Cosas apuntes 2017

Debe ser difcil encontrar algo hecho por un ser humano que no est
preado de una visin del mundo. Probablemente imposible. Es inherente
a existir. Sucede que las visiones del mundo pueden coincidir con cierta
idea hegemnica de lo que es el mundo, o no.

a responsabilidad es enorme, considerando que los pueblos de La Sierra

entienden que si llegasen a fallar al mantener su medio ambiente en
armona, esto significara el caos en el mundo entero. Si fallan en hacer
frente a la constelacin de fuerzas que estn en juego cada vez que
nosotros los depredadores supremos intervenimos en el escenario, la
raza humana no sobrevivir. Pero esta es la parte fundamental que debe
ser entendida: ellos conciben este desastre en lo que hemos llamado
trminos hologrficos, en los que el todo est en cada una de sus partes.
As es que en el entendimiento Kogi, Arhuaco, Wiwa del mundo (que ha ido
fluyendo hasta ellos en la corriente de su tradicin oral), el da en que el
metabolismo de la Sierra falle, ese da significar tambin el apocalipsis
para todo el planeta. Es una leccin suprema para nosotros: cuidar del
propio hbitat minsculo es una cuestin de vida o muerte para la especie.
La idea de una nueva era llamada Antropoceno (cuya cronologa es
bastante inexacta) probablemente sera sentida por ellos como un gran
engao conceptual, pues ellos han estado desde siempre en esa era
geolgica siendo el pagamento la expresin activa de esta idea. Ellos han
estado desde siempre en conversacin con una tecnoesfera,[1] pues la
Sierra en s es una especie de mquina. Y ellos han entendido siempre, a
travs de la potencia de su matriz mitolgica, que la Sierra es el corazn
mismo del mundo y que toda otra sierra tambin lo es, cuando es activada
como tal. Esta matriz mitolgica pone el principio y el fin del universo en la
misma mesa, en todo momento. Ellos tambin han entendido que todos
estamos al borde de una catstrofe que eliminar toda la vida de la tierra,
si no re-aprendemos a participar en la co-escritura del cdigo que hace que
el viento sople y la lluvia caiga.

Es cierto que muchos de los smbolos que aparecen en mi trabajo se

pueden hallar en la religin o la mitologa, lo que en parte atribuyo al
hecho de que la religin funciona para las sociedades occidentales
contemporneas como una especie de reserva simblica inconsciente para
acercarse a la espiritualidad. Sin embargo, no es en el mundo religioso ni
en el mitolgico en donde busco mis imgenes, sino en la vida cotidiana.
Lo observacin de la vida cotidiana en cdigo simblico es uno de los
mejores ejercicios posibles; te permite descubrir cmo funcionan las
cosas. Ves los fenmenos desplegndose en tiempo real. Es desde este
punto de vista que me acerqu al teatro, atrado por la idea del trabajo
con el momento presente. El aqu y ahora del teatro fue muy inspirador
para m. De alguna manera, hoy concibo las instalaciones como sets en los
que el pblico recorre el espacio como si leyera una partitura.

Creo que los artistas hacemos investigaciones tangenciales. No

respaldamos investigaciones de otros sino que las atravesamos en ciertos
puntos. Estamos naturalmente expuestos a teoras y a su vez
profundizamos en conocimientos de todo tipo. Lo que quise decirte
cuando conversamos es que yo me reconozco menos como un artista que
establece su campo de estudio y lo va perfeccionando y ms como un
artista que no conoce su tema y lo va descubriendo a medida que avanza.
No trabajo con un programa claro de investigacin, como lo hara un
cientfico y como lo hacen otros artistas, sino que voy corrigiendo el curso
a medida que avanzo. Es cierto que a medida que pasan los aos, los
intereses conceptuales van siendo ms claros e incluso las afinidades
formales se cristalizan, pero eso es resultado de la experiencia y no de una
decisin anterior. Mi obra adopta una posicin firme frente a la realidad:
la interroga. Uno de los principios recurrentes en mi trabajo es la
desconfianza hacia lo que llamamos realidad. Utilizo mi obra para exponer
condiciones fsicas y mentales en las que nos hallamos sumergidos y que
me sirven para comprender mejor la realidad. En este contexto, sera
absurdo partir de supuestos estrictos de lo que significa la realidad.

no creo que nada en el arte contemporneo vaya a generar una

revolucin inmediata, pero se pueden generar microagencias que
siembren dudas o infiltren ciertos temas en algunos lados en donde no se
tratan usualmente. Es raro, pues no se trata de asegurar que el otro
entienda un mensaje ni debemos bajar lnea de cmo debe ser recibida
una obra. Puedo generar una metfora, un chiste, una fiesta, una
discusin, un contexto, un paratexto pero al final la reaccin en el otro
no la s, an con los mejores deseos, pero puedo hacer experimentos.

A primera vista, parece como si las mercancas fuesen objetos evidentes y

triviales. Pero, analizndolas, vemos que son objetos muy intrincados,
llenos de sutilezas metafsicas y de resabios teolgicos. () La forma de la
madera, por ejemplo, cambia al convertirla en una mesa. No obstante, la
mesa sigue siendo madera, sigue siendo un objeto fsico vulgar y
corriente. Pero en cuanto empieza a comportarse como mercanca, la
mesa se convierte en un objeto fsicamente metafsico. No slo se
incorpora sobre sus patas encima del suelo, sino que se pone de cabeza
frente a todas las dems mercancas, y de su cabeza de madera empiezan
a salir antojos mucho ms peregrinos y extraos que si de pronto la mesa
rompiese a bailar por su propio impulso.
Karl Marx, Capital (1867)

El famoso comentario de Marx sugiere que a pesar de los cambios

aparentemente radicales de la sociedad capitalista, la metafsica an abunda
en la magia de la mercanca. Por eso me interesa hablar sobre cmo la tica
ha migrado de la doctrina religiosa al humanismo secular, al mundo
posthumanista, especialmente en el mundo del arte. En un panel reciente
en el Nasher Sculpture Center, durante la feria de arte de Dallas, el
coleccionista Stefan Simchowitz sugiri que los artistas y museos tienen un
aura demasiado sagrada, tica, cuando los coleccionistas son difamados
injustamente como capitalistas avarientos.
Cuando Lisa Cooley anunci hace poco el cierre de su galera, habl del
cansancio del hper capitalismo del mercado del arte, con sus ferias
internacionales, exigencias de espacios ms grandes, mayores costos de
produccin de obras, etc. y sugiri que nos tomramos un descanso del arte
y que, en vez, donemos a algunas causas incluyendo Planned Parenthood.
Existe una aspiracin de establecer una relacin tica en el mercado? No
es cierto acaso que las problemticas del capitalismo, adems de estar
ligadas a galeras y coleccionistas, estn conectadas con instituciones sin
nimo de lucro como museos y espacios alternativos ms pequeos?

En primaria y en bachillerato
los profesores solan contar
que poco despus de la llegada
de los conquistadores a la isla
estos fueron atacados por un ejrcito
de tanos que estaban hastiados
de los abusos y las fechoras que
los espaoles cometan a diario.
A pesar de esto, no pudieron causar
muchas bajas ya que en medio de la batalla
se apareci la Virgen de las Mercedes
como si fuera Atenea en la Ilada
y ayud a que los conquistadores
vencieran y sometieran a los tanos.

Ya sabemos que la historia est escrita

por los vencedores y que est plagada
de incoherencias y que hasta se puede
interpretar a conveniencia
como hizo aquella monjita
de la parroquia del Santo Cerro
que cuando la increp por lo sucedido
me confes que la virgen en el fondo
se encontraba del lado de los pobres indios.

Nostradamus me jodi la adolescencia.

O quizs fue culpa de Orson Welles
que narr aquel documental sobre
las profecas de Nostradamus
en el que apareca fumando muy campante
en un despacho mientras anunciaba
desastre tras desastre.

El hombre que vea el maana

es la traduccin literal del documental.
Lo vi por primera vez a los ocho aos
y al terminar yo calculaba que
para el dos mil
-que es cuando anunciaban
que se terminara el mundo
yo apenas tendra 22 aos.

Claro, pas el tiempo y me di cuenta

de que todo era una farsa
y que las predicciones no eran
ms que propaganda
sobre todo esa de que el mundo
se acabara en el dos mil
aunque debo reconocer que lo de Y2K
me hizo temblar y recuerdo que no
celebr el ao nuevo hasta estar
seguro de que ninguna potencia
lanzara sus misiles.
Y ningn pas del Caribe
aparece en las predicciones de Nostradamus
aunque en realidad yo nunca me he atrevido
a leer los libros o a averiguar
ms all de lo que mostr
Orson Welles en el documental
que por cierto
pasaban en la televisin dominicana
todos los viernes santos.
Nostradamus no slo me jodi a m
sino tambin a mi generacin.
Y la prueba est en la proliferacin
de las bancas de apuesta.

El otro da en el noticiero
vi una caravana de vehculos
dirigindose a la loma del Chivo,
que de acuerdo a un pastor gordo
y carismtico como Orson Welles
ser el ltimo bastin del planeta
cuando llegue el apocalipsis.

El reportaje dur varios minutos

como si hubiera una posibilidad
de que llegase el apocalipsis
y pudieran transmitirlo en vivo
pero yo no tuve ms paciencia
y cambi el canal.
Incertidumbre viva considera la incertidumbre como un sistema de
gua generativa y se basa en la conviccin de que, para hacer frente
de manera objetiva los principales problemas de nuestro tiempo,
como el calentamiento global y su impacto en nuestros hbitats, la
extincin de especies y la prdida de la diversidad biolgica y
cultural, la creciente inestabilidad econmica y poltica, la injusticia
en la distribucin de los recursos naturales de la Tierra, la migracin
global y la propagacin alarmante de la xenofobia, debe desvincular
la incertidumbre de miedo. INCERTIDUMBRE VIVA est
claramente conectada a las nociones endmicas del cuerpo y de la
tierra, con una calidad viral en los organismos y
ecosistemas. Aunque en general se asocia con la crisis, y no su
equivalente. La incertidumbre es principalmente una condicin
psicolgica y emocional,

Discutir la incertidumbre tambin incluye proceso de des-

aprendizaje y requiere una comprensin de la naturaleza ilimitada
de conocimiento. Describir lo desconocido siempre implica
cuestionar lo que consideramos sabido, una apertura para aprender
de los sistemas de conocimientos indgenas y locales, y una
apreciacin de los cdigos cientficos y simblicos como
complementarios y no excluyentes entre s. Arte promueve un
intercambio activo entre las personas, reconociendo las
incertidumbres tales como sistemas de guiado generativos y
constructivas. El arte se apropia de los enfoques transdisciplinarios
que provienen de la investigacin y la educacin. Pero a medida que
las muchas formas de arte del razonamiento se puede aplicar a otros
campos de la vida pblica?

Dispuesto a seguir el pensamiento cosmolgico, la inteligencia

ambiental y colectiva, y ecologas sistmicos y naturales, VIVA
incertidumbre es construido como un jardn, en el que se entrelazan
temas e ideas libremente en un todo integrado, estructurado en
capas, como una ecologa del juicio s mismo. Est organizada en
captulos, sino ms bien a partir de dilogos entre las diferentes
producciones de 81 artistas de 33 pases. La pantalla se ve a una serie
de artistas histricos que proporcionan un conjunto de estrategias
que pueden ser relevantes ahora ms que nunca. La mayora de los
proyectos artsticos, sin embargo, encargado especialmente para la
Bienal de 32, no para ilustrar un marco terico o temtico, pero se
desarrolle los principios creativos de incertidumbre en diferentes
direcciones. Varias obras de arte se refieren directamente a la
naturaleza y los procesos biolgicos, botnicos o alqumicos que nos
pueden ensear acerca de la diversidad y multiplicidad. Algunas
obras incorporan o investigan una multitud de narrativas y formas
de conocimiento. Otro examen crtico de poder poltico, econmico y
meditico y representacin. Y, sin embargo, no son los que
desencadenan las formas alternativas imaginacin y experiencia para
seguir adelante. La Bienal 32 entiende como permeable y accesible,
participando activamente en la construccin en curso del parque de
Ibirapuera como espacio pblico, ampliando su sentido de
comunidad; la exposicin como una extensin del parque en el
interior del pabelln. Y lo que el jardn se convierte en un modelo,
tanto metafrica como metodolgicamente, la promocin de una
diversidad de espacios,

El desarrollo de la identidad visual de la Bienal 32 definido por la

colaboracin entre el curador y el equipo de diseo de la Fundacin
Bienal. El proceso se inici con dos ideas distintas: una referencia a
los signos simplificadas de una orientacin comn en los senderos
( senderismo ) y el atractivo visual de los diseos especializados de
los seres vivos.

