Zaj: the Spanish "red avant-garde" - Revision history

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THIS ARTICLE IS UNDER CONSTRUCTION
zaj: the Spanish "red avant-garde"
Laura Pérez Gutiérrez.

In this article, we focus our attention on the activity of the [[zaj]] group, a symbol within the world of Spanish musical experimentation, active mainly between the sixties and seventies when Spain was under the control of General Francisco Franco’s regime.

As Henar Riviére correctly describes1, the zaj group presented itself to the public for the first time with an act of disappearance. It took place on 19th November 1964, at the height of the Franco dictatorship, and consisted of the "moving, on foot, of three objects of complex shape, made of poplar wood". The itinerary according to which this would take place was predetermined, and was carried out by the composers [[Juan Hidalgo]], [[Walter Marchetti]] and [[Ramón Barce]], the founders of the group. With this first action, the art of zaj merged with the life of the street and created a silent and backward-looking communication for all possible spectators, since the invitation to attend took place after its completion. Nobody was aware of being the audience, and no critics were present to judge it2. This became the group's biggest promotional tool, arousing the curiosity of all those who knew about it afterwards.3

Although its activity was not aimed at presenting an explicit political opposition, the environment in which it was realised was inevitably going to leave its mark. Under General Franco's military dictatorship, they not only ran the risk of being vetoed, but internally, the prevailing censorship had already conditioned their creative processes. A priori, it had already determined actions such as this first appearance, something that would continue to happen later in the consolidation of its programs, which were open until half an hour before their performances began4. The weapons and mechanisms of empowerment that they used would be indeterminacy and silence, which at first seemed to confuse and evade Franco's censorship and repression5.

Among themselves they did not seem to reach agreement on what zaj actually was: it was indefinable, and it was precisely the discursive ambiguity of the group that would translate into a reaction of bewilderment from the authorities, and lead to it being perceived as a threat. For Juan Hidalgo, "zaj is zaj because zaj is non-zaj"6, a definition to which we can add the critic José Luis Gallardo's perspective7:

''"By definition ZAJ is indefinable. […] ZAJ is not ZAJ since it starts from the principle of non-identity. […] Zaj does not exist. […] ZAJ also does not exist, since in order to deny it, it is necessary to have first affirmed it, something that we have not yet achieved.”''

To understand the group's activity and idiosyncrasy, we will refer to one of Juan Hidalgo's works, ''Zajografía'' (1975), which belongs to the ''Testimonios'' series as part of his photographic work.8,9 In it we find Hidalgo and Marchetti along with other characters, which are defined by the author as follows:

''"My father is John Cage, although I am called Hidalgo; Marcel Duchamp is my grandfather, although he is not called Cage; the family friend, Erik Satie, and the friend of friends, Buenaventura Durruti.10"''

As the main figures that condition this aesthetic-political discourse, and that lead zaj to practice musical anarchy and a political use of silence, we have to mention J. Cage and B. Durruti. John Cage, in his musical evolution, would find in silence an extra-discourse and, therefore, a strategy of counter-hegemonic resistance. In the midst of the repression, they would appropriate silence to express their opposition. In Cage's words: "silence in the face of antipathy is a positive thing.11" Once this concept was established, another of the most obvious political readings appears, hidden in this first tour that we were talking about, which was already singled out by the poet Ángel González García for its parallels with the tour that Buenaventura Durruti made in Madrid with his military convoy, before being assassinated on another 19th November, albeit twenty-eight years earlier12. This secular procession would be the first silent mechanism to mock the authority's control of the street and art.

