ABSTRACT
The exhibition Before and After the Enthusiasm. 1972–1992 took place at the Kunst-Rai 89 art fair in Amsterdam and was curated by Jose Luis Brea in 1989. In order to construct and disseminate a successful dissident narrative a different set of practices beyond that of the exhibition space and its catalogues had to be developed. It was precisely the question of the institution’s role in this operation that was at the forefront of Desacuerdos since its inception in 2003. Desacuerdos was an interinstitutional research project featuring exhibitions, seminars, publications, and a web-based archive seeking to explore the connections between artistic practices and the public sphere since the late 1960s. Desacuerdos was conceived to critically intervene in the present through a plural research on dissident contemporary art in Spain. The global and local political circumstances in which institutions sponsoring the project were embedded were also at stake.
