Iratxe Jaio + Klaas van Gorkum

The idea that we will be defending here is that certain contemporary artistic practices, indebted to the conceptual, post-conceptual and/or relational practices of recent times, are loaded with a series of tensions that point towards an interesting and fertile terrain of crossbreeding between what we could describe for now, in a generic and somewhat imprecise way, as “social”, on one side, and purely “aesthetic”, on the other.

Some of these practices, such as those we shall be commenting on in this text, work as a clear example of the potency and tensions arising from these types of performative operation when they are surrounded by an excess of intention. And, in this sense, they are a further example of a process that is becoming a symptom of contemporary art: the urgency of recovering the certainties of interpretation (of hermeneutics) in response to the unbearable ambivalence that is constitutive of every performance, with this recovery running the risk of neutralising what there is of discovery in performance.

Presentation of the publication 'Amikejo', tuesday 22 May, 20h at Múltiplos in Barcelona.

Amikejo has been produced in coordination with a series of four exhibitions by artist duos, curated by Latitudes (Max Andrews & Mariana Cánepa Luna) at Laboratorio 987, the project space of the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León, MUSAC (exhibitions by Pennacchio Argentato, Iratxe Jaio & Klaas van Gorkum, Uqbar-Irene Kopelman & Mariana Castillo Deball, and Fermín Jiménez Landa & Lee Welch).

“It is a privilege to perform this transfer of sovereignty in the face of history, or rather: in the presence of God, who alone knows why this union in freedom was not achieved earlier nor later, and who knows of the generations' failures, but who also sees how we may serve the plan for the progress of mankind."

Queen Wilhelmina in 1949

From the 28th of March to the 6th of April 2012, we gave a workshop at MASS Alexandria, Egypt, in collaboration with Elke Uitentuis. During this workshop, we focused on the concept of pre-enactment. The unstable transition period Egypt is in right now causes a lot of uncertainty, but also openings for new images of the future. This future could be the one we hope for, or its opposite, a dystopian vision of what is to come. The question is how we, as artists, can contribute to the development of a certain shared vision, a horizon to strive for. By enacting future scenarios in the present, the current politics of our daily lives will be put into another perspective. The goal of pre-enacting is to draw parallels and stimulate discussion on the proposals presented.