KARMELO BERMEJO

“Expense of money always creates a profit. Destruction of goods creates a profit. Death creates a profit. Disappearance is not possible.”

How to make revolutionary the work of Bakunin in the XXI century? By burning it in a public space. This is the answer of Karmelo Bermejo.

The young Spanish artist, whose works received a great welcome in galleries and museums of half the Iberian Peninsula, presented in 2007 his last series, “Ostentation and Unproductive Expense”, which consists in the a number of actions –finally frustrated by the capitalist nature itself- aiming to deactivate the public money. The mechanism of the unproductive expenditure (or, to say it with Bermejo, the consumption of public money to produce a private benefit) is the methodological instrument used to realize the works, while the provocative spirit of the subjects is just a factor and not the core of the action, apparently arbitrary. 3000 euros of public money spent buying books by Bakunin in order to burn them in a public square assembles, for example, more than one provocative element. But more than the Goebbles phantom, than Bakunin, or then the book itself, the central idea of the work is another, as it happens in other works such as Booked. On a working day, all the tickets for the 7:00 am bus from Bilbao to Madrid were purchased with public money so that the bus would complete its route empty. Or Tip. The inspector of the line 1 Hamburg U-Bahn was paid with public money the amount corresponding to the fine imposed for travelling without a ticket plus an extra 10% of the sanction with which he was presented as an economic bonus. And also Obtaining raw material. A tree on the public thoroughfare was felled without destining the wood to any purpose.

Karmelo Bermejo can be considered then as a disciple of Dada and stepson of Guy Debord and Vito Acconci? According to Francisco Javier San Martín, Bermejo’s work states new action protocols to replace the daily and wasted gesture. His actions present themselves as the end of a process started with the beginning of the last century. They don’t simply “observe the difficulty in accessing a meaning but rather state the impossibility of reaching a strategic position able to receive them and give them coherence. They are orphan actions, that cannot be received in any system conciliating the social living” [F. J. San Martín, Economía política del derroche, 2007].



The artist’s work fully enters the mechanism of cultural production, aiming at the artistic institution. Bermejo explains that “public money resides in a strange and attractive place to work with, because it’s everybody and nobody’s property all at once. [...] I like to think that part of the contributor’s money has been channelled into a conscious attempt of waste, even though the unproductive consumption is a utopia and to destroy, burn or spend without producing any benefits is impossible”.  His actions, apparently aggressive and radical, end up being harmless because the system reacts and grows up right when it is attacked: “disturb is just the mechanism though which the anger of someone turns into benefit for others. Permanent rebellion is also a permanent business. In the capitalist machine what is destroyed doesn’t even exist, everything is recycled” [Interview to K. Bermejo by A. F. Rodríguez, Mugalari, 23th of June 2007]. Art doesn’t escape this logic. On the contrary, it represents its hard core, bolting down everything, as useless as it can be, and excluding from its system all the actions that don’t produce a benefit.
That art would be able to produce a change in the post-modern capitalistic context is just an absurd ingenuity. The only solution, according to Bermejo, is “to butt the world out so that it can kill itself”.

The previous series “Contributions. Beyond the aesthetic of the overbooking” – winner of the VI edition of the “El Cultural” Award in 2006 – consists of a series of contributions to the consequences of the system: actions that put in evidence different forms of daily aggressiveness, not intensive but constant. The contributions’ titles are the best explanation: Contribution of fuel-oil to the Costa Da Morte. Ten kilos of fuel-oil were poured to the sea at the Costa Da Morte. Contribution of labour free of charge to Burger King Corporation. Tables located in a Burger King restaurant were cleaned without any remuneration belong paid. Contribution of labour free of charge to Gucci Group. The shop windows of Gucci Boutique located in Oxford Street were cleaned without any remuneration belong paid. Contribution of noise to noise. Ivan Prilepcanski played the Mozart’s Kleine Nacht Musik first movement in East-West street (Hamburg). Contribution of watchfulness to Prado Museum. Watching the watcher of room 39. Matter addition to the statue. Ten kilos of bronze were melt on the statue  of Lehendakari Aguirre.

But where is Bakunin in all this? In 3000 euros of public money spent buying books by Bakunin in order to burn them in a public square Bermejo explains that the choice of the object paid with public money to be burned aims to introduce a new element in the tissue of relationships and contradictions of the system: the producers and distributors of anarchist literature that in this way end up being the real beneficiaries of the action.

By Steven Forti