This richly illustrated volume brings together fresh insights into the
changing urban space of Barcelona from the beginning of the twentieth
century to the present day. The collection focuses primarily on the
complicated relationship between environment, identity, and performance
as they were seen, explored, and portrayed by countercultural and
avant-garde artists and communities from the 1960s to today. Drawing
crucial links between theory and practice, and aesthetics and
environment—and paying particular attention to the role of the
avant-garde in challenging and disrupting dominant art forms and uses of
urban space—Barcelona presents a variety of perspectives and
approaches, drawing on art history, cultural geography, performance
studies, and institutional critique.
The volume brings together researchers and practitioners from the UK,
Catalonia, Europe and the US to explore groundbreaking countercultural
artists and movements and their relationship to a particular
environment, Barcelona, setting them alongside more commercialised,
global images of the city and its culture. The book explores the
relationship between space and performance, theory and practice,
production and institutionalisation, through an encounter between
academic research and aesthetic practice, showcasing contemporary
Catalan visual and performance work by artists, poets, dramatists,
dancers and choreographers, puppeteers and film-makers.