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MACHINES WILL LEAD TO A NEW ORDER BOTH OF WORK AND OF LEISURE”

[Le Corbusier, Vers une Architecture (1923)]

Artists at the beginning of the 20th century sought towork in hybrid forms, as a socially-oriented movement, anutopian vision which embodied the idealism of a neworder, believing itself capable of changing, reforming,reordering–totally changing all aspects of human life.They embraced the notion of the all-encompassing role ofart: the profound belief in the ability of art to effectchange.

Almost one hundred years later, into the new millenium,we have seen the effects of this utopian vision: thefailure of modernism and its various permutations on aglobal basis.

At the dawn of the new millenium, what are the newparadigms for living in this Age of GlobalCommunications? We see that in the work of BettyBeaumont, for instance, in her “Ocean Landmark Project”(1978-1980), located 40 miles beyond New York Harbor,that here is a prototype for sustainable living. It is itself,both an underwater sculpture on a massive scale: 500tons of an industrial waste product made of processedcoal-waste, a potential pollutant that has undergone aplanned transformation into a flourishing ecosystem: apoetic vision 70 feet below the surface, on the floor ofthe Atlantic Continental Shelf.

Contrasting with this positive paradigm for inhabitationor regeneration in the world’s oceans, Christoph Draegeroffers us his catastrophic vision in his video “Oil” (1998).Utilising found footage of the world’s oil spill disasters,he comments upon the way in which we easily forget thequestion of technological failure, deconstructing ourconcept of reality as mediated by the news media,hollywood, and other sources of stimuli in the globalmedia-saturated village.

“At the end of the 20th century, catastrophe has notbecome a paradigm of world experience, but rather,because of its ubiquity in the media, the definitive imageof “accelerating standstill” (–Paul Virilio). The magnitudeof a catastrophe is no longer measured by the number ofits victims, but rather by its medial valuation andresulting telepresence–whose impressive images presentus with horror as an aesthetic experience.”
[Dirk Blubaum, The Security of Risk]

CURATED BY
CRISTINE WANG (CURATOR, NEW MEDIA ARTS)
THE ALTERNATIVE MUSEUM, NEW YORK

December 2, 2000 – January 13, 2001
Tribes Gallery
285 East Third Street New York, NY 10009

Participating Artists in the Gallery + Online Exhibitions Include:
MARK AMERICA
DANIEL GARCIA ANDUJAR
ZHAO BANDI
BETTY BEAUMONT
MIKE BIDLO
NATALIE BOOKCHIN
JOHN BOONE
HEATH BUNTING
YOUNG-HAE CHANG
SHU LEA CHEANG
MARIAH CORRIGAN + JONATHAN HERDER
CRITICAL ART ENSEMBLE
ANDY DECK
RICARDO DOMINGUEZ
SONG DONG
CHRISTOPH DRAEGER
LAURA EMRICK
FAKESHOP
PETER FEND
ZHANG GA
JOY GARNETT
LEAH GILLIAM
RICK GLOBUS
KEN GOLDBERG
MARINA GRZINIC
GH HOVAGIMYAN
FRAN ILICH
EDUARDO KAC
YAEL KANAREK
OLGA KISSELEVA
TINA LAPORTA
PATRICK LICHTY
MARK LOMBARDI
DIANE LUDIN
JENNY MARKETOU
HILARY MASLON
JENNIFER + KEVIN MCCOY
JONAS MEKAS
EMIL MEMON
WILLIAM MEYER
MTAA
MARK NAPIER
CARSTEN NICOLAI
EAMON O’KANE
ROXY PAINE
WANG QINGSONG
FRANCESCA DA RIMINI +
MICHAEL GRIMM
LEE SONGE
LEWIS STEIN
JEREMY STENGER
ZHOU TIEHAI
LINDA WALLACE
MACIEJ WISNIEWSKI
GU WENDA
QUI ZHIJIE

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written for Technologies to the People [d.i. Daniel Garcia Andujar], La sociedad informacional, catalogue, to be published in August 2000 [English / Spanish]

