BANCO (Bench / Bank)
2006
Video
The marketing campaign that Spanish savings banks had in the eighties was giving away benches. I don't know if their intention was to be ironic with the word’s double meaning (“banco” in Spanish means both bank and bench). Be that as it may, these benches were placed in squares and parks for the rest of their citizens. The bench (hence the bank) became everyone's object, creating a common place. In the video that Asunción Molinos presents, a child plays with the advertising printed on the bench: Caja de Ahorros del Círculo Católico (“Savings Bank of the Catholic Circle”). The child says the phrase out loud and then repeats it several times but deleting one by one a letter from the first to the last. In the process of the game the child reaches the expected: culo católico (Catholic ass). For a child, this moment is unbeatable, for adults who watch the video, tenderness invades us.
The thing is that the video is biographical, this game was created by the artist to fight boredom. Her accomplice, a friend whom to share the laughter that is hidden from adults. But in the video, the boy is alone, so the only accomplice is the viewer.
In the video, in addition to the game that turns us into accomplices, in the image we can see signs of other times: the town’s youngsters scratch with their keys on the bench the names of the music bands with which they identify. With a close look, one can find references to Iron Maiden, Metallica or AC / DC. It is a record of those people living in that specific town. It does not belong to the official story, it is an intimate story, which only art could deal with.
This artwork, just as the general work of Asunción Molinos, could be framed within the folkloric, insofar as it refers to the identity of a people. In this manner, we could highlight the work of Pilar Albarracín in the visual arts, or the work of Pedro Almodóvar in cinema. However, the differences are abysmal: Pilar Albarracín employs symbols from the most basic Spanish inventory: the bull, the moles or the dancer. The reading of her work is quick and clear: she criticizes the values of the Spanish identity through very obvious signs. She uses folklore to engage in a critique of society.
Almodóvar takes as point of departure the exaggeration of the folkloric model to claim a way of being. Almodóvar's typical characters are under the concept that Susan Sontag developed in her essay Notes on “Camp”, when she says: “Camp sees everything in quotation marks. It's not a lamp, but a "lamp"; not a woman, but a "woman”. To perceive Camp in objects and persons is to understand Being-as-Playing-a-Role. It is the farthest extension, in sensibility, of the metaphor of life as theater.”
The work of Asunción Molinos moves away from these parameters of Spanish folklore to work on intimate issues, taking advantage of the chance of a town being born (with all that this entails) to assume an identity.
Text by Montaña de la Horra
