Translation of the Response Letter to Macba

Some days ago I posted a response letter to an invitation the Barcelona based collective Crtl-i recieved to give a talk in Macba, here is a translated version of the letter.

Ctrl-i refuses the Macba* The MacBa, museum of contemporary precariousness of Barcelona, doesn't needmore words, it needs actions. Today, our first action is to make public our refusal to give a "talk"there. Because there is nothing you can say about precariousness in thatMacdonald's of culture, that won't turn into "flatus vocis", an empty voice,asthmatic fart, mental flatulence. As they say, *talking aboutprecariousness in the McBa is like a nutrition seminar at MacDonald's. * The MacBa doesn't need more words, it needs actions. The Ctrl-i girls turndown the *Faculty of Radical Aesthetics*' invitation to participate in aworkshop about "the new relationality" at the Museum of contemporary Art ofBarcelona (MacBa).We were invited to give a talk about our critical work dealing withprecariousness and culture in the new metropolis: work which is alwaysincipient and exploratory, which wishes to examine the multiple relationsand ramifications which said problems unravel. Work which began experiencingfirsthand the precariousness in the institutional cultural space ofBarcelona (1), and continues both in opposing the total precarizationoffensive launched by the institution (with special mention for the Macba),as well as in political practices that challenge the ongoing threat ofexpulsion and attempted criminalization of the city's dissident culturalspaces sufficiently autonomous to strike wherever and whenever they please.The Macba doesn't need more words, it needs a kick in the face. As Mr.Ribalta rightly says, the institution does not neutralize the manifestationsthat currently criticize order and resist power (see Brumaria nº5, p.49).That, ironically, is so true. The institution does not neutralize but ratherparticipates in the political struggle. Today, the entire MacBa is completelyon the side opposed to the active critical practices in Barcelona, on theside of Power which tries to make our lives precarious, right there with theworst of them. - Though on one count we've got to hand it to the museum,that in times like these, with so much confusion and ambivalence, they havemanaged such clarity of position. Since "las Agencias" were kicked out, nothing really political, meaningactive and transformational, has happened in the MacBa. On the contrary, ithas only offered space to representation as the flipside of theprecariousness which expands from the museum´s very center. According to our analysis, there are two vectorial lines which unfold therange of problems surrounding precariousness and culture, and the MacBa isthe very model of both._ on the one hand, politics of economic, social and cultural apartheid: themuseum as a driving force of the political segregation of urban space:internal borders are raised for migrants, *precariates*, and the entireheterogeny raised by those intertwined terms. Internal borders that "defineones as respectable citizens, and invisibalize others as criminalizeddifference" (2). The museum as a reference point for the check points of *civility,* a field of experimentation for the new, neofascist civic norm, anorm which is a desperate and aberrant attempt to subject to anadministrative and police regime everything that constantly escapes theattempted normalization dictated from above (from those who a *Barcelona -the world's best store*). The museum impelling the gentrificationtransforming the center of the city into the cultural motor of 1) the realestate business, 2) the city-company (in the business of slot-machineculture); 3) kicking out low rent and the most vulnerable collectives as adirect consequence. Meaning, "get out of your house!", you won't be able topay for housing within 100 km of the center, uprooted from whatever yoursocial fabric was, because you are bad for business with your practices andimages, habits and networks, they make the cultural territory yield lessthen what it could. The common sense of Capital finds no answer within themuseum, but for the empty echo of what was once said, while on all otherfronts the Macba continues being the driving force of precariousness,gentrification, neofascism, real estate violence and urbanistic violence: adriving force of politics of economic, social and cultural apartheid. _ On the other hand, the Fast Culture model: "The rainbow may have manycolours, but multicultural culture has only one: the colour of money." (3),as the map of *What's Forum really about *proclaimes, pointing a finger atthe MacBa and other precariousness generating spaces. This fast culture model takes the form of a company and the model ofmaximizing profit as its raison d'etre. In first place, cultural andartistic production: we won't go into the capitalization of art, which mighttake us a long way, but as a cultural producer wishing to integrate criticaltendencies, the museum offers precariousness to its collaborators, both inthe economic conditions and in the imposition of draconian regimes ofintellectual property on what they produce. It seeks contact withindividuals rather then collectives, which is how, in the words of GuyDebord, the critical tendencies "ripped away from the collective that couldsustain them" are neutralized and trivialized. Once that active dimension iscanceled, the whole weight is shifted to representation, subjectingprocesses to problems of media redundancy and message overload. In second place, the work force, where the museum seeks, again, to maximizeprofit. The culture of money, the money of culture, intermediate companiesappear and take half the wages of the museum workers: thesubcontracting/outsourcing model, expands through the cultural universe. Itsconsequences – the continuous desarticulation of the workplace as a place ofpolitical conflict and political control over a group of workers. Onemuseum, four sub-companies. And its effects: enforced maximum mobility,imposed misery wages, menacing temporariness, internal distrust and mutualignorance: Barcelona's museum of contemporary precariousness. And we conclude. If the museum is all of this, it would be better if itdidn't pretend to be something else. If it wants to put into representationwhat a moment ago was action (same, p.49, another voice) then it shouldn'tpretend to make politics, action, cooperation, challenge, struggle. Thepolitics we should be practicing are against the Macba: we should attack it,interrupt it, deconstruct it, with the idea of transforming or destroyingit. The Macba is no space for enunciation, it is the driving force ofprecarization and gentrification, of economic, social and culturalapartheid. Many years ago Guy Debord explained in the "Report on theConstruction of Situations" what happens in this museum of precariousness"The ruling ideology sees to it that subversive discoveries are trivializedand sterilized, after which they can be safely spectacularized. It evenmanages to make use of subversive individuals" and I quote from memory "byfalsifying their works after their death, or, while they are still alive, bytaking advantage of the general ideological confusion and drugging them withone or another of the many mystiques at their disposal." [here he is maybehe goes too far, about truth and illusion, actor and spectator, and yet...] And yet, the cultural institution continues to integrate criticaltendencies in this way: critical tendencies "are cut off from the segmentsof society that could support them," accepting people generally on anindividual basis, "on the condition that they accept various renunciations" The Macba is our political enemy. In Barcelona the global civil war forculture continues. In this city there are pirates. Because there is nothingleft to liberate, only things to operate on, to manhandle, to hack. Tocombat precariousness, I hack my instinct. I make ends meet because my life has no price. I practice piracy. "Weakness had, as it ever does, taken refuge in the wonderful; it believedthe enemy was overcome if, in its imagination, it hocus-pocused him away;"(4) words don't transform things magically, so this text, being a "talk",contains its own failure. But this failure is inseparably connected to itsexpansion as a refusal. This city is not a ripe cinnamon-apple which will fall from the tree byitself. It must be ripped from the branch. Ctrl-i(1) An extreme example: two of us used to work in information and guidedvisits in the Macba, until we were kicked out, in a process of work relatedmobbing/bullying, for publicly presenting our precarious situation in themuseum in a "talk" about precariousness (held) in the museum (2004). But asimilar extreme precarious situation exists in the Tapies museum, Miromuseum, Picasso museum, TNC, UB, UAB etc...*(2) http://chabolear.blogspot.com* <http://chabolear.blogspot.com/>*(3) http://www.sindominio.net/mapas* <http://www.sindominio.net/mapas>(4) Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, Karl Marx