EDITORIAL CONCRETA

Concreta arises from a shared desire and a lack: the desire to build a platform from which to contribute to contemporary reflection on the image, through the publication of a biannual magazine and a series of artist books; and to do so from a precise place, a community marked during the last fifteen years by the systematic disappearance of the cultural infrastructure dedicated to the plastic and visual arts. This local situation of cultural crisis adds to the current situation of global collapse of financial capitalism, which points towards a paradigm shift in many aspects, not only at a macroeconomic level but also, and above all, at a micropolitical level, announcing a dark future for culture and the arts. No longer considered modes of critical knowledge of the world, instruments of thought and action, culture and the arts are reduced to mere entertainment. This local situation of cultural crisis adds to the current situation of global collapse of financial capitalism, which points towards a paradigm shift in many aspects, not only at a macroeconomic level but also, and above all, at a micropolitical level, announcing a dark future for culture and the arts. No longer considered modes of critical knowledge of the world, instruments of thought and action, culture and the arts are reduced to mere entertainment.

For all these reasons, Concreta has positioned itself from its inception as a platform of resistance to the cultural impoverishment of our present and, chooses paper and the website to develop a proposal that arises in a precise place but is not limited to its geography.

The specific aim of this publication is to help elaborate a theoretical frame for research into the image —inside and outside academia— with a special focus on the photographic image and art history, yet grounded in all the disciplines of knowledge that understand the image as a place of friction and anxiety, as a structure of meaning and a dialectical force field.