„I am not fond of manipulation, and I think you should not use it for political aims.” (1)
(Left-wing squatter in Berlin, April 2000)
In 1996-1997 together with Ute Vorkoeper we organized and curated the international exhibition project discord. sabotage of realities (2) which took place in the Kunstverein and the Kunsthaus in Hamburg. The exhibition was part of the Hamburg Week of Visual Arts 1996, partly funded by the city’s Cultural Office. Artists worldwide were invited to submit artistic concepts dealing with today’s more and more un-peaceful political and social realities. The organizers received more than 500 concepts from 31 countries. The actual exibition discord was divided into six thematic zones focussing on control (security/insecurity), news services (disinformation), everyday (alienation), border politics (walking the tightrope), state machineries (law, discipline, repression), science fiction & economy (the administration of the future) and included an international selection of 34 artistic works most of which were premiered in the exhibition, and 26 additional artistic concepts from 18 countries.

The Spanish non-profit organization Technologies to the People® (TP) was one of the participants of the discord project. Unfortunately the large scale photos which Technologies to the People® had prepared as its contribution disappeared somewhere on their way between Spain and Germany. Another solution had to be found quickly. It was finally agreed upon with the organizers that Technologies to the People® would become one of the main sponsors of the discord. sabotage of realities project. As our sponsor, Technologies to the People® put its black large-scale logo (TP) on an entire wall in the exhibition space and in the catalogue. In addition to that TP distributed small boxes containing propaganda leaflets describing its product range: the Street Access Machine®, the Recovery Card®, the Personal Folkcomputer®, and the Internet Street Access Machine®. On the back cover the leaflets contained a long list of TP’s sponsors, among them such big corporations as Tokio Mitsubishi, Fuji, Sakura, Industrial Bank of Japan, Norinchuking Bank of Japan, Long Term Bank of Japan, Deutsche Bank, Crédit Agricole, Crédit Lyonnais, HSBC Holdings, Asahi Bank, Industrial&Comercial, CS Holdings, ABN Amro, Chase Manhattan Chemical and Societé Générale.

According to the definition and the visuals given on the propaganda leaflet, the whole range of TP’s products allow the underpriviledged to actively participate in the upcoming information society. The Street Access Machine® and the Recovery Card® enable beggars to transfer money from credit cards. The Internet Street Access Machine® realizes the wide-spread demand of ‘access for all’. Perfectly appropriating the IT industries’ rhetoric of technoutopian ideology which goes like „use these new technologies and the future will be even brighter”, or „the use of new communication technologies will allow everybody to participate in a better and more equal future world”, TP turns this rhetoric into its very opposite by showing the underlying cynical ‘hidden reverse’ of the IT business’s technoutopian lure: beggars will remain beggars, underpriviledged will remain underpriviledged and poor will remain poor even if they are all using new information and communication technologies. Technology alone does not change society; it may even prevent society from changing because it crystallizes existing social structures and widens the gap between the information-haves and the have-nots. It makes a difference only for the IT industry because they can make money out of selling their products.

The striking – and so obvious – contradiction included in the leaflets was overseen by a lot of people and thus the project caused a lot of misunderstandings. These misunderstandings, however, can also be read as hinting towards the conflicting understanding and the interpretation of the role of technology within society. More precisely, the TP campaign was taken dead seriously by representatives of various sides, a fact that sheds light on the interests of both industry as well as on the political left.

After the opening of the exhibition the organizers received an e-mail from the German branch of the company Apple. Apple read about TP’s advertisement somewhere in the media and was seriously interested in the (Internet) Street Access Machine®. They asked if there were already some prototypes which they could examine more closely. The discord organizers were amused. Of course there were not prototypes yet, and they were not to come either. Rather, the whole thing could be described as a meme intended to unveil the hidden desires of industry which, despite its rhetorics (as described above), is not exactly interested in an embetterment of society but is interested purely in profit. TP laid the bait and industry took it.

Also, the left German art magazine Texte zur Kunst did not get a clue. In an article entitled ‘Politics as Style’ (3) the student of philosophy Antonia Ulrich foamed with rage about the exhibition in general, and, amongst others, about TP’s project in particular. discord, of course, must have felt like poaching on the left’s very political terrain. Ulrich criticized the two curators and the participating artists for ‘aestheticizing’ political issues, for the missing applicability in real politics and for not leaving the art space and demonstrating in the streets of Hamburg. Well. Writing about art is perhaps not always the best thing to do if you want to be politically correct. Unsurprisingly, Ulrich misread most of the artistic projects. She took TP’s project for granted as if she had never heard about subversion strategies and the art of campaigning before. For her, TP was really about providing the ‘marginalized’ with access to the electronic media: According to Ulrich TP seriously „presented technology as a means to abolish social injustice, blindly believing in the progressive function of these technologies. Instead of laying bare the power mechanisms inscribed into these technologies, [TP] aestheticized technology.” (4) This obviously comes to no surprise at all for her, knowing that the TP project was „sponsored by Mitsubishi, Fuji, Deutsche Bank, and Crédit Lyonnais” (5).

