Absurdo English by Ciudad Imaginacion

Images and pictures: Ciu dad de la Imaginación’s arc hive unless otherwise indicated.

Ciudad de la Imaginaciò n: Pablo Josè Ramìrez

Executive Director

Marìa Nieves Mìguez

Administrative Director

Ofelia Gutièrrez

Finances

Alba Carrasco

Communication coordinat

Zinder Garcìa

Education coordinator

Santiago Lucas

Graphic Designer

EDITORSHIP: Pablo Josè Ramìrez. ART AND DESIGN: www.b ryancastropoz.com TRANSLATION FROM SPANIS H: Aida Noriega. EDITION: Julio Urìzar. © Absurdo 2014. © 1o. Edition, Quetzaltenan go, Guatemala 2014 © Images and pictures: Ciu dad de la Imaginación arc hive and his authors. Thanks to: Liz Rojas, Fau sto Gracia, Leslie Martìne z, La CUERDA, Teatro Laboratorio TELA, Mucevi, Walter Mignolo, Proyectos Ultravioleta, Isabel Rodas, Rosina Cazali, Carolina Esc obar Sarti, Marco Canale, Benvenuto Chavajay, Àngel Poyòn, Rey es Josuè Morales, Marco Chàvez, Lau ra Mèndez, Elma Espejo, Victoria Tiu, Kan Lainez, Andrès Rodrìguez, Tomasa De Leòn, Luis Fer nando Castillo, Josè Mìguez, Carlos Escala nte, Beerd Willems, Susana Rochna, Andrès Rodrìguez, Anabel la Acevedo, Paola Gonzàle z Vargas, Juan Miguel Arrivillaga and Juli o Serrano, among many peo ple who have made possible Absurdo dur ing these years.

Supported by:

ABSURDO

AN introducTion (LET US BEGIN WITH THE END)

In 2009 a group of intellectuals from the cultural scene in Quetzaltenango decided it would meet in an old café in zone 1 of the city. There lingered ideas, plenty of energy, instability and an overall drive to do and to say things. But one thing was clear: the structure and traditional rhetoric, common among those who practice politics, be it from the left or, more so, the right wing, did not fit into what we conceived as emancipatory behaviors.

At this point in time, several of the involved worked within such spheres as performance, cinematic production, literature and theoretic creation, all of which sprung from the city. This is the womb from which this hardly definable thing called Absurd was born. It was always thought as a festival-type event in which thinkers, activists and artists could participate and propose alternative forms of expressing hegemonic power through speech and actions, and yet, be critical of the left´s rhetoric. In other words, this Absurd movement did not self-identify with the bipolar mold coming from the hegemonic/anti-hegemonic power, nor from the power/resistance mold, as would theorize Michael Focault. In fact, our north was set toward the search of an anarchic (or deconstructive) gesture, rather than a politically supported project, with no ligatures to a political party nor an established rhetoric.

2014 · absurdo PRÀCTICAS EMANCIPADORAS

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Un chirmol epistemològico

The Absurd was thought to be a type of annual happening that could, in a disorderly fashion, begin to articulate people and projects that would come to represent a less scholarly and militant rhetoric: just a bit more absurd. Every year, with the help of small donations, and without substantial funding, there came a polysemic event, an adrogenous one, which could be disorderly, incoherent and irresponsible that would come to be known as a space that would somehow endorse global and emancipatory approaches. In this manner, annually we strived to create a certain thematic axis that would give the discussion a determined form: Citizenships along the border; Diverse sexualities; Subject, Life and Space; Violence, Sovereignty and Territory; and From gesture to the decolonial thought. Also every year, the Absurd gradually took on a theoretic character geared towards a critical debate tied to contemporary artistic practices and its intrinsic relationship to a political mind-set, in search of certain epistemologies along the border, that in turn, assert other logic

reasoning and senses. Otherwise said, these could support a certain theoretical position of the absurd. It is worthwhile mentioning that this came to be in a mishap manner and with no intention whatsoever of academic rigour. This book includes a bit of everything. It is (as I mentioned during a talk a while back) lucky epistemological chirmol (a Guatemalan sauce made with different kind of ingredients). This publication pretends to be an extension of the Absurd spirit, without logical order, without a lineal narrative construction, without a clear position (for the time being) of what we think or seek. Therefore, one could say that the present book is a poetic translation of the image and the text, or as Gilles Deleuze would say, an attempt (nothing more, nothing less) towards the thought´s new image. Originally, we considered including an amalgam of texts and images that could build the universe of what it symbolically and politically meant to be an Absurd event. One could say it denied its own modern illustrated ¨reason¨, twisting on its own axis and finding new clues that would evoke

such thought as Jack Kerouac´s ¨I do not seek, I find¨. The Absurd has been the gathering with less normed forms of ¨doing¨ by the dominant sense of lineal, Cartesian, JudeoChristian, heteronormative, statist, colonial and crudely violent thinking. We may see this publication as a ¨come hither¨ to an absurd experience during an absurd project, through which we attempt to give logic to one of many seminal narratives about political practices in Guatemala. That being said, this is neither about the colonial use of power, no does it have to do with the practice of ¨official¨ resistance. Let us say that it is a micro-narrative, a microstatute among many, which are assimilated or vested en the name of an atrocious and boring official story.

Author:

PABLO JOSÈ RAMÌREZ

Year:

ABSURDO 2009

Context:

AUDIOVISUALES Y PERFORMANCE, PARQUE A CENTROAMÈRICA, QUETZALTENANGO

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Ilogic for who? Author:

PABLO JOSÈ RAMÌREZ

(2013) (Oh so introductory notes to the discussion of an Absurd project)

circuits that perpetuate a kind of violent against otherness epistemology.

The Absurd project came about as an answer to the politics surrounding the colonial thought , proclaiming itself on account of the conflict, searching for ways to speak with many and like many. At the sight of this active and everyday policy, the role of the vigilante, of the critic, the thinker, the doer and that of the artist, change.

The Absurd seeks to operate from the borders; it thinks from the excess and vice; its goal is the break of things, the dialectic exercise that transits between what is normal and what is abnormal. Only there, within this interstice, can be found the possibility to think in an absurd manner, in the dialectic denial of a world which seems real, being at the same time, a false truth.

To speak from the extra/disciplinary crisis point-of-view is imperative for an absurd project, revealing the great contradictions of modern times, finding silenced words that could liberate. To think from the knife´s point is necessary in a space which produces everyday

If ¨policy¨ from and for ¨normalcy¨ is built from the state-nation institutions, in the congress, in the courts of justice, in the epicenters of ¨glory¨ ; if this spectacle conceived in reproduced images that circulate and are capitalized from the body and word is normal, then it is done so through trial and error.

Notes // 2. My idea of decolonialism comes from the analysis of Walter Mignolo, Enrique Dussel, and Gayatri Spivak. 3. I propose the concept of “Glory” as Georgio Agamben’s notion in his book The kingdom and the glory (2008) PENSAR DESDE EL FILO

Sabotear el lenguaje

However, a heroic sense of this logic should not exist, the promise of a modern ¨revolution¨ should be overcome, and a battle should be fought, yet not for the misguided sense of superiority, but because along the constant search, other senses could be found. Politics and art come down to ¨doing¨. Powerto-do is traced by politic gestures in order to create. These two are transcendental in this conflict, in critical works as a jump to the abyss. Obliging art finds its limits within the institution, making criticism seem a snob act for the circulation of this spectacle. To take a critical standpoint of enunciating before reality makes us contemporary . To look for roads that lead to the creation of contradictions makes art contemporary, and has no interest in living for today, but to live the ¨now¨ in an ecstatic manner. We are not free, and the power to put forward is an act of liberty. This is an absurd principle.

The kind of art and politics that interest are unorganized and irresponsible, they are specializes in the annulment of the limit. To be a specialist in the absurd is the play with the technique, to question purities, to transcend boredom. It is to sabotage the language from within the language itself. An art that is present, that takes action, that finds the limits of an institution in order to question them, from within and from without, an art which has its mind set fervently, obtusely, perpendicularly, which does not worry too much, and, above all, which considers itself a tool of epistemic disobedience, generating new lecture of reality beneath those other images/words/ sensations/desires. That art which is contemporary, an art which makes politics and politics that makes art, are an absurd task.

Notes // 4. My notion of power-to-do is similar to John Holloway’s approach in his anti-power thesis. 5. “Contemporary” is a wide concept that goes beyond chronological and historicist notions, it is proposed as state of being, something to build and discuss. 922

Picture:

MOVIMIENTO EMERGENTE 16/4

Movimiento Emergente was a movement of multiple expressions that was born in Quetzaltenango in 2005. It promoted thought process, experimentation, art productions, emergent knowledge and alternative political actions.

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Year:

ABSURDO 2009

Context:

AUDIOVISUALES Y PERFORMANCE, PARQUE A CENTROAMÈRICA, QUETZALTENANGO

Epigrams of the Absurd The truth is that I was to note on paper the central ideas of my presentation in order to then give them meaning amongst you. Then I said to myself: ¨elegance is of great need in these circumstances¨. And then, the revelation: better yet to say ¨epigrams¨ than ¨note¨. Better yet than just epigrams, would be to last-name them with the most common of all last names in the world: of ¨the absurd¨. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how these epigrams of the absurd were born.

