The exhibition is the result of the TRANSGANG project, which, with funding from the European Union, investigated between 2017 and 2023 youth gangs and mediation experiences in the Americas, North Africa, and Southern Europe.

The exhibition is located at the Gallery of the Workshop Area on the Poblenou Campus of Pompeu Fabra University. It will be open from May 15 to July 25, 2023.

Theme

“From Gangland to Transgang” invites us to understand contemporary gangs as one of the resources of globalized youth to defend their dignity against the criminalization imposed by the penal state.

Script
The exhibition develops the content in three sections:

From Chicago to the World
In 1927, Frederic Thrasher published The Gang, a monograph on 1,313 Chicago gangs, considered the first serious academic study of the phenomenon.
That same year, Josef von Sternberg’s Underworld premiered, considered the first gangster film. With Prohibition and the 1929 crisis, some street gangs evolved into criminal organizations or were recruited by the mafia. Over the following century, Gangland spread from Chicago to the world.
With the globalization of gangs, strategies to pursue them also globalized, characteristic of the neoliberal penal state model.

A legal reform in the United States in 1996 greatly increased deportations, which in turn accelerated the spread of both gang culture and policing and penal policies. Both traveled together from North America to Central and South America, and later to Europe and the rest of the world.

Despite the growing criminalization of gangs, young people around the world form street families as a form of resilience and also resistance against the punitive populism promoted by the penal state. Their life stories show that in these groups they seek the respect and dignity denied to them in other areas of society.

Gangtopia
Gang imaginaries are created from a wide variety of materials: the ever-growing film production, media coverage, scientific literature analyzing gangs, and cultural productions through which gangs imagine the world (music, dance, graffiti, performance, rituals).
The TRANSGANG project has investigated this “Gangtopia” through ethnography and three documentary films:

• Instructions for When I’m Not Here (directed by Lukas Perro and Yira Plaza)

• Al-Houma Dreams (directed by Boris Svartzman)

• Monte Tropic (directed by Andrés Duque)

These productions creatively dialogue with fieldwork and reflect the research process without mechanically replicating it. Each began with a workshop with young participants in the project, who interacted with the filmmakers to co-create a visual approach to their lives and worlds.

Credits

Curator:
Montserrat Iniesta

Coordination:
Albert Elduque and Matilde Obradors

With the collaboration of:
Poblenou Campus Directorate
Infrastructure and Heritage Service

Scientific Team:
Carles Feixa-Pàmols (PI), José Sánchez-García (Coord.), Nele Hansen (Project Manager), César Andrade, Eduard Ballesté, Kamal Boucherf, Adam Brisley, Candy Chávez, Paolo Grassi, Ligia Lavielle, Juan Camilo Mansilla, Fulvia Márquez, Margot Mecca, Sihem Najar, Mariah Oliver, Mustapha Omrane, William Ross, and Rachid Touhtouh (Research).

This exhibition has been produced by the research projects TRANSGANG and LEBAN.

TRANSGANG Project:
Transnational Gangs as Agents of Mediation: Experiences of Conflict Resolution in Street Youth Organizations in Southern Europe, North Africa and the Americas, 2018-2023. European Research Council Advanced Grant, H2020-ERC-AdG-742705.

LEBAN Project:
Legalizing Gangs? The Construction of Associations from Street Youth Groups in Spain, Ecuador, and El Salvador: Evaluation and Prospects (2000-2025). National R&D Plan. 2019 Call: Research Challenges. Researcher 2020-2023 [PID2019-110893RB-I00].

Graphic and Exhibition Design:
Eumo_dc

Production and Assembly:
Cassany Designe