The CCCB presents its new website

July 7th, 2011 3 Comments

A fortnight ago, the CCCB launched a new website to give its users as much information and documentation as possible. The website allows everyone to share it, and we invite anyone who’s interested to take part in the debates and reflection on our blogs, as well as the many opportunities for participation offered by the online projects.

The multiplicity of contents we offer is the product of the material generated by the different departments of the CCCB and collaborators: videos, audios, images, etc. Thanks to 2.0 organizational culture, with its integrative, collaborative way of working, we can share and reassess accumulated knowledge together with users.

Another aim of this new website is for users to take part and interact with the CCCB, bringing their knowledge and impressions to the online projects and blogs, and creating ongoing dialogue with the activity’s contents generated at the CCCB. In this way, the CCCB has taken another step towards coexistence and dialogue both between information about the CCCB (activities, publications, etc.) and the documentation generated around the Centre’s activities (texts, audio, video, online projects and blog articles), and with the input represented by the voices of participating users.

The aim of these dialogues is to facilitate knowledge exchange and learning, focusing on the objectives that the Centre set for itself when it was founded: to encourage debate and reflection, to further knowledge, and to create and contribute contents for research. In short, to explore knowledge in greater depth, in the conviction that only with the participation of all sectors can we achieve quality cultural services and products.

So, what do you think of the CCCB’s new website? Do you like the new design? Which functions caught your eye?

From photoblog to exhibition

July 4th, 2011 1 Comment

With over 2000 photos and the participation of more than 200 photographers, the “Brangulí was here. What about you?” project already represents a broad-based selection of the way contemporary photographers see present-day Barcelona. The initiative came into being as a result of the retrospective exhibition organized by the CCCB about the photographer Josep Brangulí. He documented key historical, political and social changes at the start of the 20th century, such as Tragic Week, labourers’ working conditions and the urbanistic transformation of the city. The mosaic of photographs coming together at www.brangulivaseraqui.com shows a Barcelona that, despite the intervening 80 years, reminds us of the Barcelona of Brangulí. The protests of the “indignats”, life in neighbourhoods such as El Raval and the city’s new monumental architecture are themes that Brangulí might have captured with his camera.

On Thursday 30 June, the CCCB and the Barcelona Photobloggers community which is collaborating on the project organized a free guided visit to the exhibition “Brangulí. Barcelona 1909-1945” to explain the work of the photographer from L’Hospitalet. The group of 50 who attended included members of Barcelona Photobloggers, people from the Espai Fotogràfic collective and many amateur photographers who post and share their images on the social networks.

The exhibition coordinator, Susana García, introduced the figure of Brangulí and his way of working: big thematic series. As Susana García explained, Brangulí took photographs by commission, with no artistic aspirations, but his particular way of seeing the events of the time makes his body of work special and unique.

If you were unable to attend and would like to hear Susana García’s presentation, you can listen to it here: ÀUDIO: Introducció a \”Brangulí. Barcelona 1909-1945\” per Susana García (Àudio: Barcelona Photobloggers)

The visit on 30 June at the CCCB was a great initiative because it allowed lots of the people who are making www.brangulivaseraqui.com possible on the Net to discover the work on show at the CCCB. From photoblog to exhibition or from virtual to presential, this could be a new way of connecting with publics and making them part of an expository project.

Images of the guided visit with Barcelona Photobloggers. Photos: Fon Simó and Marcelo Aurelio

Others who’ve talked about the guided visit:

(Català) Brangulí va ser aquí: 2×1 a l’exposició

June 30th, 2011 2 Comments

Barcelona, then and now

June 14th, 2011 1 Comment

11 September 1931 portrayed by Josep Brangulí and the camp in Plaça Catalunya in 2011, photographed by Marcello Vicidomini.

The aim of the participatory project “Brangulí was here. What about you?” is to find out how present-day photographers see the themes that Brangulí photographed.