Despus de una serie de estudios, dos ideas se combinaron y se

consolidan en un conjunto de principios rectores: animales y plantas
fcilmente reconocibles y de alguna manera presentes en el universo
cultural y / o natural brasilea gan vicios tratamiento simplificados,
lejos de detalles cientficos. Las medusas, cangrejos y la raz de la
yuca se hacen eco del patrimonio cultural y ambiental de Brasil. Los
signos comienzan a partir de formas elementales de la geometra y
contrastan fuertemente con los diseos hechos a mano. El amarillo,
rojo y azul, tomada de las normas de sealizacin siempre se aplican
a las seales, sino que se refieren a las imgenes y las ideas evocan
tal peligro, alerta, la atencin y la vida. En la superposicin de
elementos, que resume la idea de la incertidumbre como un ser vivo
con el que no slo tienen que vivir, pero tambin se relacionan.

The World Without Us is an exhibition proposed and curated by Inke

Arns. It asks how the world would look like if we subtracted the human
factor, or rather, what are the non-human actors that are increasingly
populating the world. The exhibition does not intend to conjure up a post-
catastrophic scenariorather, the world without us is understood as the
result of a gradual development that is at work already today.

La resaca es un estado alterado, tan absorbente y

alucinante como la embriaguez. Ambivalente e
impredecible, puede producir depresin u optimismo
irracional; puede liberarnos del temor y prolongar la
euforia de una celebracin, o simplemente aumentar la
paranoia de Esta Inminente Fatalidad. A medida en
que el mundo se vuelve cada vez ms injusto,
intolerante y amnsico, abordaremos preocupaciones
relacionadas con los giros cada vez ms conservadores
de nuestras sociedades por medio de mltiples
aproximaciones a los recuerdos borrosos de las fiestas
del ayer.
utilizando la resaca como metfora de la desilusin
generada por los ideales rotos. Si, como evoca Clarice
Lispector, La belleza de Brasilia son sus estatuas
invisibles, queremos enfatizar precisamente en el
aspecto ms real de la utopa: su dimensin
imaginaria.

A travs de la apropiacin, la documentacin o la

ficcin, los artistas contemporneos confrontan el
estado de emergencia permanente que caracteriza la
poltica global del principio del siglo XXI. De esta
manera, buscan procesar las conmociones sociales
para convertirlas en espacios de transformacin.

If you swim you will see lobsters and seashells living on missiles. If you dont, then you see
nothingjust the ocean.

I can talk specifically about the image of a landscape in Puerto Rico and how it has been
represented visually in very limited waysmostly in terms of the military, nostalgic, agricultural
representation of the 1930 to 1940s. Now most representations are dominated by tourism and the
service industry. And we embody them and reproduce them as well. These are specific ways of
seeing that have to do with domination and ownership; a landscape that is always portrayed almost
as a pristine landscape, even when it has been bombed for 60 years. If you swim you will see
lobsters and seashells living on missiles. If you dont, then you see nothing. You just see the
beautiful surface of the ocean.

There are questions for me about how you can think visually, aesthetically, about a place that is
destroyed, that is toxic, that has been violently transformed, but it is not visible on the surface. So,
this is why La Cueva Negra is shot in a place where there is this layer of history where you have the
settlement and the highway. This is actually a very common landscape in Puerto Rico. When I
show this work in Puerto Rico, it never goes through this lens of paradise that other people might
see, as if it was beautiful because it was a forest. If you live in Puerto Rico you recognize that
landscape immediately as a post-industrial rural landscape with all those things in it. Puerto Rico is
overpopulated; there are no ways to deal with the two million cars that are there. We know all
these things about the place but that we have not even begun to think about what they mean in
terms of sensorial reality and perception of place. We keep looking at images that represent it as if
it was a bucolic agricultural landscape. For example, in La Cueva Negra, Im interested in those
issues of post-military spaces because the place itself positions you. The place asks you to look at it
for the reasons that it was created. Even when you point the camera at it from a critical point-of-
view, its critical point-of-view is also reproducing that image. This is where you fall into creating
pleasure in the military ruin. You are still playing the movie over and over.

experimentar el riesgo que implica hacer arte contemporneo en una poca donde la velocidad de
los estmulos sensoriales a los que estamos expuestos amenaza con la desintegracin de los
discursos. Ciertamente los artistas han ampliado los horizontes de alcance para su obra, pero a la
vez, nunca antes la obra se haba visto tan condicionada a sufrir un rpido desgaste y, por ende,
un fcil olvido de sus plataformas conceptuales.

acerca de los objetos que han sido dispuestos a travs del espacio de exposicin. Es una
suerte de lo que en ingls se conoce como el aftermath de un suceso: algo sucedi antes
de que el espectador acceda al trabajo

From this self-conscious reflection, the work is liberated and becomes an

explosion/exploration of found materials, polyurethane foam and sense of humour: dirt
paintings, eyes that droop out of masks on the wall and a large plinth that holds Michael's
army, or his antihero with a thousand faces. Masks on stick pedestals, these turn ritual into
game, begging to be worn for some play-acting or a mock battle. Michael's cunning
humorous work is full of such graciousness: his various sculptures such as his masks,
made of found materials, not only echo avant-garde neoprimitive works by Picasso and
others in Western art history, but also cut straight to the heart of the masked matter: in their
many layers, one finds the smile of the world's oldest mask from the Neolithic period, an
ancient Greek mask with Titans, Aztec masks blended with West African ones, all made of
ephemera and detritus, as too are other masks reminiscent of cartoon heroes ( out of a
medieval knight extravaganza) and villains (the KKK, and even a fake sea-monster
reminiscent of Scooby Doo).

Beyond Immaterialism: Parallels between Judeo Christian doctrine and Contemporary Art.

Human culture is shifting from material to immaterial. I am going to suggest that this is related to man's fear of
nature. This fear, has got a pattern. It becomes more obvious in periods and areas with scarce resources or
under strain. Less apparent in groups of people emerging from crisis. It manifests itself as an aversion to
material objects. This text will try to explain how this phenomenon substantiates in the field of modern art and
by comparing art with other faces of culture, will make a case that the art world is largely unaware of this
condition.
Revolution against Nature

Lets take a look into the Bible, the bestselling book of all time. What's groundbreaking about the bible is that it
provides its readers with a new way of living. A way, rid of material pleasures and pains, a way more
economical and efficient. A common pattern throughout the Old and New Testament is swapping the material
with the immaterial. The material is usually represented as evil and the immaterial as good. The examples are
many. In Genesis a world of plenty (Eden) is swapped with a world of scarcity. The source of temptation is an
animal. From the very beginning there is an association of Nature with the unattainable, but also an association
of nature with evil(snake). A counteract to mans sense of futility upon confronting the natural world.

In Leviticus a manual for social operating (or Gods contract with Israel if you prefer), there is a list of animals
that are considered unclean. In the Book Of Job, Leviathan, a crocodile (or hippo), represents the darkness of
the physical world. In Jonah, one of the most popular tales, the hero is swallowed by a giant fish and surviving
the encounter with the animal provides the supernatural core of the story.

And they shall no more offer their sacrifice unto devils

Leviticus 17:7

In this particular verse, devils is a translation of the Hebrew word sairrim which literally means wild goats.* In
order to make the swap from material to immaterial more effective, the editors of the Bible (composing the Old
Testament at around 400b.c.) borrowed a concept from the Persians. Good and evil.

the Persians had become the dominant nation in Asia, and Persian thought would be expected to be very
influential among all nations which, like Judah, were under Persian rule. Persian religion had just been
systematized by a great prophet, Zarathustra (Zoroaster), at about the time of the return from Babylonian
captivity, and the earth rang, so to speak, with the new doctrine. Zoroastrianism offered a dualistic view of the
universe. There was a principle of good, Ahura-Mazda (or Ormuzd), and a principle of evil, Ahriman, which
were viewed as virtually independent of each other and very nearly equal.**

The dualistic good-evil concept made life easier to explain and added an element of excitement and drama in
storytelling. Nowhere before 1 Chronicles is Satan mentioned, but after that he regularly appears introducing
worldly vices to various characters, including Jesus Christ.

The above were examples of how the Bible managed to expose the problematic nature of the physical world
and man as animal and insert a conceptual non material world that offers freedom to everyone. Like the
computers revolution today, where there is no need for physical activity given you are connected, the Bible
signaled a similar revolution many centuries ago. One only needs his mind and two ears to experience God.
He is nowhere to be seen anyway. Western monotheistic religions signal the departure from the material to the
immaterial, just like modern notions of progress signal the same. Talking became text messaging and a
meeting bacame a skype conference and travelling will become teleportation. The disability of man to access
matter and resources, leads to all sorts of economic measures. Economy itself is the manifestation of this
universal and primeval nature-phobia. In later paragraphs I will attempt to show how contemporary art is
afflicted by the same inclination towards economy and dematerialization. What better way to start this by
sticking to the Bible for a while.

And he (Aaron)fashioned it with a graving tool, after he had made it a molten calf: and they said, These be
thy gods O Israel ***

Exodus 32:4.

The myth goes that when Moses came down from mount Sinai in Exodus, he brought with him the Ten
commandments, which were plain text. In addition he destroyed the golden calf, an idol made by the Israelites
as they waited for him. This is maybe the cleanest example of swapping the material for the immaterial. The
rejection of the material is especially strong because it is artwork that Moses destroyed. Swapping crafted art
for linguistic code was indeed a groundbreaking act in 1200bc. It made life easier. From a secular perspective,
the Bible qualifies as a piece of art but the Ten Commandments as conceptual art. The message was that
Israel would function through code, not through the abstraction and chaos of visuals. This was the revolution
against nature. The more it disregards nature and material life the more successful a religion is. Before
monotheism paganism was very close to nature and became prey to the new doctrine.

Sculptures of animals existed thousands of years before Moses, yet written language was a recent
development, especially for an impoverished tribe of exiled people wandering in the desert of Sinai. Text in this
occasion represents a solution of economy and urgency. When your people are in the desert, saving energy is
a matter of life or death. Fair enough.

To make the Ten Commandments, no serious labor was involved, no waste of precious metals, no need for
craftsmen or equipment, only thought and stones. 600 years before this event, Abraham had introduced
monotheism to his people. Well, the concept of monotheism fits the same bill. An economic solution to the
problem of faith, one that brings an end to quarrels about whose and which god is superior, an end to
manufacturing different gods and figures for different physical phenomena and attributes of nature. Perfect for
people with no resources. In a time of scarcity these were the perfect measures to keep unity. At this point a
question comes to mind. The Ten Commandments was the way to the future in a context of harsh conditions
and poverty 3200 years ago. These ideas were well digested by the millions of Bible believers that followed
and could have been left aside by now. So why is modern art, the avant garde of culture and society, operating
according to Moses principles? We will look into this shortly.

The shifting decades. From outgoing to shy, material to immaterial

A few years after the moon landings, there was talk of space cities to be, going to Mars by 2000, flying cars to
replace most transportation and nuclear fusion that would create a surplus of energy and power. Not to
mention robots as laborers, the cure of cancer etc. That was the spirit of the 70s the 80s and even the 90s. It
was a time of abundance and all of the above were associated with the idea of progress. A linear idea of
history dominated. The years after two World Wars found humanity reborn, ready to build from scratch. Ready
for new adventure. Humans would physically explore the world, expand in the universe and sort out earthly
problems by inventing new machines and technologies. Few of these ever materialized. The complex socio-
political map did not allow all this progress. The appetite for expanding and new exploration that emerged from
the repression of the World Wars, slowly faded into the past and was replaced by earthly and everyday
problems.

This is an example of how I perceive a global shift from material to immaterial activity in recent history. I will
expand this example below explaining immaterial activity.

A non physical transformation is currently taking place, that of information. Outbound explorations were
deemed too expensive, too material, too unrealistic. Not only that but Earth has almost run out of unexplored
areas. The world slowly turned its attention inwards to the cheap and immaterial technology that is computer
software and hardware. The word inwards describes the relationship of man with nature. The material activity
inside a computer is alternating current, something the eye cannot sense. Software is maths on wire and
hardware is silicon machines. Amazing stuff indeed, even more so the subsequent applications of internet and
the cloud. Recent Quantum mechanics applications in smartphones**** show this trend is actively evolving.
Google is more capable than what most preceding civilizations expected their God to be, you ask and it
answers back. Literally. The opening up of information for all is a successful concept that is becoming a central
nervous system for humanity. Yet information (today at least) is meant mostly as data and not as a holistic
experience that includes the abstract sensory of the body-space relationship. No matter how many basketball
games you watch on cable or play on playstation there is no way you can become a good player unless you
grab the ball and go shoot some hoops. Reading artist's manifestos and oil painting manuals will make you no
good an artist but might make you an art theorist. The success of new immaterial technologies shows that The
"real" experience is not very fashionable. Looking at a full inbox is exciting. Looking at the adventures of Yves
Rossy or Felix Baumgartner is foul tasted and tacky. I'm not advocating extreme sports, rather highlighting that
going towards nature is the exception in a world where the norm is sitting on a desk and processing data.

Isn't it an indicator that the Concorde was discontinued, the moon missions were discontinued and cars
became villains? In a hypothetical world of infinite energy resources that would never be the case. Two weeks
ago the Obama administration put all NASA manned missions to the fridge. Everything we do is bound to
material restrictions. These ambassadors of materialism have negative associations attached on them. Not
everyone will say that, yet this is the current in advanced western societies. Somehow machines with moving
parts (and even worse men riding machines) have come to symbolize the decadence of humanity. But whats
wrong with machines? Could it be that they are attempts at imitateing and improving nature? The same nature
the is vilified in the Bible, the uneconomic nature. To understand this we have to look into some of mans most
primal fears.

