Red and black stripe, 2016

Single-channel video, 19 min, 15 sec.
Tempera painting. Stripe, width: 12 cm, length: variable measures.
Ed. 3 + 2 P. A.

From November 1936 to October 1937, the city of Valencia was the capital of the Second Republic. During this period, the Instituto para Obreros (Institute for Workers) was created, an educational experiment that was intended to be extended to other parts of Spain and which gave the working classes access to the baccalaureate for the first time.

In February 1937, shortly after the inauguration of the Institute, the photographer Walter Reuter made a report for its dissemination and propaganda. One of the photos shows a classroom with students in attendance, political posters on the walls and a painted stripe, which appears to be red and black. Given that different political tendencies coexisted at the Institute, it is more than likely that the stripe was painted by anarchist students of the CNT (Confederación Nacional del Trabajo).

After visiting the building that once housed the workers’ institute and locating the classroom, the strip shown in the photograph was sought out. To do this, two restorers were assisted by two restorers who scraped off several layers of paint that had accumulated on the walls. After several tastings and analysis of different areas, no traces of the strip were found. According to the technicians, the low-adhesion tempera paint may have been removed by its owners, the Jesuits, once the building was recovered after the triumph of Franco’s regime. It is clear that any hint of the Instituto para Obreros was removed with relish, not only at the behest of the fascists, but also out of self-interest: the monopoly on education had always been in the hands of the religious orders. In fact, the erasure of that emancipatory project was so effective that until well into the 1980s there was no news of its existence.

Red and Black Stripe consists of two elements, a video showing the tasting carried out by two restorers who unsuccessfully search for the red-black stripe painted in a classroom of the Instituto para Obreros and the reproduction of this stripe painted in tempera on the wall of a museum. The aim of this action is to politically “reterritorialise” an institution, if only symbolically, with colours that are innocuous today, but which during the war were recognised as powers of revolutionary emancipation.

Acknowledgements: Isidre Sabater and Isabel Álvarez.

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Exhibition:
Presence and Absence
G6 Gallery. IVAM. Valencia. From 26 January to 7 May 2017.

Exhibition:
Raw Materials
Curatorial Committee: David Armengol, David G. Torres and Martí Peran.
Fabra i Coats. Barcelona. From 8 November 2017 to 1 April 2018.