What could have provoked this deliberate misreading of Technologies to the People®? Technology, obviously, is still a red rag to the left. But it was provoked as well by the fact that for the left the only possible way of confronting its enemies is criticizing them straightforwardly. Manipulation, communication guerilla (6) tactics and artistic strategies like the strategy of over-identification (7) have been neglected for a long time by the left. It was, and still is, just impossible to think about using „enemy strategies” for the ‘good’ cause.

Even if you are not fond of manipulation, like the naive left-wing squatter I quoted in the beginning, today, manipulation is everywhere. There is no such thing as whether to call it good or bad. It is there, and it is a fact. It won’t go away. In many cases, rather, it remains the only effective language left. Good intentions alone do not win fights. Rhetorics is not about having the right opinion, it is about using the right words. If the situation requires it, become a pop singer! or a stock broker! infiltrate corporate structures by appropriating corporate strategies and rhetoric! The majority of people in the squatted house who participated in the discussion about whether to use the Internet for political aims or not were of the opinion that because they had „good” political intentions they would not need „bad” manipulation. And, besides that, the computer was an instrument of power which you should not let your children use. I just felt bad, sitting there and being confronted with so much politically correct stubbornness. We soon left the place, sobered, and drove out into the night in a fat old black Mercedes, listening to the sound of Plaid.

Notes

1 Left-wing squatter in one of the last squatted houses in Berlin („Bandito Rosso”), during a discussion in April 2000 about whether to use the Internet for political aims or not. I participated in the discussion with some people from the Chaos Computer Club (CCC; the German hacker’s club), them of course also being a red rag to the left-wing squatters movement. The squatter turned openly „against manipulation” after somebody mentioned the fake fpo.at website that was installed after the right-wing Austrian FPÖ party got into the coalition with the ÖVP. The fake fpo.at website contained links to militant right wing organisations and thus intended to reveal the ‘hidden reverse’, i.e. that which remains unspoken in the rhetorics of the FPÖ. A common left criticism was that the fake fpo.at website could provide FPÖ fans with links to ‘appropriate’ organisations, i.e. could push them in an even more radical direction.
2 <http://www.icf.de/discord>
3 Antonia Ulrich, ‘Politik als Stil’, in: Texte zur Kunst, März 1997, 7. Jg. Nr. 25, S. 123-126
4 Ibid., p. 124 (my translation)
5 Ibid., p. 126, footnote 9 (my translation)
6 C.f. autonome a.f.r.i.k.a.-gruppe / Luther Blissett / Sonja Brünzels, Handbook of the Communication Guerilla [German original Handbuch der Komunikationsguerilla, Hamburg/Berlin 1997]. Here, RTMark’s <http://www.rtmark.com> and etoy’s <http://www.etoy.com> anti-corporate strategies come to one’s mind. C.f. Inke Arns ‘Recent Net Campaigns (esp. Toywar) and the Importance of Small Media or Wide-Spread Non-Hierarchical Systems’, lecture given at the conference Pro@Contra, Moscow 11-14 May 2000 [to be published in the documentation in the course of 2000] <http://procontra.danet.ru>. The SuperWeed Kit 1.0 project sponsored by the Cultural Terrorist Agency (i.e. Rachel Baker and Heath Bunting) <http://www.irational.org/cta> fits into this category as well: SuperWeed Kit 1.0 „is a lowtech DIY kit capable of producing a genetically mutant superweed designed to attack corporate monoculture” <http://pages.hotbot.com/politics/superweed/>.
7 C.f. Inke Arns, ‘Mobile States / Shifting Borders / Moving Entities. The Slovenian Artists’ Collective Neue Slowenische Kunst’, in: Irwin, Three projects: Transnacionala, Irwin Live, Icons, Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw 1998, pp. 59 – 76. See also <http://www.v2.nl/~arns/Texts/NSK/finale.htm>

