BARCELONA.- MACBA presents The Act of Filming: Video in the MACBA Collection, a new project dedicated to the presence of the moving image within the museum’s Collection. The show, which opened on 9 July, gathers three exhibition projects that explore different periods and ways of understanding video as an artistic language and as an instrument of social transformation: Counter-information: Video-Nuevo / Community Video Service, Echoes. Videos donated by the Han Nefkens Foundation and Pere Portabella: the Committed Gaze.

Despite responding to different historical contexts and practices, the three projects explore the critical potential of the moving image and share a single perspective: understanding video not only as a means of recording, but also as a way of bringing stories to life, fostering critical thinking and giving visibility to realities often absent from official narratives.

The first of the proposals, Counter-information: Video-Nuevo / Community Video Service, features a selection of works produced during the early years of the Transition. The collection celebrates the pioneering work of this collective, which turned the camera into a tool for community participation and the critical documentation of social, labour and neighbourhood movements during a decisive moment in recent history.

The exhibition continues with Echoes. Videos donated by the Han Nefkens Foundation, a selection of works by contemporary artists that push the narrative and formal boundaries of video. The pieces explore experimental languages and address social, political and personal issues through non-linear narratives, superimposed images and new forms of visual experience.

The programme is rounded off with Pere Portabella: the Committed Gaze, a series of screenings presented as part of Portabella Action. The selection offers a chance to revisit the Catalan filmmaker’s radical approach to cinema, a body of work that has challenged the traditional codes of cinematic language and retains a profound political and experimental dimension.





With The Act of Filming, MACBA proposes visitors to reflect on the critical potential of the moving image and its capacity to construct collective memory, generate spaces for debate and establish new forms of relationship between document, testimony and experience.

The exhibition forms part of the museum’s ongoing work to bring the MACBA Collection to life through a variety of approaches that enable a fresh look at the collection and foster dialogue between artistic practices, historical contexts and the debates shaping contemporary society.