Paraules d'amor. Núria Güell

The list of Western cultural representations around love and passions would be endless: from Greek mythology and its tragedies, through Christian scholasticism, courtly love, the Golden Age and the Romanticism of the 18th and part of the 19th centuries, to the most popular or alternative cultural expressions of our day. All of these cultural representations are a testament to the caos caused by certain ideals of love.

On our plane of reality, we still endure the beliefs of those who would exterminate others out of love for a God; we endure nationalists who still throw themselves into mutual destruction for the love of homeland or motherland; young adults who confuse jealusy with signs of true love; the mother who kills her children so that they do not suffer; revolutionaries who sacrifice their lives or sacrifice the lives of others for the love of an idea of social revolution; or the lover who would kill their object of love, when they believe their love to be lost.

Is our present-day culture responsible for these paradoxes? How many dramaturgic archetypes have we experienced in our stories of love? Behind the mask of the ideals of love, what pleasures or illusions are hidden? Could the main cause of social conflict be, not hatred, but an excess of blind love? What effects would the de-idealisation of love have upon the social order? And what effect would have upon us?

In Words of Love. An essay on the passions, Núria Güell questions the institutionalised representations and learned cultural mandates around passionate love and its consequences.

Words of Love, is the winning project of the tenth edition of the Premi de Videocreació Video-Art Award. Co-production of a video project between the Centres Territorials del Sistema Públic d’Equipaments d’Arts Visuals de Catalunya*, Santa Mònica, Departament de Cultura de la Generalitat de Catalunya and LOOP Barcelona. The Award promotes the work of artists who stand out for their innovative approaches in the creative process.