Saltar muros. Una conversación entre Francesco Careri y Jordi Colomer / Jumping over walls. A conversation between Francesco Careri and Jordi Colomer

¡Únete! Join Us! ​invites visitors to become participants in an exploration of nomadism and collective agency. Transhumance, wanderings, journeyings, strayings, displacement, nomad architecture: these themes are key to ¡Únete! Join Us!​, whose reference point is rooted in urban utopias that use movement as part of a radical rethinking of social imagination. Marking a return to his early sculptural and theatrical interest, Jordi Colomer’s exhibition at Pavilion of Spain is conceived as an installation of installations. Precarious sculptures and transitory architectures form a theatre within the pavilion, encompassing its audience as they walk through the space and turning them into actors, mobilising the space with their presence. The installations offer a path via several video narratives; a journey of occasions, unexpected encounters, playful improvisations and collective gestures that reveal how a community turns an urban landscape into a potential site for exchange, capable of affecting reality. “The city is something that needs to be moving,” notes curator Manuel Segade. “A contemporary urban landscape represents displacement and various themes involving movement – political, social and physical – while also moving between the public and the personal.” The fictional premise of the video pieces involves a group of people moving across different sites, exploring the semantics of displacement. Since 1950, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation has been directly responsible for coordinating the country’s exhibitions in the Spanish Pavilion, and, throughout this time, it has strived to promote Spain’s rich artistic heritage and talent. Acción Cultural Española (AC/E - Spain’s Public Agency for Cultural Action) has been involved in the support of contemporary creation at the Venice Biennale, both in the production of the Spanish Pavilion and in the international selection. Artists invited to exhibit and intervene at the Spanish Pavilion have included Eduardo Chillida, Antoni Tàpies, Susana Solano, Santiago Sierra, and most recently, Miquel Barceló, Dora García and Lara Almárcegui.

L'articolo è una conversazione sui temi del nomadismo, dell'architettura, del paesaggio, dell'utopia della città itinerante, con l'artista Jordi Colomer invitato a rappresentare la Spagna. L’occasione per raccontare il nomadismo, il movimento, la migrazione o il semplice spostamento di persone è parafrasata in ¡Únete! Join Us!, “installazione delle installazioni” concepita dall’artista con lo scopo di ordinare i flussi all’interno del padiglione spagnolo. Lo spazio architettonico si trasforma ordinato da precarie sculture e architetture effimere per diventare un teatro in cui lo spettatore è attore e dialoga con l’altro attraverso un involontario gioco performativo. È un’analisi sperimentale di come lo spazio della mostra abbia le capacità di trasformarsi in spazio pubblico, ma è anche di più: una dimostrazione di come il paesaggio urbano sia un’occasione di cambiamenti potenziali, dalla strada al palcoscenico passando per tutti gli stati mediali dell’arte. Il catalogo della mostra approfondisce il contesto socio-politico con i testi di Manuel Segade, Beatriz Colomina e Antoni Muntadas.