Marko Daniel, director of the Joan Miró Foundation since 2018, former head of public programmes of the Tate Modern and Tate Britain in London and expert in contemporary Chinese and Catalan art, delivered the inaugural lesson that opened the 2022-2023 academic year at UPF, titled “The colors of our dreams”.

The academic ceremony, which was broadcast live via the University website, took place on 4 October, at noon, in the auditorium of the Poblenou campus, presided over by UPF rector Oriol Amat. He was accompanied at the table by Gemma Geis, minister of Research and Universities of the Catalan Government, and Montserrat Vendrell, chair of the UPF board of trustees.

Other authorities present were Esther Morales and Victòria Girona, general secretary for Research and Universities and director general of Universities of the Generalitat (Government) of Catalonia, respectively; Júlia Miralles, Science and Universities delegate of Barcelona City Council, and Enric Argullol, Josep Joan Moreso and Jaume Casals, former UPF rectors.

Oriol Amat, having offered a few words of welcome, gave way to the screening of the videoreport of the 2021-2022 academic year at UPF, a review of the main milestones achieved by the University during this period, in the areas of community, teaching, research, internationalization, environment and outreach, governance and management, and social engagement and sustainability.

This year, the video report is inspired by Alexander Graham Bell, in the year commemorating the centenary of his death: the driving force behind the telephone, and one of the great precursors of telecommunications, his person allows appraising communication as an essential element in the transmission and transfer of knowledge by universities.

> Videoreport of the 2021-2022 academic year

Then, Oriol Amat introduced the keynote speaker, Marko Daniel, director of the Joan Miró Foundation, and highlighted the various lines of collaboration between UPF and the Joan Miró Foundation: the creation of the Joan Miró-UPF Foundation Chair of Contemporary Art; the temporary loan of two works by the Foundation to UPF, displayed in the Tàpies Room, within the UPF Art Track circuit, and the loan to the University of part of the Foundation’s library collection.

Inaugural lecture by Marko Daniel

Marko Daniel structured his lesson around the commemoration of the 50^th anniversary of the Joan Miró Foundation, which will be held in 2025.

>Speach by Marko Daniel (pdf, in catalan)

> Video of the complete inaugural lecture

Excerpts from the lecture

“Pompeu Fabra University and the Joan Miró Foundation contribute to the international projection of Barcelona with a global perspective based on the values of research, which allow us to share our knowledge universally beyond our communities”

“For months we have been working together on ideas to build a collaboration that will grow the two institutions and will be key for one of the most ambitious projects for the coming years: the commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of the Joan Miró Foundation in 2025”

 ”Our goal is to enhance the collection, temporary exhibitions and all our programming. And we intend to so through innovative programmes and forms of research, presentation and dissemination in order to attract more new visitors”

“The generosity of donations by friends and family over the years has allowed adding works to the collection that Joan Miró bequeathed to the city, which happens to be one of the most relevant worldwide”

“To speak of the Foundation is to speak of the rationalist building that houses it. The institution and the space were born at the same time. Therefore, the 2025 celebration will be twofold, since the museum - as a place, as an object, as an architectural jewel - will also be fifty years old”

“The promotion of the research of Miro’s work through the Joan Miró Foundation - Pompeu Fabra University Chair of Contemporary Art again rescues one of the most fundamental values for Miró: curiosity and restlessness thanks to which he dedicated his whole life to the search for new ways of seeing the world, and of sharing this intellectual and emotional vision, with us”

““Children become ambassadors for the work of Joan Miró and share the same emotional and intellectual enjoyment as an adult may feel. The relationship between Miró’s works, contemporary art and life is therefore deeply established”

“Our goal is to develop an activity in line with our values: Miró’s artistic and human spirit, from the local sphere and the monitoring of emerging and transgressive trends of contemporary art, but, above all, thinking about the programming with an eye on both the local and the foreign visitor”

“But we believe that the use of museums needs to be reviewed. The world is changing at a dazzling pace, and so are our habits. New gazes demand different spaces, different presentations, different relations”

“And this is also our shared dream. A project we hope will materialize in 2025, when both the blue and the entire chromatic palette of Miró’s works and the unique space that houses them are converted into what we all intend: a living centre open to the world, which involves the complicity of artistic, cultural, research and knowledge institutions – such as Pompeu Fabra University”

Speeches by the authorities

Then followed the speeches (in this order) by Montserrat Vendrell, chair of the UPF Board of Trustees; Gemma Geis, minister of Research and Universities, and Oriol Amat, UPF rector.

