I Want a president
The action/collective reading I Want a President has been specifically invited to the espacio trapézio art space as an intervention or event in their program, which will not be framed within an exhibition context whereas it has been thought as occurring in a socio-political situation. The state of the political debate in Spain has been increasingly present for the public opinion, especially stressed by the growth of the economical crisis and its deep implications in the transformation of the democratic context in matters of popular sovereignty and representativity.
Since May 2011 several popular protests have been taking place all over the country, reclaiming the sequestered representation of the population’s will within the government’s legislative and economical measures, questioning and problematizing the given construct of the “political class”. The tension’s escalation between the right wing opposition, the ruling left wing party and the openly manifested discontent of the population have determined the decision to bring the presidential election forward, from March 2012 to the 20th of November 2011.
Therefore, given the aforementioned political coordinates, the organizers, who knew about the existence of the piece as well as the contexts in which it had been already performed, have invited Malin Arnell, Kajsa Dahlberg, Johanna Gustavsonn and Fia-Stina Sandlund to realize the public reading of Zoe Leonard’s text without the necessity of its introduction in an exhibition space but rather as part of the active political tissue currently developing in Spain as well as in other parts of Europe.
The claims expressed in Leonard’s text as well as the voice and attitude in which they are announce, woven with a direct construction of its style, are parts playing in favor for its validity, remaining its political demands current and necessary, in fact showing various shared standpoints and concerns with the ones performed by the numerous protesters in Spain as well as in other European countries.The decision to keep on visiting those concerns through their deployment in the public realm, with the participation of the population and through the ritual of their repetition, are elements that this specific intervention has add to the pre-existing text, which have in some way updated its content and explored different possibilities for its diffusion and reactive potential.
In light of the continuous manifestations and experiments in which the art penetrates the political, searching for transfers and the possibility of transformation, and accounting the open similarities between the characteristics of the piece and the diverse political demonstrations, it seems like further framings for its realization are no longer needed. The course of the events has created the environment in which this action has escaped is contingency to become a necessity, a reaction to the absence in the perception of the situation, an intervention in its deployment as agents instead of spectators.
Artists: Malin Arnell, Kajsa Dahlberg, Johanna Gustafsson y Fia-Stina Sandlund
A project curated by Clara T. López
With the collaboration of IASPIS, Swedish Arts Grants Committee – The Swedish Arts Grants Committeé’s International Program for Visual Artists and The Culture Committee of Stockholm
Thursday 17 th november, 19 h.
