Kike España

Day 3: Learning from the Community: Collective Actions in the Face of Emergency

Perspective 10 - 13 November 2022.

Abstract

Specters of Picasso

The city of Malaga has been turned into a museum theme park through a spectacular appropriation of Picasso.

Picasso was always here. That is the tourist obsession with the genius essence of Málaga. The existential reason for the museum's strategy to attract sun and beach tourists to the capital. Picasso is the essence of Malaga, that is why you should come to visit it. Malagueñization of Picasso and Picassization of Malaga. Picasso spectacle.

But Picasso was never here, only his specters. The spectral is not present as such, neither in soul nor in body, it is an invisible presence. The specters are in the practices that haunt the city, that fantasize beneath and beyond the city, that multiply the presence of the city. Because the only possible relationship with the specters is haunting.

The spectacle about Picasso only allows the commodification of the city. Only by paying attention to the specters of Picasso haunting Málaga can one appreciate the need for ghosts, the disjunction of time, the derangement of identity, the furtive and ungraspable visibility of the Invisible.

And for that museums must not be the touristic hosts but learn to live with ghosts.

Biography

Kike España participates in the social and cultural center La Casa Invisible as activist and researcher, is one of the editors of the publishing house Subtextos, and is part of the collective bookshop Suburbia in Málaga. He trained as an architect and has a PhD in urban theory from the University of Seville. He collaborates in the Overtourist City research project of the School of Architecture of the University of Málaga. His more recent publications include the book Die sanfte Stadt (2021, Transversal Texts), the articles “La ciudad contra el Estado” (2020, Scienze Del Territorio) and “Städte zu verkaufen: Prozesse der Enteignung und Praktiken der Wiederaneignung in Spanien” (2019, sub\urban) and the book chapter “The City of Attractions” (2019, MNCA Reina Sofía).