Aesthetic alternatives and social bonds in today' s Latin American art areas

José Fernández Vega

Throughout the conference where we gathered there was much talk of "nets", of "network" bonds aimed at associating institutional experiments that might promote an alternative kind of art in the various Latin American cities from where participants of this meeting have come from. I would like to go deeper into the notion of "net" in order to reflect on whether art itself has not, in a way, become a net in at least one of the accepted meanings of the word.How could art be thought of as a net? And what could be the point of this?
As I see it, our discussions regarding the net referred to operational issues, to the circulation of information about the different activities performed as well as to their institutional, artistic, and social effects. Let us say that we were speaking of technical aspects. Still, this morning we held a debate that, in my view, was out of the ordinary. As we wondered what kind of network we wished to develop, and a whole doctrinal issue was raised about such a project, what was in fact being discussed was something much more significant, involving a wider scope. We were in fact discussing the nature of art in our times, for art itself might seem to be a net if we abide by the notions that were implicit in the exchanges I attended.
What I mean is that, apart from the strictly operational issue of exchanging information and taking advantage of the net for all kinds of communication, the notion entails another function, also related to art. This becomes evident when it is grasped conceptually, i.e., beyond the Internet as a technical tool, for instance. There is a peculiar function inherent to art - not exclusively, though- that has never been as important -or rather, as pressingly necessary- as it is today. This function might be defined as social and aesthetic at once not at all a new one, indeed. It would give shape to a special kind of political art that intends to reconstruct social places and bonds among people.
Many of our bonds have been destroyed by the neo-liberal privatisation, which, in some way or other, affected our countries in the last few decades. The privatising wave implied something else than the transferring of public enterprises to private owners and the rooting of a discourse that, in the name of common sense, stated that the market was the only effective manager, while the public sphere could only yield loss, inefficacy and misuse.
What I call privatisation in a broad sense led to life being constricted to the private space, to people living in isolation, to the dissolution of social groups, to the convolution of the self and to the "desertification" of fields where political participation and social integration used to take place. It also implied the spread of fear of the other (strengthened by mediatic panic that disseminates an atmosphere of total urban insecurity), and of individual phobias that took on an almost epidemic quality. Ultimately, it drove people to sink into their own subjective poverty, into the domestic field, into the encapsulation of the individual watching a screen, whether on the TV or on a computer.
This is the reason why, during our discussions, there resurfaced the issue of art's social role. This is most significant, for it aims at regarding art as regenerative of nets that were torn up by politics. The said function could be clearly seen in drama festivals held in ancient Greece and, during the Middle Ages, in rituals carried out in churches teeming with visual artwork. All these phenomena belong in the past: although people still gather at theatres and attend all sorts of shows and art events, this social function is much less evident in a conventional visit to an art gallery, an individual motion that does not necessarily entail a relation to any other. All of the above has to do with one of the most interesting discussions here, one that focused on the so-called "emotional curatorship". I do not particularly like the name, yet I value the concept; I like what lies behind the name. Rather than feel suspicious of the "new age" scent that might be suggested by the expression "emotional curatorship", we had better whether it names an attempt at a "policy of friendship", at the establishment of interpersonal bonds among those who attend an artistic event. Bourgeois ritual displays always tend to isolate people or, in the best of cases, to create an alienated relationship among them. It goes without saying that, in the world of art, this is patent in rituals such as vernissage and in the communication -assumed to be purely intimate- between the spectator and the work, thus creating between them a circle where there is no room for strangers. In a broad sense, if we understand "emotional curatorship" as a channel of affection between curator and artist, it can likewise be seen in this light on more stereotyped, conventional levels of the realm of art. Is it possible to reach beyond this limited, contingent view so as to seek for affective channels between the work and the audience, channels that may acquire social rather than purely personal consistency? The point is a curatorship that is not restricted to the relation between the artist and his/her work and the one in charge of staging an exhibition. Can art catalyse bonds among those who come close to it? It is my belief that if the expression "emotional curatorship" makes any sense at all, its sense is determined by our answer to these quandaries. I do not entertain much hope about its general effects. Emotional curatorship cannot replace either politics or social movements, but it might well give rise to artificial, utopian spaces that will enable us to catch a glimpse of a different way of life, in opposition to the kind of life to which we have been condemned by neo-liberalism's amputated sociability.
I wonder, then, whether the creation of these nets is not an actually aesthetic function. I do not mean to say that it is the only possible aesthetic function, or even the most important one. In other words, the question is whether what is called emotional curatorship does not ultimately boil down to building up bonds. But in what way could that be related to aesthetics? The social element is quite obvious, since establishing relationships among people seems to be, clearly enough, a social function. The aesthetic aspect is given by its strong determination to achieve visibility, by its defence of forms that are offered to the eye (where the visual arts are concerned), and by its aspiration to imagine a way of creating society through these forms. In this sense, art fulfils a utopian function that can also, to a limited scale, produce effects on reality. By way of example, our friend Helmut Batista’s home in Rio de Janeiro is some sort of anticipation of the way in which we could all live, that is to say, in a home where we could come and go as we pleased. This stands for a model of a different kind of society. I insist that this experiment, which is as attractive as it is fun, does not mean to replace the existing society, or that it is intent on doing so. I cannot share the idea that social transformation be carried out through a proliferation of such experiments, i.e., encouraging the artificial creation of thousands of communal homes like Helmut’s in the hope that we are thus building up a different society so as to push the real one out of existence once it has become a negligible minority. If we are to think that the neo-avant-garde laboratory of the 60s has taught us something, it is that inordinate expectations directed at art’s immediate political efficacy led directly to a blind alley, both in the political and in the aesthetic field. Nor does art have such a straightforward function. Perhaps its mission is not so much to bring about a change in society as it is to show what a different kind of society would look like. If one sets oneself this unprepossessing goal, it might turn out more useful.
