PROTOTYPES OF INSTITUTING DESIRESanta Mònica to Sismógrafo

Agustín Ortiz Herrera, Antoni Hervàs, Assamblea Utopia Rambles, Beth Ferguson, Collectiu 1080, Giulia Grumi, Hogar Diska, Joana Moll, Las Mòniques, LEVE Project, Marina Monsonís, Mariona Moncunill, Sindihogar, Sofía Montenegro, Sara Dean

Curated by Clara Laguillo

Assistant curator Marina Frean

Prototypes of Instituting Desire is an archival-exhibition that brings to Sismógrafo a selection of experimental practices focused on emerging forms of institutionality, embracing the relational, the collective, and the performative as premises for re-signifying cultural spaces.This proposal is part of a curatorial project that has been underway since 2021 at the Santa Mònica Arts Center in Barcelona, and which, on this occasion, brings together projects developed during that period under different thematic and methodological frameworks.

The exhibition features works by artists such as Joana Moll, Antoni Hervàs, Sofía Montenegro, Agustín Ortiz, Giulia Grumi, Mariona Moncunill, Marina Monsonís, Beth Ferguson, and Sara Dean, as well as collectives like Sindihogar, Agitación Diska, and the Assembly of Artists from Utopía Ramblas — a group formed by 44 artists specifically for an exhibition cycle and dissolved immediately after the show ended. The exhibition seeks to approach the question of what an art center can become, in a context where cultural forms and their spaces of articulation are fragmented and in constant flux — whether due to hybrid experiences with virtual worlds or the continuous use of tools for creating and disseminating images.

Agustín Ortiz Herrera studied fine arts at the University of Barcelona and film directing at The New School University in New York. His artistic practice develops at the intersection of audiovisual, performance, and installation. He uses these mediums to explore the possibilities of the Queer in a patriarch-colonial context fueled by the mastery of audiovisual persuasion and normative representation of memory.

Antoni Hervàs studied Fine Arts at the University of Barcelona. His work develops around drawing, a discipline that allows to absorb others, such as performance, sculpture, music, or installation, adopting new corporalities and questioning the limits that define it. He is interested in popular culture, oral tradition, mythology, and archives of resistance and, with these collectivization spaces, he interweaves narrative structures with accessible materials that reject nobility and celebrate the scar.

Assembleia Utopia Rambles was a collective of 44 people, artists, and/ or curators who were selected through a public call to be part of the Utopia Rambles project, developed between January and May 2023, after a selection phase held in October 2022. The selection criteria were based on the degree of commitment and dedication, experience or motivation, to work in a set of skills and working abilities in relation to the utopian imaginary. Upon completion of the experiment in this period, the Assembly was dissolved.

Beth Ferguson is an assistant professor at the Department of Design of the University of California, Davis. She is an artist and ecological designer, whose practice combines industrial design with sustainable transportation, solar engineering, climate resilience, and public engagement. Ferguson is the director of the Sol Design Lab and the founding director of the Adapting City Lab.

Giulia Grumi studied Scenography at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera in Milan and completed her training with a year at the Institut del Teatre de Barcelona, where she specialized in design and production of clothing for shows. She has worked for 15 years as a designer in theatre, circus and cinema.

Hogar Diska was formed through an appeal in a support group on Telegram, consisting of queer people with chronic pain (50 participants). This call was made by Consol Llupià García and answered by Tatiana Antoni Conesa, Silvia M. Limiñana, Eva Iovine, and Usu. They thus created a collective that, during the Dozing on the accidentalprovocation exhibition's development and conceptualization process, elaborated specific work proposals to give space to experiences usually marginalized in exhibition contexts, as, for example, the need for rest — physical and mental — in curatorial proposals. Hogar Diska was reconfigured and renamed in 2024 as Agitación Diska and its current goal is to "shake up the structures in the domains of art and culture through a crip, queer, antiableist, and anticolonial approach".

Joana Moll is an artist and researcher. Her work critically explores how techno-capitalist narratives affect machine, human, and ecosystem's literacy.

Las Mòniques are artists-in-residence at the Santa Mònica Art Centre who experiment in the relational or participatory sphere in a collective and transdisciplinary way, organized into seven guilds: communication, digitalization, editing, education, spaces, gastronomy and participation. Selected annually by public call, they develop prototypes of artistic mediation devices to open up the centre’s content, discourses and questions to diverse audiences.

Leve Productora is formed by Eva Serrats, Francesc Pla, and Daniel Cid. It started as an audiovisual production company and currently works on projects in architecture, urbanism, and cultural events. The projects they have developed have motivations and formats ranging from housing for homeless people to food sustainability, through landscape infrastructure or housing typologies. Among its most relevant projects is the Pis Zero ('Apartment Zero'), a new type of low demand temporary housing for homeless people.

Marina Monsonís is a visual artist and mediator at the Kitchen Laboratory of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Barcelona. She works with social movements and international public art projects rooted in history, culture, food, ecology, and territory, including Erased Geographies. She has developed a variety of community art and education projects related to marine sciences, collective mapping, urban art, food experimentation, oral history, and biohacking.

Mariona Moncunill is an artist, lecturer, and researcher. She holds a degree in Fine Arts and a PhD in Information and Knowledge Society from the UOC. Her artistic work is always situated in the context in which it develops, investigating the forms of symbolic value creation and the epistemological sediments that shape social and cultural conventions. Her artistic investigations include botany, museography, librarianship, and the measurement of time.

Sara Dean is an architect and designer in the U.S West Coast. She is an assistant professor at California College of the Arts and founder of IF/THEN Studio. Her work investigates the opportunities offered by digital technologies to engage cities in greater equity and adaptability, facing the dual threat of Anthropocene and capitalism. This includes work on climate catastrophes, collaborative economy, digital activism, cartography, and our cities' future.

Sindillar/Sindihogar was born in 2011, in the Spanish state, and is the first independent trade union of migrant women domestic and care workers.

Sofía Montenegro develops her work between installation, sound, image, and the scenic. She studied Fine Arts and Cultural Studies between Utrecht and Madrid, and earned a master’s degree in Art Praxis at the Dutch Art Institute. Her artistic practice incorporates several methodologies that link the visual to sound and action in space, looking for ways to produce images in thought.

Clara Laguillo has a degree in Humanities and a PhD in Philosophy, specializing in Contemporary Aesthetics. Her area of research focuses on temporal malfunctions in the context of digitization, as well as the experimentation and investigation of dissident forms of temporalization. She dedicates herself to teaching, coordination, and curatorial practice. One of her professional activity's priority is interpersonal care.

Marina Frean has a degree in Humanities and holds a Master’s Degree in Social and Cultural Anthropology and an MA in Digital Art. Her work is located at the intersection of education, production, and administration, and she is currently part of the local team for the nomadic Manifesta biennial. Her practice is nourished by experiences in spaces such as La Cuina of MACBA and the program "Crear situacions" of Centro Santa Mònica. Her interests include mediation, new institutions, situated contemporary artistic practices, and the common as a political power.

In collaboration with