Common House, 2010

Wood, 231 x 287 x 387 cm.

In the early years of the Civil War and under the leadership of the Communist minister Jesús Hernández, known as the “Spanish Lunacharski” (1), various platforms of agitation and propaganda were promoted, heavily influenced by Soviet artistic-revolutionary practices. Altavoz del Frente, Cultura Popular and other associations of writers and artists devised all kinds of “productivist” manifestations such as posters, decorated trains, tribunes, signs, banners, cinema, theatre, music, mobile libraries, dismountable schools and museums of the revolution.

Common House reproduces a propaganda loudspeaker of undeniable constructivist aspect that the organisation Altavoz del Frente mounted on trucks of Russian origin (2). Its proclamations were intended to attract the soldiers of the fascist side to a common cause (or common house) that embodied the values of the Popular Front. In order to rethink this idea, the size of the original device has been increased from a sounding board to a “house” in order to gain access to its interior and be “inhabited”.

We know that the Second Republic succumbed for many reasons; one of the most obvious was undoubtedly the lack of synergy between the different left-wing sensibilities, which led to self-phagocytisation. After that ideological anthropophagy, we can only ask ourselves what remains of that cause or house and what voices still reverberate?

(1) Lunacharski was Commissar of Instruction of the Narkompros (People’s Commissariat for Public Instruction) from 1917 to 1929 and one of the main persons responsible for the revolutionary cultural policy.

(2) The Soviet Union sent a large number of ZIS-5 trucks to Spain as a tool of war.

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Exhibition:
Parabellum 12 mm
Curatorship: Martí Peran
Ca l’Arenas. Mataró. From 21 May to 4 July 2010.

Exhibition:
Abandoned Futures. Tomorrow was already the question
Curatorship: Martí Peran
Fabra i Coats. Barcelona. From 18 October 2014 to 18 January 2015.

Exhibition:
General Dystopia
Curatorship: Johanna Caplliure
Drassanes. Valencia City Council. April-May 2017.