Ocaña's video that ends with an orgy

BarcelonaMore than forty years after his death, the artist José Pérez Ocaña, the great Ocaña, continues to be a libertarian reference. He shines in a performance recorded by the collective Vídeo-Nou/Servei de Vídeo Comunitari that can be seen at the Macba from this Thursday in the exhibition Contrainformació: Video-Nou / Servei de Vídeo Comunitari. In this video, Ocaña and another artist, Camilo, play all the roles of the 'auca': they perform a copla in playback, and also French songs and the mythical Lili Marlene in Marlene Dietrich's version. In the final section, the video takes a turn, the space where the artists are fills with people, and it all resembles what could be an orgy. Furthermore, this video has added value, as the performance was recorded on the same day that a demonstration of gays and lesbians against the law on social dangerousness was held in 1977.

"The members of Vídeo-Nou understood video specifically as a tool, as a social weapon. They did not want to be the spokespersons for marginalized voices, but rather they wanted to give this tool to everyone. They wanted to generate spokespersons everywhere," states María Berríos, former director of research and conservation at the museum and curator of the exhibition along with Daniel Gasol, artist and author of the book Història no oficial durant la hipotètica Transició. El cas Vídeo-Nou / Servei de Vídeo Comunitari (Raig Verd). "Understanding this is fundamental, and this also has to do with understanding it as a technical tool. For self-representation, for critical awareness, and also for audiovisual literacy, what it means to speak in images and sound," explains Berríos, for whom Vídeo-Nou recalls the power of counter-information and counter-narratives at a time when hegemonic media "fail".

"The exhibition is not conceived from nostalgia, but rather María and I wanted to focus on rethinking our present, taking into account that the entire political and ideological situation we are experiencing is the result of these years, of the many transitions that occurred," says Gasol. The exhibition is the result of the museum's recovery and archival work, which has integrated all available material in multiple outdated formats, from VHS to Betamax or Sony AV, into its documentary collection. In total, more than 300 pieces.

Coinciding with this exhibition, the museum has opened two more, also of video art and cinema. "We want to reflect on the critical potential of moving images, and their capacity to construct collective memory, generate debates, especially on collective themes, and, above all, rethink new ways of relating document, testimony, and experience," states the head of the museum's collection, Clàudia Segura.

The second exhibition is titled Ecos, and includes seven of the eighteen videos that the collector and patron Han Nefkens donated to the museum, the result of his foundation's collaborations with artists and contemporary art museums around the world, some of whom are artists from countries in conflict such as Afghanistan and Palestine. "Through different approaches, the artists address experiences marked by conflict, displacement, the construction of memory, social transformations, and the enterprises of colonialism. We will see pieces that speak from the wars in Afghanistan to migrations in the Mediterranean, through intimate portraits," says Segura.

"The foundation collaborates with about 50 museums worldwide, from Hong Kong. I always say that the work we do at the Foundation is to connect people through art, and that makes you feel bigger, as if you were part of something bigger," says Han Nefkens. "Here we have the privilege of seeing the way artists from other places look at their own country and their own culture – he explains. In some places they have restrictions on expressing themselves, but they always find a way to express themselves carefully."

And the third of the shows is part of the commemorative events for the centenary of Pere Portabella and includes six of his best-known films, among which are Aidez l'Espagne, Miró l'altre, and Playblack. "The right that a generation had to see a groundbreaking filmmaker, young filmmakers must also have it," says the coordinator of Acció Portabella, Jordi Balló.