Anna Moreno, Spain
Contact@annamoreno.net
Solo Exhibiton
2011 The Barnum Effect. Nau Estruch. Sabadell (october)
Group exhibitions (selection)
Group exhibitions (selection)
2011 Museum Cemento Rezola 10º Aniversario, San Sebastián
Etapa de Potència. Centre d'Art Torre Muntadas. El Prat de
Llobregat, Barcelona
ArteCittà. Cittadellarte-Fondazione Pistolerro,
Italy
The Stateless Pavilion. Pirate Camp, 54th Venice Biennale,
Italy
Jour de Fête. The Private Space Gallery, Barcelona
Speaking Corner. NauEstruch, Sabadell
2010 Unidee Open Studio 2010. Cittadellarte-Fondazione Pistoletto,
Italy
(D)FEFV videofestival in KrK, Croatia.
Hours in Fabra & Coats. Fabra & Coats creation
factory, Barcelona
Inund’art. Street Art Festival, Culture House,
Girona
2009 Mostra d’Art Jove de Mataró, Barcelona
Performances, interventions and Screenings
Performances, interventions and Screenings
2011 The Art of Money Getting. Conference at Teatre Estruch,
Sabadell
2010 On Discomfort. Conference at Caixaforum. Barcelona
Backstage, performance with Kosta Tonev.
Cittadellarte-Fondazione Pistoletto, Italy
2009 L’Alternativa. Screening in the Alternative Film Festival of
Barcelona, CCCB.
Blocs & Docs. Screening in La Capella,
Barcelona
Publications
Publications
2011 Sólo Vídeo: book+dvd, curated by David Arlandis and Javier
Marroquí
(culturalwork.com),
promoted by Sant Andreu Contemporani, Barcelona.
2009 QUAM’09: El Relat de l’Art. ACVIC (Barcelona)
Development of the online project
Duetos for the research project Binary Prospections in the University of
Barcelona
2010 Grant Museum Cemento Rezola (San Sebastián). Mention
Seminars and Workshops (selection)
Seminars and Workshops (selection)
2011 Speaking Corner, with Antonio Ortega. NauEstruch,
Sabadell.
2010 Horitzo.tv. Streaming and online-tv workshop. La Capella,
Barcelona
On Artistic Research. Tony Brown, Guadalupe Echevarría, Dora
García,
Dieter Lesage, Natascha Sadr and Jan Verwoert. MACBA, Barcelona
Between production and facts. The Reinvention of Artistic
Activism.
Moderated by Marcelo
Expósito. MACBA, Barcelona
2009 QUAM, El Relat de l’Art. Directed by Andrés Hispano. Vic,
Barcelona.
Disruption. Workshop with Rirkrit Tiravanija, Josep-Maria
Martín and Martí Peran.
Can Xalant, Barcelona
Preproducció i producció en els processos artístics: de la
idea al producte.
Workshop with Joan Morey. Hangar, Barcelona
Residency
Residency
2011 Atelierhaus Salzamt (Austria). Artist in Residence
(sept-dec)
NauEstruch. Sabadell, Barcelona. Artist in Residence
(july)
The Stateless Pavilion. Pirate Camp, 54th Venice Biennale,
Italy. Artist in Residence
(may-june)
2010 Cittadellarte-Fondazione Pistoletto (Italy). Artist in
Residence
2009 Fabra & Coats creation factory (Barcelona). Artist in
residence
A Critique of Anna Moreno
Andrea Rodríguez Novoa and Verónica
Valentini
(Curatorial team based in Barcelona, Spain)
In the particular period of social,
political and economic changes we are going through, one of the emerging
phenomena is the tendency to transform knowledge into a consumer good and its
adaptation to the logic of market economy. In this setup, the function of the
artist and the way to make art adopt a different nature from what we know so
far. The artist is a worker whose immaterial work is integrated into society.
The role of the artist in contemporary
society and their legitimate foray within the economic chain, which implies a
vindication regarding professional ethics and the precarization of the sector,
represent key aspects in Anna Moreno’s work (1984, Barcelona). Her research
equally prioritizes both theory and practice and it is mostly formalized
through videos, installations and performances. Works such as the action
<Hours in Fabra & Coats>(2010), reflect upon the process of artistic
production: in a former textile factory turned into a center of creative
production, its current users wear uniforms that belonged to the former
workers. Through subtle and hidden messages, the artist transposes problems
from other disciplines into the art world, translating the artistic practice
into a common language, and likewise suggesting a reverse reading: she questions
the viewer from an artistic perspective that is able to connect to other
universes. Anna Moreno demands the recognition of artistic practices and claims
them to be significant both as a material and immaterial activity. She
challenges the usefulness of art to ratify it, so that she breaks with the myth
of the creative genius and grants the artistic profession a dimension that
situates it within the social chain.
Moreno dislocates concepts and devices and
plays precisely with the impact of the message. So she did in the public intervention
<Casino>(2010), where a referendum was devised to consult citizens about
the conversion of a church into a casino. This work reveals the use of
citizenship participation as a means of control and signals the introduction of
the concepts that the artist is currently developing.
By calling into question what Nicolas
Bourriaud considered in his <Relational aesthetics>(1998) the
interactivity of the work of art, Moreno’s work vindicates interpassivity as a
value per se. This interactivity is related to the evasion of responsibility by
the spectator in regards to whatever they receive: through conflict or unease,
the artist questions the public in ideological terms, appealing to their
personal involvement and making the responsibility fall in the interstitial
tension between artist and spectator.
The introductory piece of her latest
project ‘The Barnum Effect’ is entitled after the book 『The Art of Money Getting』(1880), by the
american businessman P. T. Barnum, considered the first show business
millionaire. Barnum reveals the golden rules for making money through the
twenty chapters of the book. The Barnum Effect is also the observation of how
individuals approve descriptions of their personality which are supposed to be
specific, but are in fact generic and vague. The project consists of a series
of works each taking a chapter of the book as a statement, managing to
conjugate various core ideas from the artist’s reflection. Going from the
economics domain to art, she tests the personalization of the message by the
audience and the Barnum Effect among both fields. Likewise, she also explores,
in a fictional but convincing way, the dimension of art as money maker, where
she questions again the role of artistic production in the social chain.
Lastly, her use of language based on means from the entertainment media and
other devices that the audience is familiar with, stresses and highlights the
active-passive subject.
She charges storytelling with what could be
considered a weapon of mass destruction as described by language researcher Christian
Salmon, but shemakes use of it in an abstract way, literally forcing the
spectator to take a critical stand from the most intimate realm: where social
convention ends and the internal echo becomes inevitable. Moreno irritates us
by means of negation, by making evident what is ridiculous, by dominating the
use and contextualization of language, which is her tool for artistic
assertion. <Select the Right Location>, which is the chapter she is
currently working on, is focused on precariousness in the world of culture, an
idea everybody debates but nobody refutes. So far, at least.
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