Author:

CAROLINA ESCOBAR SARTI

Symposium:

ABSURDO 2013

Lo inconcebible, lo contradictorio

And as to not disrespect aesthetics, this will commence with a quote, for example, from Wikipedia. It is stated in this space, that the epigram ( deviant from ancient Greek «ἐπί-γραφὼ»: literally «over-write» or «write on top»: is a poetic composition, a brief one at that, which expresses a single, principal, festive or satiric thought in an ingenious way. Also pointed out by Wikipedia is that, the absurd, etymologically speaking, is composed of the prefix ab (next to the preposition un) and surdus (deaf). The dictionary´s translation is: «Dissonant; absurd; useless; inadequate». In its original context, the term was used predominantly in the music industry, and referred to, in Latin, the unpleasant sounds to the ear. Transferred to a better judgment, it is possible that this could be disagreeable to the untrained ear, contrary to logic, untamed. But the truly inconceivable matter is that the spirit cannot think in this manner, and that in the long

run, is contradictory. In other words, the feeling of the absurd originated from listening to music? Long live Wikipedia! Walter Mignolo impregnates us, from the beginning, with a tomb-stone sentence: ¨There is no ontological outsider, but epistemological exteriority¨. This is where I wish to even with him before the grains escape from between my fingers: the ideas will try to flow in constant movement around the subject which has called us; the ergon (center) and the parergon (outskirts) would be of great help, methodically speaking, in order to move within the constant displacements of ¨being¨ and ¨knowing¨, the difference seen as scorn, equipped to norm a world which, even today, divides itself between masters and slaves. This is Conversation 3, that of Multiculturalism, otherness and the dangers of exotization. Now, I do confess that if I were an alien and heard this title, more times than not, I would have returned

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to my abandoned planet. And yet, I believe that if I did not possess a colonially academic or politically correct stream of thought, I would not even understand the meaning of multiculturalism, otherness or exotization. However, danger I would understand with no problem whatsoever. This is how, I believe, a person who only speaks K’iche’ and no Spanish, would feel at his or her arrival in the city. Something similar occurred to Josefina, a young girl from the linguistic community of Tz’utujil when she arrived to Alianza. She is 13 years of age, from Sololá, violated in so many ways I cannot mention a specific one, dressed in the typical suit her community demands she wear, daughter of an alcoholic mother with no other family members. She is illiterate, without a single drop of Spanish in her vocabulary. According to what I

was told at dawn, she cried all night. Warning: I do not like porno-misery. The thing is, almost two months ago, another adolescent Kaqchikel girl, with similar facial factions to Josefina, was rescued from a bar, along with another 41 women of different ages. She did not know how to speak Spanish either, and I mean nothing. However, a few days later she showed us that she could do is pole dance every night and was teaching other teenagers to do so as well. We could venture to say that this is absurd. Jaques Derrida states: ¨There is no nature, only the effects of nature, denaturalization or naturalization¨. In this case, this Mayan girl´s body was capable of satisfying the hunger of a system filled with natural symbols. The body became a symbol of

2013 · absurdo EL PELIGRO

La gramàtica generadora

a situation where variables born from colonial logic intersect: culture, difference and power. Culture: today, more than ever, dumbfounded by a globalization which exceeds our deepest wishes of harmonious human coexistence, culture can be considered a legitimate handle from which humanity hold on, as a constitutive element of development, as a space used for identity, as a creator of webs of meaning and as a strategic element of sovereignty. As Klikserg and Tomassini have said, culture is the generative grammar. Let us start from here. Culture opens endless possibilities within the frame of a democracy so fragile and hopeful, as can be found in Guatemala. Four decades alter Cultural Studies were begun in the Latin American region -which include subjects like institutionalism, management, patrimony, economy, communication, politics and culture— we ask ourselves how we can put this knowledge in play in order to overcome this simplistic vision which associates culture merely to the Victorian concept of the Arts or to the anthropological approach, related to the indigenous communities.

It has been said that the XXI Century will be determined by its culture, which will surely produce interesting, various and original restatements. According to Patricio Rivas, these cultural scenes will demand its own cultures to rethink their habits, customs, languages, aesthetics, artistic bases, moral grounds and relations with the past and the future. The cultural communities will strove to survive and transmit their intangible and symbolic patrimony to the newer generations, fighting against the dominant, globalized, efficientist, individualist and obsessively tied to personal success culture´s movements. This leaves the youth—a bit schizoid, a bit surprised and a bit bored—to form part of the cyber communities which will amplify o reposition the limits of past cultural references. García Canclini points out that the life and the future of millions of human beings today is directly related to so many worldly communities that wander as nomads through territories of a process that, seen from different perspectives, bound itself to a chaotic notion; to the surge of new entities; to the

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ruptures and creation of new connections; to the decadence and hybridization of social and symbolic practices; and to the transformations of the great institutions and modern ambiences.

terms of a negative difference, which functions as a reflective counterpart of the Subject. These are the ¨others¨ that are sexualized, rationalized and naturalized.

The difference: the philosophical rhetoric has served in its essential function within the construction of identity. In that sense, the notion of ¨difference¨ as understood in our context as contempt, is part of identity and a philosophical tradition which defines the Subject en terms of identicalness, which equals to a conjunction of qualities and rights.

While the difference is equal to inferiority, it acquires essentialist and lethal connotations for those who are marked as ¨others¨ and who submit themselves to the condition of disposable bodies. They slowly become dehumanized and consequently more mortal than those who enter the category of Identicalness. The important factor is that the difference understood as scorn and that is part of that self-appointed power of Identicalness, makes it a fundamental concept. (Braidotti)

From this point we understand that subjectivity levels with conscience, rationality and the self-inflicted ethical conduct. This perspective implies a discourse with the others, defined in

The mere fact that these two opposite notions of life coincide in the human body makes

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Devenir persona

this matter of body-ness reach a point in which it may convert into a space of dispute and a political arena. The dualistic mindbody constituted (historically speaking) in a short-cut used to elude the complexities of this matter, introducing a criterion of sexualized, rationalized and naturalized distinction. Given that this concept of ¨the human¨ was colonized by the phallocentrism, and ended up being identified as Anglo, Christian, heterosexual male property owners who speak the standard language. (Braidotti) To become human is a qualitative change in perspective within the process of the apprehension of reality. In this manner, from Braidotti´s nomad philosophy, there are three ways of transformation that structure this analysis and that map the localization of those who are considered ¨other constituents¨ of the unitary subject of classical humanism. These tree forms of structural otherness are expressed as such: 1) Female sexualized bodies; 2) Racialized indigenous bodies; 3) The naturalized bodies of animal and other beings.

However, these interactions between identicalness and otherness; and hegemonic center and periphery, have been impacted by these globalized postmodernity, up to a point at which a dialectic model of opposition is no longer established, but one with more dynamic, less lineal, less predictable, more contradictory and zigzagging patterns. This results in some “others” who are not only the markers of exclusion and marginality, but they also occupy the position of alternative subjects. They are disposable bodies, but also decisive bodies in the ethic and politic transformations. In this sense, Judith Butler, points out that all opposite discourse will reflect its exterior, one that runs the risk of being considered as a space of inscription no significant. It could seemed the necessary and founder violence of any truth regimen, it is important to resist to this theoretical gesture of pathos, where the exclusions simply states as a gloomy necessity of significations. The task consists in to reconfigure this necessary “outside” as a future horizon, a horizon where the violence of exclusion is always overcome.

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But is also important to preserve the “outside”, the place where the discourse finds its limits, where the opacity of things that are not including in specific regime of truth could meet the function of a disrupting site of the impropriety and linguistic unpresentability, a site where the violent frontiers and contingents of this normative regime are illuminated and is showing the inability of this regime to represent those who could be a fundamental threat to its continuity. ¨My patron asked me to get her someone to work as a maid in her house. You look pretty and clean. How much do you want to earn?¨, a ladino gardener said to a Mayan university graduate along a street in

Antigua Guatemala, when she passed by a garden where he worked. ¨A movement is learned when the body has understood it¨. Merleau-Ponti

Year: 2013

2013 · absurdo SUPERAR LA VIOLENCIA DE LA EXCLUSIÒÓN

Author:

BRYAN CASTRO

Context:

ABSURDO CUBE

ABSURDO

Interdisci plinar

symposium extracts 2013 PABLO JOSÈ RAMÌREZ

¨The Absurd is to generate spaces from which we may part from an interdisciplinary notion and debate and construct a critical space.¨

ROSINA CAZALI

¨It is very difficult for us to find those spaces where we can understand what we are doing. If the academy is in a moment of crisis, art´s situation is much more complex.¨

WALTER MIGNOLO

¨The process of decolonizing the traditional conceptualizations. But to decolonize in order to function, we will decolonize ourselves because we will stop creating and we will no longer be able to observe ourselves in the abyss, so we have to try. The absurd is a way to respond to all of this, but decolonial is another form, we no longer say one way is better than another. The

important things here are the projects that travel toward a common destination, along different road, yet collaborating. ¨Modernity is a fictitious story of an impressive power: not only were we never modern, it is the maximum story and is as fictitious as the Bible, the Popol Wuj, and yet the Popol Wuj works for many people; for a Muslim, the Koran is no fiction; for a Christian, the Bible is not fiction either. But the danger lies in that he or she who believes that it is not fiction awaits the next step, which is an imperial one, in which this fiction is reality and that there exist abnormal people who do not understand what this is about. Therefore, here is where the absurd begins. It is totally absurd when someone takes on the authority of the planet, distribute it among monarchs and give it names, and this is the fundamental task of the decolonial stream of thought; to dismount and show that these are indeed fictions and to not forget that these fictions work, they do work even today.¨

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Agrandar el planeta

SILVIA TRUJILLO

¨There are some things that demand a more critical vision and a greater analysis. The wall risen from the social sciences and art have not been timbered, although I admit that there have been some breeches, exercises such as the Absurd begin to appear with an increased frequency in order to interlace disciplines and focuses.¨

PABLO JOSÈ RAMÌREZ

¨From here on, I would like to restate that, although the Absurd is self-named as political thought and art, and it seems to me that art and politics are guides to organize what we are speaking of. I do not know if this be only of art and of politics, if it be something else, if art be in this matter a mere road…it seems to me that that ¨something else¨ is what we are searching, and that the political and artistic side of things may be a type of lens used to see reality which always goes forth, taking hold of the reins. ¨The absurd is a state of discomfort which makes you stay in a space of self-sabotage and questions, that are, of course, no bed of roses…¨

