Formas de ser en Württembergischen Kunstverein Stuttgart. Iris Dressler &
Hans D. Christ
Artists
Gerd Arntz, Daniel Baker, Canciones de la guerra social contemporánea, Joy
Charpentier, Ines Doujak, El Solitario / Francisco Lameyer, Toto Estirado, Flo
6x8, Robert Gabris, María García Ruiz, Gonzalo García-Pelayo, Israel Galván,
Tony Gatlif, Helios Gómez, Francisco de Goya, Isaias Griñolo, Julio Jara, Hiwa
K, Teresa Lanceta, Darcy Lange / Maria Snijders, Delaine Le Bas, Los Putrefactos,
Máquinas de vivir, Ocaña, Otto Pankok, PEROU, Ragel, Pedro G. Romero, August
Sander, Franz W. Seiwert, SEM/EN, Stalker, Ceija Stojka, Mario Maya y Teatro
Gitano Andaluz, Luca Vitone, Rosario Weiss u.a.
Curators
María García und Pedro G. Romero
INTRODUCTION
With Una forma de ser, Württembergischer Kunstverein continues its
exhibition series Actually, the Dead Are Not Dead, which goes back to
the Bergen Assembly 2019 of the same name.
The exhibition deals with the relationship between the feast and the political
sphere. It examines the party as a social and collective platform for
emancipation and self-determination, and explores the aesthetic and poetic
forms that have developed since the nineteenth century, particularly in the
context of the subcultures of the Roma, flamencos and bohemians. It combines
visual arts, music and dance as well as advanced arts since the nineteenth
century with cultural forms associated with folklore and popular art: Francisco
de Goya with the multiple award-winning contemporary flamenco dancer Israel
Galván; August Sander and his photographs of Cologne’s “Lumpenbälle” with the
Spanish underground artist Ocaña; the modernist graphic artists Gerd Arntz and
Helios Gómez with Ceija Stojka; nineteenth-century Andalusian bohemian culture
with flamenco taught to new music.
The curators of the exhibition, Pedro G. Romero and María García have for
decades been exploring the world of flamenco and the relationship between
stereotyping, romanticizing, and the exclusion of European Roma. Yet they
continue to point out the crucial role that Roma and other marginalized groups
have played in the development of the avant-garde. Flamenco actually emerged in
the mid-nineteenth century in the urban environment of the Roma, bohemians and the
so-called ‘lumpenproletariat’ of the suburbs of Seville and other Andalusian
cities: as a counter-movement to an emerging folklorism in Andalusia at the
time.
This modern, avant-garde artistic manifestation was first described by Serafín
Estébanez Calderón in 1838 in his text Asamblea General (General
Assembly). What Calderón essentially observes here is a series of kris, the
political assemblies of the Andalusian Roma where the communities of Malaga,
Cádiz and Seville settled their affairs and disputes, and which always went
hand in hand with a fiesta.
This text, as well as one of the works that Francisco Lameyer, an artist close
to Goya, realized for it, are the starting point of the exhibition, along with
the series Los Disparates by Francisco de Goya himself: a series of
gloomy, carnivalesque and grotesque scenarios with a variety of allusions to
the political situation at the time. From here, the exhibition with works by
artists such as Delaine Le Bas, Robert Gabris and Teresa Lanceta extends all the
way to contemporary art.
An important local reference is the Stuttgart Vagabond Congress, convened in
1929 by Gregor Gog and held not far from the then newly built
Weissenhofsiedlung on the Killesberg in Stuttgart. As early as 1982, the
Württembergischer Kunstverein and other art institutions had already taken up
the subject of this congress and its background in the context of the
exhibition Wohnsitz: Nirgendwo (Residence: Nowhere). In 2014, Theater
Rampe in Stuttgart dedicated a reenactment to it.
Under the title Una forma de ser, a way of being or living, the curators
aim to negotiate the communities of the Flamencos, Roma and Bohèms beyond
identity politics in terms of forms and strategies of political subjectivation.
Against the background of the current experiences of lockdown and social
distancing, they have expanded and recontextualized the thematic field of the
exhibition: after all, parties are the epitome of social and physical
proximity. Furthermore, certain social groups, such as the Roma, have been hit
particularly hard by the Corona pandemic and its consequences, and their social
exclusion, which existed long before it, has become even worse. In this
respect, the exhibition also negotiates spatial political implications.
Various performances are planned within the framework of the exhibition. Among
the highlights is the play La Fiesta by Israel Galván, which will be performed at the Staatsoper Stuttgart.