Focusing on the origins and activity of zaj, we must look to Dadaist ideas, of which Duchamp was an exponent, and above all on the musical revolution that John Cage develops in the environment of the New York School for Social Research. Against this backdrop takes place an aesthetical change of direction, devaluing creative activity on the part of the artist and prioritising the joint experience with the audience over the result of a finished and tangible activity13. In a desire to unite art with life, turning it into an innocent and almost involuntary act, they try to strip away the mystical aura that characterises art whose ultimate purpose is its permanence and recognition in history. To this desire, the concept of chance understood as a structuring axis would be added, in this way understanding the consequent liberation from the hierarchy which until this point had been established via musical language and tonality. In summary, musical experimentation was to be marked by randomness and indeterminacy, giving greater importance to the performer and the spectator through action and participation in the moment14. Around these ideas, groups like Fluxus, an international movement, emerged in 1962, along with zaj in the Spanish context15. "Action art" developed from this point onward in Spain, which is based on the "intermediate art" defined by Dick Higgins and rejection of the sacralisation of the artistic object itself. Under this concept they developed all kinds of activities related to actionism: musical theatre, postal art, visual poetry, experimental music concerts and action photography. They display their art interacting within a conception of space and time as relative, and in which all objects, words, sounds and images communicate to create intermediate actions16. In this way their initial concept of music began to expand. Sound, as well as silence, cease to be concepts inherent in music itself, and this continues the process of finding new forms of expression. Taking Esther Ferrer's work as an example, we find the use of rhythm as the main structuring axis of her activity, in which repetitions of patterns, sound intervals or silence can be distinguished... In Duchamp's words: “sound also occupies space”17 - a statement that made us understand that music was no longer going to be strictly sonorous, but simply spatial as well, referring to movement.

Once the activity and conceptual challenges posed by the zaj artists are clear, we will take a specific case which provides an explicit example of their struggle in opposition, in the so-called "red avant-garde". It took place at the Pamplona Encounters held between 26th June and 3rd July 1972. Organized by the Alea Group under the patronage of the Huarte family, they established themselves as a meeting point between international avant-garde artists from different disciplines18. For a stage they made use of both the most important cultural centres and some of the streets to create a happening in which the entire city was involved19, a fact that also led to a series of unforeseen events: withdrawal of works, protests, communications, ETA attacks... It gave rise to the manifestation and clash of ideologies that coexisted in those last years of the dictatorship20, years that were marked by the 1966 Press Law, which did not promote a real opening up, and the 1969 State of Exception, via which controls became even tougher.

In this context, on June 28th, after the second bomb placed by ETA at the venue of these events and with much policing, zaj carried out its activity. Among other events, they carried out a musical-political performance in which, in the dark, by the light of a funeral candle, they played six superimposed tracks on a tape recorder with the interference that accompanied Radio Nacional de España on the Radio España Independiente broadcast, aired by Spanish exiles on the other side of the Pyrenees21. The public responded with cries of "freedom", because as Esther says:

''“In the context of those years, in Spain everything was political. […] an act that in itself was not explicitly political became a political act because the environment itself was political.”''22

The act ended with the audience being evicted by the police, along with the suspension of the public tribute that had been planned for John Cage at the end of his concert23. All zaj cultural action had been under political scrutiny since its inception, they could not escape harassment and repeated vetoes, their concerts ended in scandal and as early as 1967 the Minister of the Interior banned their show for "promoting anarchy"24. Events like these would lead to an increase in the number of artists exiled during the Francoist repression, and zaj would end up joining this unfortunate flight.

In the words of Juan Hidalgo, which he dedicated to his artistic partner and friend Dick Higgins in June '72:
''“Next July I am going to Milan and I will be there for about a month, we are trying to return to live in Italy again. Maybe in a year we will already be living there. It's too boring here."25''

However, this boring panorama that Hidalgo describes would not end the group's activity, because their lives were precisely this, their artistic actions. In the following decades, they would recreate zaj in places far from the dictatorship, without which, however, its story would no longer be as transcendent and significant as the one we are currently examining. They continued with their activity until 1996, although this was increasingly dispersed, as they focused in parallel on their respective individual careers.

