Tomorrowland
assembles and shows a revised version of the material
realised during an exhibition at the former fairground of Montjuïc
in Barcelona in 2001. Agencia
Casa Valero investigates a leisure space, which
reveals in its use and development the struggles for power.
The exhibition-project for the
former fairground consisted, besides various debates about the phenomenon
of leisure in Barcelona, of an information office, which offered a
huge historical image and press archive about the fairground of Montjuïc
and many other fairgrounds and leisure parks. These archives had the
aim to evoke conversations with the visitors about their memories
of the Montjuïc
fairground and to collect their opinions about the “free time”
in relation to “working time”.
The conversations, wich were recorded
on video, extended the documentation throughout the exhibition. As
free time goes hand in hand with so called payed time, I was especially
interested in questioning the existing social perception about the
work of an artist and throughout the whole period of the exhibition
I consequently presented me and my art work during the official office
hours (from 10p.m to 5 p.m).
Explaining the visitors, that
this performance was meant to be an artistic intervention, we could
sometimes provoke conversations about the understanding of “free
time “ in relation to the “payed time”.
In several of these
conversations I got to know professionals connected to the fairground
and persons who were employees in enterprises of the leisure industry.
With them, other professionals and various experts of the leisure system,
i organised two discussion groups to talk about the aspects of leisure
time and its products. These discussions became also part of the video
archive.