“Subversion” is what I have called my proposal for the collective and participatory event by the same name, organized by the curator Itziar Elejalde in La Morada, Bilbao. “Subversion” made me immediately think of José Ramón Morquillas—in July 2007, the Museum of Fine Arts of Bilbao decided to cancel his exhibition “Morquillas, l’air du temps.”

Initially I wanted to approach this from the point of view of art—a delicate and complex task because of the ease of falling into rhetoric, banality, empty discourse, complacency, conformism, demagogy, and domestication. I thought about stacking newspapers, books, posters, banners, propaganda, books, computers, cables, and all kinds of media that 1% of the population uses to enact (dis)information in order to control the remaining 99%, and then burning it all. But this seemed too easy. I wanted to synthesize. After long reflections and analysis, I managed to sharpen my idea. I turned the issue around and the action I took was totally different.

To perform the action I use a suit, an analog cathode tube television screen, an extendable aluminum tube, a stool, a strobe light, a flexible neon light, a black hood and a small LED light.

The suit hangs on the wall, the rest is arranged on a table. I put on the suit. I lengthen the tube, and place the flexible neon light inside the screen. I put on the black hood and put the small LED light in my mouth. I put the screen on my head. I do all this in front of those present, and start to walk, dragging the aluminum tube all over the floor of space. I stop, plug in the strobe, place the stool down. When I try to get on the stool I fall to the ground from the weight of the screen on my head. When I fall the screen breaks. I get up and I cannot get the screen back on my head. Broken crystals are everywhere. I can kill myself. I get on the stool holding the broken screen with my hands and I stay motionless for a while. I throw the cathode tube to the ground. The action, which during its development is accompanied by a pressing music, is over.

Still today I wonder: where is the subversion in this action?