Curatorial experience
Sala 10 of the Centro Cultural Recoleta is a logical extension of the activities of the Foundation which go beyond the annual contemporary art fair, in keeping with the founding mission. In this particular case it gave rise to a competition organized with the intention of encouraging young curators to gain their first professional experience in a prestigious setting.
The jury, consisting of Andrés Duprat, Fabián Lebenglik, Adriana Rosenberg, Clorindo Testa and Jacobo Fiterman for arteBA Foundation, selected Mercedes Pérez Bergliaffa, the young curator of the city of La Plata. The decision, following the arduous task of choosing between the entrants, was motivated by the contemporary nature and vibrancy of the subject matter, and also for the originality of the floor plan in the proposal.
This is the fifth display organised by the arteBA Foundation in Sala 10. In each of these, we gave a different curator the opportunity to participate, thus allowing to show in each case distinct perspectives on the visual arts. At the same time we favour the development of curatorial experience in different people, which along with the development of gallery management and collectorship, help in achieving our primary objective: allowing artists to live from their work and to free them from the responsibility of having to commercialise their work and organize their exhibitions, delegating this task to professionals in these fields instead. Our congratulations to the winner and our heartfelt thanks to the jury.
Andrés von Buch
President arteBA Foundation
Mercedes Pérez Bergliaffa
See artists' works
“I often come out here, said uncle Kasimir, it makes me feel that I am a long away, though I never quite know from where”
(“The Emigrants”, W.G. Sebald)
“Entropy: the measure of disorder of a system” (DRAE, 2001)
“Until the end of the 20th century we have believed in order. Afterwards we begin to discover disorder. Order and disorder are the same thing, seen in a different fashion.” If this was the case, then what remains apart from order and disorder?
This project deals with the possibility of inventing different situations within which to situate one’s self.
State
1. Situation in which something or someone is found, especially each one of its successive states of being.
2. Each one of the classes into which society is divided; such as the ecclesiastical, the nobles, the plebeians, etc.
3. The class or condition to which everyone’s life is subject to.
4. In the federal system, a portion of territory whose inhabitants govern themselves with their own laws, even though at certain points they are subject to the decisions of the common government.
5. Ministry of the State: government of the State, considered as the ensemble of the various departments into which it is divided.
6. Civil state.
7. The ensemble of the organs of government of a sovereign country.
8. The longitudinal measure of the regular height of a person, which is used to appreciate heights or depths, and is usually calculated in seven floors.
A state of order is a situation where there are only few ways in which something or someone may behave. A state of disorder is a situation in which someone or something has many ways of behaving at their disposal. A state of maximum order or disorder, corresponds to, a very large number or a minimal number of responsibilities, respectively. It is not known whether these states are irreversible or not.
Order: putting things in their proper place / a rule or manner which is followed to do things.
Disorder: confusion and disturbance of order.
Chaos: Confusion, disorder/Phys. and Mat. Apparently erratic and unpredictable behaviour of some dynamic systems, even though in principle its mathematic formulation is determined.
I don’t propose methods with which to find something: only to remain on alert, pay attention to a continued perception, to explore.
I do propose to study principles of uncertainty, certain disorder (perhaps not determined) from which working, an then to work from the curatorial practice. In this sense, I recognise that the figure of the curator may be conceived as “someone who works from the margins; someone who, in reality, instead of having to manage meaning, dislocates meaning”. I agree with Marcelo Pacheco in thinking of the curator as “the one who dislocates even the body of the statements, and who understands clearly that there is no dogmatic pretension to create a determined principle of authority”. It would be the idea of curatorial practice conducted by “those who work in the field of holes, in the field of thresholds, of folds, where objects don’t remain”.
Project In Transit is a project which refers not only to the possibility of curating in an experimental and procedural fashion together with the artists, but also it attempts to call attention upon certain situations pertaining to the denouement of curatorial practices in Argentina, for example the emergence of curatorial projects carried out using distinct methodologies..
About the project
Project In Transit does not pretend to be a thematic exhibition, but rather a project which brings together a variety of positions from non-specific areas of art. This lack of specificity is what mainly interests me. As García Canclini mentioned, acknowledging that our life in this world has an uncertain meaning, requires “admitting the instability of references” and accepting the flexibility of the frameworks of which reality consists.
“To make works, ephemeral installations or communicative actions? Perhaps the dilemma was badly set out.”
From these aspects I proposed to the artists that they carry out a procedural and experimental curatorial project, meaning that the works of each artists are, in reality, projects in the process of being elaborated, which will finish being set up during the final days of the exhibition; thus the results aren’t certain, they’re probable. The process took place in the following fashion: we had weekly group meetings during the months leading up to the opening of the exhibition; during these meetings, each artist proposed an artistic project to be carried out in a specific are of the city of Buenos Aires, which was discussed and analysed collectively. A second part consisted of a group visit to the selected sites. It was at this point that the curatorial project acquired greater meaning: walking around the sites, we reflected upon the development of each project and also a surprising conceptual territory was revealed to us, arising from the everyday.
Mercedes Pérez Bergliaffa
Curator