Ingrid Guardiola: "I am leaving the leadership of Bòlit so as not to participate in the structure of the bureaucracy"

GironaThis month of May Ingrid Guardiola (Girona, 1980) will close her period as director of the Bòlit Centre for Contemporary Art in Girona. She will do so after four very intense and fruitful years, in which she has carried out a host of exhibitions and activities on different burning issues of contemporary society, always exhibiting interesting pieces and with a very critical and powerful discursive line. Despite the unequivocally positive results, Guardiola has decided not to opt for renewal: exhausted by bureaucracy, procedures and the enormous amount of paperwork she has to deal with on a daily basis, she prefers to step away, at least for a while, from the management of a public institution of this magnitude. Her last months as director of the Girona contemporary art museum coincide with the publication of her second essay, The servitude of protocols (Arcadia), in which she reflects, forcefully but not fatalistically, on how the system of rules, conventions, patterns and algorithms determine our conduct and perception. Drawing on a wide range of philosophical and sociological references such as Foucault, Deleuze, Marcuse, Kracauer and Shoshana Zuboff, the book lucidly addresses the ecosystem of daily and specific protocols that, in the era of social networks, information technology and technology, affect us and affect us.

In what sense are protocols a tool of political servitude and domination?

— They are guidelines or guides that are adopted at a given time to design a social framework that limits the way we relate to each other and always have an associated component of servitude. Most of them are of an information technology or bureaucratic nature and are presented to us as necessary to improve coexistence, but just the opposite, they dynamite community aspects and take us to a very administrative terrain and make the social contract an almost managerial issue.

And they arbitrate our daily lives, practically without us being aware of it, without the option of an alternative?

— The problem with computer or social protocols is that they do not allow negotiation or amendment, they are presented as an insurmountable, universal totality. In fact, Pedro Sánchez, after the pandemic restrictions, proclaimed the end of the "universal protocol". During the health emergency it became clear how the protocol sets very strict guidelines and how everything that comes out can be demonized, and generates blame and punishment.

Beyond this exceptional period of the pandemic, the logic of protocols operates in many areas. Would Elon Musk's X network algorithm be an example?

— Absolutely. The interest in dominating public opinion is inherent to the history of capitalism, it is its armed wing. But it is also true that with the alliance of Donald Trump and Elon Musk something has changed, because with platforms like the X network there is no distance to reflect and digest information. The flow is in real time and public conversation is made to function from the opacity of algorithms or programmatic advertising, without you realizing that you are being pushed in a certain direction.

Should we therefore limit the interference and use of platforms?

— Exactly, they are devices for everyday use and as such they must be regulated, we must think about what jurisprudence we want to create around them and what use public services should make of them. These are issues that must be negotiated, but right now they have been left out of the social contract.

And the same with artificial intelligence?

— Yeah, The question is not whether we will be crushed by machines that we have built ourselves, but why do we want this tool to be used? For example, artificial intelligence in war, which is already being used on the Ukrainian front, but it does not get tired and cannot say enough when it comes to killing, because it has no morals, like a soldier. So, the question is, what is the mechanism that will allow us to stop it? If we do not do this, that is the danger. The fear is not that artificial intelligence will behave and think like a human, but that we will behave like robots and stop thinking.

The book argues that another side of the protocol easement It is bureaucracy and administrative procedures. Is paperwork the main reason why you have left your post at Bòlit?

— I am refusing to extend the Bòlit programme, fundamentally because I do not want to participate in a structure that is so bureaucratic, not only because of the procedure, but also because of the type of relationships it fosters, based on hierarchy, mistrust, indefinite postponement, supervision or permanent auditing. The impeccable record is much more important than the content or service we are offering to the public. Criticising this apparatus does not mean ceasing to be responsible or going against the law on contracting, but the system has become so extreme that a control has become the norm, which does not give rise to trust or room for manoeuvre.

However, have the four years at Bòlit, in general, been positive?

— Of course, I have learned a lot of things and with the team we have been able to develop the project that we had proposed on the archive, legacy, memory and traditions. We have done exhibitions on the monster woman, the unknown children, the figure of the idiot or other aspects related to technology, ecology or masculinities. And we have done so from the plasticity of life, of radical difference, creating a kind of discursive constellations of dialogue with all the artists, works and exhibitions, worrying about accompanying and promoting research, and not so much about generating new works or influencing the contemporary art market. We have also found alliances with other institutions in Girona and carrying out activities in public spaces.

And in the current society that the book talks about, marked by wars, large technological infrastructures and social networks, what role should museums like the Bòlit play?

— Museums are public spaces, open to the public, democratic and accessible, which allow a relationship with time, going beyond productivism and performance. Museums must be a space that allows us to enjoy time, to reverse the frenetic acceleration around platforms and work, without rivalry, blackmail or extreme competitiveness. Certainly, bureaucracy limits this possibility of transforming institutions, but some kind of administrative exception is necessary to allow this cultural singularity. If not, museums will be greatly diminished.