Pilar Cruz

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Editorial
A new step. Transparency, changes and black boxes.
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A new step
After two years of sending the resident artists’ monthly newsletter out by email, we’ve decided to take the qualitative leap and turn the monthly newsletter into an online magazine, to give the maximum possible exposure to the activity taking place in the workshops. That question, “What are you working on at the moment?“ which we almost inevitably ask when we run into an artist in any social setting, and often difficult to answer, is transformed here into an informative section that you can read, send to a colleague or share on any of the multiple social networks at the click of a button. All the contents of this magazine can be passed on and I encourage you to do so.

Every three months we will publish a new issue reporting on the artists’ professional and productive activities. We will also bring you an in-depth interview with one of them informing us about their experiences and working methods, as well as a four-way conversation discussing projects and ways of tackling production and an opinion piece dealing with a topic of interest to the artistic community from a personal and subjective viewpoint. We will provide links to artists’ portfolios and there will be a survey in order to gather, in an intentionally unscientific manner, general points of view on particular issues.

In this, our first issue, in addition to news from the resident artists, we have an interview with Ana Álvarez Errecalde telling us about the work she produced during her two-year residency in Hangar. There is also a conversation between Juan Lesta, Daniel Jacoby, Daniel Gasol and myself, where we talk about technology, communication and the public for the arts. Being the first issue in a magazine that concerns itself with artists, we’re publishing a pertinent article in which Mery Cuesta dissects the most customary types of writing on art. We’ll be launching the magazine publicly in the Espai UBÚ on December the 18th, with a performance by Codeco and a music session with mobile phones by Pedro Soler.

Transparency
Too many cases of unfair dismissal, embezzlement, suspicious goings-on in our institutions. The most beneficial solution in the immediate future is transparency. Transparency as the basis of a beneficial social contract through which we can trust our politicians, have confidence once again in administrators and grant full credibility to juries and commissions. How can we trust NGOs, cultural institutions, public entities, if we don’t know how they go about choosing their directorships, don’t know their salaries or how many bonuses they accumulate? Transparency which is, after all, well-communicated good practice, should permeate all areas operated with public funding. Participatory budgets, free public access to government accounts. Extreme rigour to prevent the recurrence of what happened in the Millet case, a person who, to the shame of the judiciary, is free while people accused of less substantial crimes, such as Amadeu Casellas, remain in prison. And there are many others. Under these circumstances the question becomes a pun. Are the competent authorities competent?

Changes
In Hangar we are going through a process of change in directorship. Pedro Soler is leaving us after four years at the helm of the production centre. Four years of service to the arts community, including the setting up of the video and Medialab departments, consolidating Hangar’s reputation as a renowned centre of artistic production, launching initiatives such as Xarxaprod, carrying out voluntary improvement of equipment and facilities, creating free software for artistic creation and undertaking building work to expand the square metres available for workshop space. Over the last year all activities in Hangar were carried out collectively and self-managed by the artistic community, with a high level of participation. This management proved to be very productive despite the strained environment, due to the whole process of eviction, demolition and conversion of Can Ricart. An unending soap opera that has even been the subject of a doctoral thesis. This month’s episode dealt with Cultural Heritage. Remains of what might be a first-century Roman villa were found at Can Ricart. The City Council has dismissed this discovery, which could hinder the building of La Casa de las Lenguas. The remains have been covered over until the second phase of the archaeological work, consisting of dating and accessing their worth, can begin.

Our new director, Tere Badia, selected by the board of the Associació d’Artistes Visuals de Catalunya following an international competition attracting thirty-two candidates, will take up her new position on January the 2nd. Some of the challenges facing her include the monitoring of the expansion and renovation work that is to take place at the centre, as well as a programme based on de-localization and transversality, the transmission and feedback of knowledge and the opening up of Hangar to artistic agents and, going beyond the arts sector, to seek out collaboration with other sectors.

Black Boxes
What is happening with the project of the Sustainable Economy Law and its Second Section reminds me of an episode of the third season of the English sitcom The IT Crowd. In it, the two protagonists, computer geeks working for a large company, decide to play a joke on their section head, who despite her position doesn’t really have much of a clue about the issue at hand, and they fool her into thinking that the Internet is contained inside a small black box which they give her to present at a meeting of the board of directors. The geeks wait for her to be jeered at, but this doesn’t happen because the directors are as ignorant as the section head and blindly believe that the Internet is inside that little black box which must be treated with great care because if anything happens to it, the world as we know it would end and we would sink into chaos.

As authors, we are clearly entitled to make a decent living from our work without the fundamental rights and freedoms that are enshrined in the Constitution being infringed upon. We need real, serious and open social debate, we need innovation and we need less demagogy and more pedagogy. As the Manifesto “In defence of fundamental rights on the Internet”, to which I personally adhere, states “cultural industries need modern, effective, credible and affordable alternatives to survive, that adapt to new social practices, rather than putting in place limitations as disproportionate as they are ineffective for their pursued aims.”

The cultural industries’ business model cannot be based on controlling the black cardboard box where the Internet is supposedly stored.

by Pilar Cruz Ramón

P.S. Shortly after posting this article, G.M. has informed us that the ruins aren’t Roman but of the industrial era. Thanks for reporting.