The Effervescence of the Photobook. Interview with Irene de Mendoza, co-curator of “Photobook Phenomenon”

June 9th, 2017 No Comments
Irene de Mendoza © CCCB, 2017. Elisenda Pallarés

Irene de Mendoza © CCCB, 2017. Elisenda Pallarés

The best-known photobooks are those that we make ourselves with photos of our holidays and that we show to friends and family on our return. At the “Photobook Phenomenon” exhibition, the term “photobook” adopts another dimension and historical significance. The photobooks exhibited at the CCCB and at the Foto Colectania Foundation are creative projects, stories in images, graphic accounts of the visual culture of our times. They are artistic objects where the creativity and choral work of many professionals (designers, printers, illustrators, photographers, etc.) all come into play. Their themes are as varied as suicide and the story of Spain’s first serial killer. They can also have different formats: from a traditional book to a cigarette pack or a Chinese sewing box. However, not all these photobooks contain photographs taken by the author; some contain archive images, photographs purchased at flea markets, drawings, etc.

At the height of the digital era, more photobooks are being published than ever before, and increasing numbers of professional find in this formula a pathway for expressing themselves and telling stories. “The photobook has the capacity to change the lives of these people” affirmed collector Martin Parr at the exhibition’s opening event.

We talked about the diversity and richness of photobooks and the fundamental role they play in heightening visibility of the work of contemporary artists and photographers with Irene de Mendoza, artistic director of the Foto Colectania Foundation and one of the curators of the “Photobook Phenomenon” exhibition.

Elisenda Pallarés: These days we can talk about the appearance of the “photobook phenomenon”. Many circuits and festivals exist dedicated to this format where artists and collectors make themselves known. This is not the first exhibition on this subject, so what is different about “Photobook Phenomenon”?

Irene de Mendoza: The “Photobook Phenomenon” exhibition produced jointly by the CCCB and the Foto Colectania Foundation aims to move away from the classic exhibition of photobooks by a photography centre. Exhibitions have already been held internationally on this subject, but always from the viewpoint of the photography. This time we have ventured to talk about the photobook in more general terms, as the exponent of the visual culture of an era, following to a certain extent the example of the Tate Modern, which has just acquired Martin Parr’s collection. We should not understand the photobook as exclusively an art of photography; it is an art that embraces many more disciplines. A key feature of the exhibition has been having seven curators who have presented very different themes.

EP: There are many women authors in the contemporary photobooks section. However, the same does not occur with the other sections. Is the world of the photobook a world of male creators and collectors?

IM: It is true that proportionally we find more men, even though history is full of women photographers. This is also reflected in the art world and in curatorship. However, now we are experiencing a total change, above all in the area of creation, where very powerful female photographers are starting to make their names known. In Spain, there are more women than men enjoying international recognition, as is the case of Cristina de Middel whom Martin Parr always cites as a reference artist. She consolidated her career starting with the self-publishing of a book.

EP: Does the same happen with photojournalism? Right now the exhibition World Press Photo is being presented in Barcelona and every year we observe more male prize-winners than female ones.

IM: It has always been more difficult for women in every sphere. Joana Biarnés, considered the first Spanish female photojournalist, is a good example. The documentary Joana Biarnés, una entre todos explains the difficulties she had to overcome to become a photographer. Although proportionally there have always been more male photographers it is also true that it has been easier for them to make themselves known. We don’t know if, in the future, archives will be found of unknown women photographers, as in the case of Vivian Maier, who spent her whole life taking photographs but never disseminated them.

Irene de Mendoza © CCCB, 2017. Elisenda Pallarés

EP: The exhibition features photobooks in different formats, from the more traditional book to Xian, by Thomas Sauvin, in which each reader takes a different journey and, consequently, has a different reading. What differentiates photobooks?

IM: At the height of the digital era, photographers have found in the photobook the ideal medium for showing a project in a coherent way. On the Internet the tendency exists for photographs to be circulated and separated from their context. The photobook, however, is something physical that enables coherence to be given to a project and allows artists to experiment with the format, the paper, deciding on the cover, etc.

The dream of authors who create photography books is for people to consider them like a novel: with a cover, a title, an introduction, a core and a denouement. There are also authors who break with this line, but it should still be understood as a reading. Often we start leafing through a book of images from the end, but nobody starts reading a novel from the end.

EP: The creation of the photographic book is a collective endeavour.

IM: Yes, it is a choral work. Often we relate it with the world of cinema. In a film, the director obviously plays an important part but the film is the result of the work of an entire team. In the creation of a photobook, the designer or the editor, for example, also play an extremely important role. Moreover, younger people have received a better education, they travel, speak English and use social media networks and all this is reflected in their work.

EP: What prominent names do we find among this new generation of Spanish photographers?

IM: There are major authors such as Carlos Spottorno, Cristina de Middel, Ricardo Cases and Óscar Monzón, who won the Paris Photo with Karma. All of them are internationally recognised for their photobooks. And also Laia Abril and Julián Barón, whose most recent works we can find at the exhibition.

EP: How do they make their work known?

IM: Through the book. Twenty years ago they thought more about doing an exhibition and making a catalogue as a record of the exhibition. But an exhibition is more limited. Which is better: an exhibition in Berlin, for example, or publishing a book that will also be seen in the MoMA bookstore? These photographers aim to reach a lot of people and they focus on this. Also, today, all the photography fairs and festivals devote a significant section to the photobook.

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EP: Are there talent-spotters in the world of the photobook?

