HAMACA inaugurated its archive in 2007 with a catalog of 200 pieces, in which the main works and artists from the history of video in Spain since the 1960s were represented. There is something in which HAMACA was a pioneer and which has been present in its archive since its inception: a large part of its works can be viewed online, making this digital collection a space for knowledge that allows research and education processes. The Hamaca archive has thus become a place of regular consultation for many users: artists, students, curators, enthusiasts, public and educational institutions, art centres... Since then, the archive has grown year after year through the entry of new works by authors already catalogued and calls for the incorporation of new authors.
Selection Committees
On all occasions when the archive is open to the reception of new pieces, HAMACA sets up a specialised committee: an external and heterogeneous jury, knowledgeable about the field of audiovisual works, its history and its links with the social contexts it interpellates.
→ First Selection Committee: The initial selection was made by a team of 8 specialists: Susana Blas, Eugeni Bonet, Juan Guardiola, Esther Regueira, Fito Rodríguez, Jorge Luís Marzo, Lola Dopico and Virginia Villaplana. This committee determined a list of 100 artists that they considered should form part of this initial catalog due to their trajectory, the relevance of their work and their projection. The guidelines established for the selection of the first committee were marked by the desire to introduce those authors and those works that were outstanding and representative of independent video production from the 1960s until then.
→ Second Selection Committee: In 2008, taking into account the number of artists who had been left out of the catalog during the first selection, the first public call was opened to expand the archive. This time, the committee of experts was formed by Laura Baigorri, Chus Martínez, Pedro Jiménez and Gabriel Villota. The selection criteria proposed in this case were aimed at giving the opportunity to more incipient artists in the medium. This call allowed the catalog to be extended to more emerging practices such as VJing, creative documentaries and music videos.
→ Third Selection Committee: in 2011 HAMACA opened another call for new videos to be included in the archive. The committee of experts was formed by Josetxo Cerdán, Nuria Enguita, Antoni Mercader and Aimar Arriola. Broadly speaking, they identified four lines of force as particularly valid among the works received: the displacement of the grammars of documentary towards broader contexts of meaning, the consideration of the filmic image and the vast field of cinema, the feminist and queer reoccupation of the field of representation, and the reactivation from art of certain conceptual practices of the 60s, 70s and 80s in relation to the structures of meaning, especially language.
→ Fourth Selection Committee: for the 2013 call, launched in collaboration with the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, the jury was composed of Miguel Fernández Labayen, Beatriz Herráez, Elena Oroz and Carlos Trigueros. They identified a widespread interest in the use of digital tools –Facebook, Google, YouTube, Skype– and in domestic practices such as archival materials and documentary sources. There was also a growing use of formats such as Super 8 and analogue video, demonstrating the validity of past technological tools. Some of the selected pieces dealt with re-readings of performative practices based on their relationships with other disciplines, such as sculpture and photography. From the artistic and documentary sphere, the presence of research projects and audiovisual essays also had an outstanding presence.
→ Fifth Selection Committee: A second call in collaboration with MNCARS took place in 2015. The evaluation team was made up of Virginia Torrente, Lucía Casani, Marina Díaz and Cristina Cámara. The committee highlighted the great richness of the genre, mixing the languages of film, video and the internet in a completely natural way. The selection included documentary practices of various kinds, found footage works, or works that use internet interfaces and the latest communication technologies as a basis.
→ Sixth Selection Committee: The 2017 call was the last one co-organised with MNCARS. The committee was formed by Cristina Cámara, Chema González and Marc Vives. By then, HAMACA was already widely considered an extensive archive of the history of experimental audiovisual proposals in Spain: both an expanded repository of video and a platform to study its transformations and possibilities in contemporaneity. There was an outstanding incorporation of anthropological documentary essays, melancholic explorations of the film medium and works on body politics.
→ Seventh Selection Committee: In 2020 HAMACA initiated a new type of public calls for the incorporation of videos: specific calls. Based on gaps in the archive that were identified as not corresponding to the reality and interest of the medium, this type of call would address specific themes and/or languages in order to enrich the catalog where it was most needed. Thus, in 2020 and in collaboration with the Institute of Porn Studies, the call for entries Pornographic Image was opened, the jury was made up of Ona Bros, Francesc Ruiz and Lucía Egaña.
→ Eighth Selection Committee: Another general call also took place in 2020, in which Tjasa Kancler, Alexandra Laudo and Albert Alcoz participated in the evaluation committee. The call was significant for the incorporation of works that challenged hegemonic logics of power and representation in different formats. It also highlighted the presence of pieces that have a bearing on the materiality of audiovisual media, video essays that integrate subjectivity and the voice in the first person or that carry out a critical revision of the history of 20th century art from current issues, as well as the interest in memory and territory to investigate and denounce questions related to environmental and extractivist policies.
