"Let's unite, unify,
let's attach, sum up, add on,
let's get together, link together, compile together,
become allies, and join together
let's conciliate, and aglutinate, and amalgamate,
let's adhere, let's shuffle ourselves,
let's coil, soak up, and combine
and interlace, and intermingle, and intertwine."

Jorge de la Vega, "Proximity", song, 1968.

When and how Trama was born is not something easy to determine. The need for a program of this kind had been growing in different ways inside every one of the organizing artists.

In 1994 and 1995, Claudia Fontes and Leonel Luna had taken part in the first Barracas Workshop in Buenos Aires, coordinated by Pablo Suárez and Luis Benedit with the support of the Antorchas Foundation. At the same time, Leonel was doing his scholarship work directed by Guillermo Kuitca. Both workshops were extremely important as they acted as places of exchange of experiences among artists. Luna had also been one of the contrivers of the informal weekly meetings in the El Progeso Club in which artists like Nicolás Guagnini, Luis Lindner, Fabiana Barreda, Liandro Carballo and Rafael Cippolini got together, and would be later joined by others –Mariano Vilela, Dino Bruzzone and Pablo Ziccarello. These meetings were intended to recover a space for the exchange of ideas among peers, comparing processes and procedures. Ziccarello, who belongs to a later generation, while studying at the Prilidiano Pueyrredón School of Fine Arts, organized talks, debates and collective activities and at the same time developed his own work. Meanwhile, Claudia Fontes was invited during 1998 and 2000 to coordinate the Production and Analysis of Work Encounters promoted by the Antorchas Foundation in San Miguel de Tucumán and Mar del Plata, experience that would later have an influence on her decision to create a nationwide network.

In the late 90s, each one of us initiators of the project had a different vision and experience of the local artistic milieu, but agreed that the context did not satisfy the need for exchange that we artists had. We knew that only through the collective debate of the circumstances that affect us individually, we could be able to build a platform of research and enrich our artistic practice.

A first version of the Trama program was called El Potrero, and was outlined by Fontes in 1997, during her period of work at the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten, in Amsterdam. The main motivation of that first project was the need to generate in Argentina a space for discussion in which artistic thought could be collectively developed and the references of the local context legitimated. Upon her return, she shared this project outline with different colleagues until the program assumed its definitive shape in 2000.

In January of that year, the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs offered support for El Potrero through the RAIN artists’ initiatives network, which connects initiatives from former participants of the Rijksakademie. RAIN allowed access to the work of artists from contexts as diverse –and sometimes as close– as Indonesia, India, Mexico, Mali, South Africa and Brazil. The possibility was unique and encouraged us to make the most of it. We thus decided to elaborate a program whose main objective would be to create a platform for research that would work as an interface between visual arts production and society. At the same time, it would act as a space for the legitimation of artistic thought within the social and political sphere, in order to confront conclusions along a south-south axis.

The artists responsible for the development and implementation of these ideas were then Claudia Fontes, Leonel Luna, Pablo Ziccarello and Marcelo Grosman. And the project was renamed Trama. The four of us looked for and discussed a possible structure. We exchange ideas with different groups of artists, cultural operators and institutions for several months in order to elaborate a program that would emerge from the needs of the environment, with a sound basis.

We decided to create a program that would interpret artistic production as a system of visual reflection and thought among peers, with a horizontal and rhizomatous structure. We set ourselves to make the natural network of interrelations among artists and intellectuals of the Argentine cultural scene visible, fluid and accessible, and also to do so with regional and international cultural scenes, promoting the establishment of different channels of exchange and facilitating cooperation and confrontation among artists.

The Antorchas Foundation was keen on our interest for giving priority to a more equitable distribution of resources and information regarding artistic production in the different provinces of our country and offered to help. Even then, in order to survive, it was necessary to find a way by which the program had institutional rank without becoming an institution. We thus asked the Espigas Foundation for institutional "shelter" and got the best of welcomes. Thanks to the understanding and support of Marcelo Pacheco and Mauro Herlitzka, we worked totally independently, but under the wing of the Foundation. On this more stable basis, we decided to give the project a duration of five years, planning to work in a flexible way stimulating and responding to the needs of the artistic community.

A large part of the organizing stage was devoted to the development of a fluid network of contacts with artists in four regions of the country –Rosario, Córdoba, Tucumán and Buenos Aires Province. By and large, we sought to associate with artists who had already in one way or another generated some kind of initiative in their places of work and/or had the possibility of summoning other artists without embodying any sectarianisms. They were all invited to participate by organizing different activities proposed by Trama. Mauro Machado from Rosario, Carlota Beltrame and Marcos Figueroa from San Miguel de Tucumán, and Daniel Besoytaorube and Mario Gemin from Mar del Plata, added their opinions and efforts to the project. During this first year, the generous participation of several institutions and artistic places was secured in each of the nodes where Trama was present with its activities: Universidad Nacional de Tucumán; Centro Cultural Parque de España, Rosario; Universidad Nacional de Rosario; "La Estación"; Centro Cultural de la Municipalidad de Rosario; Fondo Internacional de Arte Contemporáneo, Mar del Plata; Teatro Auditorium de Mar del Plata; Centro Cultural Villa Victoria, Mar del Plata; MAMba, Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires; Duplus; Centro Cultural Recoleta; Fundación Proa; Centro Cultural Ricardo Rojas; and Centro Cultural Casona de los Olivera, Buenos Aires.

At the moment the artists working actively in the project are Claudia Fontes as general co-ordinator, Pablo Ziccarello in areas related to Rain, Marina De Caro in institutional relations and programming events, Irene Banchero as editor and designer of the web site and Flavia Da Rin, just incorporated to the group.

In 2000, the program was intended to last for five years. At that time, it seemed impossible even to finish the first year. In the two years that have passed, some of the originators of the program have left, others have joined us –the energy is still flowing. Meanwhile, we have learnt as artists what we suspected from the beginning: the model of artist we are looking for is one who acts responsibly and is aware of the social conditions in which he works, one who sees in others –artists or spectators– peers with whom to build an indispensable tool to define their own cultural policy: collective thought.

Trama, June 2002.