IM: Yes, there are gurus or opinion leaders, such as Horacio Fernández, Gerry Badger and Martin Parr, and we have been lucky enough to see many of them at “Photobook Phenomenon”. But we must not forget the fundamental role played by the publishers. In this case, Editorial RM, with whom we have co-published the exhibition catalogue, are spokespersons and supporters of projects. They personally take the books that they publish to the major opinion leaders in the world of photography.

EP: Apart from the viewpoint of these opinion leaders, is there space for participation in the world of photobooks?

Yes. “Photobook Phenomenon” shows that the world of the photobook is not relegated exclusively to photography as a speciality. The photobook is not something exclusively for artists of photography, but the subjects dealt with can spark anyone’s interest. It is a vehicle that uses photographs, or images – because these days talking about photography means talking about images – to deal with very diverse issues. At the exhibition, many photobooks can be seen whose images were not made by the author, following the line of post-photography, so widely written about by Joan Fontcuberta. Photos from public or private archives are also published.

The idea is to narrate using images and this connects very well with the era in which we live. Between getting up and eating lunch we receive more visual impacts than a 14th century person received in their entire lifetime. There is a tsunami of images. I think that all those people who tell stories through images have a fundamental role to play. In the field of education there is still much to be done, because visual language is not being taught. However, many young people communicate with each other using this language: they no longer write about what they are doing, they send a photo. That is what is happening today, we communicate through images.

EP:  In the section on contemporary practices you highlight the work of Laia AbrilJulián BarónAlejandro CartagenaJana RomanovaVivianne SassenThomas Sauvin and Katja Stuke & Oliver Sieber. Why did you choose these authors?

IM: We have tried to select a series of authors who not only have created interesting photobooks, but for whom the photobook is almost their identity. As Moritz Neumüller says, they live for and with photobooks. They are artists who have found in this format the most coherent way of expressing themselves, and we have asked them to explain the book’s creation process.

EP: As a finishing touch to the exhibition, there is the Espai Beta with 150 photobooks published over the last two years. Can you tell us about some of them?

We were very sure that we wanted to create a reading space at the Espai Beta that would reflect the effervescence in contemporary photobook creation. You can find such marvels as Silent Histories by Kazuma Obara. The book explores the consequences of the Second World War in Japan, a subject that has received little coverage. It tells the story of a group of people through their own accounts, with archive images, current photographs and other elements such as a passport or the drawings of a lady who was only able to tell her story through them.

The Photograph That Narrates

June 7th, 2017 No Comments

At the “Photobook Phenomenon exhibition, projects can be seen by contemporary artists such as Laia AbrilJulián BarónAlejandro CartagenaJana RomanovaVivianne SassenThomas Sauvin, Katja Stuke and Oliver Sieber, who have all opted to self-publish books to boost their career.

“Photobook Phenomenon” is not an exhibition about a subject, but about a format. “The book is a vehicle for communication, a cartridge of information, it activates reading, increases the experience, it can be a work of art,” explains designer Eloi Gimeno in his essay Libro (Eloi Gimeno, Libro, Barcelona, RM, 2014). This exhibition co-produced by the CCCB and Fundació Foto Colectania shows us how the book of photographs has evolved and how it has visibly flourished over the last twenty years thanks to new technologies.

In the last section of the exhibition, Contemporary Practices, we have a chance to discover seven publications by artists who have promoted their career through the photobook. “We have selected authors who, in addition to having created interesting books, share in common the fact that the photobook is their identity” explains Irene de Mendoza, curator of this chapter and art director of the Fundació Foto Colectania.

Seven contemporary photobooks

Katja Stuke & Oliver Sieber, Japanese Lesson. A Future Book, 2016

Katja Stuke & Oliver Sieber, Japanese Lesson. A Future Book, 2016

Japanese Lesson, an unfinished photobook, opens up the section dedicated to contemporary artists at “Photobook Phenomenon”. On the wall different possible designs of the pages that form the book can be seen, along with the process of creation of German photographers Katja Stuke and Oliver Sieber. “We have travelled widely around Japan and we wanted to produce a book on the people in the street. We are very interested in the subject of protests in that country,” explains Katja Stuke on the day the exhibition opens.

Jana Romanova, Shvilishvili, 2015

Jana Romanova, Shvilishvili, 2015

The next installation presents Shvilishvili by Jana Romanova. The Russian photographer unfolds, literally, on the table, her family album. On the one side we can see the photographs that her grandmother sent to the family in Georgia when she had to emigrate to Russia. On the other, a chain of portraits of her Georgian relatives, whom she met recently. Between the years 2013 and 2015, the author manually produced 67 copies and this process became a reflection on the catastrophe of the murder of her grandparents at the hands of a cousin. “My family has been separated by a border and by this murder. With this book I wanted to find out who my grandmother was,” Romanova points out.

Viviane Sassen, Umbra, 2015

Viviane Sassen, Umbra, 2015

The chapter also includes Umbra, where Viviane Sassen focuses on a recurring theme in her photographs, shade. “Umbra takes an in-depth look into the world of shadows. A darkness that is seductive and deceptive at the same time. It also deals with light, from its blinding qualities to a fragile glimmer,” the Dutch artist explains. An entire visual experience somewhere between realism and abstraction.

Julian Baron, Memorial, 2016

Julian Baron, Memorial, 2016

“This book wants to be a contribution to the construction of the Peruvian identity” affirms Julian Barón, author of Memorial. The photographer from Castellón saw the play Sin título, técnica mixta by the Peruvian theatre group Yuyachkani and asked if they would let him work with the documentation that formed part of the play’s props. Thus, by copying photocopies, he has constructed a narrative where he has also involved the public.