→ Ninth Selection Committee: The 2022 general call for entries had Andrés Duque, Pablo Martínez and Marta Sesé as jurors. The selection highlighted the concern for historical memory, the register and the personal archive, as well as the predominance of narrative subjectivity, anthropological approaches and the visibility of dissident identities; interests and concerns about the peremptory nature of life, interspecies relationships, belonging, sexual dissidence and the vindication of analogic formats.
→ Tenth Selection Committee: In 2022 the End of the World Call was also opened, aimed at the reception of pieces linked to the field of the eco-social crisis. The jury was made up of Toni Navarro and Jara Rocha, who opened up the notion of the end of the world, understanding that "with the developmentalism of the 80's and 90's, worlds have already ended, that colonial violence undoubtedly managed to put an end to many worlds and yet at the same time new ones continue to emerge, that the normative, capacitative and expertcentric worlds end with the ontoepistemic crises in series and from there emerge other subjectivations, techniques and communities such as diskas and the non-binary ones".
→ Eleventh Selection Committee: Daniel Gasol, Zaida Trallero and Sergi Álvarez Riosalido were on the jury for the 2024 general call for entries. This edition was marked by the democratisation and use of the audiovisual essay practice from the field of art, the recovery of analogue archives and a recurring theme: the rural as a way of recovering memory, other ways of life, the concept of origin, works linked to the land and space to be reconsidered from a ferocious, industrialised scenario.
→ Twelfth Selection Committee: In 2025 a new specific call was opened, the Convocatoria Bergamasca, which made use of the figure of José Bergamín and his lost and imagined worlds to call for the reception of videos that worked around experiences of language, historical memory and minor/popular cultures. It opened, from the temporal stratum of the lost and the material dimension of audiovisual languages, portals of questions and mysteries through which to approach an illiterate universe that weirdifies.
Taxonomy evolution
HAMACA's taxonomy has become increasingly complex and rigorous as the archive has grown and developed. It is currently an excellent tool at the service of the identification, pedagogy and accessibility of the archived audiovisuals, a conceptual framework based on words that name and interrelate the pieces in the catalog from logics of precision, usability and lyrical sensitivity towards the pieces.
→ First taxonomy: With the launch of the first web version of the archive (2007) the first taxonomy of the catalog appeared, articulated from the words that authors themselves used to tag their pieces. From a common interface of the time, the tags are organised in the form of a cloud, with the most repeated terms being the smallest ones. The method, simple and participatory, turned out to be pleasant but not very functional: repetitions of terms in singular and plural, synonyms, contradictions or the lack of tags were common, depending on the work.
→ Second taxonomy: Through research and collaboration with a working team formed by Eugeni Bonet, Albert Alcoz and Violeta Mayoral, HAMACA takes advantage of the change to its second web version (2016-2017) to conceptualise a more precise taxonomy for the catalog. In this process, and under the proposal to use terms that would broaden the possibility of belonging instead of limiting it, a three-level system was created: audiovisual language, subject matter and featured elements. From then on, it would be the archive staff who would catalog the pieces, and for this purpose, the team that created the taxonomy made a first complete revision of the archive that implemented this new taxonomy.
→ Third taxonomy: Since 2024 HAMACA has been configuring its next taxonomy, also linked to another redevelopment of its web platform. On this occasion, the work has involved the collaboration of two teams: Ros Murray and Julia Cortegana for the semantic filters; Paloma Hernández, Martha Helga and Lorena Soria for the technical filters. Thus, the third version of the taxonomy deploys a complex branched system of terms that allow us to navigate and search for pieces through categories that reflect the multiple dimensions of interest of the catalogued experimental audiovisual.
Other ways to update the HAMACA catalog
During its trajectory, the HAMACA archive has activated various formulas to introduce works into the archive. By taking advantage of the creation of curated programmes such as Ciclo del Vídeo a la Gran Pantalla, carried out in the Maldà cinemas, the programmers were asked for suggestions that were not in the catalog to be subsequently invited to form part of the archive.
Videos were also introduced through the exhibition project Caras B de la Historia del Vídeo Arte en España (2011, AECID) led by Nekane Aramburu and Carlos T. Mori, collaboration agreements with the artistic production and research centre Hangar or the art centre La Capella in Barcelona, or the exhibition Hecho en casa (2023, Conde Duque) curated by Carlos T. Mori.
