DIDDCC 2018

DIRECTED BY CARLOS MARTÍN

It is paradoxical that the books featuring selections from an art collection, collection books, become in turn collectable books, objects that sit on shelves in offices or adorn boardroom tables with the reassuring heft of the coffee table book. Does it make any sense to maintain a format that simply serves to add a coat of intellectual varnish to the culture of luxury? Does it make any sense to perpetuate its fetishistic, untouchable, priceless, reserved and illegible aura?

DIDDCC opens again as a space for study and research into the CA2M and ARCO collections and the development of critical strategies for working with and publicising them. This year, DIDDCC, with Carlos Martín at the helm, will question the various factors behind the publication of contemporary art collections, both public and private; will take a look at the canons and dogmas operating in this particular field; and will propose a space for research that can give rise to open proposals, issues and lines of work which can then be implemented in the upcoming publication of the CA2M and ARCO Collection, due for 2018.

Can a necessarily closed format be made compatible with an open-ended collection in constant growth? Are there any germane distinctions between a public collection and a published collection? Is it possible to write about a specific artistic proposal without, in the process, neutralising its potentials? Is it possible to conceive a radically open book? A collection must publish its contents and the interpretive keys to them, but, does it also have to publish its complex and often controversial origins and formation? These are some of the issues we wish to explore in DIDDCC, in which the confluence of collection and publication will activate various different vectors: research into and curating of the collection’s holdings, writing (style, codes, theoretical approach, potential public, issues of authorship), editing, registering and cataloguing of the artworks, graphic design and strategies for the diffusion of contents.

The participants will have access to the study of the collections, meetings with the staff at CA2M, with artists and other agents in today’s artworld in order to research the various aspects involved and to set out case studies. DIDDCC invites postgraduate, master and doctorate students in Art History, Fine Arts, Humanities and Communication to take part.

Confirmed guest participants:

David Armengol (Freelance curator).
Àlex Gifreu (Graphic designer. Best of European Design and Advertising 2016).
Lola Hinojosa (Head of Performative and Intermedia Arts Collection. Museo Reina Sofía).
Carolina Martínez and Clemente Bernad (Editorial Alkibla).
Rosario Peiró (Director of Collections. Museo Reina Sofía).
Sergio Rubira (Creator of DIDDCC and Deputy-director of Collections and Exhibitions at IVAM).
Isabel Salgado and Óscar Pina (‘La Caixa’ Collection).
Manuel Segade (Director of CA2M).

Enrolment from 15 January to 12 February. The list of selected participants will be announced on 16 February