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Ámbitos

El primer rostro, el primer europeo

La primera de las salas situaba al visitante en la Sierra de Atapuerca, en Burgos, donde se descubrió al más antiguo homínido del continente eurasiático, bautizado como Homo Antecesor. La temática de este espacio inicial recogió la capacidad tecnológica de la investigación española que permitió a un grupo de científicos demostrar la existencia del más antiguo antecesor europeo conocido y reconstruir sus costumbre. Este descubrimiento es el primer intento de síntesis entre el hombre, su entorno y la tecnología.

Observar el cielo, salvar la tierra

Este espacio mostraba la combinación de la investigación del Cosmos, realizada en el Instituto Astrofísico de Canarias, con el cuidado medioambiental de La Palma como ejemplo de armonía entre tecnología, humanidad y naturaleza. La Palma y Hawai son los dos únicos lugares donde rige la “Ley del Cielo”, que tiene el fin de eliminar la contaminación lumínica y favorecer las investigaciones. Los habitantes de La Palma contribuyen a la conservación del paraíso en el que viven al cumplir el lema Apagar una luz y encender una estrella. De esta forma contribuyen a disminuir la contaminación que produce la luz en el cielo.

La sala contenía un gran balcón desde el que se podía observar los contenidos y una ventana circular en el techo desde donde contemplar imágenes del Cosmos.

España en una única tierra

La tercera sala temática se dedicaba a la biodiversidad española, reconocida como una de las más ricas por su multiplicidad climática y biológica y por ser un puente entre Europa y África. La sala constituía un espacio que simulaba una península de cuyo centro surgía el árbol de la biodiversidad. De sus ramas metálicas se suspendían una serie de hojas luminosas en las que podían verse imágenes de la fauna y la flora españolas. En las paredes, doce pantallas, agrupadas de tres en tres y situadas en círculo, ofrecían imágenes de los parques nacionales españoles y de las especies en peligro de extinción.

España es su gente

Esta sala representaba una plaza construida con cristales opalescentes. El público se situaba en el espacio central, en una tarima elevada del suelo, lugar que en muchas plazas españolas suele ocupar una estatua. En la parte superior de la sala, una serie de pantallas proyectaba imágenes de acciones de ayuda española en el exterior y dentro de nuestras fronteras. La donación de órganos fue un tema destacado ya que España ocupa una de las primeras posiciones en cuanto a número de donantes de órganos se refiere.

La palabra que une

Este quinto espacio temático se dedicaba al español como lengua universal.

La pared izquierda contenía una gran ventana compuesta por cinco pantallas que mostraban imágenes de letras en tres dimensiones. Estas imágenes se movían de una pantalla a otra componiendo una narración sobre la lengua española y su capacidad de comunicación entre las diferentes culturas que la utilizan en el mundo. Previamente, un narrador explicaba el nacimiento de la palabra como instrumento de comunicación entre los hombres.

El arte ahora

En esta sala se exponía la obra de diez artistas contemporáneos, agrupados en el proyecto Diálogos. El programa expositivo se organizó de forma que los artistas mostraban sus obras en parejas y de forma consecutiva durante los cinco meses que duró la Exposición Universal. El propósito final era ofrecer una visión creativa de la realidad contemporánea española en consonancia con el lema de Hombre, Naturaleza, Tecnología.

Arte en la red

En El Arte en la Red se permitía consultar la página www.log-os.com en una serie de ordenadores. Este site contenía la obra de catorce artistas y colectivos que normalmente ofrecen su creatividad en la Red.

Los artistas seleccionados fueron Antoni Abad, Dora García, Maite Cajaville, Ricardo Iglesias, Roberto Aguirrezabala, Carmen Romero, El Viajero, Zush, Ricardo Echevarría, Daniel Andújar, Antoni Muntadas, Daniel Snalehí, JoDi, Marco Roso, José Maldonado y la Societé Anonyme.

Esta propuesta mostraba la combinación entre el arte y las nuevas tecnologías de la comunicación en el camino de búsqueda de nuevos medios para la expresión artística. También permitía al público dialogar interactivamente con los contenidos presentados por los artistas.