Laia Abril, Lobismuller, 2016

Laia Abril, Lobismuller, 2016

Manuel Blasco Romasanta was tried in 1853 for various murders in Galicia. He said that he was a werewolf. It is a case shrouded in mystery that remains alive in the collective imagination. Reconstructing that story, of which no photographs are available, was a real challenge, points out Laia Abril, author of Lobismuller. The investigators now believe that Romasanta was a hermaphrodite and the photobook narrates the case from this new perspective. At the exhibition the entire investigation process followed by the photographer can be viewed.

Alejandro Cartagena, Santa Barbara Return Jobs to US, 2015-16

Alejandro Cartagena, Santa Barbara Return Jobs to US, 2015-16. © CCCB. La fotogràfica, 2017.

Alejandro Cartagena exhibits Santa Barbara Return Jobs Back to US, an anti-portrait of the United States with photographs taken in this city in California. It is an attractive book on the outside, with a deep red velvet cover and golden letters, and with paper and ink of little quality inside. A metaphor of a container with a critical content. “We can read Santa Barbara Return Jobs Back to US on the registration plate of a car manufactured in Japan. We can also see commercial messages in Spanish aimed at Latinos, in other words, they want their money but they don’t want them,” the Mexican criticises.

Thomas Sauvin, Xian, 2016

Thomas Sauvin, Xian, 2016

Artist Thomas Sauvin transfers us to Chinese second-hand markets with Xian. His work is elaborated with 59 boxes made of folded paper, that housewives would use to store needles and threads, and which he has stuffed with the photographs that he collected during the twelve years that he lived in China. “I’m interested in collecting photographs but I also want to share them, that is why I have produced this photobook”, Sauvin explains.

A commitment to self-publishing

At the height of the digital era “there is a clear tendency to return to the printed object,” points out Moritz Neumüller, the exhibition’s executive curator. For photographer and collector of photobooks Martin Parr, the photobook is the perfect display case for many photographers. “There is a new generation of young artists who have been capable of self-publishing their work and that has given them an international echo,” Parr highlights.

Self-publishing means having self-financing and it can be a risky practice. Alejandro Cartagena affirms that the edition of the book opened up the road to him becoming known and achieving new projects and commissions. “It’s not only your photographic work that is valued, but also your capacity to produce a project from the idea to the final result.” Other formulas exist to narrative stories through images, but the photobook has become a key format in contemporary culture.

Pedro Olalla: “Political mindsets have much more to do with the life experiences of each generation than with age”

May 25th, 2017 1 Comment
Pedro Olalla

Pedro Olalla. © CCCB, 2017. Author: Miquel Taverna.

Writer Pedro Olalla has profound knowledge of Greece. In recent years, he has been a reporter on the life of Greek citizens, who are impacted by the economic crisis and the drastic financial decisions of the European Union. For that reason, and for his background as a Hellenist, which makes him well acquainted with the culture and politics of ancient Greece, Olalla is one of the most informed interlocutors to discuss the meaning of Europe and of democracy. Pedro Olalla visited the CCCB to give a talk titled “The Old Future of Democracy“, and journalist Anna Punsoda interviewed him. In this talk, they comment on the future of an aged continent, on the credibility of European bureaucrats, and on the ability and the responsibility to make decisions that we all have in a democracy.

Anna Punsoda: You believe that direct citizen participation is key to improve the quality of a democracy. In a parliamentary democracy like ours, do I not have the right to delegate my voice on the representatives and forget about public affairs?

Pedro Olalla: [Laughs] Not only do you have the right, but it is virtually the only thing you can do. However, if we give up our involvement in public affairs, we are giving up democracy altogether. You are right that our democracies are representative, but to a dubious extent. Who are our alleged representatives really representing? Democracy, deontologically understood, is based on a high degree of identification between the governors and the governed. And this premise is not met: the distancing between them and us keeps increasing.

Anna Punsoda: Identification? Doesn’t Plato distinguish between three kinds of men, among which the governors would be those in whom the influence of reason is predominant?

Pedro Olalla: In his Republic, Plato was describing an ideal model, not portraying what Athenian democracy was like. Democracy, as a system, is based on engagement, because it aims to bring political power as close as possible to the citizens. If the citizen does not want to exercise that power, if the citizenry as a whole gives up its sovereignty, there will always be someone willing to take over, and possibly they will not be pursuing the general interest. Given that we will not be able to have the full administration of common affairs, if we want to improve our democratic health, we must demand a greater degree of control over what our representatives do. We must demand that our democracies establish mechanisms so that citizens can, through the citizens themselves (and not through professional politicians with party affiliations), fulfil their role of controlling their representatives, following them and removing them from office if they are not working for the general interest.

Anna Punsoda: Isn’t defending your own party the best way to defend democracy?

Pedro Olalla: I don’t think so. For the most part, parties defend sectorial interests, which, to a large extent, condition their existence. In its origins, democracy did not have parties, but our current democracies did not genetically evolve from the original model, the Athenian (which is the one we know the best, thanks to the historical records of Aristotle, Demosthenes, Isocrates and so on). Our democracies stemmed from Roman republicanism, which already in its early days was a representative system, a res publica, a management system to regulate common affairs based on the cursus honorum (course of offices), in which patricians had a considerable privilege. The responsibilities that in Athenian democracy belonged to the Assembly, in Rome fell under the Senate, the consuls and the magistrates —the system was more similar to the current one.

