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Barcelona Culture is the professional webpage of Jeffrey
Swartz
NEWS
-Design Dreams. In the Catalan
journal L'Avenç, a
new article on Catalan design and entrepreneurial innovation. In this piece I
consider the Catalan context in contrast to the thesis of the exhibition on
Italian "Dream Factories" , curated by Alberto Alessi at the Triennale
Museum, Milan.
-Inaugural Lecture, Escola de
l'Art del Treball, Barcelona. On Nov 17 I gave the inaugural
address to the students and faculty of the Escola de l'Art del Treball, at the
Escola Industrial, Barcelona. The presention was entitled "Leaps, Bursts and
Lights that Come On: Reflections on Creativity and Creators".
-Martí Guixé Newsletter. A short
piece appeard in mid November called "Designing Auctions", for Martí Guixé
Newsletter #16. The newsletter appears quarterly a features new work,
projects and exhibits.
-Panel chaired by Jeffrey Swartz:
Occupy Curating: Politics, Protests and the Future of
Curatorial Practice at Dublin
Contemporary, Dublin. October 29, 2011 at Earlsfort Terrace. The debate
on bottom-up curating, grounded in community and shared with artists and users
in content and format, with the following professionals: Alfredo Cramerotti
(Director, Mostyn), José Falconi (Curator, Latin American Art Forum), Oxana
Maleeva (Curator, Art Apart), William Morrow, (Director, 21C Museum, Kathy Noble
(Curator, Tate Modern), and Steve Picolo (Artist).
-Culture Cutbacks and the Taking Apart
of the Catalan Arts Council
An information session and debate on the
Catalan Budget Law and the Omnibus Law, cutting back the identity and power of
the Catalan Arts Council, took place on June 16, 2011, at the Centre Artístic de
Sant Lluc, Barcelona. With the
participation of Jeffrey Swartz, art critic and curator. See my articles on the subject,
in Catalan, on my blog.
Organized by: Associació d’Artistes Visuals de
Catalunya
-Design Activism and Social Change, Design
History Society Congress in Barcelona
From September 7-10, 2011, I participate
in the international congress of the Design History Society, to be held in
Barcelona. The theme this year is Design Activism and Social Change, my
paper is entitled "Critique, Language and Strategy in Martí Guixé's
'ex-designer'".
-On December 16,
2010, I participated in "Repetition and Difference", a series of debates on
contemporary art contexts. At Can Felipa Arts Visuals I spoke about "Independent
Artists in Space: the Urban Turn and Artistic Activism in Barcelona, 1991-2010".
Other participants included Glòria Picazo, Jordi Mitjà and Leire Vergara, who
gave an excellent presentation on friendship and its ethos in contemporary
art.
RECENT
PUBLICATIONS
-Design Dreams. In the Catalan journal L'Avenç, a new article on
Catalan design and entrepreneurial innovation. In this piece I consider the
Catalan context in contrast to the thesis of the exhibition on Italian "Dream
Factories" , curated by Alberto Alessi at the Triennale Museum, Milan.
-A
text in English and Catalan in the catalogue Asunción+Guasch, "Kenosis (in
progress)", Espai d'Art Moritz, Cornellà de Llobregat. The show opened June
8 and is on until July 2, 2011. See the expo information brochure here.
In "Participative Paths and Strategic Voids:
Asunción+Guasch and the Kenosis Series", I look at this body of work
in Asunción+Guasch, centred on the idea of constructive and conceptual
emptying, though performance, group interventions, photography and the
intervening of books and other literary texts of all
types.
-An
article on the work of José Noguero was published in the June 2010 edition
of the Calcutta art magazine Art Etc. In "Setting the
Figure, Setting Space", I reflect on Noguero's show at the Berlin Georg Kolbe
Museum, seeking connections with the place of the Kolbe figure in the Mies van
der Rohe Barcelona Pavilion. Art Etc is a quarterly
publication of Emami
Chisel
Art.
-In 2010
I published a short article in the journal Leonardo (V. 43, Issue I,
2010), published by The International Society for the Arts, Sciences
and Technology.
In
"Space-Run Artists: Cultural Activism in Contemporary
Barcelona", I review the relation between art activism and urban space
in Barcelona since the early
90s.
The long version
of this text, originally published in Fillip, is now
available linked on the website ArcPost, with many pieces dedicated to artist-run culture and
independent cultural
initiatives.
-An essay in the
book Martí Guixé: Food Designing, published by
Corraini, Mantova, Italia. The text "A Host for Critical Gastronomy:
Martí Guixé’s Food Designing", in English and Italian, explores the
idea of critical gastronomy in the light of designer Martí Guixé's work in food
design. Released April,
2010.
EDUCATION
-I am currently teaching Design Analysis and
Criticism II at Eina, Barcelona. The course includes modules on
Design Rhetoric and the Project, Contexts, Analysis and Criticism.
