Perejaume. Installation

To mark its 90th anniversary, the Catalan PEN, together with La Virreina Centre de la Imatge, the MACBA and the CCCB, is promoting an installation by Perejaume entitled Allò que devem estar dibuixant amb les nostres formes de viure (What we should be drawing with our ways of life). From 7 June to 31 August, this phrase will be it up every evening in Barcelona’s Carrer del Carme, between La Rambla and Carrer de Jerusalem. This work is installed in public space as a tribute to linguistic rights and freedom of expression.

Allò que devem estar dibuixant amb les nostres formes de viure was originally installed in Baixada de la Misericòrdia, in the old town of Tarragona, in 2000. The piece comes into its own in the evenings when the street lighting comes on and divides the phrase into four fragments that protract its reading. As pedestrians move along the pavement, they are gradually incorporated into the work as they make their way along the street. The phrase alludes to a drawing that escapes the author’s control, giving way to an unconsciously, collectively produced form. The work does not impose a particular reading and accepts as many interpretations as may be offered. On this occasion, though, installed in Carrer del Carme, its open, polysemic meaning pays homage to imprisoned writers and the defence of linguistic rights. Allò que devem estar dibuixant amb les nostres formes de viure is a call to resistance to any attempts to appropriate the collective or the individual will.