The liberal tradition, which starts with Locke and influences the republic models created after the French and the American revolutions, was a good foundation. That modern republicanism has a promising start, because liberalism back then was a struggle against absolutism, a struggle that sought to give sovereignty back to the people, to respect individual freedoms in the face of the abuses of absolutist power —inherited by bloodline— that monarchic empires represented. But, during a second stage, these new republics shifted towards a defence of the emerging bourgeoisie’s class interests. That is why they came to be known as “bourgeois republics”. From its initial humanist and political spirit, liberalism took a turn towards a sense of economic protectionism, defending the interests of one social class. Political parties were born in that context, during that republicanism, because they are the adequate expression to defend class interests. Our current democracies have inherited this “neorepublican” model. That is why we think parties are the only way to have popular representation. We find them to be natural components of democracy, but they are not, they are a part of its history and, if we are a bit rigorous about it, of its recent history.

Parties have shown that they have certain internal hierarchies, certain promotion mechanisms, which are funded by lobbying groups and serve opaque interests. They block the political scene, avoiding the entrance of smaller groups and adopting a set of attitudes that are obstacles to a true democracy. In order to revitalize democracy, we must demand alternative paths of participation in the decision-making processes.

Pedro Olalla

Pedro Olalla. © CCCB, 2017. Autor: Miquel Taverna.

Anna Punsoda: To what extent is it possible for modern nation states to organise themselves like the Athens of Demosthenes?

Pedro Olalla: Well, it’s not about copying —which is obviously not possible, because Athens had a population of 200,000 people at that point in time. But we must be aware that, back then, it was possible to develop formulas and models that managed to provide the citizens with a political weight that they have not had ever since in history. And they reached that scenario with the means at their disposal, without references from the past, from scratch. How is it, then, that we are not able to regulate formulas to achieve a greater degree of involvement? If we can vote for Eurovision’s winning song in real time, how can we not have a referendum, no matter how large the electorate is? Demography should not hinder the development of formulas that allow for greater citizen participation. That does not mean that a nation state of today has to act with the same tools and parameters that were used in Athenian democracy. However, it is a mistake to think that back then democracy simply came to be in a natural way and that today something similar cannot happen because it would be unnatural. To think that way is to deprive us of a more decent democracy. There are no natural obstacles that make it impossible for us to organise public life differently.

Anna Punsoda: You also speak in negative terms about the professionalisation of politics. When I look for a job, however, they analyse every single detail of my work experience. Why would public affairs require less professionalism than business affairs?

Pedro Olalla: You see, a sort of fallacy has become widespread according to which technical experience equates to political will. Through this fallacy, the population is denied the right to exercise their political will under the argument that they lack the technical experience. Well, do our political representatives have technical experience in all the fields over which they must make decisions? Do they not have their teams of consultants? Can they have an informed opinion on solar energy, geostrategic matters and school programmes? Obviously not, that is why they have their teams and consultants, but their actions are always moved by a political will (which, at times, is not even their own). In the Protagoras, Plato defined political will as a gift distributed across the whole of society. Therefore, we can either defend that it belongs to the whole of society, or we can accept that we lack political will and renounce our self-governance ambitions. If we believe that society as a whole can generate a degree of political will, we have to enable it to do so. It’s not right that, because on an individual level we lack the technical knowledge to make decisions across all the fields at stake, we have to delegate our political will on representatives who do not have that knowledge either and who, all too often, do not take the general interest into consideration in their decision-making. Most of the decisions that must be taken to govern a society are, in essence, ethical decisions —not merely technical—, and the citizenry as a whole is equipped to make them.

Anna Punsoda: Let’s move on to the European project. How is it possible to update it with a generation that has forgotten about the war and the need to find peace through union?

Pedro Olalla: War memory is one of the factors we should consider to assess the success of the European project’s consolidation, but it is not the most relevant one. The current European Union is an attempt to create de iure institutions to consolidate the political and financial power that, de facto, already belongs to certain instances. In reality, the Union’s bureaucrats are not fighting against the possibility of a future war, but rather to consolidate their oligarchic interests, which are opposed to the political and monetary sovereignty of the member states. They are also fighting to move the decision-making centres from national parliaments to supranational instances that are far from democratic. The European Parliament is nothing but the fig leave of the entire project, because the true decisions are not made by democratic institutions —the Commission itself is not a democratic institution, and it is very much subject to the pressure of lobbies. The political and economic group that was created cannot fulfil the old aspirations of Adenauer or Jean Monnet, because it follows other directions.

The Union has lost credibility, even though it is trying to maintain it by all means. When the perverse effects of the financial crises and the financial dependencies hit, we began to rethink the convenience of such a structure. We began to see how certain lobbies and political sectors —the neoliberal hard core— had progressively appropriated the project to grant themselves a de iure power that they had always been exercising de facto. This goes against our fundamental rights. The memoranda that these institutions forced Greece to sign over the last few years go against the Union’s original right, against International Law, against Human Rights (decent work, housing, health…), and against major social achievements (social security, collective agreements, eight-hour workdays, etc.). They are incompatible with the rule according to a higher law and with democracy.

Anna Punsoda: Is it a theft, rather than a collapse of the system?

Pedro Olalla: It has been an intentional act. The idea that things degenerate spontaneously and impersonally is false, but it has been the method devised to dilute concrete responsibilities into a collective responsibility. When certain laws are signed, when certain institutions are created, and when a treaty with Canada or the United States is signed, there are specific people to be held accountable; we cannot simply say, “That is how history goes”. The truth is that the western capitalist system has been triggering the two phenomena that humanity must avoid if it wants to survive: the accumulation of wealth in the hands of a few, and the accumulation of political power in the hands of a small minority. There are specific people, with names and surnames, who can be held accountable for that process.

