Collectivism after Modernism - autonomous learning - Blogs

286 Brian Holmes
which has spread to become an international network—associates an omnipresent
fashion brand, Mango, with a Spanish slang expression meaning “I
shoplift” (the British translation is “Just nick it”). Performances involved
stealing clothing items and putting them on display in museums; and these
evolved, in a very interesting way, to the practice of “Yo Mango dinners,”
where participants used specially outWtted clothing to lift generous collective
meals from participating supermarket chains. The aggressivity toward
any kind of integration to corporate-backed cultural institutions is obvious.
Another ephemeral collective, known as “Mapas,” took aim at the
2004 “Universal Forum of Cultures” in Barcelona, a corporate-sponsored
municipal extravaganza of debate and multicultural entertainment, widely
perceived by locals as a manipulation of the Social Forum movement for the
ends of political consensus-building, real-estate speculation, and boosterism
of the tourist economy. 29 For this campaign a map of the city was made, showing
the sponsorship links between the Forum and temporary employment
services, consumer-product distributors, arms dealers, polluting industries,
FIGURE 10.5. Yomango Tango, Barcelona, December 2002. The group stages a performance in
a grocery store, dancing tango with a mobile sound system, and stealing bottles of champagne. The
next day they brought their “booty” into the branch of a bank commonly believed to be part of the
Spanish neoliberal “invasion” of Argentina. The action took place one year after the meltdown of
the Argentinean economy. Image courtesy of Yomango, 2004, http://www.yomango.net. Creative
Commons License.