Al pati del darrere

The exhibition Al pati del darrere wants to approach some of the tangible effects of the use and development of digital technologies. Behind emails, work video calls, chatgpt conversations or social networks there are extractive, logistical and technical tentacles that extend far beyond the devices and gadgets we use every day. Being in the backyard means walking through sacrifice zones, seeing expropriated land, touching the electronics industry, pointing out the power relations in the framework of the so-called energy transition or questioning the contradictions generated in the uses of artificial intelligence.

Paula Artés (Molins de Rei, 1996). Graduated in photography and contemporary creation, she has also completed a postgraduate degree in graphic design and one in audiovisual for photographers at Idep Barcelona. Committed to make known and question the structures of power and control, to show the entrails, which are hidden from citizens. She has exhibited at the Fundación MAPFRE Guanarteme (Tenerife and Las Palmas de Gran Canaria), at the Lumínic Festival (Sant Cugat del Vallès), at the Santa Mònica Art Center (Barcelona), at the IEI and the Morera Museum in Lleida, at the Sala Kursala (Cádiz), at Embarrat (Tàrrega), at the Sala d’Art Jove (Barcelona), at CC Can Basté (Barcelona), and in Temporals program of the ICUB. With several projects he has obtained the grant for research and innovation in visual arts from the Generalitat de Catalunya and the VEGAP aid to creation. In 2019 she self-published her first photobook Forces and Bodies and completed the first artist residency at HISK in Belgium. His works have been selected, among many others, to Descubrimientos PhotoEspaña, SCAN Photobooks, Unseen Dummy Award and Athens Photo Festival.

Jose Iglesias García-Arenal (Madrid, 1991, currently lives in Los Santos de Maimona, Badajoz). He works as an artist and curator on the politics of memory and the transformations of the territory from a critical perspective with neoliberal heteronormative colonial structures, through texts, exhibitions, video pieces and collective processes. Individually or collectively she has exhibited in institutions such as CICUS (“Oculta, soterrada, sumergida”. Sevilla, 2022), Sala Amadís (“El territorio es un acto”. Madrid, 2020), Complejo Cultural de Río Gallegos (“Campamento”. Santa Cruz, Argentina, 2019), Museo Nivola (“Peekaboo. Looking askance at issues of childhood in connection with nation”. Sardinia, Italy, 2019), MUSAC (“Provincia 53”. León, 2017) or CAAC (“What do Andalusian artists feel, what do they think now?”. Seville, 2016). Since 2019 he has been directing the curatorial platform MAL (www.plataformamal.com).

Estampa is a collective of programmers, filmmakers and researchers working in the fields of audiovisual and digital environments. Their practice is based on a critical and archaeological approach to audiovisual and digital technologies, which allows to understand their functioning, uses and construction as a discursive object. In recent years they have developed different projects around the uses and ideologies of artificial intelligence, and its influence on contemporary visual culture. Their practice is concretized in artistic research pieces such as “El mal alumne. Pedagogia crítica per a intel-ligències artificials” (2017-2018) or installations such as “Cambres fosques de la ideologia” (2022), “Auspicis” (2019) or “Espècies marcianes” (2021), among many other projects. His work also includes experimental animation pieces (such as “A la colònia penitenciària”, 2010) and video-essays (such as “The process of Seeing”, 2020 and “Què és el que veus, YOLO9000?”, 2019).

Azahara Cerezo (Celrà, Girona, 1988) works on the particularities and contradictions of the territory, the physical dimension of which is liquefied by digitalizing processes of global reach. She combines her artistic practice with project coordination and curatorial tasks, with a constant interest in art and technology. She has a degree in Audiovisual Communication (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona) and a Master in Visual Arts and Multimedia (Universitat Politècnica de València). She has been selected for the Barcelona Crea Grants (ICUB), the “Immaterial” program of Medialab Tabakalera (Donosti), the “Paradigm shifts” grants (mur.at, Graz, Austria), the art and technology program Summer Sessions (Hangar, Barcelona with V2, Rotterdam) and the research and innovation grants in visual arts of the Generalitat de Catalunya, among others. Since 2021 he coordinates PLECS, an online initiative of live actions and video-creation pieces that wants to reflect on the specificities (dis) of the virtual.