Edition

“We protect you from yourselves. The Politics of Policing”, is an attempt to understand the police character of the social order and to find out what is at stake in today’s political situation.

Returning to one of the publication’s habitual interests, its theme is the intersection of art and politics, in this case, taking the 15-M movement and its international Occupy replicas as a reference. In a way, this issue’s case study focuses on the aesthetic of 15-M. At the same time, the intention is also to encourage a broader reflection on this new form of understanding political action.

We can consider that useful art, as it is in our interest to define it now, would be found for the most part in those practices which seek to be proactive in a specific context, be it confronting alternative micropolitics of a social nature to the status quo imposed by the dominant politics, or responding to the specific demands or desires formulated by a community or a movement.

Nolens Volens proposes to explore diverse projects and positions related to of understanding artistic practice.

This fourth issue of Nolens Volens has been edited in collaboration
with Alfredo Cramerotti, member of the curatorial group Chamber of Public Secrets, in the framework of their participation in Manifesta 8.

The subject explored was “mediascapes”. And the contributors have
worked with the concept of how the media construct rather than
reflect the world; they are hardly a public forum, and have transformed into an industry which has a powerful influence and exerts discursive manipulation over the audience and society.

For this issue Nolens Volens, the contributors were asked to focus their work on “systems of beliefs”, on the different types of faith that may shape our social organization.

In this broad framework, the contributors’ approaches have turned out to be diverse, although two main lines of interest may be pointed out: on the one hand, the work of those who have focused on art itself as a system of beliefs and, on the other, those who have used their artistic practice to question more all-encompassing dogmas.

This issue of Nolens Volens intends to explore the relationship between art and the electoral processes. It is structured on the basis of an investigation project called Action arts and election mechanisms and campaigns,directed by Joaquín Ivars and carried out at the Universidad Europea in Madrid, and the exhibition InterAcciones Electorales, which took place at the Madrid exhibition venue Off Limits, and included historical material, as well as the specific actions and artistic projects carried out during the campaign for the elections of May 9, 2008.

The subject articulates this first issue is “contemporary issues” and, more specifically, “current events”, as work material in art. The choice of this matter as the defining element of the first issue is motivated by the central role played by this resource, offered by the media’s coverage of current events, in the production of contemporary art and by a certain critical predisposition to question the effectiveness of the discourses developed on the basis of this concept.