Anna Punsoda: Another issue you talk about is how the system promotes a negative view of the old age.

Pedro Olalla: That’s correct. The terms in which the system of world domination expresses itself are still those of productivity. And the old age is seen as a marginal, subsidiary collective, a parasite of the State that is increasingly becoming a problem because it exists and grows. If we take this stance, we assume a position of weakness towards the system, because we will end up feeling guilty for living too long or for retiring. Politics should be something that stems from society to achieve happiness, and not an external system imposed to society and demanding that everyone adapt to serve it. If society changes —it grows older—, politics and the way we tackle problems will have to change as well. Guilt makes it impossible for us to evolve towards a political system that allows the elderly to live decently and as a part of society.

Anna Punsoda: It is often said that we grow more conservatives with time and that, as a consequence, certain parties have given up the possibility of politically addressing the old age.

Pedro Olalla: The notion that we become more conservatives and fearful with time has been induced by the system and must be reconsidered. Political mind-sets have much more to do with the life experiences of each generation than with age. The grandmothers at the Plaza de Mayo embody a progressive political view. And, conversely, neo-Nazi parties are filled with young people. We must leave aside age-related stereotypes to have a fairer view of each age group. And we must also put an end to the feelings of guilt and resignation. Elderly people must stop seeing themselves as a collective that hopes for the State’s mercy.

Anna Punsoda: A guilt that we inherited from the Judaeo-Christian tradition.

Pedro Olalla: I am just saying that it is an induced feeling. Tremendous, “Goebbelian” efforts have been made to transfer a sense of political accountability to the people. In Greece, for instance, the State has systematically fostered a sense of guilt —”We all made a mess”— with the aim of diluting the individual responsibility of decision-makers into an allegedly collective responsibility. Given that everyone has something to hide, it is really easy to induce that conscience, which keeps people from analysing concrete responsibilities. The discourse that claims that “We lived beyond our means”, “We drained public services” and so on, seeks to conceal many accountabilities, and creates a submissive population that is willing to accept whatever punishment. How can it be that, having put us through a rescue plan with a debt that was 120% the size of our GDP, and escalated to 185% in six years despite so many material and personal sacrifices, we still keep our heads down and say that we must resist, because “There is no other way”? They have succeeded in thoroughly neutralising the population’s spirit of protest, the right to demand true accountability to those who hold it. If they are representatives, they must answer to society. It is unacceptable that some became representatives in order to benefit from the privileges and then, as soon as things went wrong, they diluted their responsibility.

Ageing Democracies? Political Participation and Cultural Values among the Elderly in Europe

May 8th, 2017 No Comments

From Brexit to the rise of Viktor Orbán, Marine LePen and Geert Wilders, Europe’s political crisis is often viewed through the lens of an intergenerational conflict. According to this view, the rise of authoritarian political projects, the deterioration of democratic values and hostility to European integration are a consequence of the continent’s ageing population. This idea is sustained by a series of myths and deeply held prejudices that depict the elderly as an easily manipulated, fearful and selfish group. But this view is not supported by the facts. Political analysts have repeatedly shown that there is no relationship between ageing and reactionary politics, and that our views are entirely the result of our political experience and education. To share this knowledge and confront these stereotypes about the elderly, the Centre for Contemporary Culture of Barcelona and the Open Society Initiative for Europe have teamed up to produce the Ageing Democracies project, in which five fellows produce works that challenge our assumptions about the politics of ageing.

We are at a critical moment in history. Liberal democratic values are now threatened by the rise of authoritarian politicians like Donald Trump, Viktor Orbán, Marine LePen or Geert Wilders. Xenophobic political parties like Alternative for Germany, the Freedom Party of Austria or the Law and Justice Party in Poland treat principles of human rights and social solidarity with scepticism or even outright hostility. Meanwhile, Brexit and similar referenda have shown that the integrity of the European Union can no longer be taken for granted.

These dramatic changes are taking place alongside what is likely the most profound, long-term change in Europe’s social composition since the expansion of access to education: accelerated population ageing. Powered by the continued growth of average life expectancy, population ageing is one of the most tangible results of social progress. However, it is often treated by pundits, analysts and other commentators as a problem and a source of intergenerational conflict.

The idea that the degeneration of liberal democratic values is somehow related to Europe’s older population has absolutely no grounding in the facts. It is the result of uncontested assumptions about ageing and the elderly. Yet time and time again, the idea and the myths that sustain it are repeated and reproduced in public discussions. To confront these prejudices and provide a more thorough reflection on the politics of ageing, the Centre for Contemporary Culture and the Open Society Initiative for Europe have teamed up to produce the Ageing Democracies project.

The Ageing Democracies project brings together five fellows from various backgrounds, disciplines, and European contexts. Its multidisciplinary research team includes a political scientist, a philosopher, a photographer, a filmmaker and a playwright. For the last year, they have analyzed the politics of ageing from a variety of angles, always with a firm basis in the empirical facts, and produced works that tackle common misconceptions about the elderly, their political and cultural views and their role in society. Today, May 8th, we mark the anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe by presenting the project’s conclusions and their implications for a more just and democratic future.

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Population ageing is a blessing, not a curse

All EU countries are experiencing accelerated population ageing. According to the European Commission’s demographic projections, the European Union’s population is expected to peak at 526 million people in 2050. By then, nearly 30 percent of the total population will be over 65. By 2060, the proportion of people aged 80 or over will be roughly the same as that of people under fifteen.

