The sound recording of the seminar Reinventing art’s faculties: dissident art and political militancy in the seventies (Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 7 November 2017) are now available in our multimedia section.

The seminar addressed the crossings between artistic experiments and political commitment during the late Francoism and the first transition in Spain. To do so, it discussed events such as the students of Fine Arts School’s claims for the renewal of their curricula, particularly passionate since the late sixties; the self-organization of artists to create the “Exposición libre y permanente” (“Free and Permanent Exhibition”) (1970) as a way to boycott the “Exposición General de Bellas Artes” (“General Exhibition of Fine Arts”); or the constitution of the Association of Plastic Artists (APSA) in the early seventies, with the aim of strengthening artistic activity’s professional recognition. In a format combining a seminar and a workshop, the meaning acquired by these practices have been mapped in relation with the context of the politicization of art that went through the planet’s rebellious geography between the sixties and seventies. The seminar reflected on the particular meaning of alliances between art and political dissidence in the Spanish state and reconstruct art’s politics of territorial dissemination in relation to the neighborhood movement. Finnaly, the seminar included the participation of artists who will share their experience of that period.

 

First panel:  (Counter)cartographies of the seventies 

Paula Barreiro López

 

Second panel: Territories of militant art

Alberto Berzosa

Juan Albarrán

 

Third panel: Art and militancy in the seventies

Eduardo Arenillas

Marisa González