[JEANSELLEM VIEWER] — FRANCESC TORRES 10.01-16.01.1976 — Categories: press, letters, visual — Keywords: Galerie S:t Petri, Jean Sellem, archive — — — Category: press — Galerie S:t PetriP.O. Box 7221 01 LundFRANCESC TORRES, a Spaniard living in the USA, is exhibiting at Galerie S:t Petri, Lund, from 17 to 23 January 1976.The gallery is darkened. On one wall hangs an ornate Rococo frame. Inside it is a typewritten sheet. Above it, a picture light glows dimly. From one corner, through a tape recorder, a voice can be heard shouting: Move on! The floor is covered with ashes. On the opening day, a child takes part in a psychological experiment intended to study the child’s learning process with regard to the hierarchical organization of things.For several years Francesc Torres has worked in his art with psychology and conditioning. In various exhibitions around the world he has presented his analyses, primarily of personal conditioning processes. His ideas are being shown in Sweden for the first time.Speaking about his exhibition in Lund, Francesc Torres says: “This exhibition deals with some of the knowledge acquired by human beings and is particularly related to the political situation in several countries (including my native Spain). The framed text explains the most elementary social mechanisms within a society. The Rococo frame is the only ‘artistic’ element in the exhibition and is presented more as a cultural convention. The ashes on the floor symbolize, in a general sense, the psychological situation of individuals living under a repressive political system (the ashes are seen as the antonym of the growing tree, the symbol of life). The voice shouting MOVE ON! (often heard at demonstrations) describes an everyday reality. By giving a child the task of arranging ten wooden sticks, I want to show how the concept of hierarchy exists at an early age and how this concept can be activated and demonstrated through concrete influence.”The exhibition is open weekdays from 3–8 p.m., Saturdays and Sundays from 12–5 p.m. — — — Category: press — galerie s:t petri s:t petri kyrkogata 5 fack 7 221 01 lund 1 sverige tel 046-14 78 00jean sellemFrancesc TorresTerry BerkowitzJune 26, 1975Dear Terry and Francesc,I must appologize for not having written to you sooner, but I have been so very busy preparing another two rooms for my archive of experimental and conceptual art. Please excuse me!I am very interested in showing the works of both of you. My thoughts were to let you have an exhibit of one week each, starting for one of you 3 - 9 January, and the other 10 - 16 January. You can decide yourself which one of you should start. Please inform me immediately if the dates suit you.Galerie S:t Petri is always loosing money. It is neither a commercial enterprise, nor an institution. Therefore I would appreciate if you could pay the printing costs and postage. The sum would be $ 50 (postage for both of you is included as well as the printing of the two posters).I would like each of you to send ten press-photos, black and white, of your work to inform the international and local press. Then I need texts telling me about this specific manifestation. The exhibition material, the photos and the texts should be in Lund before the 1st of November.Please keep me informed about your activities. I am interested in receiving material for my archive from you or friends of yours, who are working with some kind of experimentation.Sincerely,Jean Sellem — — — Category: letters — October 14, 1975Dear Jean –Enclosed please find one check made out to you in Swedish crowns. According to the Bank of Vizcaya in Barcelona this amount should correspond to $50 U.S.We hope there are no problems cashing it – it should be possible for your bank to take care of it.The package with our projects and supplementary objects was mailed airmail the same day as this letter from Barcelona. We’re keeping our fingers crossed for its safe arrival.Please let us know in N.Y. if everything arrived okay at:Terry BerkowitzP.O. Box 453Knickerbocker Sta.New York, N.Y. 10002U.S.A.Again, thank you.Regards,Terry & Francesc — — — Category: visual — Dear Marie and Jean,We have received the notification of the safe arrival of our work in Sweden. Our fantastic trip to Spain is over and it's back to the cold, gray, treelessness of New York City.We would each appreciate 25 posters of our shows, both for our own files and to send to people here and in Europe. Please send them as soon as possible so we can mail them out.Francesc will also be showing in Gallery Akumulatory 2 in Poznan, Poland in January, I will have a show there in either October or Nov. of 1976. Any future shows that we participate in shall have Galerie St: Petri on the mailing list for announcements.We are keeping our eyes open for interesting work to notify you of, and hopefully we will see you in New York some time in the near future (we are anticipating that you WILL make a visit sometime).Regards,Francesc TorresTerry Berkowitz — — — — — Category: press — February 4, 1976Galerie S:t PetriFack 7Lund 22101SWEDENDear Jean and Marie,Since I haven't heard from you regarding how my show went, I thought I would write. Was there any feedback about the show from either newspapers or people? I hope that you didn't have any problems setting up the show. Please write to let me know if everything was okay.Terry was very pleased with the press releases that were printed there. She sends her thanks for the information you sent.We would like to suggest two people whose work you may be interested in showing, Angels Ribe and Billy Apple. We have taken the liberty of giving them your address and we expect that you will