Much has been made of the far-reaching economic and policy consequences of population ageing. Public discussions usually highlight the pressure exerted on the welfare state by a larger elderly population through increased public spending on health care and pensions. Indeed, media accounts of population ageing often pose the phenomenon as a threat to the very existence of the welfare state for future generations, effectively pitting Europe’s elderly population against the youth.

As a result, the generational dimension of politics has taken on a new sense of urgency. Because population ageing is a very long-term trend, the question of whether and how the views, needs and political behaviour of older people differ from those of other age groups will likely influence democratic processes and deliberation over the next several decades.

The rise of authoritarianism and xenophobia cannot be blamed on the elderly

Immediately after the Brexit vote, many voiced their frustration at the result by suggesting that old people should not be allowed to vote. Over the next several days, the idea of limiting the voting rights of elderly people made its way from the social networks into the mainstream media, including Time, GQ, Huffington Post, VICE, Forbes and El País. Commentators have also blamed the resilience of relatively unpopular governments or the rise of right-wing populism on the growing number of elderly voters.

Blaming the elderly for reactionary, authoritarian or otherwise undesirable political outcomes seems almost like a reflex, and the ageism it implies often goes uncontested. Age-based prejudices are propped up by the widespread, deeply held assumption that people naturally grow more reactionary with age. But is this assumption actually true?

Empirically, the idea doesn’t seem to hold up. For instance, the suggestion that support for far-right parties in France and the Netherlands is higher among the elderly is actually false. According to an I&O poll from December 2016, support for Geert Wilders’ Party for Freedom was highest among young voters and declined dramatically with age. Less than 5% of voters over 65 supported his xenophobic campaign. Likewise, Marine LePen’s National Front was the top electoral choice among French voters under the age of 50, but among the elderly it was the third choice.

Brighton Pride. Ivan Bandura, 2014.

Older people being less inclined to support authoritarian or xenophobic politicians may go against assumptions, but it is not too difficult to understand why this is the case. Europe’s elderly today still remember World War II and the rise of fascism, and European integration was largely premised on the idea of preventing the horrors of that era. Alarmingly, a recent study by Harvard researcher Yascha Mounk and Roberto Stefan Foa of the University of Melbourne showed that while more the majority of older Europeans believed that military takeover was never legitimate in a democracy, only 36% of millennial felt the same way. While only 5% of Europeans over 65 believed that having a democratic political system is a “bad” or “very bad” way to run a country, 13% of millennial felt this way. Finally, older Europeans were more likely than European youth to believe that civil rights are absolutely essential to a democracy.

The elderly are as diverse as any other age group

The fact of the matter is that the political and cultural perspectives of the elderly are more complex than we tend to assume. This is the overarching conclusion of the Ageing Democracies project’s first outcome, a new report by Dr. Achim Goerres, a leading political scientist specialising in the political participation of the elderly.

The report dispels the myth that the elderly form a single, reactionary constituency, pointing out that the differences between their political preferences and those of younger people in Europe are almost entirely due to the way different political generations grow up, not their age. To the extent that we can generalise, the data suggest that older Europeans are actually less conservative than their younger counterparts when it comes to the economy. The only exceptions to this are in Switzerland and the UK, where they are only slightly more conservative.

In terms of their cultural views, while it is true that the elderly are more conservative in all European countries but the Netherlands, these differences are smaller than generally assumed. More importantly, they are almost entirely attributable to the political generation people belong to. This is something very different than a person’s age. People who grew up during the same historical context share similar experiences that shape them in late adolescence and early adulthood. These experiences are very much determined by national circumstances and political history. For instance, being born in 1955 in West Germany shapes an individual rather differently than being born the same year in Catalonia or in the Czech Republic.

Yayoflautas. Teresa Forn, 2012.

In the end, the report shows that people past the retirement age are divided by the very same social inequalities experienced by younger groups. Specifically, elderly Europeans are divided by differences in attitudes and resources related to gender, health, education and income, among other factors. As occurs with all other age groups, these differences structure not only the social position of older people, but also what they do and want politically.

Let us consider the example of household income. While 73% of elderly people believe that the government must decrease income differences between the rich and the poor, when we divide older people by income groups, we exactly the same pattern we see among younger people. Those with higher income support this notion less often than those with lower income. Among older people whose household income is in the lowest 30% of their country’s income distribution, the proportion that supports redistribution is 79 %. Among the highest 30%, the proportion falls to 62%.

Socio-economic inequality does not just affect the political views of older people. It can also affect the way that they participate in politics. Health inequalities, which are strongly determined by social inequalities, are quite dramatic among the elderly, so much so that the pension age can typically be divided into a “young old” age and an “old old” age, when health problems severely hamper daily activities. Worse health among the elderly is associated with less political participation of any kind or even no participation at all.

The report concludes that politicians are catering to an imaginary constituency of like-minded elderly voters. Anxieties over the supposedly impending age conflicts brought on by a “grey wave” of “greedy geezers”, he finds, are largely the result of media exaggerations with little basis in the current scientific knowledge.

The politics of ageing is the politics of the future

The fact that there have never been as many elderly people in the world as there are today begs a troubling question: have we ever valued the elderly so little? Although the elderly population is growing and the younger population is not, our cultural imaginaries are nonetheless guided by a youth imperative. From the advertising world to the film industry and beyond, our visual culture equates beauty with eternal youth. In pop culture, older people are often depicted as hopelessly outdated, helpless or irritable. Meanwhile, scientific journalism frequently treats ageing itself as a disease to be cured, rather than as a natural part of the lifecycle. Instead of appreciating the tempos of the elderly and privileging their retrospective gaze, society asks that they age “actively” to keep up with the times.

