English
Up until 16 October the Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo hosts The Ephemeral Past, an art exhibit by Ruth Ewan. This exhibition forms part of a cycle entitled La Canción como Fuerza Social Transformadora organised by, and held at, the Andalucia-based gallery.
This cycle looks at the role played by music and art in social change during the second half of the 20th century. During this period rock music emerged as a symbol of youthful rejection of conservative values. It became a symbol of freedom, protest and resistance.
Music brought a change in everyday relationships, aesthetics and literature. The Beatles had a huge influence on male aesthetics, saying nothing of their enormous musical impact with their sophisticated take on rock and roll and skiffle and their pioneering use of psychedelia in pop.
The work of British artist Ruth Ewan investigates the social impact of songs, oral traditions and myths in communities. She explores non-hierarchic communication: that which does not go through the usual channels like education or media, but is instead transmitted orally.
In The Ephemeral Past Ewan exhibits five pieces that have been shown before: A Jukebox of People Trying to Change the World; Did you kiss the foot that kicked you?; Unrecorded Future Tell Us What Broods There; Fang Sang; and The Cut Wren. However, the exhibition also includes a conceptual work, Six Signs, created by the artist especially for the Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo.
In the piece, Did you kiss the foot that kicked you?, the artist brought together 100 buskers to perform The Ballad of Accounting, a song composed by Ewan MacColl in 1964. MacColl was a political activist and was under vigilance by MI5 for his militant communism. Over the course of a week this performance was repeated and the lyrics were given out to passers-by. Their reaction to this non-hierarchical communication was observed and thus social models of propaganda were explored.
Ewan has carried out some remarkable experiments in her recent work. She often plays with humour, as when teaching dozens of parrots a selection of left-wing slogans recorded during the anti-G8 summit protests and then putting them all together in an aviary. The strangeness of this experiment reflects the way that those in positions of power generally see such protests: as something exotic and incomprehensible.
For more information: http://www.juntadeandalucia.es/cultura/caac/programa/ex_act.htm
Nancy Guzman
The song, as well as being a vital method of cultural communication, has played a fundamental role in the construction of memory in the 20th Century. Rent apartments in Seville and enjoy the exhibit.
Translated by: Ben Palmer