The Ontology of the Problem

In this introvert revolution all one needs is a brain and two eyeballs. You do not need the rest of your body. A
good thing about modern times is that if you become paralyzed from the neck down, you can still spend a
creative rest of your life on the web. I sometimes visualize a future were biocomputers have advanced to the
point that a major percentage of mankind has dropped the physical body in order to become part of the "big
grid" or maybe what the future of the internet is. The eyes of a future visitor to Earth would observe Valleys of
immobile techno slime, which in "reality" would be people perfectly content, living their wildest fantasies in a
data haven.(yes, like Matrix). Still, apart from the introvert humans, I see the other edge of the spectrum, "The
Materialists", this old fashioned (now) tribe, the ones who will attempt the terraforming of Mars and the
colonization of exoplanets that resemble Earth. The ones who go out. They will too use the grid and the
technologies of the nano-scale but They will also create real utopias, fantasy planets, and why not, maybe
even breed with alien forms of life to create new advanced species. Judging from current trends, the
immaterialist peoples seem like a very realistic future, the path of least resistance. The other group (the
materialists?) seem like an outrageous concept for the few privileged that can only realize on the back of
others, very right wing, doomed to fail, bad capitalists, an orgy of vanity and unsustainability.

What is the problem with physicality? In the 1960's to become an astronaut or drive your car you needed your
body. And to fly in the Concorde you actually needed to be there yourself. Even to go to war you had to get
your balls in the cockpit. Now you just seat on a leather armchair at Balad Air Base in Las Vegas and nuke'em
by drone in Afghanistan. (The Lockheed F-35 might be one of the last man operated war aircrafts.) You can
also drive a Ferrari F40 in front of your 42 inch flat screen wearing 3D glasses and steering a little plastic
wheel. Many people said "why go to the planets" or "we went to the moon, so what? ... with that money we
could have built 200 hospitals" after the Apollo program. This is related to an ancient fear. Man's physical
restrictions.

The vast scale of the universe makes us feel very small. Man is intimidated when generations work and use
resources only for a few people to go from A to B, a tiny distance in the cosmic scale. The distances are
massive or we are tiny. Intimidation, defeat, pointlessness, awe, fear, the unknown. Astronomers still cannot
account for what makes 95% of the universe. The maths don't add up, so dark energy accounts for 75% of the
universe's mass and dark matter for 20%, the rest 5% is all the galaxies, stars, planets, nebulae, you name it.
Isnt that scary? Possible infinite parallel universes are not even considered here. We dont know where we
come from, we don't know what is our surrounding space, we can't find others in the neighbourhood and on top
we are going to die! This is why the physical experience is equated with evil, because it scares us to death.
The unknown is so massive that it feels nice to look inside, inwards to the small things and feel like in control.
We are tiny in space scale and also in time scale as we live for an average of 80 earth years yet we do not live
for infinities. Where were you from Big Bang to now? Nowhere. Where are you going to be from 2070 and
after? Nowhere. Nothing. That feels restricting, it seems we cant know everything, we cant see everything, we
cant go everywhere, it feels like we re excluded from the party. Humans reaction to these realizations was to
throw their own party and not invite nature. It was the new religions that found perfect form in the Judeo-
Christian and subsequent Islamic narratives.

The Fascism of Language

Living in London during the last decade, I attended countless conceptual, language and idea based art
shows. These vaguely fit in the Post-Minimalism and post -conceptual brackets. Most of them were in major
venues like the Tate Modern, ICA, Hayward, but also commercial galleries, non profit art organizations and
project spaces. I would read the labels or leaflets until I understood the work. I was committed to
understanding the concepts behind the work and so I did. It wasnt hard to understand the value and
importance of artists like Nauman or Orozco yet what struck me repeatedly was the fact that their work
somehow could not be argued with. The linguistic constructions that support the works were so tight that didnt
allow any space for questioning or doubting. The work was stripped down to a minimum of visual handles only
enough to back the concept.
Most upmarket contemporary art is so closely knit to its text that it feels as the work is only accompanying the
text, as if we could actually do without the work. Many times I read the idea and realise that I don't need to see
the work, because whatever extra the work will give me will either be the work's fault or my misunderstanding
of it. Well thats one way of making art, yet I found myself more and more in museums like the National Gallery
or Tate Britains Collection looking at big paintings or other hand made work. I didnt need to read little concept
explaining panels and in contrast with the interpretational asfyxia of conceptual art, here I was at last free to
think on my own about art and slowly develop a critical eye. It also became obvious that many artists of the
renaissance and the enlightenment, way before art for art's sake, had a very strong conceptual base and their
works were full of ideas, needless of explanations and justifications.
Overanalysis, diminishes the visual department of the work. On top of that, a great deal of new work is directly
referecial to other historically recent works. Something that makes art be like football. Let me explain. If
someone turns on a TV and watches without sound at a random moment of the game, he won't understand
who is playing nor the score and he will just see little figures running on a green background. The same
happens with contemporary art. If you can't read the text or have someone explain to you the work, or even
worse you don't know about who the artist is and what is his context, the work ceases to be interesting. What
happened to art that can stand its ground without needing an external network? I was trying to understand why
I am being mocked for using icons in my work. Could it be that I was a modern day idolater?

I also kept visiting shows that stimulated my imagination without restricting me to the zeitgeist visual diet.
Some artists still use materials freely, so much that the work viewed from a Christian viewpoint looks evil.
There is a paganistic freedom in the works of Meese or Altmejd to mention but two. It is the body perceiving
the work not just the compartment of the brain dealing with language.
One can still read the text but the works speak on their own. Leaving language on the side for a while wont
harm, on the contrary it will train the neglected visual and abstract thinking compartments of the brain.
Language is the dominant human system for communication because it is the most materially efficient. The
most economic. Definitely not the richest or complex system. Minimum effort to convey a concept, minimum
materials used, minimum innovation involved. Language is a code used for functional purposes only and has
got little to do with real innovation. It is the experiments with the physical world that produce innovations. As in
evolution, so in art, the new comes from random mutations and mistakes. Something that also became
apparent after viewing hundreds of Post Minimalist shows was that language only becomes effective when it is
not fully understood.

I dont need to read a text plate in order to appreciate an artwork. It is my opinion that if you have to read the
text beneath an artwork it is because you dont like what you see and you try to replace it with something else.
With a plausible idea. Reading the plate though, usually has two possible effects. The one of fully
understanding the text, which, demystifies and resolves the work and puts an end to the experience. The other
effect, which is the one most artist-curator-theorist partnerships achieve, has to do with not fully understanding
the text. That usually happens by inserting internal art references or obscure specialist language that deny one
comprehension. Admitting ignorance is defeat in the professional circle, the viewer is left with the feeling of
exclusion from an elite group or a sense of humiliation together with admiration towards a superior intellect.
Both feelings transmit power to the work in a manipulative way. It seems Post Minimalism is a win-win model.
The support text makes sense so the work is justified, or it doesnt make sense and no one can say something
bad about it in fear of embarrassment. Language works as an enforcer. The actual/physical work is low key
and has no handles, in a way that no one can actually accuse it of bad taste or make it look irrelevant or
timed. After all, a text on a wall will always be a text on a wall. Sometimes the team that never loses can win
the championship, no matter how bad the football was. Could that be the reason the iconoclasts have found
their way into the big venues?

Curators In The Desert

So, what with the immaterialism in the museums? Like Moses and the people of Israel, so do modern curators
and museum directors wonder in a landscape of scarcity. Tight economic conditions mean safer shows.
Restricted budgets lead to less risk. The security of a work that is fully justified in linguistic terms guarantees
the curator his job as no one can make an argument against the certain choices. The more safe ones work is
linguistically the bigger his chances of finding his way to the museum. It is disastrous for a museum to have
complaints and protests about the intellectuality of artworks and this is solved using the least offensive
(towards language) artworks. The business runs better if there are no disruptions. Like Abrahams
monotheism, if art becomes one efficient brand then the masses will unite behind it.

Immaterialism, the visual manifestation of conceptual and post minimalist art, although very much in fashion
among the contemporary art circles, let me repeat myself, is associated with the most conservative practices,
(Islamic Law, iconoclasts of Byzantium, other religious traditions) but also with Conservatism itself.
Conservatism is to hold on to trusted ideals and traditions and avoid experiments. That works great in politics
but not in art. In politics one needs to protect disadvantaged populations and avoiding risk is more often than
not the right way. I want to see art that doesnt follow the global trends of economic crisis and esotericism but
instead leads the way out of the drought and this is why I get nausea when I go into museums and Biennials.
Increasingly I find myself in the museums and the cafeterias of Venice, instead of the Giardini and Arsenale,
which last year synoptically consumed within two afternoons.

Change Of Course

It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The mystery of the world is the visible, not the
invisible.
-Oscar Wilde *****

So what could diversify the current situation? Maybe the abandonment of using language to interpret art.
Impossible. It would be interesting to see some institutions that withdraw the text labels from the artworks. It
would be nice to see more art that is incapable of justifying itself with words but is justified by the spontaneous
reactions of the viewer. Maybe there should be more art that is subject to failure in established spaces. It would
be nice to see art that is not scared of images like the rest of the world is, but instead highlights the complexity
and mystery of the material world. I would like to see art that is equally enjoyed not only by people with very
specialist art knowledge but by a doctor or a nuclear scientist too. But then again all this doesn't make financial
sense, so why bother?

Works cited:

*Asimov's Guide To The Bible, Isaac Asimov, The Old and New Testaments, p.159

** Asimov's Guide To The Bible, Isaac Asimov, The Old and New Testaments, p.409

*** The Bible, Revised Standard Version, Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1946

**** example here:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8504373.stm

***** quoted in Susan Sontag, Against Interpretation

aprecia las historias dentro de historias, las ficciones solapando pases y pocas, el espejismo
entre el sueo y la realidad.

Sus mundos imaginarios estn unidos a un elemento obsesivo: su pensamiento comienza con el
mar, un espacio para la memoria en perpetuo movimiento, un espacio para proyecciones narrativas
donde el destino de Chile se cruza con grandes narraciones de viaje, conquista y flujos migratorios.
Sus imgenes lquidas hablan del resplandor de una verdad en vuelo permanente, el retroceso de
la historia, siempre repitindose y nunca el mismo.
A travs del mar, trae tambin la figura de su padre: un padre constructor de veleros durante la
dictadura de Pinochet, un hombre que es una metfora de todas las fantasas del viaje duplicadas
con una existencia polticamente limitada. Las investigaciones de Enrique Ramrez frecuentemente
vibran con resonancias biogrficas.
Para evitar la trampa de una visin unvoca, el artista escoge deliberadamente el camino seguido
por ciertos novelistas o cineastas latinoamericanos, como Gabriel Garca Mrquez, Jorge Luis
Borges o Ral Ruiz: la insercin de elementos mgicos y motivos sobrenaturales en situaciones
vinculadas a un marco histrico, cultural y geogrfico reconocible.

aprecia las historias dentro de historias, las ficciones solapando pases y pocas, el espejismo
entre el sueo y la realidad
. No hay moralismo en este enfoque meditativo: el artista sugiere ms bien el desarrollo clandestino
del pensamiento y la experiencia de inmersin en el ruido del mundo.+

am interested in the idea that at the edges of a construction of history, the ephemeral and discarded
events evaporate, so to speak. In the shadow of history are the ruins, which have lost meaning and
are relegated to the margins. Conservation and configuration that is considered historically valuable
is related to power and politics, convenient for some, or what becomes visible by its own force. But
there is another history however, other histories, all those things that will never be recovered. The
piece in this exhibition relates to that. It is a remark about the moment when these possible material
and symbolic ruins dissolve: in the first place, architecture that was built in the 20s with materials
brought from Europe and which has been poorly restored since 2000 (in this exhibition, it is claimed
to be "providing value"). In the second place, an old display, that was useful as propaganda of
merchandise in a show of construction supplies in 2002, and which almost was removed for the
opening of this exhibition. Finally, an ex-artwork, which was once inaugurated as full of promises of
participation in the global art scene, but which soon lost its meaning, to become an empty shell, not
even recognizable as art.

Soyo Lees research-based practice examines how history, ethics and beauty influence the way we view and
understand living things

here wasnt really a pure defining moment. Basically, I have always been
interested in dualities, dichotomies, and juxtapositions. This had led me to
explore aesthetic combinations of visual tropes, sociological values, and
diverse cultural material.
Me parece que tu potica es muchas de las veces iconoclasta; destruyes conos, en el
sentido amplio de la imagen, lo que incluye imgenes mentales como creencias,
ideologas o estereotipos. Especficamente, Destruccin total del Museo de
Antropologa, en la galera Kurimanzutto, y tu intervencin en el Museo Tamayo para la
exposicin Hay ms rutas que la nuestra, desarman el imaginario nacionalista
construido por el PRI, basado en la idealizacin del pasado prehispnico. Pero esta
potica de destruccin produce al mismo tiempo, como explica W.J.T. Mitchell,
imgenes creativas de destruccin de imgenes que a su vez se constituyen como una
nueva imagen; aqu mi pregunta: esta nueva imagen no sera una auto-exotizacin,
una esttica de lo inconcluso que de alguna manera puede ser reificada de nuevo por lo
que se espera de un artista mexicano en el panorama del sistema artstico
internacional?

