Radio Papesse

The interview was recorded at the La Strozzina Contemporary Art Centre in Firenze.

Ser y Durar by Spanish collective Democracia is a very well orchestrated and long sequence in which the coreographic alphabet of parkour – a kind of discipline carried out in urban spaces and sprung out from the classic obstacle-course method of military training - is mixed with the action movies’ ABC. It follows the spectacular acrobatics of a group of hoodies flying over the secular cemetery of La Amudena, one of the biggest in Madrid: on the background a parade of failed utopias, anarchic symbols, gravestones of politicians, philosophers and thinkers, epitaph for the XX century ideologies.

The past – its collective and revolutionary desires – are buried, underground; the democracy defeated.

Together with Ivan Lopez we turn the idea of democracy upside down, by keeping in mind the most recent Spanish political uprisings. We talked about slogans, about art taking over journalism, about the outcomes of art occupying the public sphere.