Words of love. Núria Güell

For the curatorial text of this exhibition, Núria Güell has decided to publish the project Morir d’amor (To Die of Love) which she presented for the Video Creation Award on 18 October 2023.

TO DIE OF LOVE
An essay on the deconstruction of the ideal of love from a theatrical viewpoint
Barcelona, Video Creation Award, 2023-2024

INTRODUCTION
On one hand, we have culture and its cultural representations: Phaedra, Oedipus, Medea, Antigone, Narcissus, Adam and Eve, The Lovers of Teruel, Calisto and Melibea, Romeo and Juliet, Carmen, Tristan and Isolde, Juan Tenorio and Doña Inés, almost all the boleros, the bachata and even the perreo. The list of Western cultural representations about love is endless: from Greek mythology and its tragedies, to Catholicism, courtly love, the Golden Age, the romanticism of the 18th and part of the 19th centuries, all the way up to the most popular or alternative cultural expressions of our time: Bad Bunny, Rauw and Bad Gyal, all question the ravages caused by love in our era.
On the other hand, we have kamikazes who officiate in the name of the love of God; nationalists who continue to throw themselves into mutual destruction for the love of some homeland; adolescent girls who understand celotypic traits —and their implicit violence— as signs of passion; mothers who kill their children so they won’t suffer; giving life or taking it out of love for an idea of social revolution; or the lover who decides to kill the loved-one before losing their love.
What is the responsibility of culture in all these paradoxes? And cultural productions? Which myths whisper unconsciously to our narratives? What is the relationship between the ideals of the era and the unique identities of each individual? Which ideals, hidden behind the mask of shared convictions and beliefs about the ideal of love, manifest themselves to transform coercion into persuasion? Can sources of love be renewed?

PROJECT
On this occasion, the core from which the video essay’s structure will be derived is a theatrical action that I will perform at the Teatre Nacional de Catalunya in April 2024. This action comprises the organisation of a recital of love poems, written by people who allege to have killed for love. With the production of this action as the main focus, the video essay proposes the investigation of the relationship between Western cultural productions about the passion of love and some of the consequences these representations and narratives have on the reality of bodies, both individual and institutional.
Practising “pretty politics”, “let love enlighten us” or “put the spotlight on care” are slogans that are being used by the more progressive politicians in Spain. We also know that, currently, most of the cultural and artistic institutions with public funding fly a flag for caring, they declare and defend putting the spotlight on care. We also know that caring is driven by a sort of love for one’s neighbour.
At the same time, many voices point to love —romantic, neurotic, obsessive, sacrificial and/or passionate— as the main form of alienation in our society. It is undeniable that this ideological product has a place of honour among the internalised mandates that our culture imposes on us. In fact, it seems as if it were a conceptual contradiction to refer to this feeling in a critical way, pointing out the limitations or contradictions, not to mention the obscuring or directly deceptive role that the appeal to love often occupies in today’s world.

CONCEPTUAL REFERENCES

Representation and Culture
We know that something represented doesn’t pre-exist its representation, representations create what they represent. Human civilisations are based on representations. Language equips human beings with the capacity to represent something as existing and the only requirement for this to work is that the majority of the community’s subjects recognise that what is represented exists. And culture is responsible for maintaining and updating these representations. It is true that representations were and are created with the intention of adapting to what is real, but because what is real, regardless of what it is, is unrepresentable, the effects of these representations, when taken to be real, usually provoke conflict and unrest. An unfathomable abyss separates what is represented from what exists.
The idea we have of “love” is also a representation, a cultural element and therefore one that is learned.

Language
As previously mentioned, there is an abyss between representation and existence. Whenever we are dealing with words, we are dealing with fiction, because language can only be binary, there’s nothing more it can give and this is where the mismatch begins.
Humanism transferred truth to the field of words. It believes in the truth of signifiers, when, in some way, this is what can overshadow what is real, with the myths, beliefs, attributions and judgements implicit in these signifiers. Footprints of the past that still have an effect today.

Western Culture and its Inscriptions
Carmen González Táboas, an Argentinian Lacanian-oriented psychoanalyst, believes that the Spanish language/culture enables pleasures that are different to those of other languages and cultures. There is no denying that ours is a culture —of Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian traditions— full of myths, ideals, beliefs and dreams. Accordingly, we can allow ourselves these pleasures because paradise and eternity are promised, even if it is in exchange for sacrificial love. Christianity has the drama of the passion (of Christ), a sovereign act of “love”, at its very heart: God sacrifices his son and his son sacrifices himself for humanity. Mythical images of the crucifixion can be found in any apparition where suffering takes place. Love in our culture is structured like the Christian religion: with conditions, you sacrifice yourself and go to heaven. And God, or the other, only asks for unconditional love, in other words, faith.

