Il·lusionisme. Trinomis de la forma

A screening of three videos (40 min) in the presence of Núria Güell, followed by a conversation and an open discussion on language as a technology of power, institutional critique, and lines of flight in thought.

Il·lusionisme. Trinomis de la forma presents two historical works from the OVNI Archive alongside a contemporary piece, inviting a dialogue between them. This three-way relationship acts as a point of recontextualisation and reconsideration: recovering meanings preserved in one of the project’s archives, bringing them into the present and opening them up to new interpretations, while also stimulating the OVNI’s current production and reinforcing its identity as an author-driven project.

There are forms of power that do not need to impose themselves through force. They operate through words, shared narratives and the frameworks that determine what is visible and what remains outside the frame. Language does not simply describe the world: it distributes it, classifies it and organises it. Every discourse draws a line between what can be said and what cannot. Language thus emerges not as a simple vehicle of communication, but as a technology of governance.

The voices brought together in this session delve into this very space. They do not seek to reveal a hidden truth behind discourse, but rather to expose the mechanisms that sustain it. When institutions speak, they do more than explain who they are. They also imagine who they would like to be. Between the ideals they proclaim and their actual practices, a gap often opens up that is difficult to inhabit. It is within this space of contradiction that the ghosts of every institutional structure emerge: its promises, its omissions and its mechanisms of legitimation.

Here, questioning becomes an act of displacement, a gesture that interrupts the established order of language and opens up the possibility of thinking differently. Perhaps language is not where meaning comes to rest, but a device that fixes it, if only provisionally.

There is always a gap. A line of flight.

Where meaning ceases to circulate as order and becomes pure movement.

Movement without purpose, without predetermined form, without end.

Not outside the system, but an intensification that exceeds it.

Pure velocity.

Pure potential.

Gilles Deleuze à Vincennes, Anónimo en la Red, France, Italy, 1975, 14 min
“Language is a specific form of expression whose function is to convey instructions to society. At school, language is placed in the child’s mouth just as a pickaxe is placed in the hands of a labourer. When the teacher gathers the children together, it is not to inform them about the alphabet, but to teach them a system of orders. And when she asks a child what two plus two equals, she is not asking for information; she is giving an order.”

Joguines per gossos #2, Núria Güell, Spain, 2026, 21 min
What role do ideals and their ghosts play in the divide between words and deeds? In terms of transformation, is it not more effective to attend to reality and its shortcomings than to ignore it through idealistic fantasies or stereotypical utopias? Might institutions, too, be narcissistic?

The Yodelling Lesson, Vanessa Renwick, United States, 1998, 3 min
Moe Bowstern, editor of the fanzine Xtra Tuf, launches herself down the hill on Mississippi Avenue in Portland.

No hands! No brakes! No clothes!

Activity curated by OVNI (Observatori de Vídeo No Identificat)
With the participation of Núria Güell
 

Núria Güell (Vidreres, 1981) graduated in Fine Arts from the University of Barcelona, specialising in sculpture, before continuing her studies at the Cátedra Arte de Conducta in Havana, Cuba. Her artistic practice is characterised by confrontation with accepted truths and moral conventions. She believes her work to be socially and politically necessary, insofar as it puts cultural norms and established structures into question.

@nuria_guell_
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