Projecte E/F

What is provincialism in art: is it dealing with local issues or is it being a bad artist? Is art a collective or personal endeavor? Does institutionalization of the practice of art bring better funding to artists or does it also curtail artists' freedom of expression?

In her staged conversation with three young Spanish people having breakfast together in a studio, Mireia Saladrigues raises many questions about the practice and function of art. The interlocutors cite the material that Saladrigues has gathered through thirty interviews with various players on the Spanish art scene: artists, curators, critics, and employees of various cultural institutions. Using the sociological methodology of gathering and analyzing information to produce her video piece, Saladrigues thus comments on the nature of the process of contemporary art, which has become a discursive practice. An artist has ceased to be a seer confined to an ivory tower and has instead been transformed into a social agent who generates artistic meaning in the process of networking. (Olena Chervonik)