Reproduction of the work
© Ira Kneeland / Juan Pablo Macías

Juan Pablo Macías – TIEMPO MUERTO

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, which is published in conjunction with the exhibition in Berlin in Bulgarian, English, and German, brings together a selection of texts on the relationship between anarchism and paganism, specifically regarding the Thracian god Sabazios/Dionysius. The design of TIEMPO MUERTO is realized 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 shown 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).

Assistant Curator: Diana Nowak

Curated by Angelika Stepken

Participating artists

A man and a woman stand close to each other in front of the exhibition wall text Two men and a woman are looking at the magazine TIEMPO MUERTO (Dead Time), which is tied around a stick on the wall for viewing. Two of the people open the pages of the magazine Two people in the exhibition room. A woman is flipping through the magazine TIEMPO MUERTO (Dead Time), which is mounted on the wall for viewing. A man stands in front of an excerpt from the magazine, which is attached to the wall as a single sheet Gallery director Yolanda Kaddu-Mulindwa stands in an alcove with a window and speaks into a microphone. A man and two women are standing in front of her, all looking towards her Magazine TIEMPO MUERTO (Dead Time) tied around a stick and attached to the wall for viewing A few copies of the magazine TIEMPO MUERTO (Dead Time) are lying on a bench for viewers to look at Small photographs printed in a grid on dark pages. The sheets are attached around a stick and mounted on the wall for viewing Detail from a double-page spread from the magazine TIEMPO MUERTO (Dead Time). Close-up of a stitch-like text written by hand Magazine TIEMPO MUERTO (Dead Time) tied around a stick and attached to the wall for viewing. A large part of the wall is depicted with a shadow in the form of an arched window A man flips through the magazine TIEMPO MUERTO (Dead Time), which is mounted on the wall for viewing. He is pictured from behind Exhibition room with screens on the floor. A woman is looking at two screens close together in front of her. In the background, a man is looking at a work on the wall Two screens lying close to each other on the floor. The top screen shows a male face, the bottom screen shows sticks piled on top of each other View of the gallery space. Several screens are spread out on the floor. Copies of the magazine TIEMPO MUERTO (Dead Time) are attached to the walls