Jordi Hereu / Jordi Martí 42Prologue Iván <strong>de</strong> <strong>la</strong> Nuez 43Presentation Lucio Ca<strong>net</strong>ti 44Introduction Jorge Luis Marzo & Arturo “Fito” Rodríguez 46English versionCampaign Diary Roberto Alfa Commentaries J. L. Marzo & A.F. Rodríguez10 days from the start of the campaign 47 Commentaries9 days to go 48 Sud<strong>de</strong>n split with political audiovisual work8 days to go 50 Inter<strong>net</strong>, ads and politics6 days to go 51 On campaign <strong>la</strong>nguage as a <strong>de</strong>ep b<strong>la</strong>ck hole5 days to go 52 Slogan and adhesive ability3 days to go 53 Slogan and adhesive ability (part 2)2 days to go 54 Dry or non-productive cough/political coughDay 0 Images which cover up imagesDay 1 55 <strong>El</strong>ectoral campaignsDay 2 56 The gasping of political marketingDay 3 57 Charisma, lea<strong>de</strong>rship and natural selectionDay 4 58 CurriculumDay 5 59 The campaign as ritual circus and disorientation strategyDay 6 61 The framework of i<strong>de</strong>as is more important than the adDay 7 63 Television <strong>de</strong>bates and dropping a biroDay 8 65 TV <strong>de</strong>batesDay 9 66 Politicians/actorsDay 10 67 By <strong>la</strong>nd, sea and airDay 11 68 SubtitlesDay 12 69 TV and political marketingDay 13 70Day 14 72Day 15 72 RumourDay 16 73 A well-aimed insert in mass culture<strong>El</strong>ection day 74 The victory machine: consultancy as one of the fine artsThe day after 75Acknowledgements 76DVD content 79
ELECTION ADS: OR HELL IS OTHER PEOPLE<strong>El</strong>ections are the festival of <strong>de</strong>mocracy. Communication and politics come together in election campaigns and especiallyin election ads. This is a contemporary phenomenon which has been valued for its communicative and visualdimension since the theoretical universalization of <strong>de</strong>mocracy after the historical watershed of 1989.Often the real work of <strong>de</strong>mocracy is characterised by its everyday discretion and simplicity rather than by uniqueand exceptional gestures. By contrast an election ad is a visual and i<strong>de</strong>ological reference in which disp<strong>la</strong>y sharesground with <strong>de</strong>mocracy. In this respect it is extremely positive that the Virreina-Centre <strong>de</strong> <strong>la</strong> Imatge should be<strong>de</strong>aling with the intersection of these two aspects of social life.The various sections of the <strong>El</strong>ection ads. The spectacle of <strong>de</strong>mocracy exhibition clearly show the complexity ofpolitics and help visitors to un<strong>de</strong>rstand the functioning of a system which, as Winston Churchill once put it, “is theworst form of government except all the others that have been tried”.Jordi HereuMayor of BarcelonaWar is a continuation of politics by other means. That is what C<strong>la</strong>usewitz thought. And that is the way things undoubtedlywent in his time. Nowadays, however, politics is the means. Never an end, but instead the right channelfor achieving everything else: from an economic position to an artistic strategy. Some of this mutation may help usto un<strong>de</strong>rstand election ads; that fable of images which seeks the infantilization and the moral of civic life at thesame time. The most evi<strong>de</strong>nt of the narrative types in which we can read politics today.Ads are nowadays part of the visual arts. In some way they mean the same for <strong>de</strong>mocracy as social painting did forSoviet realism or Leni Riefenstahl’s films did for fascism: a visual and acritical way of extolling it. Not because an adcannot contain a criticism, but rather because this is always addressed to other people. It is an art, in short, whichonly shows the chaos elsewhere, wrapped as it is in the old conso<strong>la</strong>tion of Sartre: hell is other people.Some of these i<strong>de</strong>as obsessed Roberto Alfa, an author who I first read when I was starting out as an essayist inCuba and who I have now come across again thanks to Fito Rodríguez and Jorge Luis Marzo in this exhibition whichthey have put on for La Virreina-Centre <strong>de</strong> <strong>la</strong> Imatge. When Alfa ma<strong>de</strong> his appearance on the theoretical stage,Latin American thought was struggling with postmo<strong>de</strong>rnism and was making an effort, very fruitful in some cases,to rethink its tradition. Out of this <strong>de</strong>bate came some extremely important essays, such as those written by RogerBartra in Mexico (La jau<strong>la</strong> <strong>de</strong> <strong>la</strong> me<strong>la</strong>ncolía), Antonio Benítez Rojo in the Caribbean (La is<strong>la</strong> que se repite) and NorbertLechner in the Southern Cone (<strong>El</strong> presente continuo).This was the time when, just after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Roberto Alfa spoke to us about the appropriateness ofgoing back to Marx, given that what was coming was the apotheosis of the market. This was not his only contributionin those days that went against the trend. Thus in contrast to Octavio Paz’s thesis that Latin America was anend of the West, he suggested we read it as a West in extremis. Hence we would only be left to talk, with propriety,exclusively as Westerners at the limit of our possibilities.Immediately afterwards Alfa became dazzled by what he called “empty politics”. It was then that he <strong>de</strong>dicatedhimself to electoral campaigns, but increasingly less so in theory and more so in practice to the point where hebecame a successful campaign director. In this phase he paraphrased Foucault and gave us one of his <strong>la</strong>st, and very<strong>de</strong>ca<strong>de</strong>nt, essays: <strong>El</strong> nacimiento <strong>de</strong> <strong>la</strong> cínica. In it he inverted Marx, who he knew better than many Marxists, andused him without ceremony. If Marx told us to “follow the goods” to un<strong>de</strong>rstand capitalism, Alfa advises us to “followthe ad” to un<strong>de</strong>rstand the puerile truth of politics, “which is complete puerility” he says. There’s some truth inall this. And if a commercial ad is bound to lie because its product, whatever it may be, from a Rolex to a Merce<strong>de</strong>s,is built on an economic lie, an election ad is bound to lie because politics does not put forward the truth; the mostit achieves is to construct a certain type of reality.The thing is that while realities almost always lose elections, on very few occasions does truth manage to win them.Iván <strong>de</strong> <strong>la</strong> Nuez
Change language