How we age is an inherently political question. We do not age equally, and how long we live is shaped by the social and economic conditions we experience. Life expectancies and quality of life vary both between countries and within them, especially as a result of income and educational inequalities. Thus, the politics of ageing is a topic that goes beyond the electoral behaviour or policy preferences of a given age group. The implications of growing older depend very much on how societies are organised, what priorities they define and what questions they ask themselves.

Ageing Democracies reflects on the politics of ageing with individual works that approach the topic from a variety of angles, extending the discussion beyond the most prevalent tropes and stereotypes. Rather than viewing population ageing as a problem, the project contends that it is the result of undeniable social progress and a democratic challenge that poses a new set of key political questions about how society should be organized for generations to come.

To explore these themes, philosopher Pedro Olalla revisits the oldest classical text on old age, Cicero’s De Senectute. In a forthcoming book titled De Senectute Politica, Olalla positions demographic ageing as an undeniable fact that demands awareness to ensure that society can assimilate, manage and be enriched by its most profound implications. Ageing, he argues, must therefore be understood as an ethical, inherently political endeavour that requires us to question a society that treats the elderly as a drain on public coffers. He proposes instead a new reading of the increasingly popular notion of “active ageing” that dovetails with the democratic ideal of citizen participation and a deep engagement with political life.

But population ageing is not the only major demographic change affecting the politics of ageing. Today’s elderly Europeans are part of a society that has been quite dramatically changed by new patterns of international migration. This is dealt with in a subtle new film by Swedish photographer Maja Daniels titled My Grandma Calls Me Thomas. It focuses on the seemingly unlikely friendship between Taimaz and Barbro. Barbro had never met a refugee before Taimaz came to visit. Taimaz came to Sweden as an unaccompanied minor from Afghanistan. His bond with Barbro is his first relationship with a Swedish person. Their story takes place in Älvdalen, an ageing, depopulating village in rural Sweden with an unrecognized minority language that is facing extinction, putting a human face on the complex implications of Europe’s changing demographics.

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The political question of how different communities respond to the current challenges of our ageing society is at the center of Nobody’s Home, a documentary essay by Catalan producer and film theorist Ingrid Guardiola. Adopting an observational, experimental approach, Guardiola examines life in two vastly different elderly communities in two very different places in Spain. The first is Ciñera, a former mining village in León whose economy has been dramatically affected by globalization. The second is a retirement home in the El Palomar neighborhood of Barcelona. In Ciñera, a strong union culture tries to resist the twin threats of deindustrialization and depopulation. In El Palomar, economic growth has given way to a larger urban population, a larger number of elderly people living in retirement homes and a larger number of workers taking care of them. The film highlights the centrality of work in each of these settings and how the lives that make up these communities differ in how they deal with an ageing population.

Finally, Peca Stefan is one of Romania’s most celebrated young playwrights. His new work is an immersive hybrid between a theatre play, a novel and an exhibition. Titled The New Old Home, it is an exercise in empathy that invites audiences to inhabit the shoes of Mrs. D and her millennial granddaughter Gina as they depart on a fantastical journey through space and time. The two women reconnect after several years of separation, only to be faced with a situation that propels them on a quest through parallel worlds. Mrs. D’s fate depends on how she responds to the conflicts posed by the different possible versions of her life as an elderly woman in present-day Romania, Germany, Spain and a distant future version of Europe. As she’s helping her grandmother along the way, Gina must face her own misconceptions and fears regarding ageing, and a series of recurring questions arises. How is an elderly person valued in contemporary democracies? What would the best possible world for Gina and Mrs. D look like?

These are the vital questions posed by the Ageing Democracies project, and they are all the more urgent in light of recent political developments. The Eurozone crisis, the crisis of the welfare state, Brexit and the rise of authoritarianism confront us with future scenarios that we did not expect just a decade ago. These challenges are exacerbating the tensions underlying a much slower but no less profound change in society. And as Europe’s population grows older, the politics of ageing will only grow in importance. Its consequences will not be limited to today’s retirees. The young are tomorrow’s elderly. Whether or not they inherit a democratic culture is being decided today.

28% of people over 60 combine voting with other forms of political action. 

Marta Segarra: “We want to possess the other and end up dispossessing ourselves”

March 2nd, 2017 No Comments

To what extent is desire—which, at first sight, seems to be a phenomenon of the impulses connecting humans with animality—culturally conditioned? How do clichés about femininity affect a woman’s attitude to life and the decisions she makes? How much room have women had to discover their desire in a cultural and sexual history written by men? We speak with Marta Segarra, Professor of French Literature and Gender Studies at the University of Barcelona and director of the Women and Literature Centre.

Marta Segarra a la conferència Desig i subversió © CCCB, Miquel Taverna, 2017

Marta Segarra in the lecture Desire and Subversion © CCCB, Miquel Taverna, 2017

Desire in accordance with cultural patterns, and not only those which shape education and reading but everything we absorb on a daily basis, more or less unconsciously.

Anna Punsoda: Love is cultural and desire is natural.

Marta Segarra: Yes, love is a cultural construct. Of course it’s not understood the same way now as it was five hundred years ago, or in Barcelona as it is in Dakar. But desire isn’t natural either. We tend to think that it’s instinctive, impulse-driven, or natural, as you say. But we also desire in accordance with cultural patterns, and not only those which shape education and reading but everything we absorb on a daily basis, more or less unconsciously.