WALTER MIGNOLO

¨In relation with the absurd, I have been reflecting upon those three great subjects: decolonial gestures, contemporary art and community in Guatemala. But I speak

something about decolonial gestures because these are, as well, becoming a theme. ¨The decolonial thought is no mission, but an option (…) and we are in a combat/solidarity with other options, and this leads to a matter of ethics, and not just politics, because when you opt for one thing over another, this is a great responsibility (…) The introduction of ¨gesture¨ has to do with the body, with the act (…) We must face the fact that the colonial matrix does not only constitute itself and us through certain concepts, but it also obligates us to understand other forms through a concept of humanity. ¨This is the concern about decentralization: always, always, behind a key concept from which we cannot escape, there exist all those other concepts, forms of life and subjectivity that is necessary to reintroduce, and there lies the re-emergence (…) to create a place where we can inhabit frontiers, the frontier stream of thought, widen the epistemological frontiers does not only mean to incorporate the European way of thought, but to introduce the difference and to reduce eurocentrism, and finally, widen the planet. ¨In the first place I asked myself, when I was invited: ¨What is this Absurd project, absurd where, instead of a ¨U¨ there is a turquoise colored box?¨ This Absurd is not the absurd as we know it. I began to reflect on it, and I related the absurd in France, but it turns out the absurd in France is a project that came about

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from migrants, Becket, from Ireland; Ionesco, from Rumania; and Camus, from Algeria. ¨It was then that my excitement began to elevate, because this project, which came from immigrants from Europe, came about as well in ex-colonies which wished to observe the absurd of modernity and the ideals of occidental civilization and, over all other things, of imperial ideals: with emphasis on economic development, on scientist reason, and on the silencing of the passions that come about from personal relations, or as we call it, love. ¨This is a compatible project with decolonial project, because it is aiming at the same analytical critique. It seems to me important for the future, the way the Absurd project thinks of the possible futures, for in the decolonial stream of thought these possible futures are within the resistance, within the reemergence, within the reappearance of values, forms of life and forms of thought, forms of being that modernity repressed, making them seem primitive, under-developed, traditional, etc. First, there exists a compatibility in the analytical aspect and I believe it will not be difficult to work in a manner which we conceive and act in relation to our future possible contributions.

2013 · absurdo PENSAR LOS FUTUROS POSIBLES

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Picture:

ABSURDO SYMPOSIUM 2013

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we dec oursel constant

clare lves in t crisis...

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We declare ourselves in constant crisis. We believe that politics, seen from a capitalistic stand-point, and used as an expression of power, has generated institutions that have dialogued under feudal codes about how the modernity promise must be overcome. Sabotage is necessary in a space that produces circuits of normality that perpetuate forms of unjust and violent socialization. If the normality consists in achieving a ¨must be¨ (…) we wish to live in a perpetual search, because in the end we have the choice to say no and believe in other policies, those which construct from diffused outside, from creation, from the permanent movement and the constant critique. Liberty and democracy are merely signs and words, hoping to take on body by significant beings, those which awaken

from the profound space of words. Liberty and democracy are accessorial inventions, which the hegemonic circuits capitalize in order to dominate. These exist in certain extent to the point at which they may mean other things, simply re-inventing themselves will they be able to begin to be, beyond the call of duty, of the promise, of the liberal traps. We cannot deny the great contradictions of today, the abysmal differences between the few who have much and the many who have little; between the limitless violence and that war that seems to function as a latent capitalistic pulse; the dominant ideas oppression manifested in the patriarch, in racism, in heteronormativity, in the bio system mechanics of humanity. We cannot blind our eyes before the ways in which oppressive power have developed a

2011 · absurdo VIVIR EN PERPETUA BÙSQUEDA

sustained which today us e ng ha rc te in al dynamic of glob ngry souls. d millions of hu an on ti na by alie s makes us re these realitie fo be d an st a To take at lead toward ok for roads th lo to , ry ra po d-point. contem ntradictory stan co e th om fr on creati to question with technique, ay pl to is rd su The Ab ziness. boredom and la d en sc an tr , es puriti e with politics, on that dialogues t ar at th an t, of en k es in We th at is pr ogic, and art th ag hin m it w de t at no th is t, which h its contex it w s ue og al di limits of acts today, that ess can find the oc pr ve ti ti pe within a cyclical and re tion them, from es qu to r de or ent in a an institution in ch sees the pres hi w t ar An . ut and that and from witho dicular manner, en rp pe , se tu all, that is penetratingly ob much, and over o to lf se it y up nerates does not preocc resource that ge al ic og ol m te is e so thought as an ep that travel mor y under images it al re of es ur lect ess. than the mass pr

Arte y polĂŹtica en diĂ logo

Picture:

NATALIA RONDﾃ誰 Y ALEXANDER ESCALONA, VENEZUELA

Place:

QUETZALTENANGO

Context:

ESQUINA AUTO MATA. PERFORMANCE ABSURDO 2012

EL ORDEN DENTRO DEL CAOS

Picture:

TEATRO LA RENDIJA, MÈXICO.

Context:

ARQUITECTURA E INTERIORISMOS. ABSURDO 2012

Year:

ABSURDO 2012

Picture:

EL SALTO. MARIO SANTIZO

Contexto:

QUETZALTENANGO

EL ORDEN DENTRO DEL CAOS

VIOLENCE, SOVEREIGHNTY TERRITORY (Irresponsible Perspectives) I consider necessary to question the vindication of these three words in order to bring them, a bit more to life, and a bit less demagogic, although the greater part of the vindications around the subject are necessary and valid, I wish to fool around with irresponsibility.

Author:

PABLO JOSÈ RAMÌREZ

Year: 2012

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One of the more representative movements against the Vietnam War maintained as its slogan: Â¨Make love, not warÂ¨. There existed, at the time, a certain immaterial vindication (love) against a very material act (war). It is valid to rescue, then, from this hippie movement, its fine shot as to how one should not fight against the enemy using the same weapons, or otherwise said, to stop the reap of war and violence, these two should not be sowed. It is precisely this anti-thesis that could neutralize a violent act, as is war. However, at few times have we seen an anti-violent actions terminate a war (the wild power of the violent machine of capitalism is

shocking), as in those exceptions during the pacific resistance movement by Gandhi. Slavoj Zizek thinks that during the late capitalist era there exists a form of un-edited violence that functions as a desirepulse under the terms in which Lacan defines pulse, and that it would seem to be a seminatural characteristic of human contemporary existence. In other words, violence comes to be a species of everyday necessity within relationships. On the other hand, systematic and planned violence exists within hegemonic powers in context with the domination of territorial spaces and neocolonizing processes geared toward obtaining control of natural resources.

2012 Âˇ absurdo NO PANFLETARIOS

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What are we thinking of when we imagine the state-nation?- J. ButlerSovereignty has been a constructed category according to diverse historic contexts and under also varied interests. Many are under the impression that to speak of sovereignty is to allude to an almost religious discourse, be it from the liberal conservative or from progressive sectors, situating it within a glorified space, when during rare occasions we ask ourselves what sense and symbolic load we give it.

On the other hand, we may understand this from the state-nation discourse, as the possibility of having liberty of control over territory that is limited by the frontiers, where people share a citizenship status (with all the connotations and contradictions of this term) and where we share a certain national and multinational culture, etc. In this sense, sovereignty is associated precisely to the rhetoric of states, be these liberal, social-democratic or even socialist. This idea alludes to a discourse that is tied to the control of a territory by the government of this very same territory. Sovereignty is, somehow, a type of contra-discourse to the processes of capital globalization, of cultural globalization and, of course, the wars over the control of natural resources.

2012 路 absurdo EL ORDEN DENTRO DEL CAOS

Picture:

NUTEE. BENVENUTO CHAVAJAY, ABSURDO 2012

Context:

CENTRO INTERCULTURAL, QUETZALTENANGO

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However, this relation sovereignty-states-nation maintains greater symbolic, semantic, and of course, political contradictions: if sovereignty is marked by the possibility of controlling democratically a territory tied to the notion of nation. Who are the sovereigns? The people or the government? How can a state be a sovereign, when its historic reason is constructed precisely on the base of the plunder after processes of colonization? In tune with this discourse and probably with the answer to the previous questions, there form discursive ways which propose the sovereignty of territories beyond the control of state-nation, under semi-autonomous forms of control over these territories, under cultural premises, be them ethnic or even bodily.

The ghost of XXI century anarchism is present in these vindications with theoretical currents so diverse that they transmit messages from feminist corners, from structuralism and post- structuralism, up to the psychoanalysis of Lacan o Zizek. However, these postures maintain a similar discourse when it comes to the question of sovereign power of the state-nations and of the neoliberal globalization logic. Now, the paradox, when speaking of sovereignty, is that this is marked by the necessity to dominate and, therefore, by violence, be it hegemonic or other forms of power framed in certain microphysics, as named by Foucault, of power. On account of this, I do not know up to what point sovereignty can be a slogan of resistance or political strife, since certain tensions and constant dialogue exist between the dominance-power and a certain idea of autonomy.

2012 · absurdo ¿¿QUIÈÉNES SON LOS SOBERANOS?

345

Picture:

MOVIMIENTO ESCÈNICO EN RESISTENCIA CAOS, MÈXICO. ENSOÑACIONES.

Context:

QUETZALTENANGO, ABSURDO 2012

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Territory is associated with the idea of land, within the frame of certain political frontiers, as is the case of state-nations (and let us return to the before proposal) of the geopolitical regions (the European Union, the Mercosur, etc.) or by certain cultural criterion, which by the way are forms far more interesting of understanding territory. For example, in Guatemala, the Tz´utujil. Although I have just said that the idea of territory is also considered to be within the frame of the frontiers under cultural criteria that do not respond, necessarily, to ethnic criteria, but to other cultural forms, such as gangs or the symbolic space of the arts, the visual art, for example, or the territory occupied by the brotherhoods of Quetzaltenango.

