Broadcasting the archive in Barcelona: Analysing the side effects of Arte Útil projects

Broadcasting the archive’ is an independent project conceived and curated by us in collaboration with Van Abbemuseum, Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art (mima) and the Asociación de Arte Útil. The idea arose from the urgency to spread the Arte Útil archive beyond the institution, which hosts the material. Being the initial archive researchers, we started thinking about how to make visible the potentiality that the archive – intended as a tool – has. The project is the first attempt to emancipate usership around the Arte Útil archive through a year touring activity programmes such as workshops, discussions, and tours hosted by different organisations in various locations in Europe and United States. This article will reflect on how ‘Broadcasting the archive’ could be considered as a new methodology to understand the porosity of Arte Útil – intended as a movement – outside and inside the institutional framework, with a particular reference to the programme we developed at Museo d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA), in collaboration with the Avalancha collective, Núria Güell, Ruben Santiago and Valentina Maini. We invited them to revisit the conversations we had during the weekend for this journal