Speech by Montserrat Vendrell

> Speech by Montserrat Vendrell (pdf, in catalan)

Excerpts from the speech

“I would like to begin by offering a very special greeting to rector Amat and expressing my support for the decision he has made to bring the elections forward. This decision may seem sudden and unprecedented, but as it has been taken with the institution in mind, it deserves our full respect”

“The Board of Trustees will of course continue to collaborate with the UPF governing team to promote and deploy the goals of our institution”

“This year, moreover, launching a fundraising plan, to seek private resources that support the deployment of strategic programmes”

“Having overcome the worst of the pandemic, we are now facing a global period of economic, political and social uncertainty at all levels. A period during which there will be a greater need than ever to commit to knowledge and culture and ensure equitable access to all of society”

Speech by Gemma Geis

Excerpts from the speech

 ”UPF has a characteristic feature, a project of its own, which has been handed down from rector to rector. You have foundations that make you strong, a collective model and commitment to the university”

“Last year we increased the Research and Universities budget by 14%, and we want to keep growing next year”

“We have laid the foundations for fulfilling our dreams. The Law of Science in Catalonia must allow us to have our own regulatory framework, enabling us to improve the research, innovation and transfer system”

 ”We are working to increase the University Infrastructure Plan, so that centres can look more to the medium or long term”

“If one dream is shared with rector Amat, it is the area of knowledge transfer, which is one of the great challenges we have in this country”

“The Catalan Government has worked on different actions that are part of a knowledge transfer strategy. We have designed a programme in ICREA Academy style, but concerning transfer”

“The BIST building, as part of the Mercat del Peix project, is an example of different centres working together on precision and cutting-edge medical projects”

“The Planetary Wellbeing Research Centre requires scientific researchers and knowledge at the service of the blue planet”

“After passing the Science Act, we will address international student policy reform, gaining flexibility, with a more open system”

“Another measure that universities have asked us for is to protect and attract talent and ensure generational turnover. I want to announce a crash plan in this area, with consensual measures, endowed with 30 million euros, with more full-time teachers”

“The Organic Law on the University System (LOSU) is a major attack on and a threat to centres like UPF, which will be affected”

“The university community must mobilize if we want open doors, flexibility...  We must fight for the recognition of our way of being and for the country's university system”

Speech by Oriol Amat

• Video with the complete speech

Excerpts from the speech

 ”I thank the minister for taking the time to get to know us. She knows us well, she sees that UPF is in danger, but she is an ally of our model”

“At UPF I am very happy [...] personally I see myself as a teacher who likes to dedicate his professional time to students, colleagues, research and interaction with society”

“The success of UPF has been based on a very subtle combination or alchemy: innovation (or transformation) and continuity in its institutional strategy”

Public servants, in carrying out our leadership, have done so by combining innovation and stability [...] It's important to have both kinds of people serving... I personally feel more comfortable shaking thing up”

I will not stand for election: I believe that the issues that could be carried out have been already. It has not been possible to improve some things: I think now is not the best time to apply certain issues, and others because we do not have the budget to do so [...] I see that, objectively, the issues that have not been fulfilled cannot be carried out. It's time to pass the baton, I believe it's an act of honesty”

“We stood with an electoral programme consisting of 136 points: what was possible has already been done, in a period of time that many people are surprised at the things we have achieved, such as going from 7 to 17 chairs, and with a further 12 under way”

“I like to shake things up in institutions. I believe that the institutions must be shaken up regularly”

 ”We have done things at a very fast pace. When someone has complained, they are absolutely right. We have done more things with the same number of administration and services staff as we had 15 years ago [...] Also with 35% less budget than in 2008, we have been doing more things, with more students, new programmes...”

 ”In July we were awarded funding for the Eutopia MORE programme, with a six-year window. It's a lot of money, and it involves UPF leadership within the European alliance. It is a good idea that someone who has these years ahead should take over “

“Around March, the LOSU is likely to be about to be passed, and it will lead to a complex change of statutes. It is better for a new rector to take the baton”

“Until there are elections, there will be continuity with all that has been done. There will be no dismissals, only the necessary changes will be made”

Upon concluding his speech, the rector, Oriol Amat, declared the UPF 2022-2023 academic year open. The performance of the popular university hymn Gaudeamus igitur with the entire audience standing, brought the event to a close.