be hearing from them soon. We hope you will find their work interesting.Write and give me the information I requested as soon as possible.Again, thanks very much.Warm regards,Francesc Torres — — — Category: letters — 119 Chrystie St.New York, N.Y. 10002April 19, 1976Dear Marie,How is everything? I'm writing again this time to you because I have a special favor to ask you. Since you are involved in psychology would it be possible for you to make a written analysis of the performance of my show from a psychologist's point of view? In other words, maybe an elaboration and extension of what Jean wrote me in his last letter which I was going to include in my portfolio of this exhibition. Needless to say that your help would be acknowledged as one of the elements of the final statement. I hope I am not imposing on you too much in asking for your help.Terry and I received the posters and the book about Contextual Art which, by the way, is very interesting. I'm planning eventually to write an open letter to discuss some points which seem to me to be a bit confused. Right now I'm working on my project for the Bienal of Venice. This year the Bienal would be particularly interesting with the effort by the official left to absorb the "avantgarde" art events (Bologna will be another example). In this year's Bienal the Italian Communist Party has a definite influence. Due to this, the project that I am presenting is based on the mythological substrata of Marxist philosophy as a counterpart to its assumed scientific nature. We'll see what happens.... I'll let you know the results.Let me know if it is possible and if you have the interest to do what I have asked you. I await your reply.Terry and I send warm regards to you and Jean. — — — Category: visual — galerie s:t petri s:t petri kyrkogata 5 fack 7 221 01 lund 1 sverige tel 046-14 78 00jean sellemMay 28, 1976Dear Francesc and Terry,I have unfortunately not been able to write to you before. Partly it is because I have been travelling, partly it depends on my hesitation of what to write.You see, the text that Jean sent to you in March actually was the result of serious discussions between the two of us, so it is as well my thoughts as his. But I must say that ever since the performance in January I have had a particular interest in the problems that must arise when you are not able to use your ears in a proper sense. Somehow you have to compensate this.Recently on a conference of psychological research I met with a psychologist from Stockholm who has been working with deaf persons for many years. His hypothesis is that the visual code is deepened in the non-hearing person. In different kinds of experimental research he tries to find out wether this is the case or not. However, I just have this information from a very informal meeting and I cannot go so much further.Of course, watching is vital for all of us - but it is even more important for the one who does not hear his environment. To be able to do this he has to strengthen the one sense that comes next, i.e. vision. The British author David Wright, who became deaf at the age of seven, writes in his book Deafness:"Suppose it is a calm day, absolutely still, not a twig or leaf stirring. To me it will seem quiet as a tomb though hedgerows are full of noisy but invisible birds. Then comes a breath of air, enough to unsettle a leaf; I will see and hear that movement like an exclamation. The illusory soundlessness has interrupted. I see, as if I heard, a visionary noise of wind in a disturbance of foliage. Wordsworth in a late poem exactly caught the phenomenon in a remarkable line: 'A soft eye-music of slow-waving boughs....'"Regarding your particular action at the Galerie S:t Petri with an eight year old boy performing I do not think you can draw as drastic solutions as for the deaf, especially not with one sole example. But - it does make you very much more attentive to the world of both completely non-hearing individuals and of less hearing persons. We have much to learn from them.Francesc, I do hope these thoughts of mine have added something to the first statement. Please inform us about how your work goes.Did you receive the photos? Are they suitable? It would be nice to know.All the best to both of you form both of us.Marie Sellem — — — — — — — IMAGE'S IDENTITY[Handwritten note]VÉHICULE ART INC. · MARCH 1974 · MONTREALThe concept of this performance was the activation of the audience's psychological identity models through the disassociation of my own identity from my image.Prior to the opening of the gallery door, I placed myself against the wall completely covered by a white bed sheet (except for a small hole through which my mouth was visible). People arrived and were seated. After asking for their attention, I gave personal chronological data: name, place of birth, social origins, political origins, etc. The information concluded with the current moment in time, at which point I explained the concept of the work: to produce a phenomenon similar to that of speaking over the phone with a person never met. One forms a visual image in this context through a process of relating to psychological models out of a mental file drawn from previous experiences.Once my identity was established through verbal information and the concept of the performance was made clear (causing the audience's mental construction of a visual image), I tore the bed sheet, revealing the actual visual reference related to the previously given information. The confrontation was completed.After this, I asked different people in the audience if the image they created corresponded to reality. If the image produced was totally different, as it was in most cases, why were the principal characteristics as they were? What specifically caused such reactions in each individual? These reactions and their causes deserve further consideration and will be explored in future works.