The end of the zaj period, paradoxically, would be announced in the form of an exhibition in one of the great national institutions dedicated to the field of art, the Reina Sofía Museum, because, although it was never their intention to become part of the mainstream art market, from the eighties they would begin to be recognised in Spanish contemporary and past conceptual art in this way. As Jorge Alemán and Sergio Larriera express26, the fetishism that was beginning to grow up around these contemporary practices, together with the desire to bring them into the museum arena, would give rise to public recognition of zaj, which was already underway with its privileged participation in the ''Out of Format'' exhibition, held at the Villa de Madrid Cultural Centre in 1983.

zaj began to be identified as a developing force in Spanish conceptual art and, above all, to become part of an order and seriousness that did not respond to chance, fashion or spontaneity27, but rather to a long and premeditated knowledge of aesthetic and musical development. There is no doubt that they anticipated a shift in thinking within one of the most complicated settings for its development, motive for which today we hold it up as a singular political, social and artistic phenomenon.

== Notes ==
# RIVIÈRE Henar. “La escritura performativa del grupo zaj: arte postal, libros de artista, etcéteras” in Hispanic Issues On Line, nº 21, Fall 2018, p. 137.
# RIVIÈRE, Henar. “Papeles para la historia de Fluxus y Zaj: entre el documento y la práctica artística” in Anales de Historia del Arte, 2011, Volumen Extraordinario, p. 428.
# The remaining testimonies of this are the photographs taken by the artists or their companions, an image that was filed in the Conz Archive Collection.
# PÉREZ, Julio. Juan Hidalgo: Poética/Política de la Indeterminación [Doctoral thesis], Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Madrid, 2017, p. 106.
# RIVIÈRE, Henar. “La escritura performativa del grupo zaj: arte postal, libros de artista, etcéteras” in Hispanic Issues On Line, nº 21, Fall 2018, pp. 136-168.
# PÉREZ, Julio. Juan Hidalgo y Zaj : arte subversivo durante el franquismo (etcétera), Madrid: Huerga y Fierro, 2018, p. 17.
# Ibid, p. 19.
# PÉREZ, Julio. Juan Hidalgo: Poética/Política de la Indeterminación [Doctoral thesis], Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Madrid, 2017, pp.197-198.
# These are six black and white photographs on aluminium made by Roberto Massoti, in which the visual justification of this speech is captured.
# MARTÍN, C. “Juan Hidalgo: “Un concierto zaj es una teatralización de la vida cotidiana” in El
# País, 27 June 1981 in PÉREZ, Julio. Juan Hidalgo: Poética/Política de la Indeterminación [Tesis doctoral], Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Madrid, 2017, p. 197.
# PÉREZ, JULIO. Juan Hidalgo: Poética/Política de la Indeterminación [Doctoral thesis], Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Madrid, 2017, p. 239.
# FIGAREDO, Rubén. “A zaj lo que es de zaj” en Zaj. Colección Archivo Conz, exhibition catalogue, Madrid, CBA, 2009, p. 15.
# FIGAREDO, Rubén. “Zaj un código para los descaminados” in Experimental. I. estudios, extraordinary number (March, 2014), pp. 464.
# RODRÍGUEZ, Rosa. “La creación Zaj de Ramón Barce formulada desde la Memoria1 (1ª parte)” in Itamar, Nº 2, Year 2009, p.245-248.
# BELLIDO, Mª Luisa. “La identidad de la obra de arte electrónica” en Identidades culturales: actas del Congreso Internacional Identidades Culturales, Córdoba, October 1999, pp. 287-298.
# GARCÍA DE MESA, “El arte de la acción en los etcéteras de Juan Hidalgo”, in the Archivo Virtual de las Artes Escénicas, Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, 10 November, 2009, p. 68.
# DELGADO, Itxaro. “Estrategias sonoras y musicales en la obra de Esther Ferrer. Introducción a Elementos y Estructuras Sonoras” in Ondare, nº 26, 2008, p. 407.
# GARCÍA, Marta. “Pamplona otra: El escenario de los encuentros” in Ciudades paralelas, Editorial Universidad de Sevilla, 2016, pp. 70-72.
# ZUBIAUR, F. Javier. “Los Encuentros de Pamplona 1972. Contribución del Grupo Alea y la Familia Huarte a un acontecimiento singular” in Anales de Historia del Arte, 14, 2004, p. 252.
# DÍAZ CUYÁS, Juan (commissioner). Encuentros de Pamplona 72. Fin de fiesta del arte experimental
# PÉREZ, Julio. Juan Hidalgo: Poética/Política de la Indeterminación [Doctoral thesis], Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Madrid, 2017, p. 331.