The notion of territory can be of material or immaterial character. It can be linked to the land, to the body, or even with the space-territory of words and wisdom. The theme is, then, to make politics in the territory of epistemology if we speak of dematerialization. And I do not mean that the fight for land, for autonomies is not necessary. But I do believe that one should be careful of not falling in defense of the defense, in the opposition to opposition. If we defend these territories and their resources, why do we defend them? Which reasons are under our acts? What is the political project at hand? Sovereignty?

2012 · absurdo HACER POLÌÌÌ TICA EN LA EPISTEMOLOGÌÍA

Picture:

ABSURDO 2012

Context:

CENTRO INTERCULTURAL, QUETZALTENANGO

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¨To live in the present does not necessarily mean one is contemporary, the rupture marks the difference between the present and the contemporary¨-G. AgambenI would like to emphasize not on the rhetoric of contemporary art surrounding the idea of violence, sovereignty and territory, but on how these three notions can construct the ¨being¨ of art, and, specifically, contemporary art, parting from the before critique.

Violence, on the one hand, has branded a good part of contemporary art´s rhetoric in Central America, principally in the post-war generation´s artists (Regina Galindo, Jorge de León are two example from Guatemala). Violence is precisely the broth to the stew of creative processes. Further more than a moralistic message about violence, the production of contemporary art signals the great contradictions surrounding violence (its causes, its manifestations, is secret rhetoric). On the other hand, violence as it is, can be an epistemological resource in art, which beyond the representation of such, can search within the generation of violent actions (for example, performances) the scene-setting of something that seems so ordinary in our context.

2012 · absurdo VIOLENCIA Y CREATIVIDAD

Generar violencia desde el arte

It is im port from con ant to genera t tempora ry art, b e certain viole political at ut a pacif n the same ic vio ce the metanarratives time, that could quelesntice and of history and polit ons ics, and position alternative images about hegemonic power violence and question the very same institutions of art that produce also the meta discourse around contemporary artistic production, co-opting in some cases, its critique-explosive capacity.

Sovereignty (understanding this as the land o symbolic space, be it cultural, territoria l, corporal, over wh ich certain dominan pressed) when ce is it comes to art, seems almost pa ourselves ra doxical. If we as about the k contem Â¨spaceÂ¨ of porary art, and m art. ore specif ically, of To wh a referr t space are ing to we ? What t ype of con Can we speak o trol is there ov f artist ic auto er this space nomy? ?

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In this sense, it seems that art does not function under the base of sovereignty, but on the base of a certain degree of intromission, a kind of espionage, sabotage or contamination. Autonomy within contemporary art turns out to be the center of critique on many occasions. This kind of sovereignty is somewhat unnecessary, just as is territory-space. These terms seem to disappear at the observation of contemporary artistic production, the territory from which art speaks. It is so diverse and problematic, that is truly difficult to catalog.

There is no doubt that the task of placing these three words, one after the other, sometimes in dialogue, sometimes in contradiction and other times in perfect harmony, is tremendously difficult. But surely, there must exist a political compromise, manifested in a critical attitude in respect to the words we use to define things. One of the most important battles given in language, in words we use to think and define ourselves, it is necessary, then, to question the great skyscraper of modernity, the truth behind the words used to dominate, as much as to resist, and what better way than that which we call art, and what better manner than the contemporary to give faith of our failed existence.

2012 路 absurdo CUESTIONAR EL EDIFICIO DE LA MODERNIDAD

Picture:

SIMPOSIO ABSURDO 2013

Context:

CIUDAD DE LA IMAGINACIﾃ誰, QUETZALTENANGO

Picture:

TATA MINGO.

Year: 2013

Ponente:

‘TATA MINGO’´’ ABSURDO SYMPOSIUM 2013

DESENGANCHARNOS

666

Terrorismo epistemològico

TRUTHS IN PARENTHESIS Author:

WALTER MIGNOLO

Extracts:

TRANSCRIPTIOÓN, SYMPOSIUM 2013”

“The universities are becoming corporative. Typical. This type of organization is necessary. We are part of an emerging global political society (…) The process of decolonizing ourselves is to create communities, it is to create people, projects that go forth toward this goal¨.

¨This is not an imperial project, it is a local project which disperses throughout the globe and finds in Africa, Central Asia, in the indigenous communities of Canada, of the United States, in the Andes, its echoes because people have been thinking of the process of decolonization¨.

¨There is no modernity without colonialism. What modernity shows us is an enchanting story, what it withholds is colonialism, but the enchanting story is necessary because it is the legitimization of exploitation, expropriation, racism and patriarchy, under the promise of salvation, Christian salvation, civilizing salvation of development and modernization and democracy of world market that is now trickling all around¨.

“How to unhitch from the colonial womb of power forms is the analytical part of decolonial thought, and there is also the prospective aspect, to look well into the future, into the processes of detachment, the type of organized communities we are creating…¨

¨Decolonization is an analytical response and an unhitching of colonialism, of the colonial womb of power¨.

¨The fundamental task is, on the one hand, the analytical one, and on the other hand, the projective one, yet there is something along the middle that Nelson Maldonado-Torres calls ¨epistemological terrorism¨ which means to dismount this enunciation machine¨.

make what we institutions and to te ea cr to nt rta po ) ¨This is why it is im y the actors work (… itutions, in the wa st in g tin is ex e th can in to construct ing, we must begin be e th of n tio za ni lo anti-colonial parting from deco nial governances, lo co tian s, ie om anti-colonial econ tions¨ colonial ethnic rela tian , ns tio la re al sexu us communities, among the indigeno lid va is uj W l po y indigenous ¨A reflection: the Po But I know not of an e. id gu e lif a as ersal level. But in which it serves Popol Wuj at a univ e th se po im to g community fightin is, Islam is¨. ism is, Liberalism rx Ma , is sm ni tia Chris nal narrative that between the fictio h is gu in st di to e lief leads to ¨Now then, it is tim parenthesis, this be in s th tru of f lie be fiction that operate under the t submit (as in the no es do ne eo m so es: truths in war, because when nial thought propos lo co . de at wh re fo can work together is democracy) be narrative and mine ur yo if s, si is r he te nt at re m in pa parenthesis. The existence of truths idiversity is the co ur or our pl ity of r lin te cu at as m m e Th uncing our no re I d an u yo of it is not a matter

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Pensamiento fronterizo

heterosexuality, but what I must fight against is heteronormativity.¨ ¨Epistemological terrorism consists of an epistemological frontier, to begin escaping from the occidental concept, which is fundamental in the dismounting of fiction¨. Parting from border thinking, we cannot rid ourselves of democracy, but it will be necessary to humble it to its just terms. This will be one of our truths, to polish democracy without parenthesis, and transform it into its ¨in parenthesis¨ counterpart. Border thought is fundamental for decolonial thought, if we do not articulate this epistemology of the frontier, we will work at the level of the content, yet not change the terms of the conversation. To think decolonially and to imagine the border is not only a matter of the mind, but of the body, of the moment in which your body feels that it inhabits the border, it is the moment in which you say that you no longer wish to be there, there are many forms of inhabiting the frontier…¨

¨The decolonial thought is one that investigates in order to plead, to fight for a cause, be it for education, for a university curriculum, be it for the possession of land, be it to stop the international ones, be it to stop Monsanto, this thought is analytical, but it has its plead also. We can, from the decolonial thought, dismount the ideology and legitimacy of public state policies that are operating against the nation, the people¨. ¨It is not necessary to eliminate scientific thought, the problem is that this turned hegemonic and totalitarian. What we must decolonize is the demystification of scientific thought¨. ¨But the matter is that scientific thought goes hand in hand with development, without one, the other does not exist. A lie! We must distinguish the ideological story over the science and the method which allows us to keep a certain amount of knowledge¨.

nial thought? power in the decolo of r te at m e th rk ¨How will we wo k of options. ich we begin to thin At the moment in wh t n with a mission, bu thought is an optio al , ni sm lo ni co ia de uc at nf th Co y , Liberalism n. It is not merel tio op an to in g the existin that we transform renthesis.¨ tions. Truths in pa op e ar Marxism, etc., ity tion of the commun s to the self-regula ad at le th s is si ty he ni nt er re od pa t of m ¨The truth in es. But the argumen iti un m m co r he ot in relation to eity¨. threatens homogen cultural relativism

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dialogues ¿Ilògico para quièn?

MARCO CANALE

WALTER MIGNOLO

I think the system in which we live generates so much horror, hate, vengeance and I believe that the ethics amid this hell is difficult to deal (…) I do not know up to what point we are generating discourses that are not to the height of what is happening, and before this fact the principal ethical position is to look into the eyes of true reality.

Colonial is control of the economy, of knowledge, of subjectivity, of nature, of gender and sexuality, that which power fights for, and which serves a double function: to make us conceive society at these levels and to makes us conceive another type of social organization which is not occidental through these levels.

WALTER MIGNOLO

Ethics is not, to my liking, to say what is good and what is bad. Ethics is responsibility, and therefore, what I cannot permit myself is to not take on the responsibility of my actions. Ethics is responsibility. Of course all those crimes, the war worries us, it is something that bitters our lives, yet at the same time, what can we do about it? We can do something else, create communities for future possibilities of the end of war, create subjectivities where the orientation is no longer to dominate and control…

“We must dig all those silences which words hide; this is colonization, is it not? What I believe is fundamental for decolonial projects is the re-existence, the resurgence, that is not necessarily through capital, but through other media. There is no great capital, but only a vision, a want to do: re-existence, resurgence, re-emergence; in other words, all those cultures, civilizations, sensibilities that modernity has made traditional, primitive, barbaric, disagreeable. These are resurging, re-emerging, re-existing, and not simply resisting.

