>> This presentation in Palma is the first in a series of four QSL project events, which will continue in Gdansk, Chicago and Nairobi.
>> Students from the Bachelor of Fine Arts program at ADEMA, Columbia College of Chicago, and the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdansk, Poland, carry out a performance action in which they intervene in and hack the exhibition “Gratuity is an aggression. Young Plastic Arts and the renewal of the arts in Mallorca, 1969-1982”.
>> This is an initiative that is part of the mediation program parallel to the exhibition: ANÈCDOTA promoted by the culture area of Palma City Council.
>> The result will be displayed in the exhibition halls and will coexist with the rest of the works until next Wednesday, January 21.
The Casal Solleric in Palma became an international artistic activation space through a performative intervention that has connected students of the Bachelor of Fine Arts from ADEMA, Columbia College of Chicago (USA) and the Academy of Fine Arts of Gdansk (Poland) within the framework of a collaborative project that proposes a contemporary reading of the exhibition “Gratuity is an aggression. Young Plastic Arts and the renewal of the arts in Mallorca, 1969-1982”, curated by Jaume Reus.
The project, titled “QSL. Performing the Exhibition,” is part of a mediation program promoted by ADEMA, Casal Solleric, and the Palma City Council, in collaboration with international institutions. During the performance, entitled “Interferences,” as explained by professor and artist Dan Norton and exhibition curator and professor Jaume Reus, the project’s driving forces, “fourth-year Fine Arts students from ADEMA activated the exhibition space through performative practices, experimental gestures, and situated actions that engage with the works, discourses, and historical tensions present in the exhibition. The proposal introduces a critical layer that reactivates its content from a contemporary perspective.” This presentation in Palma is the first in a series of four QSL project interventions, which will continue in Gdansk, Chicago, and Nairobi. In Nairobi, the works will be exhibited in the Wajukuu neighborhood in collaboration with the Wajukuu Arts Collective, expanding the project’s social and cultural reach and incorporating non-Western contexts into the artistic dialogue.
The exhibition “Young Artists and the Renewal of the Arts in Mallorca, 1969-1982” explores one of the most intense and transformative periods in the island’s art history. The exhibition is structured around a context marked by the profound social, political, and cultural transformations of the late Franco regime and the early years of democracy.
In this context, artistic practices emerge that challenge dominant institutional models and explore new forms of art production, exhibition, and circulation. The exhibition brings together works and documents from artists and collectives associated with movements such as conceptualism, arte povera, action art, pop art, and neo-figuration, many of which have never been seen before in Mallorca.
It is precisely within this genealogy of critical, collective, and experimental practices that the “QSL” project is conceptually situated. “The intervention proposes a dialogue between that generation that questioned the artistic structures of the time and a new generation of emerging artists who today face other challenges, such as digital hyperconnectivity and the acceleration of production processes. From this perspective, QSL is not presented as a rupture, but as a critical continuity that connects past and present through shared methodologies,” Dan Norton stated.
The QSL Project is an international educational and artistic initiative inspired by early radio technology and QSL cards, historically used by amateur radio operators as physical confirmation of a received transmission. These cards, in addition to verifying signal reception, functioned as objects of exchange, fostering physical and emotional connections between transmitters and receivers separated by great distances. Drawing on this imagery, the project reclaims the value of slow, tangible, and collaborative communication as a critical tool in a context dominated by digital immediacy.
“It’s a collaborative project inspired by early radio technology. On certain nights and under specific weather conditions, shortwave amateur radio operators can connect in real time beyond the curvature of the horizon, a surprising milestone for an analog process with more than a hundred years of history,” Dan Norton argued.
For twelve weeks, fine arts students from the three universities of Palma, Chicago, and Gdansk participated in an intensive exchange of artistic practices. The process was structured around the sending of digital works conceived as visual or auditory signals, which were received, manipulated, and transformed by other participants. These works, the QSL cards, were subsequently sent by mail. It’s worth noting that the exhibition includes several mail art pieces, among them Neon by Suro.
This process culminated in the creation of QSL cards, mail art pieces conceived for a post-digital era. After their development in digital environments, the works were physically sent via traditional mail, reintroducing waiting time, geographical distance, and the fragility of the object as active elements of the creative process. These pieces are now integrated into the Casal Solleric exhibition and will remain on display until Wednesday, January 21, establishing a direct dialogue with historical practices, remixing, reconfiguring, hacking, and inspiring each other toward new and unexpected results.
For Dan Norton, “QSL was born from the desire to approach artistic communication as a shared process, where the artwork is not understood as a closed object, but as an open transmission to be received, transformed, and returned.” In this sense, Jaume Reus emphasized that the project places students in an active and critical position regarding contemporary systems of artistic production, questioning authorship, the idea of originality, and the speed at which images circulate today.
The event takes place within the framework of the Sant Antoni festivities and is accompanied by a live sound performance by Antoni Vidal, a student of the Bachelor of Fine Arts at ADEMA, who performs a musical action with guitar as part of the sensory experience of the project.