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La primera producción del Museo de la Universidad de Alicante reúne dos reflexiones sobre el ser y la tecnología

J. J. M. GALIANA 23/05/2000
El País

Salvo aisladas excepciones en alguna que otra galería con tendencias suicidas, el arte más moderno que se puede ver en Alicante es el esplendor geométrico de Eusebio Sempere. El Museo de la Universidad de Alicante estrenó el pasado viernes su primera producción propia: las exposiciones La sociedad informacional, de Daniel G. Andújar, y El hogar de los milagros del cuerpo, de Mira Bernabeu. Ambas fueron concebidas especialmente para el museo universitario, que aspira a convertirse en el hogar del arte de vanguardia del que Alicante carece.Las dos exposiciones están separadas por un telón blanco. Si el visitante gira hacia la derecha, penetrará en el hogar construido por Mira Bernabeu. Allí encontrará una mirada hacia el lugar donde confluyen carne y espíritu, con fuerte dominio de verde, “un color neutro que simboliza ese tránsito entre lo material y lo espiritual”, según el artista. La carnalidad de los habitantes subleva la propia carne y conduce a la zona interactiva y audiovisual de la casa.

El vestuario y el salón ocultan proyecciones en las que los personajes de las fotografías cobran vida. Entre ambas estancias, el dormitorio invita a convertirse en uno más de ellos. En completa intimidad, uno puede hacerse hasta un máximo de cinco fotos en un espacio que sólo limita con la propia imaginación.

Sobre límites y fronteras reflexiona Daniel G. Andújar en La sociedad informacional. “Internet presenta una frontera en cuanto al acceso, y una vez dentro hay otras fronteras, como el control de la información”, dice el autor. Un camarín negro sirve de sala de descompresión. Cuando se descorren las cortinas, paneles llenos de letras se descorren desde su punto de arranque a los pies de una torre circular. Sólo se escucha el silencioso zumbido de los ordenadores.

Cada panel enfrenta información analógica con digital. La primera explica cómo fabricar explosivos y la segunda enseña los códigos para crear virus, entre ellos el temido I love you. “Toda la información que aparece es considerada ilegal por Estados Unidos, pero la información no puede ser legal o ilegal, lo es el uso que se hace de ella”, señala Andújar.

En un segundo anillo hay unos terminales informáticos en los que el visitante puede realizar varias operaciones de pirateo, desde asaltar el correo del rector Andrés Pedreño hasta escuchar mensajes de contestadores de Telefónica. El usuario nunca sabe hasta dónde llega la broma y cuándo está realmente cometiendo un delito informático, lo cual, para Andújar, dice mucho de las motivaciones de muchas acciones de pirateo, que nacen como un juego de adolescentes que se retan para tumbar un servidor.

En la torre central está el sistema panóptico de vigilancia, que para la telemática se revela como herramienta inútil. En una malla como Internet, cualquier punto puede convertirse en centro y vigilar o controlar todos los demás. Andújar asegura que su instalación no pretende dar respuesta a estas cuestiones, sino plantearlas. Pero sí toma partido: “la seguridad en Internet no se logra cuando las empresas piden al Gobierno que censure conocimientos que pueden llevar al pirateo, sino cuando invierten en la seguridad de sus redes”, expone.

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by Kristin Bergaust

Around 20 different projects that combined new media art, social and political awareness, were presented to the public in the premises of Atelier Nord media lab at the end of March 2000. The presentation weekend was also an introduction to the workshop that was held the following week.

The weekend event was open to the public. Norway has been quite isolated from what has been going on in new media culture in other parts of Europe, and this was the first presentation of its kind in Oslo. The aim was to introduce media art concepts and practices to an audience of Norwegian artists and interested public. The event was also introducing ideas for the development of a Norwegian network of media-labs and other initiatives as well as developing further international networks and connections.

The workshop
During the following week a team of people worked on questions and solutions concerning group-software, tools for co-operation and ideas for network activities. The workshop resulted in a common understanding and development of some tools for the NICE network, as well as the idea of the Mobile NICE. Mobile NICE is the plan for a three-month bus-trip around the countries surrounding the Baltic Sea. The bus will visit media initiatives in the area, who will cooperate with the changing bus team in what they want to happen at their stop along the route, as well as cooperating in projects and tasks for the bus along the way. To sum up this idea: Mapping, developing, connecting and supporting the Nordic-Baltic new media art and cultural activities through travelling education, presentation, production, research and exhibition.

