leon eckert • lo que pasa

M29 Huelga General:
My pictures show episodes from a night in Barcelona in Spring 2012.

The national labour union had called for a "Huelga Nacional" a general strike

which erupted into protests and then outright violence.

The scenes look as if taken on a battlefield far away from us, however in 2012 the 

Economic crisis has brought physical conflict back to the centres of civilisation - Greece,

Spain and Italy.

In Spain 50% of young people are out of work, without perspective, without 

hope. Hang on. Without hope? There is something else in these pictures: there 

is the skateboarder that pops a kickflip to the backdrop of rubble in a blocked street, 

there is the young woman riding her carefully decorated bike through this night

of violence, there is the inline skater who keeps skating when everything else is falling apart.

And indeed throughout my summer I met young people with new ideas, new ideas

for making ends meet, new ideas for institutions, new ideas for how we should live

together. I have travelled extensively in 2012 but nowhere could I feel this 

dichotomy between crisis & despair on the one hand and hope & new found creativity

on the other as intensely as in Barcelona. I hope I could capture this in these pictures

from that Barcelonian summer night.

I took these pictures a year ago, but showed them in a small exhibition at the University College London (UCL) last week. That's why I share them here again. First digitals on this blog, premiere. I haven't slept last night, I'm out, bye.

P.S.: The text is the one that was next to the pictures at the exhibition, my brother helped me with that. Danke, Fabi.