All of Us Want to Work Less
Azkuna Zentroa
2018
Over the last decade, Barrio’s work has included virtually all mediums—from prints, photographs, and sculpture to video, and installation. Yet, perhaps at the core of all these modes of production is Barrio’s interest in performance. The artist’s live events are often staged within museum or other art spaces, and blur the line between rehearsal and finished work; between actors and audience. Indeed, by opening up such categories, Barrio effectively asks that we look as closely at processes as products, and imagine exhibitions as themselves evolving entities. To that end, during the course of her exhibition, BY ALL MEANS, Barrio’s ongoing work, All of Us Want to Work Less will include two distinct performative components.
Over the course of an hour, an audience will encounter two distinct but interrelated scenes: two male actors in an endless loop of pick-pocketing each other and a single male protagonist who moves between producing a concrete sculpture and rehearsing a monologue (constructed on the one hand from dialogue from the film Basic Instinct and on the other elements of ACCELERATE MANIFESTO—a text by Alex Williams and Nick Srnicek arguing for the speeding up of capitalist tendencies as the only way to overturn them). Part of the action is being directed and filmed in real time, which adds yet another layer of productive ambiguity to where the action begins and ends, and where such brackets are usually placed. This performance was first executed in 2015 at MACBA in Barcelona.
There will be two ‘activations’ of Barrio’s installation during the run of the exhibition. New concrete sculptures will be produced and placed within the show during public hours, indicating their production could continue in perpetuity.
Johanna Burton, 2018
Keith Haring Director and Curator of Education and Public Engagement at the New Museum in NYC
CREDITS:
Itziar Barrio in collaboration with Javier Vaquero Ollero.
Direction: Itziar Barrio.
Performers: Javier Vaquero Ollero, Guillem Mont de Palol and Jorge Dutor.
Repeater/Acting Director: Maia Villot de Diego.
Camera: Jone Novo.
Activation: Juanjo Otero.
All of Us Want to Work Less (Performance)
MACBA, Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona
2015
The iconic scene from Basic Instinct (1992) is used by Itziar Barrio as the starting point for All of Us Want to Work Less, a performance that manipulates the methodology of the rehearsal and reveals the mechanisms that exist behind a production. The artist has created a monologue that states the position of the character through a text that questions the learning process and failure as a condition.
Performer: Javier Vaquero Ollero
Repeater: Quim Pujol
Camera: Victor Gonzalo
Camera assistant: Daniel Gañan
Lighting design and Audio: Diego Rada
Still Photography: Cristina Inocenci
Music: Crossed Legs, Basic Instint (1992), Jerry Goldsmith.
Scene adapted from the film script of Basic Instint (1992) Dir. Paul Verhoeven
Texts compiled from:
La recolección de 1909 en Barcelona. Semana trágica para unos, gloriosa para otros.
Dolores Marín. www.portaloaca.com
Protesta, desobediencia y violencia subversiva. La Semana Trágica de julio de 1909 en Cataluña. Gemma Rubí. www.dialnet.com
www.wikipedia.org
ACCELERATE MANIFESTO for an Accelerationist Politics. Critical Legal Thinking. Alex Williams and Nick Srnicek (2013)
Special thanks to: Xavier Acarín, Sarah Anderson, Jorge Dutor, Sergi Faustino, Bea Fernández, Guillem Mont de Palol, Monica Muntaner, Juanjo Otero, Paul B. Preciado y La Poderosa.
All of Us Want to Work Less (Video Installation)
Tabakalera
2015
The working material for All of Us Want to Work Less are pickpocket scenes from Robert Bresson’s feature Pickpocket (1959). The reconstruction of these and other scenes from the film in which the social use of stealing is questioned are the focus of the video. All of Us Want to Work Less explores the relationship between work and legality, while foregrounding process as a mode to question the audiovisual apparatus.
Itziar Barrio continues her ongoing project We All Want to Work Less with a video work which takes place in Tabakalera. The rehearsal and development work in the building will finalize with a performance/shoot on the last day.
The audience will witness both a performance and a film in its making, in a situation that blurs the distinction between fiction and nonfiction. The gaze of the audience will be assumed as active and their presence will be assumed by the action.
Director: Itziar Barrio
Performers: Guillem Mont De Palol and Jorge Dutor
Choreography: Guillem Mont De Palol and Jorge Dutor
Music: Keith Milgaten
Technical direcor and camera: Rach Rodriguez
Camera: Klamer Hernández
Dolly operator: Ivan Jimenez Medina
Make-up artist: Maialen Elosegi
Filmed at Tabakalera
Produced by Tabakalera
Special thanks to: Javier Andraka, Soledad Gutiérrez, Erin Lee Smith, David Markus, Eva Mateo, Anna Manubens, Fernando Pérez, Alessandra Zeka and Itziar Zorita,