S, claro; si la reificacin es como la gravedad, slo se escapa a ella por

instantes. Hasta las obras ms ligeras son susceptibles de echarse a perder por
la sobre-codificacin que se hace de ellas (ver el caso ready made). La irona no
lo hace a uno inmune al desastre, pero poco a poco va cambiando la consciencia
sobre algunos supuestos hegemnicos de
la jerarqua cultural. Esta variacin se logra poco a poco. La re-insercin de la
propuesta artstica en la estructura social que pretende desestabilizar no slo
sucede al arte crtico, sino tambin al periodismo o la teora crtica, por ejemplo.
Incluso el arte participativo y de interaccin comunitaria sufre de una gran
cantidad de perversiones no siempre conscientes. En el caso de las obras que
mencionaste, creo que Destruccin total del Museo de Antropologa es una idea
que, por as decirlo, me tom por sorpresa. En ese caso la obra abri un campo
de investigacin en el que estoy muy entusiasmado porque saba muy poco al
respecto. Encuentro que mucha gente se interesa por conocer todo lo que yo
expongo en mis visitas guiadas al museo para explicar cmo sera demolido,
porque como efecto colateral expongo tambin varias ideas en torno a la
obsolescencia y la radical injusticia de una institucin como esa... Y al mismo
tiempo tambin recalco su valor. No me interesa algo que no sea problemtico;
no me parece productivo proponer al pblico una pregunta para la que ya s la
respuesta. Por supuesto que sera monstruosamente absurdo de mi parte pensar
que con esta obra resuelvo los problemas de tantas personas afectadas por la
marginacin cultural, pero creo que la pieza desafa al espectador (y al autor) a
cambiar sus puntos de referencia. A partir de esa obra estoy haciendo una
investigacin sobre los diferentes desastres bioculturales en Mxico.

Coincido en que es poco lo que hace el arte en el mundo real. Pero el

trabajo de la crtica en cualquier medio es as, y quiz el nico gesto no reificable
en este sentido sera la violencia real. Algo de esto puede leerse en la Crtica de
la economa poltica del signo, de Baudrillard. Creo que mi proyecto tambin
tiene su valor en que reactiva afectivamente la operacin del poder, y yo la hice
criticando no slo los procesos culturales que desde Manuel Gamio desembocan
en el museo, sino tambin el poder presidencial casi absoluto. Era mi manera de
criticar al PRI que estaba por tomar el poder de nuevo. Lo mismo con la pieza del
Tamayo. Cuando sali el escndalo del nombre de Hank en la sala del museo,
Felipe Ehrenberg propuso un boicot. Yo propuse tomar el museo, y
eventualmente logr poner algo ah que trataba de abordar las contradicciones y
diferentes sucesos realmente extraos en tres museos mexicanos para el que
quisiera leerlo. Ah, entre otras cosas, se vislumbraba a travs de una
materialidad desordenada y endeble la trayectoria de la familia Hank desde su rol
poltico en la donacin de un terreno para el museo de un artista mexicano cuya
imagen indgena tena unas coordenadas muy precisas y problemticas,
pasando por un patrocinio cada vez ms activo de la cultura, y en el cual hasta
hoy el patrocinio empieza a querer ejercer un poder de decisin sobre los
contenidos, una situacin que se filtr con la pieza de Erick Beltrn. Carlos Hank
Rhon construy, y segn entiendo administra hoy el Museo del mundo Maya. La
gente relacionada al grupo Atlacomulco tom la va poltica y Carlos Hank la
empresarial. Ambas formas de poder desembocan en productos culturales; hay
que pensar en estos procesos culturales de alguna manera.

presenta un nuevo cuerpo de trabajo que una vez ms entremezcla referencias del mundo natural
con narrativas histricas y culturales,
En exposiciones previas, Pizzani ha explorado las posibles conexiones entre el ataque de las
sufragistas al orquideario de Kew Gardens en 1913 y las ambiguas connotaciones de gnero
atribuidas a estas flores, (Orchis, Galera Fernando Zubillaga, Caracas, 2011); la mscara funeraria
de una bella y desconocida dama cuyo cuerpo fue encontrado en el Sena cerca de 1880 -que
luego se convirtiera en un objeto de culto entre los escritores de la Belle poque- y su relacin con
las cualidades metamrficas de las mariposas nocturnas (Mariposario, Oficina#1, Caracas, 2013
y The Worshipper of the Image, Sala Mendonza, 2014); as como investigaciones acerca del reino
Fungi, inspiradas por las importantes contribuciones en el campo de la micologa de la autora
Beatrix Potter, comnmente opacadas por el xito de su obra literaria (A Garden for Beatrix, Cecilia
Brunson Projects, Londres, 2015).

la cual reflexiona sobre la memoria histrica de la nacin colombiana y su construccin a partir de

la figura del hroe.hacer nexo con la construccin de la imagen de la naturaleza en mexico

Descubr que tena un paisaje y un patio bastante grande, y eso me permiti ir tomando objetos,
contextos, situaciones y ancdotas que pertenecen a ese lugar especfico. Son objetos que yo
llamo endmicos o situaciones endmicas, porque son pertenecientes a ese espacio

Cristbal Gracia parte de la investigacin y conexin de eventos histricos, mezclndolos con

un toque de humor, ciencia ficcin, irona y violencia, que le permiten cuestionar la
construccin de un presente y una realidad regida por estructuras ideolgicas y de poder
impuestas a lo largo del tiempo.

En todas las series realizadas por el artista mexicano Alex Dorfsman en la ltima
dcada y media puede observarse una caracterstica comn: su preocupacin por
interrogar la relacin entre la naturaleza y su condicin exhibitiva. Transformada en
cultura a travs de diversos medios y dispositivos, desde la cmara de maravillas
hasta el museo contemporneo, la naturaleza adquiere en el arte metafrico de
Dorfsman una condicin cultural esttica heterotpica.
Re-enacted scenes of the film Tarzan and the mermaids (1948) which was filmed in Acapulco,
Guerrero, Mexico one of the most decadent and nostalgic touristic places of Mexico nowadays. The
narrative and production of the movie follows an evident post colonialist vision of an exoticized and
primitive culture towards a confusion of Mexico and Africa (understood as country) that for a post
war Hollywood could mean the same place. In this re-enacted scenes in the same locations that the
movie was filmed the ideological mechanics of power implied in the economic, cultural and political
visions instrumentalized by the mass media and entertainment industry as a global tool of control
are taken to a level of absurdity that become more than evident, contradictory and even humorous.
Using the same social roles implied in a touristic scenario as Acapulco instead of using actors the
performers were fishermen of one of the touristic beaches.
The reference acquires relevance as the work problematizes the nostalgic exoticism that industrial
Hollywood exploited (mid 20th century), in agreement with the modernist ideals that marked the
post-colonialist cultural intervention of the United States in Latin America.
A partir de la pelcula Tarzn y las sirenas (1948), el artista Cristbal Gracia
desarrolla un proyecto que cuestiona, a la vez que reinterpreta, la visin
postcolonialista que a mediados del siglo XX explot Hollywood de un
nostlgico exotismo que serva de contrapunto a los ideales de modernidad.
Basada en una serie de forzados sincretismos que no se correspondan con
la realidad, la cinta, protagonizada por Johnny Weissmuller, muestra a las
playas de Acapulco como escenario de una atrasada sociedad africana.
Acapulco tambin fue uno de los pilares de la construccin del impulso
modernista, el cual fracas y entr en decadencia, igual que el propio Johnny
Weissmuller, quien vivi los ltimos aos de su vida en el hotel Los
Flamingos, de Acapulco, perdido entre su propia decadencia y el delirio de su
personaje Tarzn. Cristbal Gracia retoma estas historias cruzadas para
rescatar esa fascinacin que genera el puerto mexicano, el cual est perdido
hoy en el alucinante laberinto de la violencia del narco. El Cuarto de Mquinas
es una nueva plataforma para la investigacin y experimentacin con
proyectos de arte.

Este proyecto usa tanto la potica material del mbar como las posibilidades
especulativas de la semitica por medio del formato del documento, poniendo en
cuestin la dinmica binaria del discurso postcolonial en relacin a los artefactos
histricos que narran el pasado de la conquista y que estructuralmente evocan
una nostalgia cultural. Esta misma dinmica binaria an permanece latente en la
cotidianidad de las conquistas contemporneas del neocolonialismo.

El hbitat en el que conviven los objetos en el espacio, genera tensin entre

lo museogrfico y lo cientfico con lo familiar e idiosincrtico del objeto cultural
contemporneo. sta yuxtaposicin expone el paralelo entre la identidad cultural
nostlgica e histrica y la identidad cultural latinoamericana contempornea en su
estado de hibridizacin, producto de los procesos de globalizacin.

durante sus paseos compra objetos al azar. Y cuando ya ha juntado una cierta cantidad de objetos
nuevos que excitan su curiosidad, comienza a jugar con ellos. Hace listas, las ordena, las mezcla,
luego asla dos o tres objetos y trata de imaginar una escena con estos tres. Son ejercicios que
hace regularmente. Todo eso, segn sostiene, no sirve para nada en el sentido productivo
inmediato por ello lo pone de lado cuando escribe un guin, pero constituye un repertorio de
historias hechas nicamente con objetos. Sin embargo, indica, en el momento de la filmacin,
cuando ordeno todo lo que hay en el plano, recuerdo ciertos automatismos, pongo los objetos de
una manera ya dramatizada porque est atravesada por el recuerdo de stas micro-ficciones que
he elaborado. Todos estos ejercicios me dan la sensacin en un momento de estar listo. No es
improvisacin, es incluso lo contrario, pero al mismo tiempo excede el simple mbito de lo que se
cree querer decir
Jamie Fitzpatricks practice deals with the rhetoric of image making, the relevance of the figure and how
objects and totemic gestures such as flags, statues or plinths are used within the work to impose forms of
power and control. The sculptures are influenced by Wilhelm Reichs ideas on power-infatuation, cultural
conditioning and sexual suppression, the works are built from fragments of cast statues, foam and coloured
wax and imply some transgressive act.

Frieze Magazine described Fitzpatricks aesthetic a mash-up of Paul McCarthy and Phyllida Barlow, and
indeed, his sculptures are dynamic and bold. Fitzpatrick brings play and nuance to the motifs of authority and
prestige creating works (and worlds) that question positional and hierarchical constructs by remaking and
resurfacing narrative objects, his work places the viewer in an ever-shifting position between subordination and
empowerment.

By employing the motifs of figurative art, patriarchal depictions of masculinity and nationhood, Fitzpatricks
domineering sculptures express intention of undermining them, rendering them absurd and dumb. To bring
these themes to life, Fitzpatrick uses performance and movement, transforming his sculptors into both actors
and sets. He is recently introduced temporal considerations as a means of further undermining the arrogance
of permanence in monumental figures.

This is the journey of a young girl around an island. She is both ancestor and descendent. Her
journey begins inland, and she makes her way to shore only to return to the center. Her impulse
is to perform this ritual as a form of re/membering what was lost/ forgotten. She travels across
visible and invisible boundaries until she comes to the shore. The shore line literally represents
the edges of the island, which represents the transitional space of departure and arrival.

It is a season of the bloom. Their presence in limited.The flowers are at once metaphors for the
wounds of history combined and the beauty of regeneration. The roots dig deep, the tree is
nurtured and blossoms erupt on hillsides, in valleys and flesh. Echoing the dichotomy of the
Caribbean landscape, the vital foliage cloaks the soil that nurtures and buries our histories.
My work explores the relationship of the natural world to memory, personal and cultural. How
does nature create memorials for the small and large histories that occurred. The hurricane, the
sea, the shore, the land and the flora all play a role. In these narratives Ive created the seasonal
memorial.

No veo el arte tanto como un mecanismo didctico donde se deba entender algo en concreto y
especifico, creo que el arte funciona de una manera ms libre, donde las posibilidades de
generar cuestionamientos son ms ricas que las de generar afirmaciones inquebrantables.

Ensayar la fragilidad de la materia es descifrar, reflexionar su biografa en un intento de apologa de los

olvidos y registros imperceptibles almacenados sobre, adentro, alrededor o en lo que queda de ella, para a
partir de esa mirada que investiga lo soterrado construir un orden en el que se trastorne el hbito de su
sumisin.

Documentary Fictions explore the contradictions inherent to

documentary practice to bring to light invisible, unknown or simply
omitted fragments of reality. Using strategies that range from traditional
storytelling to installations, diaporama and Internet, the show presents
works that do not aim to consolidate truths as much as they seek to unveil
the complex processes (especially from a political and social standpoint)
through which the relationships between information and visual
experience are forged.
Recounting a partial history of our relation with matter, this exhibition
explores how the crossover between cosmological narratives, the spatial
revolutions of concrete poetry, and hypertextual and territorial fictions
might have an impact on the recognition of human agency in a time that
calls for our action on climate change.

