Catalan Pavilion, Venice

La comunitat inconfessable
(The Unavowable Community)

A project by Valentín Roma with:
Joan Vila-Puig and Elvira Pujol/Sitesize
Daniel G. Andújar/
Technologies To The People
Pedro G. Romero/Archivo F.X.

http://www.lacomunitatinconfessable.cat

Based on the book of the same name by Maurice Blanchot, The Unavowable
Community is a proposal that explores the types of social intervention
adopted by various artistic practices that are developed around the
idea of the communal.

Three different projects have been selected to form part of this
project: Sitesize by Joan Vila-Puig and Elvira Pujol, Technologies To
The People by Daniel G. Andújar, and Arxiu F.X. by Pedro G. Romero.
These projects share communal strategies of transversality and
antagonism, in a territory that is difficult to chart, found in the
cracks in both the institution of art and models of cultural
productivity. (100)

The project. Concept

This artistic idea - which takes its name from the book of the same
title by Maurice Blanchot, and from his interpretation of communism
as "something that creates a community"- constitutes, therefore, an
investigation into the possible meanings of the nature of communal
works in the sphere of art, focusing its analysis on attempts to
glimpse the possible forms of collective action this entity might
suggest to us.

For this he has selected three projects (Sitesize, Technologies To
The People and Archivo F.X.) which, in spite of operating from
different perspectives, share the same strategies of a cross-cutting
approach, antagonism, supplantation and interference, which forces
them to place themselves in a territory that is difficult to map out,
situated between the cracks of both the institution of art and the
models of cultural productivity.

An important link between the ideas forming La comunitat
inconfessable is their questioning of the notion of a single and,
even, recognisable authorship. In this same direction, the ambiguous
character of these projects and their non-exemplifying nature mean
they are located beyond certain decision-making monopolies, re-using
pre-existing action devices, taking advantage of, or re-orienting,
communication nodes, parasitising consolidated structures,
configuring new archives and, in short, placing them amidst the
tension of that General Intellect of which Marx spoke; that social
brain which is, at the same time, a productive force and a principle
of citizen organisation.

The project. Lines of work:

1. An exhibition presenting the ideas generated by each of the
participants using the metaphor of a library as a reference point or
visual interface. Thus, each intervention constitutes a
"deconstructed" approach -i.e., distorted, unconstructed, destroyed
or under construction- to this space of knowledge, learning and
theatricality that is Borges' interminable library, which functions
here as a sort of meeting point of the "community of readers" urged
by Blanchot.

2. A book constituting a kind of polyphony of essays using texts by
Maurice Blanchot, Giorgio Agamben, Jean Luc Nancy, Philippe
Lacoue-Labarthe, Lars Iyer, Peter Pál Pelbart and Marina Garcés
that were published in different contexts, periods and media, but
which, never the less, pose shared questions such as: What is the
common? In which political or mental space is the notion of community
developed? With which elements is it confronted? On which does it
feed?

3.. A website that will document it visually and textually, and
operate as a vast archival collection around the notion of the
communal from the perspective of philosophy, anthropology, the social
sciences and art, among other disciplines..
http://www.lacomunitatinconfessable.cat

La comunitat inconfessable (The Unavowable Community)
Dates: 7 June - 22 November, 2009 (Vernissage; 4, 5, 6 June)
Opening: 5th June, 6.30 pm
Opening hours: 10 am – 6 pm
Closed Mondays
Magazzino del Sale, n. 3,
Dorsoduro 264.
30123 Venice
http://www.veneziacatalunya2009.cat