Participants in the workshop were Thomax Kaulman and Udo Noll from Germany, Jaanis Garancs from Latvia, John Hopkins and Mari Keski-Korsu from Finland, Nils Claesson from Sweden along with Norwegians Kristin Bergaust, Atle Barcley, Kenneth Korstad Langås, Bodil Furu and others.

Since the event in March, the Norwegian network between
Atelier Nord, Oslo ,
BEK in Bergen
and Top Floor
in Trondheim is more established and has already started working on some projects together. News will be published on the NICE mailing list: http://nice.x-i.net/a/.

Oslo Presence was organised by Kristin Bergaust, artist and director of Atelier Nord http://anart.no

http://anart.no/~kristin

Financial support was granted by the Norwegian Council of Cultural Affairs as well as the City Council of Oslo.

Overview of the program of presentations:
Eric Kluitenberg (Amsterdam) opened on the Saturday with an introduction to media art, presenting the the CD-ROM Permanent Flux produced at De Balie containing the history of multimedia art in the 20th century, from the early avant-garde to the contemporary techno culture.
Eric also presented the event “Next 5 Minutes” organised by the Balie and others in Amsterdam and discussed the notion of Tactical Media, giving a critical perspective on what it is really possible to achieve, using the grave and difficult situation of B52 in Belgrade as an example. http://www.balie.nl/

http://www.medialounge.net

http://www.n5m.org/

Daniel Garcia Andujar (Valencia) showed examples of his “Technologies to the people” then presented his installation work with a focus on how security is not understood or taken seriously even by the people responsible in major telecom companies.
http://www.irational.org/tttp/

“Ted- Media and slander.” A prototype of a media spokesman was presented online and as a video by Karin Hansson (Stockholm).

http://www.art.a.se/ted/

Nomade & Gediminas Urbonas (Vilnius) showed excerpts from their project: “TVV Plotas” -a series of interviews and reports on themes connected to contemporary art presented on national television.

Heath Bunting (London) presented Rachel Baker´s “Art of Work” as well as his own, among them the Cultural terrorist Agency and the Superweed.

http://www.irational.org/cgi-bin/cta/cta.pl

http://www.irational.org/cta/superweed/

Rasa Smite & Raitis Smits (Riga) gave an introduction to different international networks, among them X-change for net-radio activists, NICE for small-scale media culture initiatives and informed about the plans for the media center RIXC in Riga.

http://xchange.re-lab.net

http://nice.x-i.net

The final presentation on the Saturday was by Thomax G Kaulmann who introduced some of his work, and the principles behind it, among them Radio Internationale Stadt.

http://www.orang.org

Sound work by Nomade & Gediminas Urbonas new project was presented in the evening along with projections from the Norwegian club project “Le Big Sloppy Kiss” and music from orang.org and other sources.

On the Sunday Goran Boardy from Valand, Gothenburg, presented a quick-time film festival on the net in connection with the conference Elpub.

http://www.elpub.net/index_a.html

http://www.valand.gu.se/finearts/staff/gboardy

Udo Noll (Cologne) described and showed his projects “Of The Equator And Some Otherlands” and “H|U|M|B|O|T”.
http//kingdom.de

http://king.dom.de/otherlands

http://king.dom.de/equator/

http://www.humbot.org

Borderland -a documentary project by Kristine Briede and Calle Biörsmark from Locomotive, Riga was presented by Rasa Smite (Riga).

http://www.borderland.org

The Norwegian presentation featured a videopresentation of the performance group “Motherboard”.

http://www.notam.uio.no/motherboard

Jaanis Garancs(Riga/Hamburg) talked about collaborative web interfaces as an art form and showed experimental web based, groupware services that are being developed for the networks NICE, Xchange and the Baltic Interface Net.

http://jg.x-i.net/

Nils Claesson (Stockholm) demonstrated his “Say voff- the international dog sound interface” a work based on the concept that the only international languages are bad jokes and music.

http://www.crac.org

Mari Keski-Korsu (Tornio) presented a student´s point of view and showed some of her work.

