Recovering Sculptures or Losing Them Forever. On Malpractice in the Public Sphere, Bureaucratic Silence and Other Fables

“The future is written; only the past remains unpredictable” is a lecture series revolving around the “Legacies in Potential” programme, organised by Bòlit, Centre d’Art Contemporani de Girona as part of the Girona Bimillenary.

Jordi Mitjà in an Attempt at a Performative Lecture.

Without meaning to —or almost as if by accident—, artworks reappear or disappear, and not precisely within the art market. As more or less responsible authors, we feel the loss of these works, regardless of their value, which is often negligible.

Heritage Squandered by Institutions?

I want to think aloud about questions surrounding “relative” responsibility and the lack of a framework to define it, and to ask myself what happens to artworks when they slip beyond our control. We will explore personal cases, while also pointing to other sculptures that likewise find themselves in a limbo of institutional oblivion — the worst kind of bureaucratic silence.

Jordi Mitjà’s artistic practice is formally heterogeneous, rich in content and social critique, while at the same time sensitive and poetic. It draws on materials from everyday life that the artist continuously collects. He collects experiences, images and objects, invents situations, explores archives and proposes actions to examine the simplest human responses to unforeseen situations. He extracts and invents through a “dyslexic” working system. He does so through sculpture, as well as by creating installations, publications, performances, photographs, texts and drawings. His proposals raise questions about the individual, the spaces he intervenes in and art.

In collaboration with the Arxiu Municipal de Girona.