Barcelona – Pleasurescapes

Mai 24, 2022Mai 24, 2022

New Interview by Marc Geli about the Paral·lel in Barcelona

Our team member Marc Geli has published an interesting interview on Pleasurescapes in Barcelona. For the Catalan magazine „Ab Origine“ he met three local stakeholders to talk about the myth and leisure at the forgotten margin of the Paral·lel.

His conversation partners are experts on the history but also the present of the Paral·lel. The researcher Enric H. March has recently published the book „Barcelona Freak show“ about the history of travelling „sideshows“ like clowns, musicians, illusionists, „human phenoma“, and wax museums in Barcelona. Jordi Rabassa is a historian and local councilman. Also present was Pablo Perez from the Arnau Itinerant Project, which is trying to reclaim the old Arnau Theatre as a building and in its use for the neighbourhood.

You can find the complete interview online in the history magazine Ab Origine [article in Catalan]!

März 17, 2022

„Infrastructuring pleasure“ by Aurelio Castro Varela

Montjuïc is a long flat-topped hill overlooking the harbour of Barcelona from the southeast border of the city. From 1915 onwards it underwent a profound transformation turning it into the site of the 1929 International Exhibition. Aurelio Castro Varela delves into this turning point, examining the aesthetic role of infrastructures in delivering pleasure on the hill before and during the dazzling, monumental display that characterized the event. He elaborates on two distinct regimes of pleasure by theorising their material forms as functional to and expressive of specific ways of having fun. Thus, such enquiry concerns the ambient conditions, sensorial landscapes and architectural elements through which pleasure took shape in Montjuïc from the mid-nineteenth century to 1936.

März 11, 2022März 11, 2022

“Changes, continuities and the public in Paral·lel and the 5th District in Barcelona (1914-19)” by Marc Geli

Paral·lel Avenue and the old 5^th District formed Barcelona’s underworld in the early 20^th century. PhD candidate Marc Ge li investigates this area in the period 1914 to 1919. During these years of the First World War, the city experienced drastic changes due to Spain’s neutrality in the conflict. The arrival of foreign capitals allowed, among other influences, the change of the leisure offers, a more relaxed morality and the cosmopolization of Barcelona. Paral·lel Avenue and the 5^th District became the epicenter of the entertainment industry across classes, but how far did this seeming equality of classes reach exactly? Along with an analysis of the change – as well as its continuities – of the traditional entertainment models, this research scrutinizes how accessible the new leisure offers were to all social classes or where boundaries emerged.

The Om street (Fifth District) in 1934. Many of the leisure activities took place among huge poverty. Source: Arxiu Fotogràfic de Barcelona, Margaret Michaelis.

Januar 23, 2022Januar 25, 2022

“Spiritism and occultist practices as popular entertainment around 1900” by Judit Vidiella

Judit Vidiella explores the connection between maritime trade and the freedom of conscience that placed port cities at the forefront of articulating new societal ideals among the population around the turn of the 20^th century. She is interested in analyzing how Spiritism circles built proper networks of communication and ‘uncanny infrastructures’ (Geoghegan 2016), focusing on the fundamental role that female mediums played as active agents in the change of consciousness by means of their ‘inspired’ messages and socio-political practices.

Engraving table moving, at la Ilustracion, Saturday 21 of May 1853, page 201. Biblioteca Nacional de España.

Occultist practices became a massive entertainment in Europe, when the magic and the scientific lived together and spirituality was given a positivist and scientific touch and supposedly empirical evidence in public shows and performances. This opens a field of research about the ‘spectatorial regime’ (Crary 1992) that had spiritist séances in common with other forms of popular entertainment in the late 19^th and early 20^th century such as cinema, hypnotist and magnetizer’s exhibitions or café-concert shows.

Poster for the "Magnatiseur" Donato. The coloured litography shows excerpts from the programme. In the centre of the poster is a large portrait of "Donato" and next to it a female artist. Around it, the artist "Donato" is depicted in a tailcoat with small scenes and with different emotions, for example: singing, eating, dancing and fighting. You can also see a hypnosis act and how the woman is made to levitate. — Le Magnetiseur Donato. Unknown Lithography (around 1880 and 1881). Musée Carnavalet, Histories de Paris, Inventory Number AFF956.

Advertisement for the movie "Más allá de la muerte" / "Beyond Death" in magazine, text in Spanish saying: "En Olympia esta tarde, a las 5 y por la noche a las 10, grandioso estreno del extraordinario y emocionante cinedrama original de Don Jacinto Benavente que lleva el título de “Más allá de la muerte” (premio Nobel en 1922). Filmado por la Casa “Benavente Film”, puesto en escena por Benito Perojo y adaptado a la pantalla por Lara Brunet, con ilustraciones musicales “ad hoc” y experiencias prácticas de hipnotismo por el Profesor Onofroff." — Advertisement for the movie „Más allá de la muerte“ / „Beyond Death“, El Diluvio journal, Tuesday February 1 of 1927, Year 70 number 27. Arca, Archive of Old Catalan Magazines.