In the last two decades, in the city of Barcelona, Spain, there has been a growing interpenetration between art practice and political activism. The MACBA, Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona, played a key role in promoting ‘direct action as one of the Fine Arts’. Rancière’s theories of the politics of aesthetics have been very influential at the MACBA. Describing different events of political conflict around the MACBA in the recent past, this article investigates the contradictions in the relation between art, activism and the politics of aesthetics in Barcelona, and advances a critique of the limits of Rancière’s notion of politics.
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