Pop Politics: Activisms at 33 Revolutions
30 November 2012–21 April 2013
Opening: Thursday 29 November, 20h
CA2M Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo
Av. Constitución, 23
28931 Móstoles, Madrid, Spain
Hours: Tuesday–Sunday 11–21h
Curator: Iván López Munuera
Pop Politics: Activisms at 33 Revolutions, curated by Iván López Munuera, raises a claim of specific political forms produced in pop music through contemporary art practices. The exhibition tenders, through the work of over 30 artists, to reflect over daily aesthetics, to discuss the viewer’s position, to vindicate diverse spaces where music is produced and socialized, to reconsider the “cover version” phenomenon and to highlight the specific communication forms of Pop culture, all to reformulate today´s extension and understanding of politics from the contemporary art side by means of performances, videos, photographs, drawings, comics, installations, concerts, paintings, songs and documentary films shown in the exhibition.
Over the 20th and 21st centuries, it has taken place a number of events which have had, as gravitational center, the different knowledge produced in Pop music (or urban popular music forms, either rock, punk, post-punk, disco, electro or hip-hop) causing a change in the social and cultural establishment. Actions which are not always present in used history that, however, have developed a serial of varied genealogies essential for art experiences, causing a radical crash in aesthetic, social ties as well as in the interaction with the established order.
Music is understood as the arena for politics where diverse positionings are brought into play as a wide relation net that contains hegemony channels, as well as an archipelago for alternatives, irony, neglect and dissent, because its assorted relation systems are not subcultures beyond a global context but shared agencies and positions of interconnected knowledge, hybrid as well as polluted, where it is possible to find micro-spaces of discoordination; a political arena that has significantly influenced the present, revelling current implications from many of today´s aesthetic and artistic expressions.
Through songs, t-shirts, album covers, clubs, concerts, covers or fanzines, it is featured and dramatized as the running power mechanism in daily life, proving that “what is personal is political” and “what is political is personal.” Within all of these elements, consumerism and sexual relations are dissected, as well as questions of how hegemonic fictions, post-colonialism, gender theory or common-sense notions over what is natural/normal are built.
The artists featured in this show are assume vivid astro focus, Lorea Alfaro, Gabriel Acevedo Velarde, Bozidar Brazda, William Cordova, Red Caballo, June Crespo, Robert Crumb, Discoteca Flaming Star, Jeremy Deller & Nick Abrahams, Juan Pablo Echeverri, Ruth Ewan, Luke Fowler, Till Gerhard, Luis Jacob, Jeleton, Daniel Jacoby, Daniel Johnston, Daniel Llaría, Kalup Linzy, Jennie Livingston, Christian Marclay, Ryan McGinley, Momu & No Es, Dave Muller, Raymond Pettibon, Francesc Ruiz, Mickalene Thomas, Pepo Salazar, Aitor Saraiba, Azucena Vieites, Lyota Yagi, Zira02 and Icaro Zorbar.
The exhibition catalogue includes texts and contributions by Iván López Munuera, Kim Gordon, José Manuel Costa, Simon Reynolds, Greil Marcus, Amparo Lasén, Peio Aguirre and Lucy O’Brien.
