personal website︎︎︎

Email interview on 9. Jan. 2022


Interviewed by
Jeeyoung Lee


Translated by
Seolhee Park


Proofreading
Britcent Ltd

Please tell me about yourself.

My name is Pablo Santacana. I am a Spanish visual designer and cultural researcher based in Madrid and Berlin. I am interested in problematizing the power structures behind every form of representation, with special focus on the ways such representation mold our collective memories and our worldviews. I am currently writing my dissertation at the Research Training Group “Identity and Heritage” at the Bauhaus University, Weimar on the topic of historical reenactments as performative spaces of radical negativity towards present conflicts. In parallel to my academic work, I am part of the collective Co-Re (Ig: contextual_research) with whom I manage a project space at Haus der Statistik. In Madrid, together with my friend Martra Muñoz, I also run a graphic design studio called Humo Estudio. With Marta, I also run a research- and community-oriented artistic collective called Vendedores de Humo.

Can you tell me what the term “Performative Monument” means, which you use to explain your practice? If you have a meaningful project concerning this form of practice, please tell me about the project. Also, I would like to know what made you start this kind of project and the intention behind it.


My interest in performative monuments developed from a need to redefine the ways in which the intangible and the processual are validated as holders of meaning related to the past, besides what has been defined as intangible heritage by UNESCO and other key institutions. 
             Coming from a traditional family from Spain, I have been continuously in contact with ritualities and ceremonies that were rarely problematized or questioned, and at the same time I understood the power such events hold in constructing meaning and producing engagement. What would happen if we empower ourselves in such ceremonies and use them as tools for social change? This specific interest became stronger, in relation to two main facts. The first was the rise of right-wing movements who claimed the intellectual property of these gatherings, using them to remythify the past to justify xenophobia and nationalism. Second, the touristification of culture and the transformation of collective memory into a sanitized commodity.
           With this setup, and after some personal experience organizing reenactments and public activities, I decided to focus on the format of historical reenactments as a way to channel (and challenge) all these issues. The choice of topic was very much influenced by my main reference, The Battle of Orgreave by artist Jeremy Deller. Deller reenacted a fight between miners and the British police during a massive strike in 1984 to protest against the measures taken by the liberal government of Margaret Thatcher. In the reenactment, which happened on 2001, miners who had participated in the original event reenacted the fight, also playing the policemen, and the documentation of the reenactment served to counter the proven bias in the documentation of the original event by the BBC, where distorted editing showed the miners as starters of the fight as a way to justify their repression.

---

Fiestas de la Melonera, Madrid, 2017 © Galerna foto
Vendedores de Humo

What could be the usual process of your project?

I always work in a process-oriented and research-based way, which means that the most important part of the project is not the final result, but all the findings that happen in the process, which we (I speak with the plural as I never work alone) always try to document. Documentation is a key part of the project, and it sometimes comes in the form of a book, a film, or an installation.

---

Esfera, piedra, poligono, 2021 Vendedores de Humo
IPER, 2022, © ZK/U Berlin, Pablo Santacana Lopez

You are known to have an interest in memorials. What are you focusing on with that? In that you are currently working in Germany and Spain, what do you focus on differently between memorials in the two countries?

On my present research on historical reenactments, I am now focusing on a theme park that celebrates and resembles the hegemonic narration of the Spanish past, which therefore I consider to be memorial work. It is not considered or regarded by local authorities as a memorial per se, but the theme park is gaining agency on validating specific historical narrations, which are clearly simplified and rendered as spectacle. In the case of Spain, the success of this theme park is especially dangerous, linked to the rise of hate speech and conservative nationalism. In comparison with Germany, which needed to go through a process of historical revisionism after the defeat of National Socialism, Spain has only gradually tried to distance itself from fascism and Francoism, and there is no common agreement on how to deal with even recent conflicts, to say nothing of colonialism.

Imagine that you come to Gwangju. Is there any project that you would like to try regarding May 18? What would you research based on your current interests?

For me it would be interesting to focus on the public representation of the event, either in mass media or popular culture, as well as in institutional discourses and memories. Who is telling what? How, and most importantly, on which interests? Remembering has always more to do with the moment in which we remember rather than on the moment we are remembering, so research on the reasons why such an event needs to be addressed nowadays could be very interesting. Also, related to the opposition between popular culture and institutional discourse, it could be interesting to find the gaps into which the missing narrations could be put into circulation. I would love to stop imagining and actually go there! Hopefully I find some projects there soon!

Is there any ongoing project or anything that you are planning to do at the moment?

As part of my research on the theme park I mentioned Puy du Fou. I am planning to write a paper on it and visit it again this year, probably also doing some interviews. For everyone who is not familiar with the place, I strongly recommend having a (critical) look on their website︎︎︎  

I give you also some links in case it is of interest to you:

My research at Bauhaus university︎︎︎
My website about the research︎︎︎
Jeremy Deller's Battle of Orgreave︎︎︎