Plague
to
Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) Plaça dels Àngels 1, 08001 Barcelona
Image courtesy of MACBA.
The concept of plague indicates a relationship between life and territory: life forms which, from this point on, will be considered excessive in a given space. Being a plague means that you are categorized as an agent that destabilizes a standardized relationship system. The plague is a mathematical notion and an economic matrix: the number of individuals considered problematic for a given economic operation in a territory. There are about 50,000,000 pigs in Spain. These pigs are animals bred for the purpose of being sold as dead animal protein. There are also 1,000,000 wild boars. The former are part of the life-and-death economy of contemporary capitalism; the latter are considered a nuisance because they get in the way of real-estate speculation in forest areas. Although both are of the same species —Sus scrofa— pigs are considered breeding stock and wild boars, a pest. Lives to be produced and lives to be eliminated, respectively. The exhibition ties the concept of plague into the way living things are categorized. Eucalyptus, parrots, urban grasses, water, native species and invasive species; the Cultural Ecologies group of the Independent Studies Program offers us a critical look at the different forms of “nature” management currently applied.
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