Miralda. De gustibus non disputandum
The videos included in the first programme, Food Pavilion (2002) and Se confiesan (2008), draw on a piece that the artist showed at the Expo 2000 Theme Park in Hanover and his collaboration with the Power Food project to explore a topic that fascinates Miralda, the relationship between visual culture and food in modern society. The result is a reflection on excess, deficiency, consumerism and faith. The second programme includes three pieces that document works done by Miralda between 1977 and 2010. Breadline (1977-2009), a reference to the lines of people waiting for bread to be distributed during recession times, is a video document of an exhibition held in Houston in 1977 and the performance piece presented during the inauguration. The opening routine of the piece - which concluded with the formation of a breadline - was done by the Kilgore College Rangerettes, founded in 1939. Taste Point Charlie (1979-2010) is a ‘visual chronicle’ about East and West Berlin and the wall that separated them, filmed in 8 mm during Miralda’s visit to that emblematic German city. This programme concludes with Wheat & Steak (1981-2008), a video of an urban project done in Kansas City in 1981 that linked the harvest (wheat) to livestock (meat). It was made up of three parts: a parade through the centre of the city, an exhibition at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, and the Gold Taste ceremony at the commodities exchange, which consisted of exchanging money for grains of wheat and the wheat for slices of blue bread spread with pork fat and covered with a sheet of gold.
Finally, two of the first films that Miralda made in collaboration with Benet Rosell (Lérida, 1937) are being screened. The delirious Boum! Boum! En avant la musique! (1974) includes Miralda himself acting alongside the artist Jaume Xifra (Girona, 1934) and art critic Pierre Restany. La cumparsita (1972) documents Miralda’s performance piece in the streets of Paris, where he walked around with a life-size plastic soldier on his back.
The programme for this cycle includes a conference with Antoni Mercader, a professor at the Department of Visual and Plastic Education at the University of Barcelona and the participation of Benet Rosell.