In the advent of genetic algorithms, the decolonizing force of poetic

resistance has predicted the viral impact of programming and its
consequences on the physical world. By liberating the sign, generations of
cyberutopians and poets opened up the path to an understanding of the
potentiality of language as a carrier of turbulence and material entropy.
And as we grow aware of the fluid faculties of code as a technological
subconscious to reality, we begin to inquire into the causes of planetary
transformation and contest the prevailing predatory and extractive use of
matter, just as technological determinism and machinic labor rule out the
possibility of an earthbound democracy. Exploitative resource extraction
neglects any understanding of deep time and nonhuman ontologiesbe it
plants, animals or mineralsswerving beyond the cognition of our
complicity with matter. But how can we navigate this liminal space and
think of ourselves as responsible agents?

As the world is increasingly subject to predictive algorithms, artists have

become highly aware of the metabolic circuits of matter, its agencing and
potentiality as a catalyst of biopolitical and economical transformations.
Their knowledge has proved alchemical, as they are transducers of
planetary ecologies, while being indispensible mobilizers of collective
agency. From them may we re-learn our ontological position in the world,
by inquiring into how matter is transformedat the pace of a lava flow.

Curated by Margarida Mendes.

The narrative-imaginary vacuum of the present bears the imprint of the
systemic monstrosity of modern history. The re-visioning of modernity
and the rewriting of its master narratives constitute a trans-disciplinary
project of global proportions. The Taipei Biennial 2012 departs from the
crisis of the imagination that plagues global capitalist culture. It explores
the need for collective horizons that withstand both the clichs of
modernist development and the logic of division that haunts nationalist
and identity politics in the long shadow of colonialism and imperialism.
Entitled Modern Monsters / Death and Life of Fiction, the Taipei Biennial
2012 addresses the relationship between historiography and the
imaginary. Fiction occupies the blind spot of historiographic and
documentary work, as it speaks of the fundamental underside of
modernity, its dialectics and paradoxes, as well as the systemic terror that
lurks behind modernitys emancipatory promises. Drawing upon a recent
study titled The Monster That is History by Taiwanese literature
historian David Der Wei Wang, the Biennial engages with the aesthetics of
monstrosity. The figure of the monster is treated as a fictional, liminal
figure, a symptomatic mirror of actual and imaginary relations. Wang
suggests that the ancient Chinese monster Taowu served as an objective
correlative of the human account of past experience. Taowu is
furthermore identified with history as such, particularly through its
vicious ability to foresee and undermine human intentions.

Featuring some 40 artistic projects, many of them conceived specifically

for the exhibition, the Taipei Biennial 2012 is structured by a series of
mini-museumsdistinct spaces within the exhibition that function as
autonomous propositions organized by various co-curators. While the
mini-museums are self-contained spaces, they influence the registers and
contextual readings of the works in the exhibition surrounding them. In
each mini-museum, the relationship between works of art and documents
serves as the backdrop for an interrogation of ambiguities of writing
history. They are conceived as models of possible histories and narratives
hidden in the interstices of official accounts. Their primary goal is to
question the relation between the systemic conditions of the present and
our situatedness in a historical imaginary.
explores the narrative possibilities of fiction. Situations involving escapes where reality ceases
to be the only parameter, and invention, fantasy and simulation give the narrative thread an
alternative private truth.

Means of escape, superposed layers, rereadings, a fascination with detail, strange characters
and situations In short, a cosmogonical look that shakes up the expected nature of time we
take for granted and which defines us every day. Longed-for futures, lost pasts, presents to be
dodged. And the solution, as well as where the solution isif, indeed, there is a solution. The art
work in II. Escapes: Fiction as Rigour creates worlds and yet also requires us to take the starting
point into account: the economic system, the weight and meaning of objects, the footprint of
language, the conscious construction of ourselves as public, medial characters.

Playing with reality to turn it on its head, searching for what cannot be found, enjoying a process
that creates a constant separation from todays harsh world. Yes, enjoying. The exhibition
presents works and artists searching for shades and ways of finding other options to create
flexible grammars that can also lead back to reality, if it were ever possible to escape from it.
Fiction as Rigour means delving into serious work systems held in place by hazy goals. It is
about shaping a message outside reality to turn itfor however longinto a different possible
reality. And once it exists, believing it to be true, without any doubts, without any need to justify
it.

II. Escapes: Fiction as Rigour is an exhibition that creates characters that dont hide, where the
future and fascinating flashes of childhoodwhich stay in ones memory like cinematic stains
intertwine without any headaches. An exhibition where objects and images are fashioned
through imaginaries that can be read in different ways. Findings, escapes, desires. Pieces for
making stories, sounds for taking situations apart, snatched glances, transformations and
speculations on reality. At the end of the day, reality is always keenly present in any escape.

SHARE

Tue, Thur to Sun 11 a.m.7 p.m., Wed 11a.m.8 p.m.

Amid global crisis, contemporary art finds itself confronted by its own
theoretical and practical dissolution within a thoroughly debunked reality.
As the Tao te Ching advises the mysterious protagonist of Dystopia, the
exhibition, the point is to neither beat the pot and sing, nor loudly bewail
the approach of death. Between nihilism and hedonism lie pathways to
failure, resistance and survival.
The exhibition Dystopia is the offshoot of a fiction written by the American
science fiction novelist and theoretician Mark von Schlegell. Curated by
Alexis Vaillant of the CAPC, the art-works of 46 international artists are
presented within a world turned horror film. Utopias wretched flipside is
presented not as subject matter but as setting, not as end but as point of
beginning.
According to von Schlegell and Vaillant the enlightenment tradition of
Dystopiathe imaginary place or condition in which everything is as bad as
possible*offers contemporary art specific pathways (of re-mix,
collaboration and radical tradition) into present-tense science fictional
struggles with the disintegrating real past and imaginary future.
Immersed in the present, dystopian art presumes a weakest-possible
point of view within an unresolved fictional narrative presumed to be
worsening. As with the theory of black holes birthing new universes
within them, it is within concentrated dystopia that the actual utopias
appear.(*Oxford English Dictionary)

With all the museums windows covered by blood-red cellophane the

visible outside world is rendered fictional, casting its glow deep into the
museums nave. Even so, the art works find idiosyncratic function,
adapting with surprising ease to the covering fiction.
Mark von Schlegells new novel New Dystopia, featuring work by all
participating artists, will be published in English and French by Sternberg
Press as catalog for the exhibition.

What lies on the other side of things is only a question of perspective; the position
where one stands determines direction, distance and difference.
Inherited tendencies of the observer predispose what is seen and the way it is
depicted. The result is always a reconstruction, conditioned by patterns of
narration: an image of unexplored landscapes, remote traditions, foreign practices
and unfamiliar artifacts.
The unknown becomes exotic and the exotic is integrated in the work as a
reference to what that means today. With an awareness of the inescapable
condition of the global tourist and the legacy of the ethnographer, new positions
take place in the perception of otherness within contemporary experience.

Je Oldendorf
Beachlife (Elephant Beach), 2014, Archival pigment print on canvas, wooden
frame, 164 x 134 cm.
Je Oldendorfs piece belongs to a larger series of images of paradise-like beaches
from the shores of tropical countries taken from Google Earth, in a perspective
watching the beach off shore. The pictures themselves are a digital reconstruction
of the area being represented, where cameras have no access from such a
perspective, the outcome being a calculated image shaped upon a 3D model of the
terrain according to topographic, which doesnt always result into a credible
landscape, but rather has the appearance of an unreal painted surface. The
blurred image recalls impressionist landscape views as well as color field paintings
in its reduced horizontal composition.
The pictures are mounted on wooden frames that resemble the very imitation of
exoticism that one could find in a Five Star Thai-Style Beach Resort in the coast of
Tenerife. Such a replica, based on an abstract and inaccurate idea of pseudo-
asianism (self-aware of being a fake and embracing it), is made from an
accumulation of exported imagery and concepts such as closeness to nature, Zen,
and life in Paradise. With this, Oldendorf doesnt only point to the inherent kitsch
value of the fabricated portrait of exoticism, but also to the contemporary version of
the romantic standing in front of the magnificent, wild and intimidating territory. This
is, no longer unconquered as in the eyes of the first western explorer, but rather as
a version adjusted to the expectations of the global tourist whose involvement
can go from the at home - spa experience to the on the spot pre-packaged
adventure, as a range of possibilities of one same thing.

Raphal Constant
La tendresse des perspectives (The Tenderness of Perspectives )
Film, 2011, 26min.
Constants video is the staging of a series of moving pictures, recreated
fabrications that enact an interpretation of the inherited ideal of Africa in its virgin
wilderness and aboriginal civilization. The film, shot in Burkina Faso, Ghana or
Guinea amongst other countries through which Constant traveled, is built from a
process of involvement with local communities and adaptation to their social
structures, resulting in their unconditional participation in the performance of
completely foreign scenarios. In one of the villages, an animal sacrifice is made
and interpreted in order to determine whether the spirits agree with the artists
presence. At the positive result of this, their homes are offered to be painted at the
artists free will and villagers collaborate without constraint.
The situations triggered by Constant, often appearing in them as an integrated
outsider, are an awkward blend of vague references to modern art and its ideal
depiction of exotic aesthetics and an imposed cleanness of constructivist style,
creating an iconic image that doesnt belong in the landscape, a bizarre portrait of
its own endeavor. The subtle clash reveals a constant breach and the
acknowledgement of the inherited structures he brings into the mix as well as those
of the context he works in.
Constants work walks a journey of unfolding rooted perceptions in a surprising
account of the projection of desire in otherness.

Josep Maynou
Tip of the tongue #2, 2015, 150x210 cm.
Guitar # 1, 2015, wool and cotton yarn, 70x100 cm.
Josep Maynous works are part of a series of rugs recently produced in a small
village in the mountains of Morocco, where he traveled for the period of the
manufacturing and overseeing of the process in a constant dialogue and
compromise. Made by hand in looms by some of the women in the village, the rugs
avoid traditional motifs and instead reproduce designs familiar to pop culture
such as electric guitars or tongues sticking out , and interpretations of the
idealized imagery of the desert, contrasted with the reality it withholds. The
roughness of the traditional craft and the use of colours and choices of execution
diverge from the elements being represented, conveying the structural duality of a
society living in an ancient system, but consuming the bits and pieces of
contemporary global pop production.
In pictures of the process, we can see him dressed in a colorful 80s style shirt,
shorts and a baseball cap, sporting a rug over his shoulder la cheap towel from
the souvenir shop, on my way to the beach standing next to a donkey and an
olive tree with an arid landscape as the background. The rug itself shows a brick
wall, where graffiti in Arabic characters has been sprayed, and beyond the wall an
archetypal orange-to-red sunset, framed by two palm trees that enclose
reminiscences of the romanticized idea of orient.

Marco Montiel-Soto
Seasick direction tristes tropiques / Mal de mar hacia un triste trpico, 2015.
Installation. Table, clay pintaderas, bamboo, plants, b/w photocopies on paper,
pages of books, lava stones, palm seeds, dry palms, plastic palm tree, globe,
wooden platano, map of Venezuela, postcards, speaker, cable, amplifier, lamp,
candles, sound composition (12min).
Montiels practice takes place in the exploration of his own countrys indigenous
culture and the myths of authenticity, wildness and difference it entails, in contrast
with the reality of political stress and social violence that Venezuela presents. This
research, often also using other countries as his own, keeps him in constant shift,
from belonging to being a tourist in ones land.
Montiels project starts in the study of a pre-colonial, long gone civilization from the
Canary Islands, the guanches, and their recovered relics. Their legacy is very
limited and thus highly constructed by history, but key to the shaping of local
cultural identity and the way the islands portrait themselves in the present.
In the cabinet he displays we can find volcanic rocks, palm trees and bananas, and
the multiple reproduction of an artifact, the pintadera, meant to be a sort of stamp
for tattooing that guanches used. The installation moves on towards the
relationship between canary islands and Venezuela, two far-off places connected
not only by being paradigms of exoticism having a parallel depiction of the native
versus the colonial, but that are also linked by a historical tradition of migratory
movements. Venezuela, known amongst canarios as the eight island, was the
desired destination for immigrants who fled the islands between the last decades of
the 19th century until after the Spanish civil war in the 1950s. An audio piece reads
fragments of several nautical logbooks from the stolen sailboats that took on the
challenge of crossing the ocean in precarious conditions, not always succeeding, in
a clandestine odyssey to reach the Americas as the promised land.
Cuntanos un poco ms de este proyecto que quieres desarrollar en la residencia y cmo
ste toma como punto de partida, adems de los dispositivos bancarios de Londres, algo
tan local y personal como lo es el Museo Las Gaviotas de tu abuelo.
Mi abuelo ha explorado la superficie y profundidad de unos pocos kilmetros cuadrados del
desierto de Atacama en Chile. Aproximndose al lugar con actitud abierta y sin dar nada por
sentado, ha accedido a la historia del lugar desde los objetos del presente. Ha encontrado
artefactos indgenas, artefactos de la colonizacin espaola, basura contempornea, especmenes
biolgicos, juguetes, balas de la Guerra del Pacfico, huesos indgenas heridos con puntas de
flecha, la colonia de tortugas verdes ms austral del planeta (la que tambin ha inspirado proyectos
de pintura corporal), fsiles de millones de aos de antigedad, una especie nica de ballena de 16
millones de aos, fragmentos de cermicas inglesas producto de la minera, entre muchas otras
cosas. Todos sus descubrimientos los ha organizado, mezclando tiempo y espacio en este museo
donde presente, pasado y futuro conviven en gabinetes hechos de redes de pesca descartados por
la industria pesquera y el ocano. Mi abuelo ha inventado un nuevo gnero, donde arte indgena,
artesana popular y arte contemporneo se han hecho compatibles. Con los objetos disponibles en
el desierto, ha construido joyas, recreado los barcos piratas que llegaron a Amrica con pedazos
de basura, construido medios de transporte para sus familiares, instrumentos de msica, hornos
para hacer pan, reproducido dibujos de los naturalistas que llegaron a Chile con betn de zapatos,
organizado un cementerio de ballenas, ha construido bellos objetos planetarios de decoracin y
transformado boyas en maceteros y adornos tiles e intiles. Su produccin simblica y subjetiva
se ha convertido en una estrategia para entender el lugar que se habita de una manera extraa y
personal. Este museo es la base de mis mtodos artsticos y ahora va a ser la base para este
nuevo proyecto.