[Handwritten note]NOT INCLUDED IN THIS PORTFOLIO — — — During wartime, or in other words, during time of organized violence as an integral and normal way of life for each one of the fighting groups, a specific vital space is produced as a substitution for the normal vital space in peace time. For example, the bomb shelter substitutes for the house or apartment. In the U.S., during the McCarthy era and in the middle of the cold war, the atomic shelter was commercialized and could be built for a few thousand dollars, in the garden, cellar or backyard of the house. They are hermetic structures made of concrete with the capacity for an average family featuring air conditioning, food storage, etc. Many of them can still be found, used as playing rooms for the kids equipped with ping-pong tables and similar things.One of the most significant spaces in martial architecture is the bunker, a fixed defense cell of reduced dimensions with the capacity for two or more men depending whether it is a machine gun post or an artillery post. When the biggest worry is self-protection, one doesn’t have the time to feel oneself. You always find the bunker generally isolated, despite its being part of a larger defense complex. In this fixed cell, watching and waiting become the companions of a crew obliged to use such a space as a home, during prolonged periods of time. After a certain time of living in the same place, one observes and discovers the spots and chips on the wall and ceiling. Little by little one discovers faces, animals, which after being fixed in your mind will never abandon the place that belongs to each one of them. Sometimes you will give names to them, but not indiscriminately: only to the ones which have seized one part of the life of the discoverer.For the person inside, the basic function of the bunker is to protect the physical and psychological integrity of the person inside. The occupant needs to think that he is in a position of advantage and the bunker offers him this belief just by its appearance, although this is not necessarily true. The subject’s unconscious responds to this with confidence; the bunker is one of the architectural spaces which is most closely related to the maternal womb in subjective terms through its protection of the individual against the exterior hostility which has to be confronted alone. Even in the worst circumstances it is sad to abandon the space where we lived, the corner where we ate and slept, the wall over which somebody wrote a name or a sentence “Here lived Felipe Torrado. 10/8/38”.One of the many things the bunker hides is its own weakness. It also hides the fear of the men inside, the tedium and the ways of fighting it, some of them difficult to justify to the manufacturers of customs, if they would flow beyond the wall that produce them. Logistically, it is an obsolete system overwhelmed by the modern techniques of warfare, an easy target for the mobile units and a trap for its occupants. Masturbating is one way of making sure that you are still alive, that you can still generate life, that you still have a sensitive body. When this is not sufficient, when the fantasies that — cross the mind while playing with yourself cannot compete with the surrounding reality, is when a companion may try to substitute for them. It all will depend on how we take the context we are living in being attacked by flame-throwers forcing the soldiers inside to jump out, in flames like torches: the luckiest of them being killed in euthanasia by the enemy.Despite everything, the bunker, this shelter of female nature when it appears in dreams, seems inexpugnable when looking at it straight, from the distance. Every act of violence has a sexual equivalent. We still don’t know (is it still forbidden?) how to separate things.Close to Llanca exists the remains of a parallel city which was abandoned in 1939 — Peace, in our society, is non-organized violence (among the subjects who compose it) or partially organized (according to the needs of the class in power). In the subject’s case, the practice of violence is a personal adventure which develops itself daily and in the open air; it is an integral part of our conditioning and social structure. The fact that this violence is not organized as a consequence of the private interests of each individual isn’t a reason to think that it perpetuates itself following behavioral patterns similar to the ones produced in wartime situations. The differences between what is called war and what isn’t are to be found on the anecdotal and statistical level rather than in radical changes of behavioral patterns and their consequences, especially in social formations which are the result of a war disaster. Peace also needs to be officially declared. Whatever happens afterwards is always ambiguous.The reason why, consciously or unconsciously, the subject’s behavior is organized according to the “defense-attack” formula can be found in the society’s structure itself. Being incapable of producing the necessary means for the total realization of its individuals, society must rely on and encourage the “natural selection” that results from the competition between those individuals to obtain the crumbs the society offers. Who didn’t hear at one point or another, something like this: “My son, society is divided into two types of people, the one who succeeds and leads, and the poor one who’s only obligation is to know how