It is clear to everybody that what in other times was assumed to be “art’s social function’ is undergoing the same crisis as the very notion of art is. This brings us back to the question ¿What is art? ,a constituent quandary pervading artistic activity throughout the 20th Century and, needless to say, ours as well. Starting from this time framework, it is interesting that the spaces where you do your management work shelter people who say, ‘I used to be an artist, but I no longer am; now I’m a cultural operator, or an alternative curator or something else’. These people also tend to state that art, which at one time interested them, no longer does. These are radical manifestations, and the most telling case we had occasion to listen to here was that of a Colombian narrated by Michèle Faguet, about a Colombian artist who held her last exhibition in ‘La rebeca’, a space conducted by Michèle. The said artist celebrated a sort of culmination of her career through a last exhibition, and then declared that she ceased to be an artistic, at least in the public field. Her stance was twofold: she thus meant to abandon the system ruling art while she attacked the constraints of the Colombian circuit. Since she had already shown her works at every available place, found that the local market was non-existent and, consequently, the only thing left for her to do was to take her leave.
Another aspect of the same issue is Duplus’ self-representation. They maintain that they are content to have relinquished their identity as a space for alternative art in search of a new identity. Since they admit lacking a definition of art, their conclusion is that they can no longer do what they used to. They would not be able to organise an exhibition of any kind, for they do not feel up to distinguishing between which objects meet the requirements to be exhibited and which do not. Here we find another radical manifestation, but does it show even a trace of the artistic in it? Enlarging on the question: how artistic would it be for each of you to turn your private homes into open houses and offer them as public places, as spaces for artistic or social creativity, for instance? I believe there is an actual attempt launched from a quite abstract perspective, and that what Duplus intends to do is not so different from what others aim at through different means. All of our quests are addressed at creating society, at producing bonds. Yet not just any bonds, but one that is mediated through aesthetic production, even when it is not quite clear what exactly is aesthetic today, since our culture is unable to provide a clear-cut definition.
All of this also involves an aspiration that used to be restricted to religion. The already remote disconnection between art and religion left bourgeois art in a state of crisis, so to speak, for this type of art does not seem able to consolidate something transcendental, a spiritual atmosphere that may replace the dead God. In fact, it keeps threatening to just show something pretty, and nothing else. It could be said that this stands for a change where design has replaced metaphysics. The notion of religare, about which you must have often heard, the idea of re-connecting people, of creating community, which was one of religion’s general functions, seems to have taken on another hue when it comes to "art as a net”. Now it is indeed about creating community, though not to frame it into some doctrine or other, but rather to picture what another lifestyle could be like, and what it could be like if we were reunited again – if we ever were actually united. It is on this level that the affective and the emotional issue find a place.
This quasi-religious function becomes interesting only if it can be understood as a demystified, thoroughly secularised matter. Should this be the case, the function quickly shifts onto a political level. It aspires to experiment with the constitutive power that the political sphere, such as we know it, seems to be in bad need of. This also explains why our own discourse shows some sort of inflation regarding “institution”, a word that is cautiously uttered and that arouses a certain amount of suspicion. It would seem as if when one institutes something, one has invalidated from the start. The idea is to sustain the moment when this movement has not yet solidified, the moment when the institution is still in a state of magma, for when it has been constituted it is no longer useful, it has lost its capacity of circulation, and has become petrified. It is obvious that there is a tendency to privilege circulation over institution; still, paradoxically, the latter guarantees the former, for it would be unable to exist by itself in a void.
This is one of the political problems affecting art. It cannot dispense with institutions and neither can it support them. Additionally, it lacks the capacity to create effective political institutions, and this, in turn, thwarts its ambitions to intervene in the public sphere. However, this drawback finds its balance thanks to the fact that art can and does act as a stimulus for us to imagine what good societies would be like. This is indeed an advantage, insofar as the specific language of art highlights the borders of bad societies; that is, of the ones we live in.
The spaces herein represented are at risk in a symmetrical way with that of great institutions, and even with that of the worst kind. The danger is associated to the fact that space may become much more important that anything it contains or that it intends to exhibit or originate. When it comes to the worst kind of institutions, this is confirmed in increasingly visible, material, obscenely concrete ways. A case in point is Guggenheim at Bilbao, where nobody really cares about what is inside the building, for what really appeals to the public lies in the building itself. This stands for an extreme case illustrating what can happen when, rather than focusing on aesthetic aspects, one becomes obsessed with the institutional, with space, or –to put it more clumsily- with the building. One significant risk is that the net may become more important than its contents, thus acquiring the status of a fetish so that what can be found in it or what it can generate no longer matters.