Qu temas manejas ahora mismo y qu miras para inspirarte?: Creo que son
varios, pero el principal es la tradicin animista latinoamricana. Toda esa tradicin de
los museos de antropologa, el arte indgena medio mgico, simbolista, combinado
con el capitalismo de alguna manera, con objetos chinos baratos y muebles horribles
institucionales. Me fascina la relacin de los objetos tradicionales con los objetos
actuales del sistema capitalista que se han integrado de forma natural en la vida de
los indgenas. En esta lnea el trabajo del curador y antroplogo paraguayo Ticio
Escobar es bien interesante.

Hblame de la naturaleza en tu trabajo: No puedo entender mi trabajo sin la

naturaleza. Me interesa ms lo vivo, los virus, los animales, la idea de las especies en
la naturaleza que estn coexistiendo y perciben el mundo de modos muy diferentes.
Por qu existe en este momento un inters especial del arte por la
ciencia?: Es natural, encuentro que es interesante la posicin que uno puede tener
como artista al aproximarse a la ciencia. Hay artistas apropindose de algunas
metodologas cientficas pero que tienen una investigacin abierta sin tener que llegar
como la ciencia a una hiptesis y comprobarla. Creo que estamos tratando de
entender preguntas muy parecidas desde mbitos distintos. Quiz la ciencia es mas
objetiva y el arte mas abstracto y metafsico y por eso es buena su distancia con la
realidad para llegar a otra cosa. Las etiquetas de todos modos me dan dolor de
guata.
Botnicos, zologos, socilogos quin es tu Rock Star?: Dora Haraway y
Timothy Morton. Tambin Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, un antroplogo con una teora
relacionada con las manifestaciones de la cultura animista.
Me interesa la distancia con lo real. Me interesan las reproducciones extremas de la
realidad. Esas piedras son para tapar regadores de jardines, encuentro genial que
alguien quiera tapar algo con una piedra de mentira. Tambin he trabajado con spray
que pretende ser piedra.

Su nuevo proyecto nos habla del concepto de colisin entre el hombre y la naturaleza.
Esta relacin se refleja segn el artista, en las historias de ciencia ficcin, y la
inteligencia artificial. Se trata de una propuesta en la que se mostrarn una serie de
esculturas en bronce, con referencia al cuerpo humano, se presentarn algo
distorsionadas, modeladas por el bronce caliente, dado su paso por la fundicin. En
dilogo con estros fragmentos de vida, encontraremos animales de un bronce dorado
impoluto, en un ejercicio cargado de sinergias.
De Jong otorga una fuerte carga simblica y de significado a estas obras. El oro,
como metal precioso que posee un estatus superior sobre el resto de metales,
simboliza en ellas la pureza y la inmortalidad. Pero, tambin nos mostrar la otra cara
de la moneda; representando a su vez, el egosmo humano y la explotacin.
En esta relacin de extremos, el artista encuentra la oportunidad de resucitar una
nueva obra que viene de lugares dispares, como el ave fnix. Los animales dorados
emergen como vencedores sobre un mundo material, destrozado por la violencia
humana.
En dilogo con las esculturas, encontramos dibujos, que giran en torno a la idea de
conflicto, la colisin y la interferencia. Algunos de ellos dirigen nuestra mirada hacia lo
infinito, en alusin a la red de constelaciones que pueblan el universo. Otros, nos
recuerdan en su complexin a unas sper dimensionadas manchas de Rorschach,
que manifiestan el encuentro directo entre el cuerpo y la tinta, como medio artstico.

El cerro isla Santa Luca (o como se le llama en mapudungn, el idioma

mapuche, Hueln). Desde la cumbre se poda ver el horizonte de la ciudad
de Santiago en 360 grados (ahora los edificios impiden verlo). Era un
antiguo sitio sagrado de observacin astronmica, primero mapuche y
despus inca. Cuentan que ah viva una Machi (sacerdotisa) en una
pirmide de tierra, desde donde haca sus observaciones astronmicas para
el calendario mapuche. Tambin hay una roca inca tallada en tres
escalones, uno de los nicos vestigios arqueolgicos a la vista en el espacio
pblico en Santiago. El nico monumento al pasado indgena que hay en el
cerro es una escultura dada de baja por Mxico de las propuestas para la
pelcula de El ltimo mohicano. No tiene nada que ver con los indgenas que
habitaban esta zona porque tiene plumas, pero ah est, como recuerdo del
pasado sobre una gran roca. Todo esto coexiste con unas murallas de un
fuerte espaol, unas bellas construcciones estilo francs en decadencia y
una palmera con cuatro troncos. El investigador en arqueoastronoma,
Patricio Bustamante, conduce caminatas-charlas por el cerro Santa Luca
explicando su pasado, presente y futuro de acuerdo a tres fenmenos
psicolgicos relacionados con la percepcin del entorno: Pareidolia
(reconocimiento de formas), Apofenia (asociacin de datos azarosos) e
Hierofana (manifestacin de lo sagrado), proponiendo un cambio de
paradigma en relacin a Santiago.

For Dear Mother Nature: Hudson Valley Artists 2012, Ms. Weintraub invited artists to send
something to Mother Nature that expresses their relationship to her and their feelings about
her. What would it be? Love letter? Care package? Medal of honor? Bill for unfulfilled
promises? Payment for services rendered? Prayer for guidance? Crutches for support?
Bouquet of praise? Compensation for damages? Reward for effort? Entreaty for forgiveness?
Pledge of devotion? Summons for misconduct? Condolences? Advice? Warnings?

Enrique Ramrez aprecia las historias dentro de historias, las ficciones solapando pases y pocas,
el espejismo entre el sueo y la realidad. Este artista chileno, que vive y trabaja entre Chile y
Francia, a menudo utiliza la imagen y el sonido para construir una profusin de intrigas y ocupar el
equilibrio entre lo potico y lo poltico. Sus mundos imaginarios estn unidos a un elemento
obsesivo: su pensamiento comienza con el mar, un espacio para la memoria en perpetuo
movimiento, un espacio para proyecciones narrativas donde el destino de Chile se cruza con
grandes narraciones de viaje, conquista y flujos migratorios. Sus imgenes lquidas hablan del
resplandor de una verdad en vuelo permanente, el retroceso de la historia, siempre repitindose y
nunca el mismo.
A travs del mar, trae tambin la figura de su padre: un padre constructor de veleros durante la
dictadura de Pinochet, un hombre que es una metfora de todas las fantasas del viaje duplicadas
con una existencia polticamente limitada. Las investigaciones de Enrique Ramrez frecuentemente
vibran con resonancias biogrficas.
Para evitar la trampa de una visin unvoca, el artista escoge deliberadamente el camino seguido
por ciertos novelistas o cineastas latinoamericanos, como Gabriel Garca Mrquez, Jorge Luis
Borges o Ral Ruiz: la insercin de elementos mgicos y motivos sobrenaturales en situaciones
vinculadas a un marco histrico, cultural y geogrfico reconocible.
SINGING THE CACTUS

HD video, audio, 05:17 min, 2016. Made by Palo Chn Collaborative.

Apocalypse Me, Curated by Jan Zalesak, Emil Filla Gallery, Usti nad Labem.

"When we visited the pyramids in Teotihuacan we were searching for animist traces and instead found cultural
imprints graffitied on agave plants and sacrificial daggers that reminded us of emojis. The plants told us about
fragments of the current state of consciousness of global culture; SEXY SUSHI, $, AMERICA, BLACK/ WHITE,
ROSA LOVES JUAN, I LOVE YOU and YOU MISS ME.

This video proposes a visual constellation of current migrations that are taking place in Latin America.
Horizontally from east to west, it is an abstract approach to new forms of capitalism through global plastic
commodities (cheap or luxury items) made by invisible hands. The commuting of industrial products produce
new ways of understanding border crossings where the capital is what flows while humanity gets stranded in
the process of transition.

The video is a dream like ritual built from our own crossings and inspired by video game structures where
protagonists go through processes of obstacles and rewards. Vertically, from South to North, multiple levels are
crossed by current migrants escaping the violence and corruption of Latin America. Automatic drawings
transform the borders of North, South and Central American countries through magical thinking into entities,
demons, vehicles, sacred animals and guns. The constellation of this ritual is expressed through the
disorientation of absurdity, prayer, humour and sacrifice that occurs during the navigation of the journey".

Text Palo Chn.

"Latin America is a place where the colonial order has been in conflict with traditional cultures for more than five
hundred years. The genocide of a large part of the original Indian population accompanying the historical period
of colonialism, then later on the slave trade, emigration waves associated with the two world wars, the
invasions of the imperial policy of the USA, and economic globalisation have given rise to hybridised cultures
that have become the subject of interest of post-colonial theory. Patricia Dominguez and Irvin Morazan worked
with this layered patchwork of cultures during a joint residence in Mexico City and for their project Sexi Sushi,
which they continue to refine at GEF, created the artistic duo Palo Chn. Sexi Sushi is based both on
juxtapositions (globally distributed products such as false nails are confronted with archaeological findings) and
on metaphorical recoding (a game with the shapes of individual countries of Latin America in a video of the
same name) that has special significance in that it contains an element of the retrospective re-appropriation of
metaphorical language, which is one of the potent weapons of the hegemonic Western culture".

Text Jan Zalesak.

LOS OJOS SERAN LO ULTIMO EN PIXELARSE

HD video, audio, 08:59 min, 2016.

Video producido durante la residencia "El Ranchito" en Centro Matadero Madrid y en Centro Cultural Espana, gracias al Premio
Matadero - CCE realizado por el Consejo Nacional de la Cultura y las Artes de Chile y AECID y al apoyo de Galera Patricia Ready.

// "Los ojos sern lo ltimo en pixelarse" es una video instalacin de Patricia Domnguez producida durante la residencia El
Ranchito en Centro Matadero, Madrid y en Centro Cultural Espaa Santiago, gracias al Premio Matadero - CCE realizado por
Consejo Nacional de la Cultura y las Artes de Chile y el AECID el 2015. "Los ojos sern lo ltimo en pixelarse" rastrea y actualiza la
imagen latinoamericana del conquistador espaol y su caballo hasta su origen en Espaa, tratando de manera simblica las
relaciones de dominacin y liberacin en relacin a la historia de moldeamiento cultural entre Espaa y Chile, y proponiendo una
reflexin sobre la precarizacin, domesticacin y reduccin de lo vivo en relacin a procesos de digitalizacin y tecnocratizacin
que lo afectan.
Investigando la utilizacin de caballos ya no como objetos de guerra, sino como trabajadores folclricos, Domnguez trabaj con
caballos que estuvieran sujetos a procesos de entrenamiento y doma en las principales escuelas ecuestres de Espaa (Club
Ecuestre Luz de Luna) y Chile (Escuadra Establo de Peaflor). Estos caballos son domados y entrenados para formar un ballet
ecuestre y realizar doma vaquera, doma clsica y trabajos a la mano, disciplinas en las cuales realizan piruetas y movimientos que
no le son naturales al caballo, el que aprende a realizarlos mediante un entrenamiento arduo y repetitivo. Domnguez utiliza estos
movimientos como metfora del moldeamiento de lo vivo, lo salvaje, lo animal que ocurri con la llegada de los Espaoles a
Latinoamrica. Al igual que los jinetes doman y entrenan a sus caballos, los colonizadores moldearon el cuerpo, culturas y el paisaje
del nuevo continente al imponer sus comportamientos y creencias. Un moldeamiento que se ha trasladado a la actual
transformacin y reduccin de la materia viva a pixeles.