BENVENUTO CHAVAJAY

I know we have two occidental eyes. But my uncle would say that we have a third eye we must return to, and that is the us, the we; the I becomes useless. With the us, the we, we will never disappear. 49

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This is a resistance through re-existence and re-emergence. If you resist, resist the rules of the game that have been imposed. When you re-emerge and re-exist and resurge, we make the rules of the game, not independently, but we deal the cards (…) it is a question of the regeneration of life, to work to live, and not to live to work, and in any case, it is love, the concept of decolonial love that is circulating… Decolonization, as we propose it, is an analysis and a resistance used to program the re-emergence/resurgence in relation with devalued bodies. And that is the colonial wound, the patriarchal and racial wound which we feel in different ways. Evidently I feel the patriarchal wound a bit less, but I cannot turn a blind eye, I cannot help but to understand and not consent, although I will never feel what it is to be gay or lesbian, yet at the same time, I must admit my privileges as an white, heterosexual man, and also my difficulties in at not being an Anglo-German, French, European man. There lays the analytical side of colonialism to re-emerge. When I begin to re-emerge is when I recognize things as they are, and become angry (…) first the inferiority complex comes, and slowly, you begin to realize of how knowledge colonialized your body. Not

only do you understand, but you begin to feel that you are inferior until you realize, damn, that it is a fiction, this that made me think something is superior and that I am inferior. This is where the fuss begins, the answer, the humiliation, and well, we can respond to this row in many ways. We can throw bombs, we can be a terrorist, or an intellectual terrorist, who I chose to be out of cowardice, and after that moment of decision, I feel better because I reprogrammed myself as to not feel inferior amongst these and those, and this is what gives me great subjective capital. But this is also accompanied by knowledge. To be and to know and even art has to do with it, if it is the case that we are programmed through art.

ISABEL RODAS

Not all identities are ethnic, there are other constructions, other references and it is there where the mechanisms of power exist, these mechanisms over which we must reflect.

Año I · absurdo EL ORDEN DENTRO DEL CAOS

¿Ilògico para quièn?

WALTER MIGNOLO

This acquirement of conscience is not one of romantic conscience, but is basically political (…) and why are we discussing identity? Gender, sexuality, ethnicity, there are many…We are discussing this because the problem is that we have been identified, and many of us no longer wish to be identified as we are identified, because when it is done so, we are devaluated. Then the problem is not identity, but identification and disidentification. The project of decolonization is all around. But it is done in different manners. The matter is, how can I contribute from where I am situated? The decolonial project is a process of disidentification that has many ways. The matter of identification is in relation to the economy, because it is next to politics in the control of power, the same power that creates a system of classification and devaluation to control people in a capitalist system in order to control us in a politically and economically subjective way (…) while the world destroys itself in the fight between westernization, re-westernization and de-westernization, and that is where the shit hits the fan, and we can protest and denounce the fact, but if we become the type of people that waste all of their energy in speaking of this nonsense and we do not build anything, then, the system has won.

ISABEL RODAS

The term ladino was written to differentiate citizens. The problems emerged when the state of the XXI century, a fabricator of modern citizenship at a time when which the whole state belonged to one ethnicity, confused citizenship with nationality and later on, with ethnicity. And here we are in this predicament, we do not know how to differentiate between these references (…) we cannot unhitch ourselves if we do not understand to what we are hitched.

CAROL ZARDETTO

I think we are spinning (in Guatemala) even today, around a bunch of half-truths and half-lies, a bunch of constructions, false ones, that we have not taken the time to deconstruct; instead we have left it dragging along, and we have leapt deeper into our differences rather than our point of convenience, and I believe that is the great failure of us as a country, we have not been able to find a center (…) this theme of

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having to identify ourselves has seemed so rigid, when all of these mobile things are so relative (…) it seems to me that even there, where our identities are the most concrete, there are also many variables and elements of differences and similarities that cannot become a definition, maybe connecting links of belonging, but not definitions, because once one defines oneself, it eliminates all other possibilities of oneself and all possibilities to connect sympathetically with one another. If we dwell on the differences we are denying the possibility of solidarity.

ISABEL RODAS

The recuperation of historic memories, of being able to talk of it, the historic investigation. Not permitting the spaces for its production is part of the logic of the Guatemalan State. It is necessary to fill the void as a society with the comprehension of those historic processes that make us what we are today…

REYES JOSUÈ MORALES

Even now we are inhabited by the many ghosts that we do not dare look at, because it is painful. These are traumas that we are escaping.

ANDRES ZEPEDA

The problem of identity has not only been our uncomfortable past, the fictitious temptations that have appeared, it does not simply transmit us to the ethnic or cultural, but also to the economical. And to assume ourselves and to submerge ourselves in this conflict we must be brave and name things by their name, taking advantage of the, more or less, relieved and not cultural.

PABLO JOSÈ RAMÌREZ

That constant preoccupation of knowing what we are, and that Marxist vision that tries to interpret that ontology of class, and then the postmodern vision that we are a bit of everything, that will depoliticize and leave the space of the conflict (…) identity, to me, is this moment which does not respond a question, maybe we should change the terms of the conversation.

Año I · absurdo EL ORDEN DENTRO DEL CAOS

¿Ilògico para quièn?

MARCO CANALE

All of us construct a positive history. I self-construct the positive history in which I enter the market of art and I change it from within. I self-construct the positive history of the native people that fight for their land in mass. That keeps us from looking at the toughest part of the story. Why do we avoid the hard parts and finally propose theories that make us feel comfortable?

WALTER MIGNOLO

I´ve come to know what hurts the Guatemalan people (…) all of this racial classification in which we are wrapped comes from the colony. It adheres to the racial system invented by the colony. Racism is no other thing than a system of knowledge which makes people inferior to establish control (…) I found it quite interesting that when I was a student in Cordoba, that Latin America always found itself in constant worry over identity. Why do the French or the U.S. Americans not speak of this? Then I realized: now the matter, for the U.S., is immigration. Ask ourselves who we are (…) One thing is to distinguish politics from identity,

which has us stapled tight, and identity in politics. Fausto Reinaga, an Aimara activist, said in the 70s: ¨I am no Indian damn it, I am Aimara, but you´re going to have to put up with me, the Indian, now¨. The same thing that Fanon said when he realized he was black once they made him black. He invents the concept of «sociogenisis», just as Darwin invented phylogenesis or Freud the ontogenesis. Fanon said “none of these is of use to me”, because the identitiary classifications are sociogenetic, in other words, he or she who controls knowledge establishes classifications and hierarchies and then I must go it on my own. I did not know the meaning of Hispanic until I arrived in the United States. I do not know whether I am Hispanic or Latino or not, but I do know how I am seen. The answer to identity within politics is found in sociogenetics.

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ISABEL RODAS

WALTER MIGNOLO

What we must do now is describe ourselves and invent categories that permit these new states, social relations of another nature, and not the ones that contemporary capitalism has marked upon the basis of the consumers and expropriationdespoliation, which is intense. I believe that that is what we should all be doing. A place where we can lay down our possibilities of finding the terms used for establishing relations connections to generate collective spaces.

Healing is directly related to all colonial wound and the scars, wounds of the war that are so worrisome to you who have been born in Guatemala. Healing begins when you begin to write your own story, of what comes of those destroyed, that healing cannot come from the state, it must come from within ourselves (…)

ANABELLA ACEVEDO

Exotization is a process in which we have all seen ourselves wrapped, because it is the construction of being another when it is of convenience, that which is harmless. It implies a series of denials of the truth, and that gives you a comfort spot, if there is a general denial of what we please, these are assumed fictions, and this, in a sense, has made the Guatemalan people a species of not so vane schizophrenic society.

CAROLINA ESCOBAR SARTI

Being born in Guatemala, practically, will be the most surreal experience we will have.

It is not about disputing the matrix’s control, but of unhitching from power, the power that comes from the matrix. The revolutions giving way in different part of the matrix, are local in this sense, as they are trying to unhitch, but also as a political project of resistance and re-emergence (…) for me, these projects are rather a guide.

PABLO JOSÈ RAMÌREZ

And there lays the conflict, I believe, that many would prefer a politically protocolled project, under some kind of lineal salvation, it is a conflict of process, when that same process is the objective…

Año I · absurdo EL ORDEN DENTRO DEL CAOS

¿Ilògico para quièn?

ANABELLA ACEVEDO

It is a society that has not lived a healing process as a whole society.

WALTER MIGNOLO

But here is the thing, the problem with the Marxists. Resurging, re-emerging, re-existing are processes, projects in a sensible direction to a required destination, but on the other hand, these are multitudes of projects that cannot be controlled with a socialist project, with a here is what you need to be saved…to resurge, re-emerge, re-exist are not invented theoretical concepts, but concepts that come from the projects themselves… (…) From the colonial we take the following: all civilizations have a concept from which the Renaissance called humanity, that concept of humanity colonialized all other concepts.

ROSINA CAZALI

How to escape from the panoptic? CAROL ZARDETTO

From the very beginning Walter spoke to us about the colonial matrix, and that helped me tie some ends that I had

flailing around in the scheme of things, in order to understand from that point on, many personal questions I had living in a country that confuses one all the time, where there is no existential break, and where having a scheme from which to understand it, helps quite a bit, so as to not simply sit in an absurd knot, but in a clear one, with causes and clean-cut connections. I will no longer walk into a lightless labyrinth (…) if I deconstruct all of it, if I question it, if I place it in the margins of this knowledge, what is left? In the abyss, is it good or bad? I think it is good, because the abyss leaves room for creativity, the challenge at hand is to create new formulas of thought, of articulating the reality of relating to one another, of naming ourselves. The abyss throws us the task of building that which does not exist, or what exists in forms which we have maintained occult, rescuing heritages that we had not valued… (…) we, in Guatemala, are living this reality in the matrix which does not let us see ourselves, we are close, yet we cannot see, because we have been entrenched, and I use this last word because it has become a battle, segmentations that are artificial, that do not allow us to see the possibilities of making fructiferous, fertile, connections to solve those things that distress us, life, construct something viable for life (…))

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What hurts us Guatemalans, we speak of segmented identities, fragmented as if they were caught in mid-air, because it is not an I am, but an I am because I was named so (…) It is not alright to assume that I am a bastard, but it is okay to assume that the system that named me so is wrong and there is need to revise and rethink as we see. We must escape definitions, there are so many other subjects from which we can cross those frontiers and achieve important things, such as the matter of genocide that occurred in Guatemala. That crosses the frontiers of identity, of nationality. It is a humane subject in its widest sense, because while systems or mechanisms of horror exist, they can commit such terrible things as that, and so, we are lost.

fall (…) when this reached the colonies, and national identity is the homogeneous identity invented by the creole in order to control difference. This is already uncontainable. The idea of this plurinational state, to my judgment, has a tremendous potency (…) The plurinational state obligates us to separate state from nation, because that rumor that they are the same is a great lie, a state-nation, to control under the fiction of national identity.

