The Ojo Atómico, an independent art space in Madrid, recently announced its closure… We are copying its statement here:
EL OJO ATÓMICO CLOSES
After five long and exciting years of work in the warehouse on Mantuano Street, we have decided to close the premises and embark on a new stage for Ojo Atómico.
The hostility of the City Council and the Community of Madrid, one covert and the other overt, but equally implacable, and the lack of dialogue with the Ministry of Culture, are pushing us to close, as they have other independent spaces that have disappeared in recent months. We could resist, but we have already entered a phase of attrition, and we believe that a change of strategy is more prudent than entrenching ourselves in unsustainable positions in the medium term. They have won, at least this battle that began in 2002 with the opening of 29 Enchufes. For the first time, there was an alternative art scene in Madrid, characterized above all by a desire to open up to the outside world. It is enough to see the programs that 29 Enchufes, Liquidación Total and Ojo Atómico, among others, have carried out to see the internationalization that we have achieved, and that can only continue in our foreseeable, or already consummated, exiles.
I am not going to hide the bad taste in my mouth, because we will be another lost generation, and as I said a year ago, for me it is the last. My age, 45, and my aspirations push me to focus on more institutional projects, where I can have the resources that I have not had until now. We leave behind an excellent job that is already being forgotten. A week ago I heard a well-known art historian say that the political art scene in Madrid ended in 2001. Should I answer something? Explain at this point what is art and what is politics? Let them forget us! Madrid does not seem to need art, but public works, municipal police, and Olympics.
One of our failed objectives in this stage has been to achieve a legal framework to support creation in Madrid. In the frustrated Manifesto of the Artistic Agents of Madrid (www.ojoatomico.com/comunicados/documento4.html) we describe in detail the situation experienced by creators and independent managers in this city. The text was so accurate that a henchman of Carlos Baztán called me on my cell phone to ask me not to publish any more manifestos, if we wanted to maintain the “dialogue.” That was the day I personally decided to throw in the towel, and renounce an impossible “dialogue.” And as for the CAM, why talk about it; I, because of the quid pro quo, have put them on my blacklist. It is significant that only AVAM and the Unión wrote a text in support of our basic claim, a legal framework that regulates support for art with public money, and that neither ADACE nor the Council of Critics deigned to answer. Perhaps they thought that this is mixing art with politics, or, as a high-ranking official of the Matadero told me, that those of us who are outside the institutions have to “learn to conform.”
It is even more regrettable that today, as in 1991, when I opened my first exhibition hall, the only place in Madrid where an artist can go to start a coherent career is the international departures terminal of Barajas. But now the world is much smaller, and nothing can hide the ridiculousness of its cultural policies, the white nights, the slaughterhouses, the open Madriles, the tributes to the movida and so many art centers disoriented, without content and satiated with good parochial vibes.
We are closing, happy with how much we have been able to give, and how much we have received. Thanks to those who in one way or another have been with us and to the artists who selflessly have come from different parts of the world to collaborate with this project.
We will consummate the closure on Friday the 21st, starting at 8:00 p.m. We invite you to participate in an action with Javier Pérez Aranda, who will transform into a piece of furniture the well-known installation that has occupied the loft for the last few years, to then deposit it in the places indicated by the city council for this purpose, and taking advantage of the fact that the 21st is the day designated for this in Prosperidad. We will give away what we have left over, but there will be no bar, so whoever wants to can bring their own drink (well, we have a few boxes of tequila left). Warm clothing is recommended.
December 2007