Cultural Policy and Caring
Not so many years ago, cultural and contemporary art centres were transformed into refugee reception centres. A few years later, these same centres wanted to be turned into hospitals. What we now have, so they say, are spaces that put care and affection at the centre: there is no end to the benefits of cultural practices. Reflections aside, what interests me is investigating the extent to which the institution, which is self-produced and self-legitimised, can escape repetition, to allow coherence between theory and practice, beyond the rhetoric implied by ideals.

The Ideal of Love
All these tales and myths about love mentioned at the beginning, build an ideal of love in our culture, which, like all ideals, belongs to the realm of the imaginary, even if it does appear to be natural. An ideal, by definition, longs for what is unattainable, dreams of what is not there and has no equivalent in reality. If we abandon ourselves to the hypnotic embrace of myths and ideals, they will incite us to confuse the signs with their seductive illusions.

To Die of Love
The passion of love, changing in form as time passes, continues to appear as a feminine trademark par excellence. Dying of love, whether real or psychological, also concerns men but in our culture, it is shown to be a feminine paradigm. Greek tragedy knew this already, Phaedra is the archetype.
Anguish, depression and despair are the flip side of the autonomy of the individual, they imply extreme sacrifice in the name of love —for art, for the better half, for the homeland, etc.—. Just like the declarations of those who justify the abuse they suffer from their loved one to be a sign of love, even if it is a harmful sign. Abuse inflicted in the name of a passionate, wretched love, degraded to hatred.

The Way Out of the Myth
One hundred years after Freud’s discoveries, it is surprising how much supposedly critical sociology is developed as if the lives of human beings pass by exclusively in the realm of the explicit and transparent, the rational and conscious. It becomes imperative to accept that the human being is, above all, an animal with language and desire, guided by impulses of which, a priori, the cause is unknown —life and death, Eros and Thanatos—, impulses open to the influence of administered culture, in other words, impulses whose objects and channellings are adapted to the spirit of the time.
Only in this connection between what is psychic and what is social can we penetrate the secret of “voluntary servitude”, which could also explain the ravages that passionate love still leads to in this society of “liquid love”.

Núria Güell

-

Words of Love. An Essay About Passion by Núria Güell, award-winning project of the 10th edition of the Video Creation Award, a co-production of the video creation project between the Regional Centres of the System of Public Visual Arts Facilities of Catalonia,* Santa Mònica, the Generalitat de Catalunya’s Department of Culture and LOOP Barcelona.
The Video Creation Award consolidates its position this year after a decade of history. The award aims to promote the work of artists who stand out for their innovative approaches in the field of contemporary art and incorporate video as a unique or partial element in their proposal. One of the main objectives is to carry out strategic actions so that the visual artists, centres and institutions involved can grow as a network, increasing their visibility in the region and their international presence.

*The Regional Centres of the System of Public Visual Arts Facilities of Catalonia are: ACVic Centre d’Arts Contemporànies (Vic); Bòlit, Centre d’Art Contemporani (Girona); Fabra i Coats: Contemporary Art Centre of Barcelona; M|A|C Mataró Art Contemporani; Mèdol – Centre d’Arts Contemporànies de Tarragona; Centre d’Art la Panera (Lleida); Lo Pati – Centre d’Art Terres de l’Ebre (Amposta); and Centre d’Art Tecla Sala (l’Hospitalet de Llobregat).

-

Exhibition included in the LOOP Festival

​-

Núria Güell (1981, Vidreres) graduated in Fine Arts from the Universitat de Barcelona, having specialised in sculpture, and continued her studies at the Cátedra Arte de Conducta in Havana, Cuba. Her artistic practice is one of confrontation, of challenging evidence and moral conventions. She considers her work to be socially and politically necessary, bringing into play what is cultural and what is established.
Her solo exhibitions include Confinements, Escape Plans and a Various Kinds of Jouissance at Salle Principale (Paris, 2023); Tot ordre es vol pur. Una exposició retrospectiva at Fabra i Coats (Barcelona, 2021); Nation State. Four Escape Strategies at Biennale Warszawa (Poland, 2019); Au nom du Père, de la Patrie et du Patriarcat at CAC Brétigny (France, 2018) and Troika Fiscal Disobedience Consultancy at Project Arts Centre (Dublin, 2016).
She has collaborated on group exhibitions such as The Museum of Arte Útil at Van Abbemuseum (Eindhoven, 2013); Un saber realmente útil at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (Madrid, 2014); Today Is Our Tomorrow at PUBLICS (Helsinki, 2019); Coreografies del gènere at CCCB (Barcelona, 2019); Un même monde at Maison des Arts Georges & Claude Pompidou (France, 2021); “Everyone is an Artist”: Cosmopolitical Exercises with Joseph Beuys at Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen (Düsseldorf, 2021) and Palestina libre. Exposición de Apoyo al Pueblo Palestino y por el Fin de la Ocupación at Espacio Tangente (Burgos, 2024).
She has also received various awards and grants throughout her career and regularly collaborates with social and educational centres.
​For more information go to nuriaguell.com​