ISABEL RODAS

The problem is that these categories are no longer enough in order to understand the new dynamics of the population, that racialization of society is no longer enough in order to understand the dynamics of gang violence. To speak in this manner is obsolete to what is actually happening.

WALTER MIGNOLO

The same concept of citizenship is fundamental in the foundation of the modern state. When we say, I am Argentinian, I am Guatemalan, we begin to

MARCO CANALE

What Carolina Escobar Sarti is talking about goes hand in hand with that, and with my work experience. We spoke of it with

Año I · absurdo EL ORDEN DENTRO DEL CAOS

¿Ilògico para quièn?

Carol Zardetto, about the subject of reason. I told her that reason, to understand with my head is not enough to change (…) it is not with the aim of falling into messianism, but to ask ourselves up to which point I am accompanied, up to which point am I offering my body. In my opinion reason is not enough, it is about a life change. It is a matter of the colony that is still within us, thinking on our behalf. To think is important, but it has its traps.

CAROLINA ESCOBAR SARTI

Empires, rather than building themselves on the exterior, have spent much time inside of us, and dis-imperializing, decolonizing, emptying ourselves in order to fill us up again, proposes a series of questions (…) everything is decolonizable, deconstructible, but what use does this have, maybe what we have forgotten to ask is for what purpose, the how, what is all the fuss over decolonization and the flow of things, I am perplexed as to what we are doing here…(…) Everything is trying to come to life, and life is the only thing that can break the disorder or the entropy.

There are several ideas, not only from the artistic stand-point, philosophical stand-point…everything is knotted together, the youthful that have so many proposals, all different, the children, there are so many answers, nothing is fixed… WALTER MIGNOLO

I wish to maintain myself in the projects, not become a nomad, but anchor myself: I anchor myself to the immigrant conscience (…) I need a center of support or I lose myself: but this center of support cannot be the state-nation, it can be the Atlantic, it can be the diaspora, the immigrant conscience that is linked to the diaspora, of course, if you are here, the problem is national conscience…

CAROL ZARDETTO

What would happen if this young man could understand his situation, and could transform his leadership into something positive, young, politically oriented to change causes and make connections with others to get out of this staled development, not from the exterior, but from the interior of the subject who understands?

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MARCO CANALE

SILVIA TRUJILLO

I believe the prints are much stronger than knowledge; there is hate and rage related to the accumulation of emotional experiences that will not resolved only with knowledge. I think the processes take a lot of effort, a lot of time and a lot of life, the prints are rascals…

I am going to retake what Carolina has said, today at noon we were speaking about which use theory has. To me, theory is useful as long as it is useful to live.

CAROLINA ESCOBAR SARTI

Yes, Walter talks about anchorage. There are many ways of anchoring. Forgive me for what I am about to say: when I do not have an answer for things such as the massacres committed during the genocide in this country, or for what is happening in Israel and Palestine, or Syria, sometimes I think if this is not simply a method of natural selection.

These transitions of academics (because I am going to link it to the way we can identify certain traces), these matters which permit us to keep on making life something essential. I think it is not a coincidence that we have spoken from our own experience (…) the colonial positivist thinking has told us that personal experiences are useless, but our ancestors have told us that we must situate knowledge, bring back the voices of personal experience…

Look at the perverseness! There is an ever-so present colony, an empire we work unto others, and we have been caught in the act of forcing it everyday, but there is an art, and hopefully all academics could know: it is to land theory on practice. We have not built bridges. A bridge is not built spreading rhetoric in such places, you must live with these people. Año I · absurdo EL ORDEN DENTRO DEL CAOS

Picture:

JOSÈ MÌGUEZ, 1m3 DE FIESTA, 2012. GLASS BOX AND PINE.

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the colony belong to us Author:

MARCO CANALE

Paraphrasing Gabino Rodríguez. Nothing is mine, it is all pure theft. The colony is not a superentity up to which we stand. The colony is a space which belongs to us and to which we belong intimately. The colony is within the fingerprints of our history, our parent’s history, within the fingerprints of our ancestors. And it is within the movements we make every day, within the things we think and dream, within the relations we knit to work and to survive. The colony is within us, and when I say us, I mean me, an Anglo Argentinian male; I mean the Mayan indigenous people of Guatemala; I mean the feminist lesbians of another point in the continent; and I mean Marxists; and I mean Anarchists; and I mean radical or benevolent ecologists; and I mean the friendly hippies of the Earth;

and I mean indigenous, or city underground, or accommodated foreign artists; and I mean social workers of our apparently leftist or fascist governments. The colony is not simply a superentity up to which we stand, but instead, a space that belongs to us, and is in our bones, and to which (it may be of some use to know) we will never cease to belong to entirely. Unless we continue to believe that we are the future, that we are the perfect child to be born (that we are, in any case; the prodigal son or the new man), that is, if anyone still wishes to be or inhabit the spectre m of that old man or that new man who has left horror where he has passed. The new man (a man free of capital, of power, of the colony) is the most horrible spectre we have constructed. Without the possibility of receiving criticism and of putting into function auto-criticism, we

2013 · absurdo NOS PERTENCE HASTA LOS HUESOS

Un incendio que se come a sìí mismo

are destined to destroy and be destroyed. And this is the reality we are living, in this colony in which the fire consumes itself. No doubt, the battle against colonialism has freed an indispensable space used to understand what Marxism, from its own colonialism, left out (just as Foucault was forced to remind Communism that it too had power). There is a need of honesty, even just a little, in order to come into knowledge of how resistance organizations that battle against mines or artists that defend some form of vindication, fall, just as did Marxism, to power. Could it be that the colony is an external entity of 500 years of age, or will it become part of human nature? I say this, and I feel Hobbes´ shadow over my shoulder. Despite this, I continue to ask myself. Does the colony belong to a project or is it part of us as human beings? And this is not, of course, a denial of the invasion´s genocide, or of the massacres of the capitalist or communist twentieth century, it is not about that; it is about trying to avoid believing, as did Marxism

one day, that the problem is on the exterior, that the problem is something to which I stand up and that I can shoo it off as I would with a fly. Someday, by the fire, a young Mayan asked me: ¨I am generous because I share my fire with you, why did your ancestors kill mine, and despite this, we share this fire together?¨ And I remember that I responded: ¨Do you know my history and that of my ancestors?¨ And I remembered my exiled aunt, and my great-grandfather, a notary who legalized property and turned it in to soldiers as the desert campaign went on, the same campaign in which the Argentinian army massacred the indigenous population in the center and south of the country. But does this great-grandfather of mine make me guilty of something? Does having an uncle, on the other hand, murdered at the hands of the dictatorship make me more innocent or more compromised? Does being indigenous absolve me of my colonialism? How many forms of colony inhabit diverse indigenous structures?

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It is much easier to expel in the other our incapacity to give a real answer to this question of power, which is multifaceted and masks itself in different ways. And so we go on constructing our own tale, our own epic, the idealization of ourselves and our original communities, and of the movements we inhabit; and maybe these have only the sense of holding out on us until our demise, without the need to confront us face to face in a true mirror. As I take a look back on Agamben and Hannah Arendt, whilst we sit around the theatrical play we are constructing with the collective Las Poderosas, I thought: from within our own isms we define the reality of the three roles of the game. The victim, the monster and the hero. They tend to be cartonbox characters created by some mediocre

author, with wardrobe we place onto ourselves, and which regularly take on a mask we wear with pride, or a hint of far-away terror. And we tend to choose the mask of the hero (though sometimes, also the victim). But never, oh so never, that of the monster. Although we know well, there always exists within ourselves a weak shadow, an echo of the beast. Because our story, is also that of the beast. And in the first play that we construct against the colony, the world is inhabited by victims with whom we fight for their access to justice, and it is then that the story of the victim accompanied by the hero or heroine (whether they manage to lock-up the big, bad wolf) begins. And the mask of the victim is the woman massacred in a field who survives by some miracle, or that of the abused and mutilated woman raptured by the

2013 路 absurdo LOS MONSTRUOS

La rabia

Guatem ala mask of n Army or by t the her he Tri Guevara, be o is that of Marpt le AAA, and t he neath which in Luth fearful face, becaus we find our owenraKning or Che e we will never live xious, the life of the mask. The mask of the Monster is that of a sad, little man that has mutilated his woman, or simply, the face of RĂos Montt, onto which we place the entire history of the genocide in Guatemala. As if this genocide wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t just an intensifying continuum of the plantation that has been this country, but the invention of an abject monster called EfraĂn (although we could take our bloody mask and call it Cain). And this is not, I repeat, to ignore the importance of judging the old genocide, which is, I must say first ly, a start in the m iddle of the hell that is this plantation that burns; but thinking th to avoid stayin e monste g still, ourselv r dead an d es the the rabie hero s gone, an d feeling at hav i To fee ng slain th e l cont ent, t dragon. ourselv es in th ranquil, sa e t multipl ies and midst of thisisfied of hell wh which g ich rows.

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In the second play the victim copulates with the hero and becomes a hero-victim, in which we all progress in the struggle—in favor of our ancestral rights or against the advances of the mining company, or against the abuses men structurally commit against women--, and we advance together, hand in hand, all of us heroes and victims of an entity we confront, and no one thinks whether we´re up to the challenge, or even if we are building a politically –charged strategy with even a glimpse of realism or if we are building a political, artistic or personal career. And when the bombs fall, when prison comes, we flee. In this play the monster prevails, but we win at least a little bit of honor, sometimes a job at some University, or other times, money. These type of plays are reflexive and cynical.