http://students.llaky.fi/~mkk/

Finally John Hopkins (Helsinki) shared his thoughts on educational models and policies.

http://members.iex.net/~hopkins

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Una gran exposición, en consonancia con su propósito de recorrer más de 500 años de historia, ocupa desde ayer las estancias de la antigua sede de la Universidad de Valencia (la Nau), buena parte del nuevo edificio de investigación del Jardí Botànic, y las salas temporales del Museo Nacional de Cerámica. Son los tres escenarios de una cita culminante en la celebración del quinto centenario de la fundación de la universidad valenciana. Arte y artilugios, cuadrantes y sexantes, manuscritos y libros, legajos y pancartas, retratos y fotografías, cuadros y esculturas, piezas anatómicas y fichas policiales de estudiante antifranquistas…, hasta 600 piezas se han reunido con voluntad didáctica en la exhibición del patrimonio de la Universidad de Valencia, patrocinada por Bancaixa. Más de un centenar de prestadores privados e institucionales han colaborado en la consecución de la muestra.

Es el fruto del ambicioso programa Thesaurus, de catalogación, conservación y exhibición de todo el material universitario. “Junto a un recorrido histórico, la muestra no puede olvidar la reciente evolución de la Universidad, caracterizada por el proceso de expansión y democratización”, señaló ayer el rector, Pedro Ruiz. No se trata de un ejercicio de “autosatisfacción”, ni de propaganda, sino de explicar qué ha sido y es la Universidad, sus “etapas esplendorosas y decadentes”, comentó el comisario, Salvador Albiñana.

La exposición de la calle de la Nave está dividida en seis grandes bloques cronológicos y tres temáticos. La bula papal de Alejandro VI, de 1502, en la que respondía a la petición de los Jurats de Valencia, inicia el recorrido sugerido que concluye en el apartado sobre la vida cotidiana de la institución hoy en día. Entre la serie diacrónica se intercalan la sala de códices, que muestra una selección de los valiosos manuscritos, otra que refleja, muy gráficamente, cómo los campus de la Universidad han modelado la ciudad, y una tercera que da el contrapunto audiovisual sobre la percepción que la sociedad y los universitarios tienen de la institución.

Cuando la muestra se adentra en el siglo XX adopta un carácter “más evocativo que descriptivo”, explicó el comisario. Y ciertamente las secciones Entre dos dictaduras y Democracia sí, dictadura no accionan de inmediato el resorte de la memoria. Decadencia y reforma ilustrada y La universidad liberal completan el recorrido cronológico comprendido entre 1499 Una universidad para una ciudad y I un dia.

El Museo Nacional de Cerámica, ubicado en el Palacio del Marqués de Dos Aguas, acoge el apartado titulado Medicina y sociedad en Valencia: la transformación al siglo XX. En él se repasa el proceso de transformación en las condiciones de vida de la población valenciana, cuando el médico adquiere un gran protagonismo en la lucha contra las enfermedades. Las primeras radiografías y otros muchos objetos que dan cuenta de la incipiente cultura sanitaria se exhiben en este museo del Ministerio de Cultura.

Del huerto de Simples al Jardín Botánico es el nombre de la muestra del edificio de investigación del primer jardín universitario de España. En ella se repasa la evolución de la botánica como disciplina científica, desde la creación del Botánico en 1567 como huerto de simples, en estrecho contacto con los estudios médicos, hasta la reestructuración como centro de conservación de la biodiversidad vegetal. Aquí se exhibe el Platicage Generalis, un manuscrito procedente de Padua, que recuerda la obra de Juan Plaza y la difusión en Europa de la botánica valenciana del Renacimiento. Una prueba del esplendor cosmopolita de la Universidad en el siglo XVI.

Otra obra singular, propiedad del Museo del Prado, se exhibe por primera vez en la sede de la Nau de la exposición Cinc Segles i un dia. Es el gran lienzo de Vicente López (en la imagen de la primera página de EL PAÍS Comunidad Valenciana) que se mandó pintar a propósito de la visita a Carlos IV a la Universidad de Valencia.

En el completo catálogo editado se refleja el trabajo realizado por los decenas de profesores que han intervenido en la organización de esta gran exposición. Rafael Ramírez, Pedro Feduchi y Daniel García Andújar se han encargado del impactante montaje.

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