Global Cities Vs. The country of Maialussa

Anthropologist Saskia Sassen coined the concept of global cities 30 years ago. It doesn't take much explanation to define them; today only by reading these two short words do we understand the dimension of their definition: hyperconnected, constantly growing cities that have a global influence not only with their new urbanism but also with the way they do politics and culture. Today, global cities are the proud bastion of Western and Westernized societies, the supposed beacons of cosmopolitanism and contemporaneity; cities that create the future, mirror of the embattled below. But today, getting bogged down in big cities is almost old-fashioned and reactionary. There is a much more interesting society outside of these great influential spaces. Exactly: the peoples. You don't have to imagine a small village lost in the middle of the Pallars with a bucolic spirit; by town I mean everything that is antonym of global city. It would be a people what some call counties, or suburbs, or suburbs ... Everything that is far from the long shadow of the global trends of big cities. Yes, what still has a real and essential aftertaste because it has not passed through the sieve of this poorly designed contemporaneity that is based on an excess of order, rules, hygiene and all kinds of protocols. They have money, yes, but at what price!

Today I think of peoples as revolutionary spaces, of forms and backgrounds. They are free spaces, without so much fear, without so much mold or protocol. Places with a clear essence, with some inaccuracy as well. And I like to exemplify this with Viatge al país de Maialussa, an exhibition curated by the Tarragona poet Xavier Garcia in homage to the trio of Carles Hac Mor, Àngel Jové and Benet Rossell and a trip they embarked on in March of 1989 in the so exotic counties of Les Garrigues, Segrià, Baix Cinca, Matarranya and Urgell (and be a little ashamed if you don't know where they stop). The same and longed-for Hac Mor explained it like this: “We made a 10-day journey through drylands of these counties with the aim of conducting research in anthropology, ethnography and linguistics, art, literature and video. The result of all this work has resulted in an unusually initiatory journey. ”

With little miscellaneous material available (only a few hundred polaroids and hours and hours of video), Garcia reconstructed the trip and highlighted those trips to nearby places as scenarios of absolute exploration. The exhibition, at the Sala Marsà in Tàrrega, closed on October 4, but soon the local Natan collection will publish its catalog.

Maialussa is the antonym of what dazzles the world. But you know, the real truth is in the villages.