Finally, I feel bound to insist on the issue of art understood as a net –this reconstitution or institution of bonds through art that is comprehended to some extent, and that may even not be clearly and permanently comprehended. This issue cannot be suitably assessed outside the context of the unspeakable destruction of bonds we have experienced in our countries of origin over the last twenty or thirty years. In the course of our meetings, whenever we brought up the subject of setting up projects within the urban space, the starting point was one and the same: the city had been closed. Bogotá perhaps provides an extreme example. It was here that Michéle’s efforts to generate society demand the kind of energy that she now feels she cannot cope with. It is in no way easy to generate bonds in Bogotá: the city proves to be an unbeatable case of privatisation and of domestic confinement owing to a series of factors it shares with other countries in addition to its own particular setbacks, such as overriding violence.
Even when a city may seem to open up to the world, as is the case with a seaside resort like Rio de Janeiro, for example, creating a space for alternative art, like Helmut did, laid more emphasis on setting up a stand half-way between the dwellings and the beach than in trying to lure people out of their homes. Because of the way he devised it , people necessarily had to walk past the stand on their way to the beach. Thus, for a few seconds, people traversed an “aesthetic” place that enabled them to connect with one another differently from the way they did on the beach. Helmut insisted that his city is also a victim to privatisation. Most entertainment activities have been privatised, and he also told us –and this is another extreme case- that many streets have been shut out because owners of neighbouring buildings block the way with a security guard. Thus, the city gradually renounces its already scarce public spaces. Helmut’s is an unusual proposal: his home offers a cosmopolitan atmosphere welcoming artists from very place in the world, even though their initiatives are not restricted to a specific physical space. They go wherever they deem more suitable for their initiatives, although Espacio Capacete, fostered by Helmut Batista, now offers headquarters other than a private home.
It goes without saying that here, in Buenos Aires, institutions are very much distrusted. There are many that think that institutions are harmful, since, ultimately, they create themselves and their only achievement is destruction of some sort. Recent events in our political history have contributed to spread this feeling; still, I wonder whether systematic distrust may last over time. This is one of the greatest challenges to be met by Duplus, by the problem involves the whole of Argentinean society. This is the reason for the specificity of Duplus’ discourse. It can be articulated in our circumstances but not in Chile, for instance, where, in my view, institutions are endowed with a different sense and depth. In Chile it is still possible to stage an exhibition like the one organised by the “Hoffmann’s House” group, expressing a most original questioning of museums.
They told us that they had started by buying a prefabricated wooden hut, a typical precarious dwelling for popular sectors. In Chile these houses are called “gables” and said to have been designed by a Mr Hoffmann whose name was adopted by the group. They installed it in various areas of the city, such as in a square located in an exclusive neighbourhood, on the pavement where the Housing Agency stands, and in a recreational park. The circuit ended at the museum, on whose walls they leaned the hut. They achieved a remarkable image, for it seemed as if the hut had run aground at the museum after a long urban navigation that could also be understood as a social vicissitude. In a way, this can be equated to art’s social vicissitudes throughout its history: it arises in a rich neighbourhood and ends up in a museum. In addition, it gives rise to a number of questions addressed at other groups in that it inverts the operation by turning a private home into a public space. It provided the opportunity to visit the hut, where children played and artists held short exhibitions. Thus, a private home, so personal and isolating under neo-liberalism was opened to public use through the artists’ choice to represent it as a public promenade. Hoffmann’s House turns the home into a parody, a denunciation and an itinerant gallery which embodies, at one and the same time, a piece of art and a comment on art.
Perhaps some of the issues dealt with here sound rather abstract, but I found them relevant to attempt a particular reading of our discussions during the conference. I have not done fair justice to two extraordinary experiences which, with enormous effort, seek to install a space for independent art. One of them, named Espacio Aglutinador, is located in Havana, and the other is an exhibition platform in a working-class neighbourhood in Santiago de Chile [Galería Metropolitana]. Both seek to enlarge the boundaries of the art circuit, usually confined to rich or central city neighbourhoods. In both cases, a family house offers a public space with the resulting financial and organisational difficulties it is bound to meet, to say the least. Both these spaces run the risk of being incorporated –and therefore, neutralised- into the art routine agenda of their respective cities. This is why continuous interaction between Galería Metropolitana and its immediate social surroundings is decisive to its fate. On the other hand, it is crucial for Espacio Aglutinador to defend an independent meeting place and an exhibition policy that is not ruled by the changing official winds.
I regret these deficiencies; still, I would like to say that Francisco’s previous intervention (our Mexican friend), helped me to mitigate them while shedding light on what I myself wanted to voice. I am grateful to him as well as to you for your patience in listening to my unravelling a number of not altogether satisfactory reflections. It was most stimulating to me to learn about your experiences, for they speak of great generosity, of an urge of a different mode of sociability, and of a better fate for art, now a prisoner of money and prestige wherever we look.