Juan Pablo Macías’s work is characterised by an engagement with anarchism as a global human and planetary concern. He combines European anarchism with indigenous critique, hegemony with insurrectionary knowledge, agrarian disobedience with ritualism and soundscapes.
The exhibition presents, for the first time, all previous issues of the magazine TIEMPO MUERTO (Dead Time) with accompanying videos. Published since 2012 by Juan Pablo Macías, TIEMPO MUERTO is dedicated to the exploration of anarchist practice. In the context of art, it embodies a critique of representation and is central to his practice, which also extends to other grammars.
In 2009, Juan Pablo Macías came across the Biblioteca Social Reconstruir (BSR) in Mexico City. This anarchist library, founded in 1978 by Catalan refugee Ricardo Mestre, had been evicted and confiscated for rent arrears. In 2010, Macías organised a meeting at the social centre of the Frente Auténtico del Trabajo (FAT) entitled “The Anarchist Movement in Mexico, public and private documentary records”. The transcript of the various contributions was published in TIEMPO MUERTO #0 (2012). After another issue dedicated to Ricardo Mestre and the anarchist library as a tool, TIEMPO MUERTO became a platform to reflect on different topics from an anarchist point of view: from private property to land, from culture to nature, from agriculture to banks, from seeds to historical texts, from the encounter between the maize people (pre-Hispanic cultures) to European anarchists. The latest issue of TIEMPO MUERTO #7 is published on the occasion of the exhibition in Berlin. Produced in Bulgaria between 2018 and 2024, it brings together a selection of texts on the relationship between anarchism and paganism, specifically the Thracian god Sabazios/Dionysius. The design of TIEMPO MUERTO is realised in collaboration with Brice Delarue / Zirkumflex.
Juan Pablo Macías was born in 1974 in Puebla, Mexico, and lives in Livorno, Italy. In addition to his work as editor of TIEMPO MUERTO, he runs the publishing house WORD+MOIST PRESS, the usury-free seed bank BAS (Banca Autonoma di Sementi Libere da Usura) in Abruzzo and initiated the International Society of Proudhonian Studies. In Livorno he runs the Carico Massimo association and, for the last two years, together with Alessandra Poggianti, the MG 48° 50° latitudine arte contemporanea foundation. His editorial projects, poems, installations, performances, videos, texts and photographs have recently been exhibited at the Institute of Contemporary Art ICA-Sofia (2024), the Centre Pompidou (2023), the Guilmi Art Project, Guilmi / Abruzzo (2023), the Sculpture Institute of the University of Applied Arts, Vienna (2021), at the Yinchuan Biennale (2018) and as part of a collaboration between Villa Romana and the Thread Residency of the Josef & Anni Albers Foundation in Tambacunda / Senegal as well as in Florence and Berlin (2018-2020).
With the support of the Mexican Cultural Institute in Germany (KIM).
Curated by: Angelika Stepken
Curatorial assistance: Diana Nowak
