Cadavre Exquis...a project of Gerard C. aka Vader

The project Cadavre Exquis – Dibuixa’t la ciutat – proposes an analysis and a later reflection about the contemporary city, by making available to the inhabitants – the real protagonists – a discussion framework about the City.

Given that is in the bars and restaurants where an environment prone to debate and discussion is created, the authors propose that the individual paper tablecloth commonly used there serve as a physical space to draw and therefore express different ideas about the city. By substituting the usual message “Have a good meal” (“Bon Profit”) that one can find in paper tablecloth, for the motto of the project “Dibuixa’t la Ciutat”, they pretend to build a scenario that allows the active participation of citizens, making them the main characters of it.

Each tablecloth becomes a cartography that is stored and exposed in an area of the CCB (Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona) within the framework of the Festival BAC’07 (International Festival of Contemporary Art in Barcelona), this year under the title “BacBabylon”. At the same time these tablecloth will be used in the lunch-debate to be held at the closure of BAC’07 in the CCCB, becoming both physical support and discussion framework to the festival participants.

In parallel, these cartographies have been digitally recorded and constitute a big cartography about the city which can be found on the website: www.cadavreexquis.net, in the form of a Cadavre Exquis, an instrument used by the surrealists from the twenties which allowed to participate individually in a group drawing, and therefore to show on the table the resulting total expression of the group of players. This technique enhances the friction between different opinions, and as a consequence becomes a generative instrument of new readings and situations.

In conclusion, the authors want to create a dense accumulation of different realities, a big New Babylon built, literally, with the people that live in the city.