BARCELONA.- In Self-Organization. DIY Practices, artist and curator Antonio Ortega (Sant Celoni, 1968) surveys the phenomenon of do-it-yourself practices in recent art history, from the pioneers of the sixties to the present. Ortega argues that these artists use self-organization strategies to take control of the production, transmission, and reception of their works, through empowering processes that have generated new ways of understanding and experiencing art.

In a text entitled “Ten Moments of Alert”, Ortega begins to recount how he became aware of the potential of self-organization through the practices of various artists. A series of footnotes in which university professor Pilar Bonet explains how art history has dealt with the strategies of these artists offers an academic counterpoint to Ortega’s first-person account of those personal turning points

To illustrate the publication, the painter Pere Llobera was commissioned to adapt images of the works mentioned in the two texts and reproduce them as oil paintings. This strategy is intended to reinforce the idea of self-organization regarding the use of images in publishing projects related to artistic practices. In addition, social researcher Ruben Martínez Moreno and artist Quim Packard were asked to reflect on the contextual framework of self-organization from a political perspective and from the point of view of artistic communities, respectively.

The launch of Self-Organization. DIY Practices will take place at the Jacques Dupin Library, Fundació Joan Miró, on Thursday 10 march 2016, at 7 pm. With the participation of Antonio Ortega, Pilar Bonet, Pere Llobera, Rubén Martínez Moreno, and Quim Packard.

“Some of my close friends get nervous when they hear the term ‘self-organization’, because they think it is synonymous with selffinancing and precarization. They would be right if we see self-organization as a symptom, in other words – once again – as a sign subject to interpretation [...] Selforganization is a political decision, not the representation of a political decision. It is ultimately a form of empowerment.” (Antonio Ortega. Self-Organization. DIY Practices. Fundació Joan Miró, 2016).