For me, the most obvious cultural pattern is that which pushes us towards heterosexuality. We think it’s natural for men to desire women, and for women to desire men when, in fact, things aren’t always like that. Obviously. Culture pushes us into a kind of heterosexuality which some theorists have called “obligatory heterosexuality”. Affections, but also sexuality, are marked by cultural patterns which nowadays are mainly conveyed by audiovisual stories, in films, television, advertising and the new social networks.

AP: Speaking of patterns, in your essay Políticas del deseo (Politics of Desire) you contrast two archetypical women, the biblical Mary and Eve. What do these archetypes represent and who do they serve?

MS: To begin with, they are a clear example of how, in the West, our thought has always been constructed in a binary fashion. Good and Evil. Body and Soul. Pure Love and Sexual Love. Hence, two models have been promoted in the gender of “woman”: the good woman—mother and, moreover, virgin or, in other words, bearer of life without ever having felt sexual desire—and Eve, who would be the first femme fatale in history, the woman who entices the man into materialism, who leads him to damnation through the power of her attraction. Eve is temptation and death because expulsion from paradise symbolises the introduction of mortality into the history of humankind. This pattern, which takes conceptual shape in the nineteenth century, is very old. And it has a very clear message: desire brings disaster. This is the legend of Carmen, the woman who doesn’t fall in love but is so attractive to a whole range of men that she ends up spreading death and pain.

AP: And this idea of the seductive, manipulative woman who is well aware of the effect of her charms, doesn’t it contradict the cliché that presents us with woman as a childish creature dominated by telluric forces?

MS: It certainly does. This latter idea is a commonplace which paradoxically gained ground in the eighteenth century, the Age of Enlightenment. We are told that, because of her body, her anatomy, woman is closer to what is natural and this is because femininity is bound to maternity. According to this idea, man is exempt from this and he can therefore sublimate the link with nature through reason and rise above material contingency. 

“The female artist has often been presented as the archetypical bad mother because she devotes herself to art—or her job, or whatever—going beyond the bounds of the role that nature has allegedly assigned her.”

AP: So woman has always been represented the eternal element, the basis of things and man the complement, namely progress.

MS: Yes, and precisely in this sense we have the classical conceptual opposition between procreation and creation. Maria Àngels Anglada deals with this in a poem called “Una resposta” (An Answer). These two activities have been seen as mutually exclusive for many centuries. A lot of women have internalised it and are convinced that their role in the world is first and foremost one of transmission, continuity and family care. The female artist has often been presented as the archetypical bad mother because she devotes herself to art—or her job, or whatever—going beyond the bounds of the role that nature has allegedly assigned her.

Marta Segarra i Merri Torras a la conferència Desig i subversió © CCCB, Miquel Taverna, 2017

Marta Segarra and Merri Torras in the lecture Desire and Subversion © CCCB, Miquel Taverna, 2017

AP: And aren’t there clichés, like the one that presents the woman as “she who receives (man, children, etc.)” based on biology?

MS: Well, that depends what you want to emphasise. The woman can also be “she who expels”. In fact, Marguerite Duras has a whole theory about giving birth (the first expulsion) as primordial movement. Think about how the social structure would be affected if, instead of having imposed the story of the “body that receives”, it had instituted the one of the “body that expels”.

AP: What space has woman had to discover her desire?

MS: For centuries the dominant discourse has claimed that man desires and woman is the object of desire. Freudian psychoanalysis reinforced this idea. The only role that women could have was passive. In Europe at the beginning of the twentieth century some women—still only a few—demonstrated, through the way they lived, the possibilities of breaking bounds, of living their desire according to their own parameters. But we begin to discover ourselves with the feminist movements of the 1970s. “Our body is ours” is a demand that has to be understood in this sense, as a possibility of shunning stereotypes of femininity with the aim of discovering our own desire.

AP: Unlike love, which has been seen as a means of transcendence, desire tends to be presented as a state of anxiety and yearning to possess.

MS: Yes, but it’s not so simple. Sometimes desire becomes the desire to possess but, then again, since it pushes us into a state of crisis as subjects, it shakes us up profoundly and it is our “undoing”. We want to possess the other and end up dispossessing ourselves. In this regard, the effects of desire are interesting because they lead to a crisis in the autonomy and self-sufficiency of the subject whose limits become problematic.

AP: There is ethical desire.

MS: That’s one way of putting it. For example, in Undoing Gender Judith Butler presents sexuality as one of the ways or one of the human domains in which it is easier to “undo oneself”, to break through the limits that isolate us as individuals. We open up to the other, to our difference from the other, which is to say difference in the broad sense.

AP: And the sexualisation of everything, the constant presence of stimuli, how does that affect desire?

MSHypersexualisation is a way of channelling desire within very specific constraints. Yes, we emerged from centuries of repression as European society was very puritan in centuries of the past. But present-day “sexualisation” doesn’t necessarily means that the possibilities of desire are opened up. The 1970s feminist discourse on liberation has been reabsorbed by power and the logic of capitalism in order to boost consumption. Liberation per se is not subversive. Desire per se is not subversive. In fact, it’s possible, too, as we are seeing in many cases, that “liberation” and desire are not causing any crisis in the structures of power but, rather, are reinforcing them.

Marta Segarra collaborates in several debates and CCCB programmes about the role of women in society. You can consult all the contents related to the author on the CCCB website.

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