Insideout: jardí del cambalache

Insideout: jardí del cambalache was a project in progress launched in March 2000 which featured the intervention of Federico Guzmán as artist and Rosa Pera as curator. Insideout: jardí del cambalache was presented within the framework of the Barcelona Art Report 2001 triennial.

“We planted ourselves at the Fundació Antoni Tàpies, from where we want to amass a new collection at the rhythm of plants. The Mutant Collection, cumulative and recyclable, is the fruit of a free and open conversation between the museum and the street.

To cultivate the earth of the museum and distribute its gifts informally amongst citizens, the Fundació Terrace has been turned into a garden: a plot where economical plants grow, re-establishing the Community aspect and participatory use of this space, alluding to its memory.

Aromatic, edible, medicinal and industrial plants and other cultural productions are offered in exchange for whatever people wish to give. Taking non-monetary exchange as its method or procedure, this garden is proposed as a biological bartering between plants and citizens, a mental exchange between people through plants and a transfer of places through travel and thought.

The plot of Insideout: jardí del cambalache is its growth, as it enters and leaves the museum, becoming disseminated all over the building, infiltrating other territories and causing situations propitiating non-pecuniary bargaining. A constantly-changing story line whose principal actors are anyone who wishes to enjoy the uninterrupted dialogue between objects, drawings, plants, visitors and photocopies in an itinerant recreational space: return journeys stopping at all stations, from the museum’s portable garden to traditional fairs in the city, from the laboratory to the exhibition, from the workshop to debate, from play to reflection.”

Rosa Pera