A travs de un guin de ficcin, el video reflexiona sobre el posible proceso de transformacin de los caballos en imgenes digitales
(pixeles y luz). Estos caballos no son utilizados para realizar los pasos tradicionales para los que han sido entrenados, sino que
estn quietos, siendo acariciados por las manos o tubos LED de los jinetes, para recordar a travs del tacto sus cuerpos en el caso
en que se conviertan en pixeles en un futuro cercano. A lo largo del video, distintas luces LED activan las figuras ficticias creadas
por Domnguez, aplicando absurdamente lgicas de marketing y merchandising en los cuerpos orgnicos de los caballos.

En Chile, el video fue producido en el establo Palmas de Peaflor en Curic, lugar donde entrenan caballos chilenos para bailar
cueca, el baile tradicional, y hacer piruetas para las celebraciones tradicionales de la Independencia el 18 de Septiembre. En el
video, el jinete porta una mscara que reacciona al sonido para establecer una comunicacin no verbal con el caballo, y un tubo de
LED verde a modo de arma u ofrenda que representa una abstraccin del mundo vegetal. El caballo tiene puestoartefactos
lumnicos de proteccin y un casco de acrlico similar a los que utilizan los uniformes de caballos policiales. Esta figura es El
Pegazo. El nombre es un juego de palabras entre el animal mitolgico Pegaso y la palabra puetazo. Este hbrido surge del
contexto de Chile y sus constantes ejercicios violentos de dominacin sobre el otro, dentro del contexto de las protestas
acontecidas en los ltimos aos en Santiago de Chile. El Pegazo es un hbrido simblico entre humano, animal y vegetal, esta vez
especficamente entre un trabajador rural, un polica y un huaso, convirtindose en una figura llena de contradicciones. Una nueva
figura de poder en diferentes niveles de violencia, personificando distintas tradiciones de entrenamiento; entrenamientos especficos
que han moldeado su especie hace aos desde su introduccin a Chile por los mismos espaoles y posteriormente por mestizos y
descendientes de los pueblos originarios. Un moldeamiento que toca indirectamente puntos de la historia y situacin actual de Chile
en relacin a la comprensin y utilizacin de lo vivo.

Siguiendo su inters por rescatar y actualizar el folclor tradicional mediante las artes visuales y las posibilidades creativas que
surgen desde la confluencia de la actual cultura digital y lo vivo, Domnguez produjo una escena el video en Rari, Chile. Rari es el
nico pueblo en Chile en donde se realiza una artesana tradicional en la que mujeres tien y tejen crin de caballo para crear objetos
decorativos. Estos objetos les otorgan sustento econmico y diferenciacin de identidad. Siguiendo la ficcin propuesta en el video,
El Pegazo tie las crines del ltimo caballo blanco vivo para confeccionar objetos para ahuyentar el electrosmog que afecta a lo
vivo. Esta escena utiliza y transforma metodologas propias de registro de informacin tomadas de la antropologa y de
pensamientos animistas en el que el crin de caballo tiene la agencia para ser el sustento de las mujeres de Rari.
__Las aves del museo de historia natural montados en dioramas realistas,
evidentemente muertos.

__Los peces muertos en bolsas

__las plantas con coca. Herbario d eplantas de mexico, o de Chiapas,

hechas con cocacola. El proyecto de reforestacin de San cristobal por parte
de cocacola

_La inutilidad de los especmenes de historia natural para dar cuenta de lo

natural- Entonces que sirvan como topes d puerta, ya que el museo se
esfuerza por darles un uso.__ Topes de pared.

Vo explora las intersecciones que tienen lugar entre las

experiencias personales y los eventos histricos, y
estudia en particular la propagacin, el impacto y las
mutaciones del catolicismo a travs de los procesos de
colonizacin. Su obra refleja las paradojas inherentes a
la construccin de la identidad, y el uso que le da a los
objetos evoca las circunstancias histricas que dieron
forma a nuestro mundo contemporneo. Acerca de esto,
el artista ha comentado: No creo que las cosas vengan
desde nuestro interior. Para m, son producto de un
dilogo continuo que tenemos con nuestros
alrededores.
La exposicin aborda, desde diferentes obras artsticas, imaginarios sobre el trpico que existen en
diferentes regiones de Amrica Latina. Mediante una revisin de las producciones locales en Per,
Ecuador, Colombia y Mxico, la muestra busca dar cuenta de los componentes de estos
imaginarios y la forma en que deconstruyen el estereotipo de lo tropical por diferentes vas, ya sea
por medio de su ataque o apropiacin. Se trata no solo de desmenuzar la idea extica del trpico y
del otro, sino entender las contradicciones que entraa vivir hoy en los trpicos.

Study for a Curtain (2015) Installation view at Third Line. A variety of plants that are not native to UAE, sticks,
sand, oscillating fan and wind chime, exposed skylight & for the duration of the show all light fixtures and
lighting tracks were removed.
Study for a Curtain is a continuation of Abbas Akhavans ongoing exploration of gardens and domesticated
landscapes.
Study for a Monument (2013 ongoing) is an act of commemoration, and also an attempt to archive plants
belonging to regions around the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, the title hinting at the legendary gardens of
Babylon. Plant taxonomy thrived as a scientific discipline in the colonial period, when 19th-century researchers
gained access to new areas and organised expeditions around the world gathering species, thereby becoming
the gatekeepers of scientific knowledge. Akhavan has traced botanical species such as those held at the Royal
Botanic Gardens at Kew, in particular endemic species that grow in present-day Iraq, such as Iris barnumae,
Astragalus lobophorus and Campanula acutiloba. Damage to their habitat, firstly by the destruction of salt
marshes by Saddam Husseins Baathist government to quell the marsh Arabs resistance and then by the
effects of the Iraq war, has made tracing them a difficult task. Rooted in the funerary tradition of
commemorating the dead, monuments often record public figures or landmark historical events. They
demonstrate strength and attempt to stimulate forms of nationalist or collective memory despite the inevitability
of shifts in power. Sculpted from photographic documentation and cast in bronze, these flowers, stems, leaves
and roots are displayed in groupings which rest on the ground, resisting the verticality and singularity of
traditional monuments. Enlarged to a human scale, they are displayed on simple white sheets, as if captured
while being transported
Catalogue essay by Marina Roy
The sense of space, and in the end, the sense of time, were both powerfully affected. Buildings, landscapes,
&c. were exhibited in proportions so vast as the bodily eye is not fitted to conceive. Space swelled, and was
amplified to an extent of unutterable infinity. This, however, did not disturb me so much as the vast expansion
of time; I sometimes seemed to have lived for 70 or 100 years in one night; nay, sometimes had feelings
representative of a millennium passed in that time, or, however, of a duration far beyond the limits of any
human experience.
-Thomas De Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium Eater
While reading Thomas De Quinceys description of the sublime time-space mind expansion made possible by
the ingestion of an exotic psychotropic, I couldnt help but be reminded that plants occupy a privileged space
not only in constructions of a textual imaginary but also in the preservation of history. Through the ages, plants
have been an essential agent to transforming our concept of time, extending beyond our individual life spans.
An exotic plant captivates De Quinceys European imagination, releasing it from social constraints, and
releasing its creative juices. In the exhibition at hand, Study for a Glasshouse, Abbas Akhavan introduces
native plants into a vitrine in order to deterritorialize Dale Estate documents that are reproductions from the
PAMA Archives Collection. A colonial discourse underwrites each project. Plants are used to loosen the
civilizing forces at stake.
Plants live on a different time scale. Rooted in place, but able to disseminate in seed form, they are slow
moving creatures, with the ability to grow rather quickly under ideal conditions. Some trees have been
recorded as living up to 4000 years. Many plants have a rhizomatic life form, propagated across a shared root
system, holding a shared ageless material consciousness. Their temporality is necessarily different to that of
humans. When humans began tapping into the nourishing and useful chemical properties of plants, our lives
were extended and enhancedagriculture meant growing plants as food that could be stored for future use,
while manipulating plants into clothing meant an ability to live in different geographies and climates, and the
production of paper meant the ability to record memory and thought for preservation into the future.
Human intersection with plants is therefore one of radical becoming, and oftentimes heightened experiential
intensity, across a lifespan, but also across millennia. Tapping into plants secreted potentials can mean
opening up unforeseen human potentials. We as humans would never have evolved the way we have without
the life-extending properties of plantstheir ability to nourish, heal, preserve, and exceed mere life. Plants
have chemical properties that can provide a sense of expanded time; think of the mind-altering toxins and life-
extending elixirs inherent to plants, as well as the extensive properties of their patient, plodding reach (their
creeping, wavering movement), which has helped extend our own footprint in space. As a lightweight
technology, paper can easily travel, almost as easily as their seeds, propagating genetic material, ideas In
fact, plants have become inseparable from human evolution. This extends into the destructive potential of
colonial expansion. The contamination of the native by colonial thought and species is a cultural
phenomenon that has radically altered the world. A violence that spreads through the prosthesis of lumbering
wooden ships, carrying foreign seeds and species, and hence new agricultural traditions abroad.
Colonists spread their culture to the New World in the form of ideas and invasive species. Roses were
understood to be civilized and beautiful, and increasingly commodifiable. One could buy, rather than cultivate,
that instant aura of civilization and good taste permeating the home. This cultivation was made possible due to
industrial energy provided by coal and oil. An intricate network of tunnels and pipelines heated the
greenhouses, and smoke escaped the complex through a 91-metre chimney, which dominated the Brampton
landscape. It is important to remember that oil and coal are ancient plant matter transformed into intensified
energy potential over millions of years.
Their slow natural production is quickly burned into quick profits and instant pleasure, beyond the time and
space of lifes natural rhythms. To extend the industry beyond the immediate territory, a special spur line was
built to link the greenhouse complex of the Dale Estate to the Canadian Pacific [railway] to deliver coal in
all seasons. In turn the railway connected Bramptons greenhouses to Toronto, such that by 1956 the Dale
Estate greenhouses were responsible for half of provincial production of fresh cut flowers.
I imagine Study for a Glasshouse as the artist has explained it to me. In a long vitrine he will place photos of
rows and rows of greenhouses. Hand-written speeches about the role of flowers in society. Photos of the Duke
and Duchess of Yorks royal visit to the factory. I imagine the list of endless Victorian names given to new
strains of roses. On one leaf from each rose is branded the factory name, Dale, using a perforation device.
With the autographed rose, nature and culture join to reproduce their ultimate capitalist-colonial progeny. About
two-thirds of the way across the vitrine, one begins to find traces of soil and sprouting verdant matter, which
becomes increasingly dense as one reaches the far end. Grasses, mosses, and wild flowers sprout from the
soil, and by the end of the exhibitions term, wildly proliferate. Condensation accumulates inside the
hermetically sealed cabinet. One is witness to a native invasion of a collection of domestic-industrial archival
material. One follows the estates rise to power, from its early burgeoning through industrial experimentation
accelerating growth and maximizing yield, while searching for the most beautiful strains of botanic life forms
through hybridizing techniquesall the way to its decline, stemming from the transformation of the economy,
national to global, industrial to informatic/biotechnical.
But what difference does Akhavans artistic intervention of native flora species make to the Dale Estates
history? Abbas Akhavans Study for a Glasshouse has tapped into what Jacques Derrida has described as an
unconscious death drive underlying every archive, but also to its unintended potential thanks to the human
ability to insert new meaning in the uncovering of past violences that demand new textual interpretation:
[T]here is no political power without control of the archive, if not memory. Effective democratization can always
be measured by this essential criterion: the participation in and access to the archive, its constitution, and its
interpretation. The archive is not only a repository of historical memory and artifacts for preservation and
future knowledge acquisition. It captures a past violenceauthority captured through foundational naming,
territorialization, planting roots, the laying down of laws and rules of conduct, and documentation of exchange.
Every archive could be understood as the institution of a firmly planted assemblage that surreptitiously silences
other positions. The institution of memory also requires forgetting. Preservation also requires destruction. An
enforcement of what is deemed worthy versus what is deemed undeserving of preservation and
memorialization.
Hoary vervain, Solomons seal, wild bergamot, wild columbine and geranium, woodland sunflower and
dogwood. Contrast these to the Canada Queen, Lady Canada, Lady Willingdon, Rosedale, Dorothy Dale, and
Sunbeam. The first list of names represent plants native to the Brampton area. The second list represents the
names of roses cultivated at the Dale Estate greenhouses for over a century using industrial flower production
methods. Industrial capitalist production as we know it went hand in hand with the colonizing project. Profit at
the expense of the weaker position. The drive to grow strong strains and stocks. The compulsion to repeat this
violence across the continent could be understood as a will to defy death. And an inability to deal with it.
Capitalism is a repetition compulsion, a will to power, to progress, to human expansion, against the inevitability
of death. But it is an ideologically compromised position that privileges preservation of one conception of life
while reaping death for all others. Earlier I proposed that the archive had something to do with the death drive.
One side of the death drive is external aggression, the compulsion toward propagating civilization/cultivation,
which stymies and even kills off other forms of life. To be buried secretly, ever so sweetly, under a bed of
roses. This is counter to the state of quiescence that characterizes the internalized death instinct. Trauma can
be at the root of this internalized form. The desire to choke the rumbling engines of progress through the
introduction of the quiet creep of plant life. This is perhaps the phantasy that Akhavan lays out for our eyes. It
is perhaps a way of paying respect to the stifled voices and suffering lives that are at the foundation of industry,
civilization, and archives; it lays bare the colonial violence that quietly unfolds across reams of mulched plant
life and coal dust, ink on paper.
Bibiolography
Dale Estate, http://www.heritagetrust.on.ca/CorporateSite/media/oht/PDFs/Dale- Estate-ENG.pdf
Jacques Derrida, Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression, Diacritics vol 25, no. 2,Summer 1995, p. 11
Thomas De Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium Eater, edited by Alethea Hayter, New York, Penguin
Books, 1971, pp. 103-4.
Canadian Art Magazine (2012)
Abbas Akhavans solo show at the Darling Foundry poses a series of questions into the relationships between
war and art, destruction and nation building, human and animal.
Akhavan activates these themes with his signature light touch, allowing the pieces a lot of air to breathe.
Materials, titles and references interact and resonate in a way that seems so casual as to be almost accidental,
but thinking through the work makes clear none of the shows overall complexity is such. With just four pieces,
one visible only at sunset, Akhavan manages to fill the massive space both physically and conceptually.
The linchpin of the show is the sculpture Mortar. It is a copy of the stone lion of Hamedan, Iran, that Akhavan
has reproduced in its current war-, weather- and ritual-scarred state. The actual Hamedan lion is the survivor of
a pair that once stood at the city gates. Its twin was destroyed during an ancient regime change and the
survivor was knocked off its pedestal and left to erode on the ground with broken legs. In addition to these
brute attacks, the lion has also been more slowly transformed by generations of people coating it in honey, milk
and wax as part of marriage, birth and fertility rituals. Akhavans glossy abstraction of a lion is titled for a
substance that refers both to the paste that repairs buildings and to the weapons that destroy themit
succeeds in sensually evoking both centuries of affectionate anointing and years of violent bombing.
Like a Bat Afraid of its Own Shadow is a stack of sandbags that serves as Mortars phantom twin. Sand is
transitory and soft when left to blow across a landscape, but it can quickly become heavy and absorbent when
encased in a bag. If mortar holds together and shatters, sandbags deflect and absorb at least the physical
shocks of warfare.
The third piece in the gallery is a bright yellow hot-air balloon resting alongside Mortar and Like a Bat Afraid of
its Own Shadow. Its measured expansion and collapse brings the other works abstract evocation of historic
cycles down to a sensually graspable scale. A loud hiss fills the space as the balloon expands, but when the
air blower switches off, the balloons slow collapsing is made more poignant by birdsong echoing in the
newfound quiet. Though easy to miss for their seeming naturalness, these sounds are just as much a part of
the piece as the showy billows of fabric. Birds sing out most at daybreak and sunset, so their repeated return in
the gallery at once shrinks the length of a day to a matter of minutes while reimagining the yellow balloon as
not just an envelope of air, but the sun itself.
Outside, the actual sun also finds its way into the outdoor piece 6:35/8:03. The title points us towards the time
of sunset on the day of the shows opening in March and the much later sunset on the day of the shows
closing in May. Akhavans positioning of a cutout ensures that each sunset of the exhibition spells the words
second nature in natural light on a wall across from the gallery.
In this piece, as with the entire show, Akhavan puts us between competing cycles. He suggests that, though
precarious, it may be necessary and potentially freeing to find our selves somewhere between past and
potential, structure and ruin, first and second nature.