An extensive career in academia and museums

Marko Daniel (Aachen, Germany, 1964) holds a degree in Art History and Philosophy from University College London (1988) and is an expert in contemporary Chinese and Catalan art. He received his PhD in Art History and Theory from the University of Essex (1999) with the thesis “Art and Propaganda: The Battle for Cultural Property in the Spanish Civil War”, for which the fieldwork was carried out in Barcelona, thanks to a scholarship from the British Academy.

Daniel has developed his teaching career at the Winchester School of Art of the University of Southampton (1994-2001, lecturer, and 2003-2006, director of the Graduate School), at the Department of Audiovisual Communication at Da Yeh University, and at the Center for Art and Technology at Taipei National University of the Arts, both in Taiwan. Also (since 2009), he has been vice-president and faculty member (since 2006) of the London Consortium, and art and design theory advisor at ELISAVA, the University School of Design and Engineering.

In 2006 he joined the Tate Modern in London as curator of public programmes, and five years later, in 2011, he headed this same area of the two Tate centres in London (Tate Modern and Tate Britain). From his position, he deployed an extensive programme of activities and promoted research into modern and contemporary art, especially Chinese, as part of the institution’s programme.

A special relationship with the work of Joan Miró and promoter of collaboration with UPF

During his time spent at the London institution, among other exhibition projects, Marko Daniel, together with Matthew Gale and Teresa Montaner, curated the exhibition “Joan Miró. The scale of evasion”, which was on display at the Tate Modern in London, the National Gallery of Art in Washington and the Joan Miró Foundation between 2011 and 2012. Years before, in the 1990s, while working on his doctoral thesis in Barcelona, he discovered the Foundation through the centenary exhibition “Joan Miró 1893-1993”.

A connoisseur of the Catalan, Spanish and international cultural and artistic sector, Marko Daniel is leading the journey of the Joan Miró Foundation towards its 50th anniversary, which will be celebrated in 2025, as the head of a project that seeks to sink its roots into the spirit of Miro’s work and into the founding values of the centre to project itself towards the future.

Together with Oriol Amat, rector of Pompeu Fabra University, in June 2022 Marko Daniel signed an agreement to create the Joan Miró Foundation-UPF Chair of Contemporary Art, an initiative that represents a further step in the collaboration that has linked the two institutions since October 2020.

The inaugural poster for the 2022-2023 academic year, the work of the artist Lúa Coderch

Lúa Coderch (Iquitos, Peru, 1982) is the author of the inaugural poster for the 2022-2023 academic year, to which she attaches a poem she wrote titled “The thumb on the horizon, fingers touching the stars”. The artist gives an explanation about his work: "The schematic grid of a map is projected against a night background, where two hands seem to be holding each other. This piece wants to be an instrument of orientation for the times to come, now that making sense and tracing one's own cardinality is, more than ever, a task that must be undertaken in solidarity."

A multifaceted artist and a College of Arts & Design Barcelona (BAU) associate professor, she took her master’s degree in Production and Artistic Research and her doctorate in Fine Arts at the University of Barcelona, and she also trained as a sculptor at Escola Massana.

She works in sculptural practices, audiovisual languages and research and experimentation processes in art and design, and she does so by combining narrative and objective practices in videos, performances and installations, which she configures as research devices and in which she articulates the relationship between the superficial, aesthetic and phenomenological dimensions of our common life and the latent philosophical and political implications.

Since 2010, she has exhibited in spaces such as the Chapel of Sant Roc de Valls (2011), the Suñol Foundation and the Joan Miró Foundation of Barcelona (2014), Art Institute Vienna (2017), Centro Cibeles of Madrid (2018) and the Domus Artium in Salamanca (2020). Her works can be found in collections such as MUSAC Centro de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León, Collecció de Arte Contemporáneo Cal Cego, Barcelona, Fundació Lluís Coromina in Banyoles and MACBA de Barcelona.

Some of her works and projects are Vida de O, The Girl With No Door On Her Mouth, As long as summer lasts, Souvenir (Onyx), The Rainbow Statement Night in a Remote Cabin Lit by a Kerosene Lamp, [Shelter] and Echo (together with Julia Múgica, Lluís Nacenta and Iván Paz), which won the ARCO/Beep d’Art Electrònic award (2022).

> Photo album posted on Flickr