Architectures of Discourse

The origins of Architectures of Discourse lie in a reflection on the function of curatorial practice today, based on the difference between the theoretical creation of models and their reproduction.

The project is based on reflection generated around a study of the architectural space of the Fundació Antoni Tàpies, the collections of periodical publications in the Fundació library and Antoni Tàpies’ sculpture Núvol i cadira (Cloud and Chair, 1990), installed on the roof of the building. Ute Meta Bauer is the general curator of Architectures of Discourse, assisted by a series of collaborators from widely different fields -from cultural anthropology, design and counter public action to sonic translation.

Architectures of Discourse works with this sense of self-enquiry to articulate a discursive construction through lines drawn from reflexive flux, not fixed to objects or forms, but formulations, expressed in various formats. In this way, the project and its collaborators are enabled to convey their idea from a direct correspondence to parameters that influence the lived social space and the transforming links between art and society and its codes and values.

Architectures of Discourse is organised around the sense of a curatorial dérive, within the framework of an art institution at the place where the exhibition hall and the library meet (Level 1 of the Fundació Antoni Tàpies). The events which take place in the library will spread to the exhibition hall, and vice versa. Through the project, the architectural, solid meeting-point between the two rooms is translated into spatial concepts: exchange, flow, and information. The hybrid format of the exhibition is due, in part, to the anchorage points that the project selects from each participant’s specific frame of reference, with the intention of interrelating and highlighting a diversity of approaches, with appeals to the visual and other senses, and a goal of information/communication that ranges from new printed matter, events and media to architectural interventions. All in all, the exhibition embodies an associative poetics of construction, articulating the new forms brought into play through the social imaginary generated by a culture of restraints.

In its nature, Architectures of Discourse expresses the influence of the project’s underpinning theoretical frameworks -from feminist discourse to political and media theories. These discourses are linked to cultural and artistic practices that are engaged and critical from many positions. Architectures of Discourse undertakes an exploration and is developed in such a way as to suggest a function which contemporary exhibition curators have yet to recognise as belonging to them: that of effectively enabling and maintaining open critical relations expressing the links between art practice, institutions, culture as lived on a day-to-day basis and the social space. And this recognition should take the form of dialogue and communication.