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
-[[File:Concierto zaj en nueva york small.jpg|thumb|zaj concert in New York (March 27th 1973). Photo from Ruben Figaredo's site (rubenfigaredo.com)]]THIS ARTICLE IS UNDER CONSTRUCTION
+[[File:Concierto zaj en nueva york small.jpg|thumb|zaj concert in New York (March 27th 1973). Photo from Ruben Figaredo's site (rubenfigaredo.com)]]
 zaj: the Spanish "red avant-garde"
-Laura Pérez Gutiérrez.
+'''zaj: the Spanish "red avant-garde" by Laura Pérez Gutiérrez.'''
 In this article, we focus our attention on the activity of the [[zaj]] group, a symbol within the world of Spanish musical experimentation, active mainly between the sixties and seventies when Spain was under the control of General Francisco Franco’s regime.
-As Henar Riviére correctly describes<sup>1</sup>, the zaj group presented itself to the public for the first time with an act of disappearance. It took place on 19th November 1964, at the height of the Franco dictatorship, and consisted of the "moving, on foot, of three objects of complex shape, made of poplar wood". The itinerary according to which this would take place was predetermined, and was carried out by the composers [[Juan Hidalgo]], [[Walter Marchetti]] and [[Ramón Barce]], the founders of the group. With this first action, the art of zaj merged with the life of the street and created a silent and backward-looking communication for all possible spectators, since the invitation to attend took place after its completion. Nobody was aware of being the audience, and no critics were present to judge it<sup>2</sup>. This became the group's biggest promotional tool, arousing the curiosity of all those who knew about it afterwards.<sup>3</sup>
+As Henar Riviére correctly describes<sup>1</sup>, the zaj group presented itself to the public for the first time with an act of disappearance. It took place on 19th November 1964, at the height of the Franco dictatorship, and consisted of the "moving, on foot, of three objects of complex shape, made of poplar wood". The itinerary according to which this would take place was predetermined, and was carried out by the composers [[Juan Hidalgo]], Walter Marchetti and [[Ramón Barce]], the founders of the group. With this first action, the art of zaj merged with the life of the street and created a silent and backward-looking communication for all possible spectators, since the invitation to attend took place after its completion. Nobody was aware of being the audience, and no critics were present to judge it<sup>2</sup>. This became the group's biggest promotional tool, arousing the curiosity of all those who knew about it afterwards.<sup>3</sup>
 Although its activity was not aimed at presenting an explicit political opposition, the environment in which it was realised was inevitably going to leave its mark. Under General Franco's military dictatorship, they not only ran the risk of being vetoed, but internally, the prevailing censorship had already conditioned their creative processes. A priori, it had already determined actions such as this first appearance, something that would continue to happen later in the consolidation of its programs, which were open until half an hour before their performances began<sup>4</sup>. The weapons and mechanisms of empowerment that they used would be indeterminacy and silence, which at first seemed to confuse and evade Franco's censorship and repression<sup>5</sup>.

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	# DÍAZ CUYÁS, Juan (commissioner). Encuentros de Pamplona 72. Fin de fiesta del arte experimental		# DÍAZ CUYÁS, Juan (commissioner). Encuentros de Pamplona 72. Fin de fiesta del arte experimental
	# PÉREZ, Julio. Juan Hidalgo: Poética/Política de la Indeterminación [Doctoral thesis], Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Madrid, 2017, p. 331.		# PÉREZ, Julio. Juan Hidalgo: Poética/Política de la Indeterminación [Doctoral thesis], Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Madrid, 2017, p. 331.
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		+	[[Category: Spanish Content]]