Abbas Akhavan: Beacon, Darling Foundry

by anja bock
Art Papers (Sep Oct, 2012)
Abbas Akhavans installation Beacon transforms the cavernous Darling Foundry into a slowly breathing, giant
organism (March 15 to May 27, 2012). Lying prone on the floor is an undulating yellow envelope, a hot-air
balloon alternately inflating to press itself against the brick walls, and deflating to form a flaccid pool of color. It
rises up with a promise only to be cut off of its air supply and fall down to the floor repeatedly (Envelope, 2012).
This yellow sun of sorts is guarded by a pair of sculptural gate-keepers, two lions, albeit at the edge of life
themselves. One is a mixed-media replica of the partly demolished and deeply symbolic Stone Lion of
Hamadan (Mortar, 2012). Hamadan, which dates back to the 7th century BCE, was conquered repeatedly and
in 931 CE the ruling dynasty ordered the destruction of the lion gates. They were dethroned and dismembered.
In 1949 one of the ruins was raised again but there is no trace of the counterpart it was thought to once have.
Akhavan transports the lion to Montreal by way of mimesis and reunites it with its lost sibling, here figured as a
stack of sand bags (Like a bat afraid of its own shadow, 2012). While the former is sensuous and inviting of
touch, with a supple spine, wavy mane, and numerous fist-sized dells made from centuries of ritual use, the
latter is obstructive, like a barricade or gun shelter. They look in opposite directions as though their clocks were
out of synch.
The two sculptures, together with the rising and falling envelope of air, establish a strong visual
relationship. Beacon brings to mind cycles of destruction and perseverance, war, nature, Mars and Eros.
These layers of meaning are intrinsic to the work, deftly embedded by Akhavans choice of material. Yet they
seem tangential, as though an attempt at diegesis would compromise the physical empathy the installation
elicits, the melancholic sense of its efforted breath and tired organs in states of decay and atrophy.
I have an iconoclastic relationship to making work. I dont like creating new images or figuration, states
Akhavan, who would like his artwork to be experienced as though it were just happened upon unexpectedly. Its
definition, operation and economy as art is subsequent to its discovery in the world of things among other
things. When situated outdoors, this interpretive delay is easier to initiate, as in the audio recording of the bird
songs Akhavan played outside the Vancouver Art Gallery (Landscape: For the Birds, 2009). But even within
the context of a gallery, Akhavan succeeds in slowing down the influx of interpretive tools by deliberately
withholding a clear message. This momentary pause in the process of signification allows the material reality of
the installation to appear like a semiotically unmanageable monstrosity.
The distinction that Grard Genette makes between an artworks immanence (its physical presence) and its
transcendence (the experience it induces) is useful when thinking through Akhavans installation. Like the
stone lion of Hamadan, the usage and symbolic value of which varied with every new conquest since
Alexander the Great, an artworks significance is mutable it exceeds its immanence over time and space,
through displacement, replication and adaptation, for example. This excess is the work that an artwork
accomplishes and cannot be separated from it. In the case ofBeacon, it is as if the immanent and transcendent
parts of the artwork operate in tandem, rendering the installation mute, then almost magical, battered and
broken, and then heroic.
On the roof of the foundry Akhavan installed a large plywood stencil that casts a legible shadow on the facing
brick wall at sunset (6:58/8:32, 2012). It reads second nature. Herein lay all the dualities Beacon mobilizes:
rise/fall, absence/presence, nature/culture, original/copy, empty/full, immanence/transcendence.
v

Landscape: For the birds (2009) is a site-specific multi-channel audio installation at the Vancouver Art Gallery.
The work, made for the exhibition, How Soon Is Now, explores the power relations embedded in the
domestication of nature and the territorial uses of space. The eight tweeter horns, installed in two tall Cypress
trees at the entrance of the gallery play the songs of invasive British bird species that have been introduced to
the Americas in the aftermath of colonization. The 24 hours audio installation fluctuates between aggressive
territorial calls to soft mating sounds that serenades the audience while drawing attention to Canadas history
of colonization.8 tweeter horns installed in Cypress trees. 40 min audio looped 24 hours / day. On the second
floor of the gallery, a window was cut open. Stairs were installed for access to the large window that looked out
onto the trees and speakers.
8 tweeter horns installed in Cypress trees. 40 min audio looped 24 hours / day. On the second floor of the
gallery, a window was cut open. Stairs were installed for access to the large window that looked out onto the
trees and speakers.
Esta bien orinar en el mar?

Botellas de orina con conchas de mar.

Es posible crear una relectura de la historia que ignore por completo el

impulso a apegarse a los hechos reales? Aunque la colaboracin entre
Marcel Dzama y Eduardo Sarabia no pretende contestar esta pregunta,
hace surgir una serie de respuestas involuntarias que dan indicios de un
proceder alternativo. En primera instancia, se manifiesta el rechazo a
considerar el pasado en trminos de victorias y fracasos, lo que lleva a los
artistas a distanciarse del relato unvoco que se legitima como verdadero,
para indagar en los sucesos perifricos, ignorados y descalificados por los
historiadores, asumiendo el potencial dinmico e inconcluso de la historia.
Campeonato de Guadalajara es la negacin del relato histrico como un
cmulo de hechos inmviles, es la reanimacin de algo que se
considera inerte. Es el retorno a un torneo de ajedrez en Niza, para el
cual Marcel Duchamp dise un cartel y, simultneamente, es una
interpretacin fragmentada del Cdice Florentino, recurriendo a los
lenguajes visuales de ambos artistas. Es una sucesin de ritos secretos
ejecutados por compaas de ballet que incorpora encapuchados y
animales antropomorfizados, con vestuarios diseados por Oskar
Schlemmer y Francis Picabia. Esta puesta en comn no es un ejercicio
de traduccin; tampoco busca llegar a un consenso en el que se
establezca un cdigo que sobrepase las diferencias contextuales entre
ambos artistas. Ms bien, opta por un dilogo simultneo, con
interferencias e interrupciones.
Sarabia busca desmitificar la iconografa relacionada con el
narcotrfico, convirtindola en mercancas que podran
parecer souvenirs de la esttica mexicana. El imaginario popular que
sola poblar estas artesanas es reemplazada por la realidad
mediatizada que se ha instalado en el plano de lo cotidiano. Por su
parte, Dzama ha creado todo un elenco de personajes que habitan sus
obras, obligados a protagonizar situaciones que podran ser producto
de una mente infantil que especula sobre la naturaleza de la violencia: a
pesar de ser una explcita aproximacin a lo macabro, permanece un
carcter ingenuo e inocente. Los sucesos representados rehyen a la
coherencia narrativa, creando estampas suspendidas en pleno frenes,
provocando la sensacin de estar interrumpiendo una celebracin
pagana.
Los dos artistas pretenden conciliar mundos aparentemente
contradictorios: lo popular y reconocible con lo oculto e
incomprensible. Las formas en que ambos manifiestan la contradiccin
entre estas dos dimensiones revela un desdoblamiento del
entendimiento arquetpico del mundo. En el caso de Sarabia, esta
discordancia es acentuada por medio de la normalizacin en forma de
mercanca, mientras que Dzama recurre al xtasis eufrico, violento y
sexual.

MARCEL DZAMA (Winnipeg, 1974)

El trabajo de Marcel Dzama se caracteriza por un lenguaje visual
inmediatamente regonocible, que incluye un gran nmero de
referencias e influencias artsticas, incluyendo el dadasmo y
especficamente a Marcel Duchamp. Aunque ha sido reconocido
ampliamente por sus prolficos dibujos con su distintiva paleta de
colores opacos, en aos recientes, el artista ha expandido su prctica
para incorporar escultura, pintura, video y dioramas.

Deitch starts with an evident assumption: the confines

between reality and fiction are increasingly less clear.
As such also artists end up constructing aesthetic
worlds in which, as in life, it is increasingly less
possible to establish the boundary between that which
is real and that which isnt.

The CIA, after the attack on the Twin Towers, has

decided to pay science fiction writers to bear out the
most visionary screenplays. The world does not want to
be surprised anymore and to achieve this turns the
relationship upside down: starting first with fiction in
order to then arrive at reality.

What to some cynics, or confused minds, appeared to

be the most costly Hollywood set ever made, is just the
latest example of this incredible mix of real and
artificial.

The exhibition Inventing the Truth. On Fiction and Reality reflects on the possibilities of fiction
as an instrument for understanding the world and for shaping the present. Blurring the line
between fiction and reality allows us to articulate creative hypotheses about both past and
present, thus activating a new relation between what is and what could be.

The intensifying effect of climate change on our global environment has implications for
humans and animals alike. Making Nature emphasises the symbiosis that has existed
between humans and animals for thousands of years. Four separate rooms: Ordering,
Displaying, Observing and Making combine to explore how human decision-making
influences our classification of animals and our attitudes towards them. Themes of
behaviour, communication, display and modification are effectively integrated with
taxonomic literature, artistic representation and scientific debates to demonstrate
changing human-animal relationships.
here are more futures than we realize, and more failures too. The past is littered with the
debris of these futures, while our present incorporates the unstable collective memory of
hopes that have long since been abandoned.
Formed in 2002, the London-based Otolith Group (which comprises Kodwo Eshun and
Anjalika Sagar) doggedly investigates these temporal slips and Utopian dreams of the
temporality of past potential futurity, as they put it. 1Their use of documentary footage, of
archives both familiar and alien, provides a melancholy window onto worlds not created
and paths not followed. At the same time, by reasserting the potential of underused
forms, the group reveals the latent promise of various media: letters, television, science
fiction, philosophy.
There is no memory without image and no image without memory. Image is the matter
of memory.)