Pedro Barateiro: How to Make a Mask

How to Make a Mask, a monographic volume dedicated to the work of Pedro Barateiro. The book was developed during almost three years in close and intense contact between the artist, the editors João Mourão and Luís Silva and some elements of ATLAS Projectos, who worked on the graphic project. How to Make a Mask is co-published by Kunsthalle Lissabon and Sternberg Press with the support of Galeria Filomena Soares and Netwerk Aalst.

How to Make a Mask collects texts and visual work by Lisbon-based Pedro Barateiro. The publication spans a period that dates back to 2008 and features extensive visual and written material of key projects presented in solo exhibitions, as well as other relevant installations, videos and performances. How to Make a Mask borrows its title from one of Pedro Barateiro’s performances presented for the first time in 2011 at Old Schoo1 #3, in which the artist reflects upon the role of the individual in the collective socio-political situation through references ranging from psychological tests to the history of theatre. By sharing the same title as the performance the publication acknowledges the central role this piece has attained in terms of understanding and articulating Barateiro's ongoing inquiry into what modes of being in the world we are able to (re)produce.

Projects collected in this volume can thus be thought of as having been made before or after the performance How to Make a Mask. Those that predate the performance tend to emphasize the over-theatricality of art making in the West, reflecting on the spectator dictatorship in a post-capitalist world. Works such as Domingo, Teoria da Fala/Theory of Speech and Theatre of Hunters, for instance, address the collapse of the notion of modernity and its insistence in the human-non human binary, through a critique of the position of the author, a position romanticized throughout most of the twentieth century, as well as the role of the spectator as actor. Projects postdating How to Make a Mask tend to reflect on ideas of distribution, on immaterial practices, ranging from writing/typing on our computers to “liking” on our social media feeds, and on the growing importance of writing for big corporations through big data and other non-participatory activities. Projects like The Sad Savages, Feitiço/Spell and Prova de Resistência reflect on the need for maintaining forms of resistance vis-a-vis changes brought into effect by post-capitalism, while claiming for the need of an awareness towards the role humans have in drastically changing the planet.

New essays have been specially commissioned to Anders Kreuger, Ana Teixeira Pinto and Els Silvrant-Barclay and Pieternel Vermoortel. Kreuger’s text focuses on Pedro Barateiro’s major solo exhibitions (Theory of Speech, Casa de Serralves — Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Serralves, 2009; Theatre of Hunters, Kunsthalle Basel, 2010; Palmeiras Bravas/The Current Situation, Museu Coleção Berardo, 2015) which can, all of them and in more ways than one, be considered 'exhibition-events'. Teixeira Pinto’s essay departs from Michel Serres’s text Parasite to address some concerns present in Barateiro's more recent works, namely the videos The Current Situation (2015) and Currency, currency (2016), while establishing a relation between that concept of the parasite, as the locus where natural and social/ economic plagues manifest themselves as part of our post-capitalist era. Els Silvrant-Barclay and Pieternel Vermoortel's contribution functions as an epilogue of sorts, one that rather than concluding and ending the monograph proposes an alternative way of navigating the works and texts it presents and discusses.

Title – How to Make a Mask
Author – Pedro barateiro
Published by Stenberg Press e Kunsthalle Lissabon
Design – ATLAS Projectos
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