. The paper argues that an excessive interest in the Raval, whether to save it or to romanticize it, have worked to convert it into "an inner colony" within the Barcelona socio-cultural imagination. The paper was originally published in a book commemorating the 10th anniversary of Raval-based artist-run cooperative gallery La Xina Art: La Xina Art X anys, Barcelona: 2009.

Entrevista en español con Tomás Pariente Dutor, originalmente publicada en su blog "Grabado Liquido", en mayo 2012. La entrevista repasa el origin y la historia de la iniciativa de talleres abiertos de artistas en Barcelona.

ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Jeffrey Swartz interviewed in Spanish by Tomás Pariente Dutor, a Barcelona-based painter and activist, and originally published in his blog, “Grabado Liquido”, on May 26, 2012. The interview reviews the founding, history and guiding principles of the first major artist open studios project in Barcelona, Tallers Oberts (Open Studios), which began in the Old City (Ciutat Vella) in 1993. The current state of the project, considered here to be in decline, is also dealt with. The interview deals with the Barcelona art scene in the 1990s, Barcelona cultural politics, gallery culture and the dynamics of gentrification in the artist-dense Raval neighbourhood. Jeffrey Swartz was a founding member of the Barcelona Open Studios project and later president of the cultural association organizing the Tallers Oberts event.
English version available upon request.

This paper analyzes the critical and cultural context of my previous analysis of independant artistic practice as published in Institutions by Artists (2012). The article, originally published in Catalan for the annual review of the Sala d'Art Jove, Barcelona, takes on the question of the relevance of artist-run spaces for contemporary art practice.

Originally published in Catalan as “Cultura crítica en l’alterespai: a la recerca d’un model per a l’activisme artístic”
In Sala d’Art Jove 2010-2011. Barcelona: Generalitat de Catalunya, 2012,
pp.128-134.
Online at: <http://saladartjove.cat/sites/default/files/SALA_ART_2010-2011_0.pdf>

Publication available upon request.
This essay reflects on the question of anarchist and libertarian ideology, identity and practice amongst cultural collectives, with specific reference to the context of contemporary Barcelona. It examines the meaning of assembly-based organization and non-hierarchical consensus in cultural collectives. The  influence of anarchist thought on the structures of cultural practice, as coherent with anarchist propositions, would shift the focus of anarchist aesthetics or cultural studies away from the representation of anarchy and towards its theoretically coherent practice.

"Reflections on Anarchist Structures and Aesthetics in Cultural Collectives" is published in Spanish in the Sitesize book "¡Catalunya termina aquí; aquí empieza Murcia!" (Catalonia Ends Here! This is Where Murcia Begins!). The volume deals with the history and memory of anarchist and libertarian practices in Catalonia, and is edited by the art collective Sitesize. Barcelona: Sitesize, 2014, pp. 59-66.
The book was presented on November 13, 2014, at MACBA, Barcelona.
A revised and updated version in English is available upon request.

... 2]. A variety of such space invaders still inhabit Barcelona&#x27;s cultural scene. Saladestar began as an artist-run gallery in the Gràcia district in 2003, organizing projects within its confines and without &lt; www.saladestar.com/ &gt;. It ...

This paper analyzes designer Martí Guixé’s use of the term ‘ex-designer’ as a critical self-labelling strategy in the context of contemporary design. Introduced in 2001 and presented publicly in 2002 as a social tool meant to permit a widened space of professional practice, ‘ex-designer’ constitutes an unusual case of the use of the prefix ‘ex’ in the distinction of a cultural current or movement. The specific use of the term by Guixé has varied over time and does not allow for interpretative consistency, However, the idea of establishing a critical position with regards to mainstream or conventional design has always been maintained. This first part of this paper analyzes the critical, strategic and linguistic ramifications of Guixé’s ‘ex-designer’ in the context of his work, examining the possible motives for its genesis, its specific uses and its activist effectiveness. The second part of the paper offers a terminological and typological reflection on comparable operations of differential labelling in art and design, with special consideration for the use of the prefix ‘ex’ in the history of modern culture.

This talk examines the role and meaning of prefiguration in anarchy, with particular emphasis on its cultural expressions. Examples are taken from figurative painting (Neo-impressionist Paul Signac), science fiction literature (Ursula K Le Guin's The Dispossessed and other works),  and collective art practice (Barcelona's anarchist and libertarian influenced cultural collectives). The lecture explores the relationship between the idea of implicitly imbedded anarchist practice (from Kropotkin's Mutual Aid and Colin Ward to David Graeber) and explicity activist prefigurative politics (drawing from Boggs and Virno, amongst others). While some contemporary thinkers stress the implicit prefigurative nature of the revived anarchy of our own century, right from its very beginnings in the 19th century anarchism has always sought a specific way of culturally visualising the forms and meanings of the society it longs for.

This talk is currently being prepared for publication. For more details contact the author.

Presented at the Fabra i Coats Art Centre, Barcelona, December 4, 2014. Spanish.