This Sunday, an artist's diary at the newsstand with Antoni Muntadas

BarcelonaThe ARA has a clear commitment to art and artists, and therefore, periodically collaborates to provide a different perspective on the news of the day, fostering a critical dialogue between journalism and art. This Sunday, we present another special artist edition that you will find at the newsstand. We do so in collaboration with Antoni Muntadas (Barcelona, ​​​​1942), one of the most important creators in our country, who has chosen it as the guiding thread and theme of the dossier. The construction of fear.

There are many types of fear, and Muntadas himself has spent over twenty years exploring how politics and the media use them to control societies through a dozen works he has presented in various countries, from Argentina to Jordan, the United States, and Morocco. This diary is another work in the series, at a time when fear is one of the biggest themes. Furthermore, the artist intervenes throughout the diary, replacing the photos with colored spots on which he places, as if performing acupuncture, the words he finds most significant in each text: "media ecosystem", "discredit of politics", "borders", "violence", "120 monuments", "emotional refuge", "a cat attracts" he chooses to emphasize them, to draw attention to what they mean, to trap the reader and make their head spin, encouraging questions and unknowns. It is one of the many strategies that the Catalan artist uses in his works, in which he often serves to twist the meaning of what seemed obvious.

Antoni Muntadas's special diary was filmed live right down to the very last moment, because the artist turned the diary's newsroom into his studio for days. After months of conversations to define the structure and main theme, he has been constantly present in recent days to define the colors, structure, and typography. He was there to learn about the themes and talk with the editors, and to integrate himself, in a way, as another member of the editorial team.

Dossier 'The Construction of Fear'

Furthermore, he was the one who defined the dossier's theme, which is also the newspaper's guiding thread: the construction of fear. You'll find it divided into two main sections: On the one hand, the traditional dossier, with reports and articles that address the topic from various angles. On the other, the stories about fear that the editors have written in each section.

This diary is, thus, another piece in the series on fear that Muntadas, a key artist in Catalan art in recent years, has been working on since 2005, to whom we dedicated the supplement as a monograph. Sunday. It is a special, a true work of art, made possible thanks to the artist's generosity; the patience of his collaborator, Andrea Nacach, and her assistants; the sponsorship of the Macba, and the great professionalism of the entire ARA team, both the management team and an editorial team that always accepts these creative experiments without problems. Special mention to the head of Design, Jordi Olivé, and the designer Maria Subirana; the head of Photography, Ferran Forné; and the coordinator of the SundayMaria Labró; art editor Antoni Ribas; and deputy director Catalina Serra.