Josep Brangulí’s camera focused on the social, political and industrial changes of a specific era, the early 20th century in Barcelona. The 300 photographs and the original printed matter that form part of the exhibition «Brangulí: Barcelona, 1909-1945» document ways of life, forms of political protest, recreation and work of the Barcelona residents of the time.

But what about the Barcelona of today? How do present-day photographers see life in a city that is also going through a change of century? The participatory action “Brangulí was here. What about you?” aims to find answers to these questions. This is a participatory photographic project aimed at professionals and amateurs organized on the website www.brangulivaseraqui.com and leading up to an exhibition at the CCCB to present the best images of contemporary Barcelona that take Brangulí as their inspiration.

The work of Brangulí will serve as the departure point for photographers taking part in this initiative. The participants can submit images taken since the year 2000 that correspond to the themes chosen by Brangulí presented in the exhibition: Barcelona by night, political and social events, industrial spaces, work places, emblematic social and commercial premises, museums, beaches, urban remodelling, transport and street life.

We want you to portray present-day Barcelona with your photographs. Grab your camera and capture the city: what’s happening in the street, industrial districts, the new Barcelona born of urban remodelling, today’s night life, new means of transport or emblematic social or business premises.

Everyone who wants to take partmust have a Flickr account and join the group “Brangulí was here”. Once they’ve been viewed by the curators, the images will be posted on the brangulivaseraqui.com website. Under the heading ‘How to take part?’ you’ll find details about how to upload your photos.

A team of curators will select the ten best photographs, one for each category, which will be shown at the CCCB from 20 September to 23 October 2011. The ten best submissions to “Brangulí was here. What about you?” will be printed in a special format, and the rest of the photographs submitted will be screened during the exhibition.

www.brangulivaseraquí.com

139 postcards to Claudio Magris

May 30th, 2011 No Comments

Next week, when Claudio Magris gets home from the University, he’ll find an unusual amount of post in his letterbox: the 139 postcards that visitors to “The Trieste of Magris”, Barcelona residents and tourists alike, sent to him on 18 May, International Museum Day.

The “Postcards to Claudio Magris” activity took place in the framework of the exhibition at the CCCB as an opportunity to establish a direct dialogue with Magris, who will soon be writing a collective reply to the letters received from Barcelona.

Once the postcards have been counted and their content recorded, we want to show you the great variety of messages that visitors to our Trieste sent Magris. The postcards were written in Catalan, Spanish, Italian, French, English, Portuguese, German and even Russian, messages thanking him for the exhibition abut also for his books, which many visitors have enjoyed and say they often reread. There are also messages thanking him for the introduction to Trieste, with its nooks and crannies, its cafés and bookshops, and one from a couple who announced that the exhibition had prompted them to go out and buy tickets to Trieste these holidays.

Postcards written by adults, with profound reflections on Europe or memory, but also postcards written by children, in a more light-hearted vein, and others with drawings dedicated to the writer. You can be sure that this was the first time in years that many of the participants who wrote to Magris had sent a postcard!

The postcards also contained many recommendations to Claudio Magris, both literary, relating him to writers such as Louis-Ferdinand Céline and Elias Canetti, and touristic, telling him about hidden places in Barcelona. “La Barceloneta and the harbour, untouched by time”, one visitor told him. “El cafè de l’Òpera”, another recommended. “You have to see Barcelona from the mountain, bounded by the sea”, added a third. A street, Carrer del Bisbe, was also highly recommended, as was the secret oasis that is the garden of the Marés Museum: “Sit on the terrace in the museum’s garden while an opera singer outside takes you by surprise…” We’ve scanned a selection of 50 of the 139 postcards sent, and you can see and read them in our Flickr album of International Museum Day.

We at the CCCB would like to thank the 139 people who wrote a postcard to Claudio Magris, and the two who contacted Magris by leaving a reply to the previous post, and to remind you that as soon as we receive Claudio Magris’s reply to all of you, we’ll post it for you to read on this blog!

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