Five exhibitions in one. Five different ways to exhibit an apple at Mataros’ old prison 

To exhibit an apple as a starting point. Without any a priori milestone or path laid out. To project Lucas Cranach's Adam and Eve. To remind students of the biblical story (Genesis, 3). To talk about the apple as the first exposed object. To tell them that the hand that takes the apple and shows it also hides half of it. To project Lemon, by Hollis Frampton and Com una sola substància, l’art d’exposar I l’art de amagar by Perejaume. Understand that presence always entails a degree of concealment. Merleau-Ponty and the impossibility of seeing all the faces of a body at once. To play the aria and the first three Goldberg variations by Johan Sebastian Bach. To show a couple of panels from the Mnemosyne Atlas. To find the undulating movement in it. To explain that Aby Warbourg, when he was waiting for death, saw a dead apple tree blooming at the bottom of his garden and dried it. To say that maybe it was the last thing he did - he who had devoted his whole life to the study of the surviving images.

This was roughly the starting point of the workshop From curatorship to exhibition design, 2023-2024, MEATS’ unit. As a practical exercise and in groups of three, the students developed five independent exhibition proposals. Five attempted exhibitions housed, for a few days, in the old prison of Mataró

2024


Jaume Coscollar, Toni Montes, Roger Paez
Rebecca Diaz, Athina Fatourou, Rana Genç, Sofia Giannoulidou, Sahar Hameiri, Ufkum Kaçar, Eduardo Lazo, Diego Mata, Xavier Molins, Maria Tkacikova, Axelle Van Eupen, Lara Bertin, Josefina Gestoso, Jaskiran Karwal, Ane Santillan


MAC_Mataró Art Contemporani

A chameleonic stage design for a night and day underground techno music festival at the Monumental bull ring

Soundit is an electronic music festival that select’s the best DJs from the international underground scene. Soundit schedules 12 dates throughout the year, between Monumental Bull Ring and Par del Forum. This season, Soundit celebrates its tenth anniversary and they wanted to do it with a new stage. Soundit contacted MEATS to set us the challenge: an innovative stage, a new iconography for the festival, a new scenography from one edition to the next, working well both in daylight and at night Fast and easy to assemble and disassemble.

Following the usual MEATS methodology, we worked as a big solid team, generating two proposals that we developed in 1:10 scale prototypes. Both proposals were very well received and Soundit decided to go ahead with one for the premiere of the season in Monumental.

The proposal generates a floating cover that flies over part of the audience and casts a shadow over the stage. This same cover, together with the Background and the sides, made of micro-perforated white canvas, acts as a light and video projection screen at night. This solution makes it possible to customize the stage in each edition of the festival through lighting and visual design.

2024

Toni Montes, Jordi Queralt, Roger Paez
 
Josefina Gestoso, Rana Genç, Athina Fatourou, Axelle Van Eupen, Diego Mata, Eduardo Lazo,Kiran Karwal, Lara Bertin, Mária Tkáciková, Rebecca Diaz, Sahar Hameiri, Sofia Giannoulidou, Ufkum Kaçar, Xavier Molins, Ane Santillan,


SOUNDIT (Borja & Pepe Malet)

An immersive journey into human’s limbo between nature, our roots, and technology, our invention. Midway overlaps three real time projections that represent three different temporalities: a microspcope image of a leave, a rain of X messages and the visitors shadows. 

What does it mean to exist in between a high-tech environment that is rapidly changing and the disobedient nature, our creation and our origin? In an era where the climate crisis is getting increasingly urgent and technology is on the verge of surpassing human intelligence, people seem to be trapped in this intermediate condition. In a way, our inability to relate to either of these phenomena reveals our disconnection not only from our surroundings but also from our starting point. We no longer feel one with nature, but we cannot keep up with technology either.


By projecting real-time footage of data and nature, “Midway” invites the visitors to explore this sensation of being alienated between the slow nature and the accelerated technology and act as a mediator between them. In that sense, the installation attempts to turn this unsettling feeling of existing in between into a game of introspection.

