Barricadenwetter: The Visual Acts of Insurrection at MACRO

The MACRO museum in Rome presents "Barricadenwetter. Atti visivi dell'Insurrezione," a show exploring the iconography of barricades from the Renaissance to today. The exhibition draws on the 1849 neologism by anarchist Mikhail Bakunin, meaning 'barricade weather,' which signified a revolutionary transition. Over 289 images document the Parisian revolt of May 1968, alongside eight showcases on the history of street barriers built from salvaged materials and three focuses on the Situationists of the '68 student uprising. Documents by photojournalist Rodrigo Pais cover Roman barricades from the same year, and materials address metaphorical representations in popular culture. The show connects the socio-anthropological history of barriers to avant-garde artistic techniques, with Dadaist Hannah Höch as a key link. Her collage work, born from opposition to bourgeois society, is featured; Höch participated in building barricades during the 1919 Spartacist uprising in Berlin. The exhibition argues that collage, assemblage, pastiche, sampling, Brechtian estrangement, deconstructivism, cut-up, détournement, and certain film montages all derive from Dada collage, each bearing the concept of barrier. Curated by Wolfgang Scheppe, Bastiaan van der Velden, Sara Codutti, and Eleonora Sovrani, the show includes a collateral program on December 1 at 6:30 PM featuring Scheppe, van der Velden, and Lorenzo Gigotti.