The third play is post-modern and there are no characters. It happens on Facebook. There, we all wear the mask of the hero and tell our victories and never our miseries, never our frustration, not even a bad lay. This play is transmitted through streaming and we hang photographs of idyllic struggles that we know will not change the established situation, and we hang photographs of a paradise lost which does not exist, and we insist on making a story of the enlightened traces of our cultures, of our own battles, of our own identities, of our own essence. And we construct a trap to engage the monster, but we fall in instead. And we hang a post in which we state how much the natives loved the land as if it were their

2013 · absurdo LAS MÀSCARAS

El poder que nos habita

mother, when the majority of these communities are as filled with ruffle as the poorest neighborhood in Buenos Aires.

take off because we have seen it, and we have understood it. That Cartesian (oh so colonial and rational) has made its way all over the place.

And this is, of course, the real structural problem generated by the true monster which should avoid that the people starve to death, pick up the trash, and it is also the product of the lack of educations, of many things. In addition, it could be reality which crashes against our essentialist slogan: The natives love and defend the land. Some do, others donÂ´t. Others are fighting to save their lives however they can (and they are not so far from us, the heroes on salary). The monster does not win in this play, because he is not see, is but a spectre which consumes all.

There is something which unites the memories of the 70Â´s guerrillas and the reunions before the fire, life in the communities, sharing time, silence, the difficulty of staring into the eyes of our own incapacities, amongst what we do not know, to try to comprehend beyond our reach. Maybe, as in a fable, we have forgotten the great questions of our time.

I believe that the question of Power, with a capital P, will have no sense if we do not analyze it with a lower-case p. The power which inhabits us, which most humiliates us, is the one we must confront. Creating epic tales is but another way of feeding the monster. The colony, the power, is not a suit we can put on and

//Ponencia presentada durante Simposio 2013. 65

Picture:

REYES JOSUÈ MORALES CALENTAR LOS HUESOS. (STILL DE VIDEO)

Year: 2012

CREAR COMUNIDADES

ART or something like it The colonial womb of power consists basically of four or five domains: the control of the economy, the control over authority, the control of sexuality, the control of knowledge and subjectivity, and it is there where art, religion and aesthetics come in. The question lays there. All modern aesthetic, parting from Kant on, is a manual used to control taste, declare genius and regulate its audience around some sensibility and what is useful, beautiful or sublime. -Walter MignoloExtract:

ABSURD0 TRANSCRIPTIONS 2013

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WALTER MIGNOLO

The expert is one of the most perverse characters of modernity; not only because he is an occult ignorant, not because he ignores the relation of the one with the all, but most of all, because he converts this ignorance into a politically and critically-sound authority, telling us what we must do, etc. It is necessary to decolonize religion in order to liberate spirituality. It is also necessary to decolonize art in order to liberate aesthesis, sensibility, sentiment…

an object, a space, or something with a soul or k´u´x. Why should I make art, if the word does not even exist? I better only do sacred things then, objects that for the occidental world could be art, but this is like going back to see the past knowing myself in the present. For in the Mayan world our past is before us, and we should not forget. No, it is not behind us. We must go back to the sacred world (…) You must get closer to where you are living, go to where my belly-button was buried, an eternal reunion of the belly-button, and I am going back and to do so I can create a type of non-occidental art.

BENVENUTO CHAVAJAY

You cannot decolonize ever-so suddenly, but you can do it from an artistic stand-point. I am trying to distance myself, to decolonize myself from occidental thought. Almost all of my work is a socially, academically and occidental-based disobedience. As I spoke once with my father and grandparents, I asked: ¨What does the word «art» mean?¨ In Tz´utujil, a few 60 or 70 years, the word did not even exist. So what is there in the Tz´utujil word? All there was, was a connection in the word ¨sacred¨, which could be

REYES JOSUÈ MORALES

Although the concept of art is not in the Mayan world, and we must look for other equivalents, our artistic practices are related to all forms of life, to the games that are present. For example, in Totonicapán, there is a search to integrate what we do in life and what we have lived from infancy in our community, or what is present in our festivities, rituals and that sort of things. And within these we try to create a sense of strong

2013 · absurdo EL PASADO ADELANTE

Traspasar esos viajes obscuros

community life. It´s not just about presenting an artistic act. The true value is in the people being united, the mere act of being together is of great power.

and the evolution of Guatemalan society, there is something? The war wrought death, but that death implicates a new creation, we can see ourselves differently now, we can re-invent ourselves. So what is left?

BENVENUTO CHAVAJAY

My parents were illiterate, as is the majority of indigenous people and as experts catalog us. I know my father never learned to read or write. But they did feel something, they spoke with the stone. I do not know who was more illiterate, whether it was the occidental experts or my parents who felt. When I asked my father what art was, they did not know of this concept, but they did know of the field, the land. He was a very spiritual man, and from there I began to reflect: Why do I have to do occidental art, like paint or sculpt? To us, there only exists what is sacred. Everything has a soul, and to me, art is putting soul into the object.

ANGEL POYÒN

Art gives you responsibilities. Batz represents the monkey, which is black, and monkeys descend into the darkness, and there we also find light. In art you have the possibility to transcend that, possibly, if we keep looking to find ourselves we can transcend those dark voyages.

BENVENUTO CHAVAJAY

There is a passage in the Popol Wuj where the tale tells that a couple of twins told their grandmother they would leave her a small tree to see if it would grow. We must return and blossom… REYES JOSUÈ MORALES

CAROL ZARDETTO

Do you believe that, parting from the reflection of war, of what the peace accords (whether they be good or bad) brought,

And within art, apart from the possibility to peek inside dark territories and blossom, there are other possibilities to create communities, and that is why I feel there is a

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great value in being together, being reunited, in being together further than the mere quality of the artistic act. At least in Totonicapán, in some of the activities we have done there it is just that: to feel each other’s presence, to create our community, small oasis, that can be temporary and that finish.

whole archive of the word art, and so who come in now and say, of course, that is what I want to do, but I wish to do it in a different way, and there is where aesthetics is ripped from other canonized forms of art. REYES JOSUÈ MORALES

At some point the conclusion came to be: if art does not need to be made, let´s just stop making it. Instead, let´s make something useful to us at this moment, in this community.

WALTER MIGNOLO

We must disembowel the aesthetics from art, because that is just another trap the XVIII Century put us in. By this I mean that, aesthetics has become theory, the regulation of what is called art. I ask: What does a decolonial artist want? No one know. But the truth is they simply do not want to make beautiful objects, it is not a beauty fight, but a transformation of subjectivities, a creation of communities. It is a re-orientation. I do not mean that they would be catalogued as decolonial artists, but there is a tendency, there is a need to use the ability to do things, in art, and that is a technique.

And if it has something to do with art, great, or let´s look for a new name for it, but let´s make it and share it…Within the classic clichés there is: What can this town full of Indians know of contemporary art? It is a category that is being used, another way to call the things we make, but the real question, for me, is how will be inserted in our time and throw ourselves into the darkness, into that which is ambiguous, and twisted, and from that point on we will have the interest of getting closer to the cultural codes that are present in our context and our history.

Now, what happens is that there is a codification, an experience, and a

2013 · absurdo TRANSFORMAR LAS SUBJETIVIDADES

Liberar la aestesis

ROSINA CAZALI

The residences and the conventions in Latin America, in Central America, are places where we can open cracks in order to transform them into spaces of critical thought.

WALTER MIGNOLO

In my opinion, to reflect upon art is part of the reflection of the next: the colonial womb of power was constructed from 1500 to 2000, it was transformed and managed by occidental states in Europe and the United States. From the year 2000 on, this cannot be controlled and the dispute for control and discontrol of the Womb begins. What we are thinking as decolonial aesthetics is a new conceptual language that is emerging. The idea of decolonial aesthetics reaped from the conversations over the colonial womb of power. What can we do with aesthetics? How can we conceptualize it? This surged in conversation in 2003 or 2004 in the doctoral defense of Catherine Walsh, in Quito. Adolfo Albano Chante, an afro-Colombian artist and activist, proclaimed decolonial aesthetics and no one listened to him, but he was already fumbling with the idea. We were worried about

politics, nature, and the economy. Now, we recognize Adolfo had a point. It was to re-take the word aestesis, referring to sensibility, decolonize Kantian aesthetics in order to liberate aestesis (…) It is not beauty that is sought now, but if the word art is used, it is done so in order to create another type of community, another type of sensibility.

PABLO JOSÈ RAMÌREZ

What does the contemporary imply in Guatemala? What does making art history imply in a country like Guatemala? What does modern art imply in a country where modernity was never built as in the occident, where an institution like a museum is scarce? In that sense, what function is implied in art? How can we speak of a modern art with so much scarcity of it?

SILVIA TRUJILLO

How can we create ideas from the conviction that aesthetics has the capacity to crystalize history in ways that the social sciences still cannot?

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JULIO SERRANO

Who of us relates to art: literature, cinema, scenic art, rituality, corporeal nature. Who and how do we relate to art, the reach of our epistemological replanning, how we connect ourselves with a space that goes far beyond the reach of the auto-reference of art. And by this I do not mean to be reductionist and place myself between rhetoric discussions. It is simply so we can stop, see ourselves; stop and feel ourselves, to agree with the re-vindication of feeling. There is just something about art that does not feel right. There ascends a contradiction that I can state with certainty, basing myself on a quote by Tata Mignolo (whom, after a heated and ethylic discussion last night, and as a result of poetic dyslexia, we fondly call Tata Mingo): ¨using imperial knowledge to suppress subjectivities, that is what the colonization of being and knowing consists. Subjectivities are the key.¨

WALTER MIGNOLO

But the thing is that all that we call art or decolonial aesthetics has a horizon of questions surrounding the concept

of humanity, that racist and patriarchal concept used for the classification and hierarchical organization of the communities.