2024

Toni Montes, Roger Paez, Xevi Bayona 
Aitor Inchausti, Ane Santillan, Athina Fatourou, Axelle Van Eupen, Diego Mata, Eduardo Lazo, Emma Rosales, Ignacio Montero, Jana Deulofeu, Josephina Gestoso, Júlia González, Kiran Karwal, Lara Bertin, Laura Gimenez, Laura Palacios, Mária Tkáciková, Mileva España, Pau Diaz, Paula Sánchez, Rana Genç, Rebecca Diaz, Sahar Hameiri, Sofia Giannoulidou, Ufkum Kaçar, Xavier Molins


ICUB (Maria Güell)

Exhibition curatorship and design

Now you See Me Moria is a no profit organisation created by a Spanish photographer and some refugees from Moria’s refugee Camp in Lesvos to raise awareness and promote civic mobilisation to denounce and put pressure on European policy makers to change the present shameful migration policy.

Now You See Me Moria uses diverse digital platforms to publish images and videos of the daily life and the dramatic life conditions in the camp and invites European citizens to take action, based on theses images, to spread the information and send messages to the EU politicians and mass media.

The project also reaches cultural institutions all over Europe (museums, photography festivals) while keeping the original aim: to reach as many citizens as possible and engage them to spread the message.

Home Moria is a result of a collective research in new exhibition formats for NYSMM, based on the original aim, rules and philosophy of the project. Home Moria reflects on the concept of home and creates a radical juxtaposition between the qualities the make a home and the dreadful reality of the camp.

Home Moria proposes a very basic interactive format, where the visitors, European citizens unveil the shameful reality of the Camp hidden under the beautiful words that define what a home is. The exhibition kit, to be easily produced and implemented anywhere, includes also a series of cards that, based on the same interaction principle, invite visitors to sign them and send the to the European policy makers.

Home Moria was exhibited in Nantes, in the context of the Matia Mou contemporary Greek culture festival.

2021-2022

Toni Montes, Roger Paez, Elsa Pacheco

Diana Mehrez , Nour Awarki, Sanjana Paramhans

Mar Gené, Sena Kocaoglu, Mana Pinto, Qhosha Vad, Cristina Valarezo, Tiffany Whittaker, Noa Yarkoni, Amber Zhang, Elodie Bodart, Yana Latinovich,

Seniors is a project made collaboration with the Urban Ecology and Social Rights departments of the City Council of Barcelona to provide temporary quality public space in direct contact with the more than 80 senior homes located in the city centre.

The project was developed in two parts, involving two MEATS year students. The first part included filed studies and the design of a methodology to approach each case, in order to identify potentials and opportunities.

The second part consisted in proposing a material system and developing four different prototypes. One of them was developed to a construction level and is expected to be implemented soon.

The material system proposed is based in prefabricated rammed earth blocks, an innovative material used in permanent construction that has never been used in temporary urban space projects.

Once we assume that tactical interventions are not only an emergency solution but a new powerful tool for fast-track urban transformations, it is time to explore new material solutions that, allow for an harmonic integration in the urban fabric while being fully consistent as temporary and sustainable. Its mechanical and tectonic qualities, together with an immaculately closed life cycle, make rammed earth block an extremely interesting material.

2020-2022

Toni Montes, Roger Paez, Xevi Bayona

Diana Mehrez , Nour Awarki, Sanjana Paramhans, Mar Gené, Sena Kocaoglu, Mana Pinto, Qhosha Vad, Cristina Valarezo, Tiffany Whittaker, Noa Yarkoni, Amber Zhang, Elodie Bodart, Yana Latinovich

Agustina Angelini, Momen Bakry, Dasstan Bissen, Malak Ghemraoui, John Gillen, Liana Kalaitzoglou, Gal·la Knoph, Julia Llorens, Elsa Romero, Chloé Rood, Giulia Tufariello, Irini Vazanellis, Aleksandra Zaitceva