to submit to somebody else’s will”. The tragedy of this is that in one way or another, almost everybody believes it.Within this frame of action, the first thing to be undermined is interpersonal communication. To communicate is to penetrate and to modify the others reality and as a consequence one’s own reality as well. Once the communication has been interrupted, the only way of modifying the other’s reality and our own is through aggression. It is then that the strategies of attack, defense, camouflage, manipulation of information and falsehood are converted on a daily basis in the same proportion that the other becomes the enemy. When certain things cannot be mentioned by name, what is said is as significant as what is silenced. The important thing is to keep the other as confused as possible.The pattern of behavior that our society produces is schizoid by nature. Blocking the communication with the outside, the distortion of identity, the reluctance towards intimate relationships and the eruption of violence as a way of the individual’s psychological protection is all pure behavioral pathology. The only people treated as schizophrenics deserving therapy will be the ones who push the situation to its limits, showing reality without fallacies, destroying the illusion of normality. It is necessary then to declare this individual as a sick one. The concept of mental illness and where it begins is culturally conditioned and serves the interests of the social class in power. Having a group of subjects qualified as schizoids means that the ones who do the qualifying are not so, even though their behavior and the structure of the society perpetuated by them, is. We need to have a poor cat to whom we can transfer everything we hate of ourselves. This is a practice as old as humankind: killing or locking up the other we exorcise the demon who lives in our house and sleeps in our bed. — — — Spaniard exhibits at S:t PetriFrancesc Torres, a Spaniard living in the USA, is exhibiting at Galerie S:t Petri from 10 to 16 January.He works with psychology in his art. The exhibition consists of a Rococo frame, a voice shouting “Move on!”, and ashes scattered across the floor.In addition, a small child is asked to arrange a number of wooden sticks in order to demonstrate that the concept of hierarchy already exists at a young age.AGP — — — Category: press — Dark gallery with ashes on the floorLUND: Francesc Torres, a Spaniard living in the USA, is exhibiting at Galerie S:t Petri in Lund until 16 January. This is the first time he has presented his ideas in Sweden.The gallery is darkened. On one wall hangs an ornate Rococo frame. Inside it is a typewritten sheet. Above it, a picture light glows dimly. From one corner, through a tape recorder, a voice can be heard shouting: Move on (continue). The floor is covered with ashes.Francesc Torres explains:— The exhibition deals with some of the knowledge acquired by human beings and is particularly related to the political situation in several countries, including my native Spain.— The framed text explains the most elementary social mechanisms within a society. The Rococo frame is the only “artistic” element in the exhibition and is presented more as a cultural convention.— The ashes on the floor symbolize, in a general way, the psychological situation of people living under a repressive political system — the ashes are the opposite of the growing tree, the symbol of life.— The voice shouting Move On (often heard at demonstrations) describes an everyday reality.The exhibition is open weekdays from 3–8 p.m., Saturdays and Sundays from 12–5 p.m. — — — Category: press — Swedish premiere for Spanish artist at Galerie S:t PetriLUND. The gallery is darkened. On one wall hangs an ornate Rococo frame. Inside it is a typewritten sheet. Above it, a picture light glows dimly. From one corner, through a tape recorder, a voice can be heard shouting: MOVE ON! The floor is covered with ash. On the opening day, a child takes part in a psychological experiment intended to study the child’s learning process concerning the hierarchical structure of things.This is how Galerie S:t Petri describes the exhibition by Francesco Torres, a Spaniard living in the USA, which is presented from 17 to 23 January.For several years Francesc Torres has worked in his art with psychology and conditioning. In various exhibitions around the world he has presented his analyses, primarily of personal conditioning processes. His ideas are being shown in Sweden for the first time.POLITICSSpeaking about his exhibition in Lund, Francesc Torres says: “This exhibition deals with some of the knowledge acquired by human beings and is specifically related to the political situation in several countries (including my homeland, Spain). The framed text explains the most elementary social mechanisms in a society. The Rococo frame is the only ‘artistic’ element in the exhibition and is shown more as a cultural convention. The ash on the floor symbolizes, in a general way, the psychological situation of individuals living under a repressive political system (the ash is seen as the antonym of the growing tree, the symbol of life). The voice shouting MOVE ON! (often heard at demonstrations) describes an everyday reality. By giving a child the task of arranging ten wooden sticks, I want to show how the concept of hierarchy exists at an early age and how this concept can be activated and demonstrated through concrete influence.”[Caption]The political situation in Spain is the background to Francesco Torres’s exhibition in Lund.The exhibition is open on weekdays from 3 pm to 8 pm, and on Saturdays and Sundays from 12 noon to 5 pm.