‘Cómo imaginar una musea?’ began as a collaborative project and un programa pública experimental taking place en several momentos during November 2017 in espacios diferentes across Barcelona, Spain, siguiendo una logica anti-institucional. Este proyecto quiere imaginar una institución museística como una institución femenina, basada en multiple ejes: hospitality, care, collaboration, embodied knowledges, practice, friendship, economics, and administration. Esta posibilidadde ficción will help us to feel and think different ways to work and move in cultural institutions.

In Barcelona, la musea was developed in a mix of English, Spanish and Catalan and embodied by Adrian Schindler, Andrea Rodriguez Novoa, astrology, Ariadna Guiteras, Ariadna Rodriguez, BAR project, Bloodroot Collective, cashew nut butter, Caterina Almirall, Celine Condorelli, Cinenova, circlusion, Encarna’s recipe, espresso martinis, Eulàlia Rovira, Eva Rowson, fermented ginger beer, Fundació Tàpies, gomashio, Iñaki Alvarez, Juan Canela, Jordi Ferreiro, kimchi, Lara Garcia Diaz, Linda Valdés, Maria Sellarès Pérez, nyamnyam, one oven, Pou de la Figuera, Priscila Clementti, Sara Agudo Millan, ‘School Without End’, seven carpets,
Simon Asencio, six lamps, Sonia Fernández Pan, three heaters, Ursula K. Le Guin, Veronica Valentini,
Virginia Woolf, Yvonne Carmichael, and many, many more.

Virginia Woolf, Professions for Women, 1931.
Quoted in Céline Condorelli, The Company She Keeps, 2014.

La musea occurs in many spaces and through many bodies
- and includes the sink and the oven among her fundamental tools.

“Tienes un cuarto propio, en tu casa, hasta ahora exclusivamente owned by men. You are able, pero con mucho trabajo y esfuerzo para poder pagar el alquiler, but this freedom is only beginning; the room is your own, but it is still there – necesita ser amueblada, it has to be decorated, necessita ser compartida.

How are you going to furnish it? How are you going to decorate it?

Con quien la vas a compartir and upon what terms?”

An introduction to fermentación and ‘The Second Seasonal Political Palette’, un libro de cocina and document of the Bloodroot Collective, a self-sustaining feminist restaurant (1970-present, USA). Together we fermented (kimchee, chilli greens, cashew cream), cooked the five different parts of the Bloodroot Collective's recipe for Native American Wild Rice dinner, made gomahsio for everyone to take home, and read para compartir prácticas y estrategias for keeping the collectivity, energies and economics in our work going.

We created an open library for la musea, with readings / texts / images / references we'd shared and collected between us - to make it available for others to contribute to and take from it.

“You have one room in your house exclusively owned by men. The room is your own: How are you going to furnish it? How are you going to decorate it? With whom are you going to share it and upon what terms?” – Virginia Woolf, ‘Professions for Women’ (1931), quoted in Céline Condorelli, ‘The Company She Keeps’ (2014).

Gathering references from Céline Condorelli, Virginia Woolf, Ursula K. Le Guin, astrology, fermentation, and the staff of the Fundacio Tapies in a collective imagining of how la musea moves, feels, sounds - inside il museo.

/// how does she move?
Borrowing items of furniture from 'backstage' in the museum - a sofa from the Director's office, crockery and glasses from the kitchen, yoga mats from a previous project from the store cupboard - we invited everyone coming to also bring something with them to set the space, and the terms, of la musea at the beginning of the event.

Then, once we were settled in la musea, we all shared and ate the ferments made at la musea’s previous event at espai nyamnyam.

/// how does she feel?
La musea moves between different horoscopes, depending on when she appears. Aquesta nit la musea is sagittarius.









/// how does she sound?
"Though we have elaborate languages for what we don’t want, echamosde menos un lenguaje rico para con lo que queremos. The political vocabulary for what we want - justice, peace, equality, freedom, happiness - is often too abstract or embarrassing to intelligent people, who seem to find them too ‘simplistic’...Of course what we want is not just a language, but a whole way of being, a way of life. This requires a certain standpoint: it is about being or becoming ‘no disponibles para la servidumbre, back straight with conviction". - and saying it loudly. (Avery Gordon in 'The Company She Keeps' by Celine Condorelli, 2014.

Together, using the method of an 'exquisite corpse' game, we wrote a spell for la musea - answering to 'WHAT DOES LA MUSEA HAVE TO SAY?' - and then altogether whispered each of our spells into the museo.

In this space, which is still forming, we discussed the structures we have the possibility to build, the hospitality we want to practice – and how to shake an espresso martini.

/// Patatas d'Encarna
The evening began by putting the oven in the middle of the room, and with cooking and serving of 'Patatas d'Encarna' - a recipe passed on by Encarna, a local resident, one evening when she came across a gathering at the space in summer 2017.

/// ‘Scuola senza fine (school without end)' by Adriana Monti (1983)
After eating, we arranged the chairs (and the heaters) to watch ‘Scuola senza fine (school without end)' by Adriana Monti (1983), which documents the 150 Hours Courses – an educational experiment in Italy in the 1970s. The courses were not intended to improve productivity at work, but to allow for personal and collective growth. For the women attending, the course also provided an important ‘room of their own’ in which to share their experiences with work, emigration and discrimination.






/// Espresso martinis
We finished by shaking espresso martinis with Yvonne Carmichael who co-founded Bare Plume, a DIY ethical vegan and cocktail bar.

Esta programme was organizada by BAR resident Eva Rowson, developed through exchanges with BAR project during her residency September – November 2017 and within BAR project’s philosophy and curatorial practice of using hospitality as its working method. It is written in ‘Spanglish’ as it has been developed in conversation and collaboration with Adrian Schindler, Ariadna Guiteras, Ariadna Rodriguez, Caterina Almirall, Eulàlia Rovira, Jordi Ferreiro, Priscila Clementti, Simon Asencio, and Sonia Fernández Pan. It is shaped through Eva’s encounters with many others who have swapped books, shared texts and recipes, opened their homes, cooked, been cooked for, listened, talked and danced during her time in Barcelona: Alba Vilamala, Anna Irina Russell, Adriano Wilfert Jensen, Ainara Elgoibar, Andrea Francke, Andrea Rodriguez Novoa, Ángela Palacios, Ania Nowak, Anna Pahissa, Anne Szefer Karlsen, Antoni Hervàs, Beatriz Cavia Pardo, Bethany Rowson, Claudia Pagès Rabal, Danielle Burrows, David Ortiz Juan, Elida Hoeg, Gianmaria Andreetta, Holly Willats, Hugo Hemmi, Iñaki Alvarez, Isabel de Naverán, Jonathan Hoskins, Juan Canela, Lara Garcia Diaz, Leire Vergara, Linda Valdés, Louise Shelley, Lucy Joyce, Luke Drozd, Marc Navarro, Maria Acaso, Marlene Bonnesen, Michael Lawton, Miren Jaio, Núria Solé Bardalet, Pippa Rowson, Quim Packard, Quim Pujol, Rosanna del Solar, Ross Jardine, Sara Agudo, Sinéad Spelman, Susannah Worth, Usue Arrieta, Veronica Valentini, William Luz, Yvonne Carmichael. Thank you to The Showroom, London, and to Luke Drozd for making it possible for Eva to be in Barcelona.

With thanks to Andrea Francke and Kim Dhillon, and to Bloodroot Collective, for sharing ‘The Second Seasonal Political Palette’.