arteBA’10 - Prime Time Auditorium Program
Bicentenaries: After Invention
It has been said that Latin America was not discovered and conquered, but rather invented by the European colonizers who came to it in the 15th and 16th centuries. Our approach to celebrating the bicentenaries of the independence of a group of nations that separated from the Spanish metropole in the 19th century to be free and self-determining has its starting-point in the difficulty of thinking today of the idea of a nation through some stable, unifying definition. Even if we acknowledge the bonds forged by a common language and colonial past, and identify the problems shared by being peripheral societies, these factors are not enough to homogenize the huge differences of the countries comprising the geopolitical term “Latin America.”
Once these difficulties have been identified, we will consider a set of topics debated in the visual arts of the late 20th century that place this discussion in a broader regional context wider than that which the limitations of the nation-state present. The framework for the celebration we propose takes up the nationalisms and emancipation myths of ‘imagined communities’ of countries with distinct processes and at varied stages of modernization. Our idea has been to reflect on the modalities of the public and private, the theories of self-determination transferred to visual discourse, and the appearance of conceptualisms from the 1960s on, with their concern to take stock and itemize history and thereby show the cracks in the constructions of power.
1. Friday, June 25
(In)dependence Theories (6 to 8 PM)
Nicolás Guagnini (artist, New York City),
Taiyana Pimentel (art critic, curator and director of the Sala de Arte Público Siqueiros, Mexico City) and
Pablo Vargas Lugo (artist, Lima), moderated by
Beverly Adams (curator, the Diane and Bruce Halle Collection of Latin America Art, Phoenix, Arizona) and
Gabriela Rangel (director of visual arts and
curator, Americas Society, New York City).
In the 1950s a group of distinguished South American theorists developed the so-called “dependence theory” to explain Latin America’s conditions of under-development vis-à-vis the political imbalance existing in the international markets and the accumulation of hegemonic wealth of the industrialized countries. Although dependence theory was first worked out in the field of economics and the social sciences, it influenced much of the debate on art, politics, and perifery that arose in the ‘60s and ‘70s in light of the revolutionary movements fomented by the Cuban Revolution. The critic Marta Traba, in particular, took positions clearly marked by this body of theory. The members of this panel will discuss artistic practices centering on social advanced by contemporary Latin American artists in the current conditions of the globalized economy. To what degree do these manifestations summon up the regional questions debated in that period?
2. Saturday, June 26
The Emancipated Image? (6 to 8 PM).
Marcelo Brodsky (artist, Buenos Aires),
Eduardo Gil (artist, New York City) and
Carlos Motta (New York City), moderated by
Beverly Adams and
Gabriela Rangel.
Since the 1960s, the various conceptualisms that have emerged globally have brought together archival processes in various cultural contexts and historical moments, creating a sort of homogenizing lingua franca or bureaucratic aesthetic. On the other hand, these conceptualisms’ obsession with the archive as a procedure by which to examine the construction of modernities has shown genealogies of difference by means of those artistic practices based on the memory losses that have developed in countries like Colombia and Venezuela. The participants in this panel will discuss their practices in confronting various models of the archive in which historical fact and its mythologies figure as fictions and myths.
3. Sunday, June 27
The Phantom of the Public Realm (6 to 8 PM).
Montserrat Albores Gleason (curator and founder of Espacio Petra, Mexico City),
Isabel García (curator, Santiago, Chile) and
Tahía Rivero (curator, Banco Mercantil Collection, Caracas), moderated by
Michele Faguet (art critic, Berlin).
The appearance of private cultural spaces and contemporary art galleries subsidized by individuals or corporations in Latin America has created alternative management models stimulated by privatization processes started by basic industries and the goods-and-services sector in many of those countries over the last decade. This situation took account of the absence of state philanthropy for the arts or of the loss of support of the cultural sector in countries with a strong tradition and institutional philanthropic infrastructure for the arts. These spaces, many of them run by artists, have gained importance to the extent that, in their programming functions, they have taken over the role of museums and cultural centers. The members of this panel, directors of alternative spaces, critics, and curators, will discuss the weight the State still exerts as generator of a public function in the national imaginary. In particular they will examine the cases of Colombia, Chile, Mexico and Venezuela.
Design, coordination of topics, and selection of participants: Gabriela Rangel (Director of Visual Arts, Americas Society, New York City)
As part of the present program, there will be screenings at stand H63 of the Pabellón Azul [Blue Pavilion] of two videos Gabriela Rangel has selected by artists participating in the forum: Eduardo Gil and Carlos Motta.