-The Legacy of Goya in Spanish Modern Art, a course
taught at Emily Carr University,
Vancouver, July 4 to August 18, 2011. The course built a reading of Spanish
modernity and its problems, its specificity, out of major themes in
Goya, echoed throughout the 20th century in Spanish art and
culture.
-From February to June, 2011, I taught History of Art
and Design II, at Eina,
a degree-granting design school in Barcelona. The third-year course focuses
on the early 20th century to the 1960s, and emphasizes subjects and debates
relevant to industrial design students in art, design, architecture and material
culture.
-In the summer of 2009 I taught a summer session Humanities
course at Emily Carr University
, Vancouver, Canada. Held from July
6 to August 19, 2009, the course dealt with food politics, hunger and
agricultural models, and also examined questions of taste dominance in
gastronomy and its relation to geopolitics. "The Geopolitics of Food:
Hunger, Culture and Contemporary Dietary Ideologies" looked as
well at regional and local food and diet ideologies in the Vancouver
context, in light of recent research.
-"The Perfect Host" (L'amphitryon parfait),
a Jeffrey Swartz workshop that delved into the concept of the "host" in
relation to contemporary art. From February 2-5, 2009, at the Haute École d'Art (HEART) de Perpignan,
France.
The workshop dealt with the presence of the artist together with
the artist's work, an attention to details, the creation of codes and languages
for specific "occasions", concern for the aesthetic and social experience
of the spectator-receiver, the mediation of pleasure, and the desire to see
the spectator participate in the definition and completion of the work. What
does it mean in the present day to speak of the artist as host, or the host as
artist?
PROJECTS
-Thought for Food: A Gastronomical Reading
Room . A project by Jeffrey Swartz for a reading room on food and gastronomy.
In artist Kristina Lee Podesva's public
project Vehicle, at
Langara College, Vancouver, Canada. From January 13th to February 10th,
2009.
The
Jeffrey Swartz project Thought for Food was installed inside the
ephemeral module-container that Podesva has designed for her artist's residence
at Langara College, the first project of the recently begun Centre for Art in Public Spaces.
See
the short video produced for the exhibition: The Art of
Eating
(Nails).
PREVIOUS
PUBLICATIONS
-a reflection on the image of Barcelona's Raval neighbourhood as
constructed from the perspective and values of the Eixample. "An
Inner Colony: Barcelona's Raval in the Terms of the
Eixample", was
written for the catalogue commemorating the 10th anniversary of the
gallery La Xina Art, Barcelona. Released in April, 2009. See link for full text
.
-"Abstinence", a short text for the book-catalogue by
Miralda, Power Food LEXIcom , after his
exhibition Power Food in late 2008 at Artium, Vitoria, and in
Palma de Mallorca in early
2009.The book is
distributed by
Actar.
An article on Miralda and his project
appeared in the cultural supplement Babelia of El
País, on March 7,
2009.
- " The Tourism Debate beween Seekers and
Receivers", introductory text to the guest
edited feature section of the journal Barcelona Metropolis, no. 72, dedicated to tourism. The
journal came out in the summer of 2008. The article is also available in Spanish
and the original Catalan through
this link to the journal webpage.
Jeffrey
Swartz was the guest editor of the issue on tourism, the city and the many
debates surrounding it in the present day. He is a member of the
editorial board of Barcelona Metropolis, published by the City of
Barcelona.
-CURATORIAL
-419, or 'The
Spanish Prisoner', from
February to May, 2008.
The exhibition project on the Nigerian e-mail scam known as 419,
with a documentary section by curator Jeffrey Swartz and a video installation
by Catalan artist Pep Dardanyà, was shown at Centre d'Art Santa Mònica,
Barcelona, after travelling to Vic and Girona.
A full overview of the documentation
to be exhibited and internet
links related to the show have been posted here. A more complete press
release from the previous venue in Vic is available here
.
A
video of 419 expert Brian Wizard talking on YouTube about the world of email
scamming.
A
video of the exhibit in Girona can be viewed on YouTube.
The article published in the Spanish daily El País on November
23, 2007, can be found here.
BLOG
-Since May 2007
I've got a blog with articles on cultural politics
in Barcelona, Catalonia and Spain, recently updated. My most recent entry dealt
with my summer in Vancouver, with reflections on Greenpeace, Occupy, Adbusters
and the Canadian economy: http://barcelonacultureblog.blogspot.com/
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BARCELONA
CULTURE STUDIO
Information
Barcelona Culture
Studio is the personal project and web page of Jeffrey Swartz. You can find here
information on my professional activities as critic, curator and cultural
educator.
FOR MORE INFORMATION:
jmswartz_2000@yahoo.com .
Jeffrey Swartz , Winter
2011-12
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Exhibits and Activities
