The images of the hands and accompanying answers to the questions were assembled together and framed for the exhibition. Rather than emphasis on an individual’s face – the dominant signifier of identity and citizenship exemplified by the essential passport photo, here the hand is the subject of identification. Through the combination of the image and the text, viewers are asked to make a connection with the individuals through touch; through the items and objects that they have rejected or embraced, or held onto through periods of trauma and/or emotional recovery. I also spent some time learning about each individual to discover why they came to Barcelona, what are their hobbies, and what makes them happy (image 5, left) . This time spent was preparation for an important part of the art work; to search the city for a gift for each of them. The gift was a very important device for avoiding the potential problematics of inhabiting a voyeuristic gaze. It has been argued that the exchange of gifts is at the heart of the market economy, to the extent that Marxist scholars, and for that matter Karl Marx, have written about the commodification of the gift as its fall from grace; its failure so to speak. 5 But to rely on this as the only function of the gift removes other possible meanings from the exchange and from the significance of gifts in relationships. To theorise and define this aspect of the work, I drew from feminist media scholar Jörden Skågeby’s concept of the performative gift. Skågeby argues that gift economy is ‘a candidate for more participatory alternatives to capitalist totality. ’6 Basically the gift can be reconfigured by using it as a tool through which one can imagine new patterns of life, or experience new facets of the world. In this way the gift as a site of financial intensity is de-emphasised and becomes instead an agent in what Skågeby describes as ‘contributing to ongoing reconfigurations of the world’. 7 I set myself a few basic rules such as the gifts had to be fair trade, or second hand. Importantly the gift was to be something I felt was connected to their knowledge, to the things they do every day, to their dreams and ambitions. It was also important that the gifts’ meaning would resonate with my collaborators through their connection to places and buildings in the city of Barcelona. For me this meant days thinking about my new friends, imaging the worries and concerns they face each day, what they long for, and what are the tendencies in their personalities; all the while discovering a particular version of the Barcelona delineated by my quest for their gifts.
Natalia San Juan
Darius Dogdanowicz
images: 5 Author (right) with Andrei (left) exploring one of his favourite places in Barcelona, Parc del Guinardó 6 Author (right) and Rubén ringing the Tibetan chime at the Temple of Augustus in Barcelona 7 One of Rubén’s three gifts, beside a photograph of the gift he left in the city. Exhibited at Sala d’ exposicions del Districte de Gràcia
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Thomas Strickland
5 Skågeby, Jörden. ‘The Performative Gift: A Feminist Materialist Conceptual Model’, Communication and New Materialism . 2 (2013): art 7.
6 Skågeby 7 Skågeby
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