ANABELLA ACEVEDO

The conversations taken place in this space during these two days prove that identity, self-definition and ethnicity are still conflictive for many. Why speak of multiculturalism and otherness in a contemporary artistic and political thought symposium? Firstly, it is about representation and about places of statement from which we speak, places that are not always physical and which always have something to do with the positioning within structures of power, be them of different natures; it is about the reflection over identity and the discourses from which they are thought, and how this translates in aesthetic terms; and not because this reflection is done on the basis of suspicion and conjectures, but because the evidence within contemporary artistic production places it as an obligatory subject. But this was not so obvious.

2013 · absurdo CUESTIONAR EL CONCEPTO HUMANIDAD

El horror al vacio

Multiculturalism, interculturalism, mayanization. These started to be common terms confined within this academic and NGO’s Babel Tower that ran the risk of invisibilizing the subject as a person in its every-day realities, of making generalizations and of converting into politically correct language all that came into reach. But, on the other hand, it made possible other new ways of understanding them.

ROSINA CAZALI

Something that is still very powerful within us, and that we still struggle to overcome, is a very catholic heritage: the horror vacui, the horror of the abyss, to stop for a moment and confront the need for silence, of ¨enough words¨ and ¨let´s look for ways of understanding other languages, and especially, other ways in which we can understand.¨ Those spaces are of great interest to me, those medial and step-by-step spaces, where what we have named works of art is merely evidence of a personal or collective process, simply a piece, an object, that in the end, is secondary.

works of these artists, that are not called works of art, but are considered to be directly within the land of healing and that have coincided with thoughts bordered these days as an answer before the decolonial wound…

CAROL ZARDETTO

This thought process throws a questioning stone into these waters that promote art. Where are we going and how are you going to help us in this creative space which the abyss of decolonizing our senses has left us?

WALTER MIGNOLO

I would dare ask another question: What do we wish to do with that which tradition has left us as an artistic legacy? In other words, this has nothing to do with the act of art, but of what we wish to do with it…

Finally, there is a space that is opening before us: the idea of healing, as an alternative that is more than present in the

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WE WANTED TO DO THE IMPOSIBLE By:

LIZ ROJAS

By mid-2009 there emerged the possibility to travel to Guatemala alongside my classmates. The motive was our participation in an art and political theory festival in a place whose name was difficult to pronounce, in a country that I knew very little of. And that is how my journey through the Absurd, later called Abzurd and today named Absurd again, began. I had no way of knowing that the first contact would define my route for the next four years. It wasn´t long before I started making contacts, and I found a way of coming back the next year with the project Teatro Laboratorio of which I was part of in Costa Rica by then. However, being part of the agenda was not enough, I wished to support its growth and

prolong its life next to mine in the project; it was then that Pablo offered me the excellent opportunity to involve myself in the management. That is how this beautifully painful and unsure road commenced; like life itself, and next to Pablo and other friends and colleagues, we decided to believe, because after all, the Absurd is and always will be in existence thanks to those who believed and still believe in him. To assume the responsibility of leading a project gives you a kind of empty satisfaction, without a doubt a challenge which makes you walk various less-taken roads. I wished to find out if I was able to assume the challenge of encouraging the project onto foreign land, and onto my own country of

Notas // 6. El Teatro Laboratorio o TeLa es un proyecto de investigaciòn y creaciòn artìstica que busca generar espectàculos interdisciplinarios que nutran al medio artìstico nacional, desde la academia, de nuevos lenguajes artìsticos y metodologìas integrales de investigaciòn teòrico-pràctica. 98 ASUMIR LOS RETOS

Picture:

DETALLE DE PERFORMANCE, ABSURDO 2010

Contexto:

PARQUE A CENTROAMÈRICA, QUETZALTENANGO

El Tela tambièn abre un espacio para que los estudiantes de las carreras artìsticas generen sus propias iniciativas de creaciòn e investigaciòn, estimulando de èsta forma la aplicaciòn de los conceptos asimilados en los procesos acadèmicos desde el punto de vista y bajo las necesidades de cada estudiante. 77

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be there, we simply believed in him, and as Gustavo Cerati states: ¨We wanted to do the impossible¨, and it was much too tempting. To organize a virtual agenda of all the team, to solicit help from patrons, to reserve hotels, imagine agendas, confirm spaces, diffuse the news and everything else, and all done from my country; communication, no doubt, was the essential basis of a modus operandi so particular, so impossible. Two years I assumed the task of the project´s coordination and management from my country, constantly filled with anxiety, divided by Costa Rica and Guatemala. Every year was a surprise, though one does try to control all possible factors in order to maintain calm. And by June, things started to come to life. I believed and do still believe in the Absurd, as if it were the nucleus that processes life, that attracts it, creates it and transforms it, for once you come close it marks your path. The Absurd has been and is constructed on the basis of the handy work of a group, in constant movement, from a professional or non-professional space, with socio-economic and cultural levels so diverse, that I can firmly say, that they are witnesses of a contrasting reality.

One of the principal objectives of the project has been the study and the reflection of the relationship between a being and its surrounding. Thus, the Absurd thrives on multiple variables, and before this reality, we again challenge the limits of the impossible, firmly believing in the common necessity of constructing new communal spaces that are in order to achieve true reflection. The Absurd recently suffered an important transformation, and has matured and fortified its standing ground. It has ¨settled-down¨, so to speak, and is coming back for much more. This is something our Latin American region must recognize, they must make a blind-date and get to know each other a bit better. An experience, a mixture of friends, artists, thought, movement, uncertainty and novel; the Absurd was not a mere project, but a ground-breaking époque in my life in all possible aspects, and I hope I´ve given at least half of what I received in these last four years shared together. Year: 2014

2013 · absurdo CREAR, ATRAER, TRANSFORMAR VIDA

Pensar el sonido

sonorus art By:

MUCEVI

In 2010 there surged the idea of working on a project about video art, sonorous art and new technologies that would extend its arms to the Central American region. An investigation went under way on the topic, and rather than be locked away in some library, it was accessible to all in various ways. One of which is the realization of the educational activities guided in conferences, talks, video projections, workshops. Later on we called out to video artists to participate in a sonorous art contest, as well as expositions…and that is how MUCEVI was created. The emerging practice made us arrive in Xela thanks to the invitation presented to us by Pablo Ramírez. He requested our participation in the Abzurd Festival of 2010, which included a conference emphasizing video art and virtual museums in the Mesoamerican University. This activity was, from the get-go, a

series of connections, talks and new invitations to share the works of such geniuses like Yuan His-Chiang (Costa Rican pixel art and video game designer) who lead a conference about the evolution of video game sound in 2011. We arrived in Xela in 2012, and this time, we came with the Sonorous Art exposition, product of the 2011 contest, and installed it in Ciudad de la Imaginación; this same exposition tried to incorporate the audience in the act of listening and/or thinking about sound. There was a conference held at the Mesoamerican University by one of the participating artists: David Marín (Guatemalan physicist and sonorous artist), which emphasized art and technology in contemporary times. Marín spoke of his sonorous sculpture project KINÉTICA, with which he participated in the 2011 MUCEVI Sonorous Art Contest.

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Likewise, Guatemalan maestro Joaquín Orellana´s work, which has experienced an evolution of various concepts of textural music, was referenced. A workshop on sonorous and creative creation improvisation also took place: Improvising in Quetzaltenango, which was led by José Duarte (Costa Rican musician), and as its final activity, Duarte headed a concert consisting of the participants´ interventions during the event. In this manner, contemporary art is not presented as a fierce territory, dull and damaged, but as a liberating act which stimulates thought that can be heard, observed, touched and commented, developing its complexity and capacity to astound, one of the reasons for which its audience has grown. The editions of the Abzurd Festival is one of the most significant experiences for the MUCEVI, as it has been given the possibility to create from ¨other Central Americas¨. The Festival has become a place of reflection and a gathering of artists and theorists of different latitudes, which show affinities and routes to explore. It has also permitted the expansion of other projects presented by MUCEVI in the constant search for the sharing of knowledge, the generation of questions and critical thinking, from physical or virtual experiences for all senses.

El Museo Centroamericano de Videoarte (MUCEVI) es un espacio virtual que nace en Costa Rica en 2010. Su objetivo es la investigaciòn y difusiòn de las nuevas tecnologìas en el arte de la regiòn a travès de conferencias, talleres, proyecciones y muestras sonoras. www.mucevi.com 66 RESONAR EL ASOMBRO

Picture:

DETALLE DE KINÈTICA, DAVID MARIN. ABSURDO 2012

Contexto:

EXPOSICIÒN CONCURSO MUCEVI 2011

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2012

The art and political thought festival arrives at its fourth edition in a year in which the end-of-the-world rhetoric, of a new époque or simply, a times of confusion, emerged; and we believe that change is the constant that unbalances the equation of power. Crisis is a destabilizing revolutionary, and it bases itself on language. In this sense, art as an epistemological resource can build itself based on a pedagogical resource equally based on a resource of critical character, which permits us to propose, imagine, perceive and project other possible spaces, hopefully a bit more just and free. The 2012 Abzurd Festival pretends to build itself upon a space made for the reunion of the word and contemporary creation, which by questioning the assumed precepts of modernity and its cultural production, will

closer itself, leaving aside the hegemonic institutionalization, to a critique of the mechanisms and the objects of power which strive to normalize the codes under which XXI Century societies work today. The discussion which motivates the Abzurd´s fourth edition works around three symbiotic ideas: violence, sovereignty and territory. We believe that violence is a characteristic of XXI Century capitalist societies. The violent practice could then be understood as a primary drive, without reason or cause, or maybe as a form of geo-political relation, motivated by an accumulation of capital, the expropriation and by neo-colonization processes. Sovereignty can then be understood as the capacity to govern, but who governs, and under what precepts?

2012 · absurdo CRITICAR LOS MECANISMOS DE PODER

El arte como estrategia

Why do we ideas su let ourselves pport t be gov perspective he need for goveerned? What we must the r ent? n tackle thnm From t notion on which po wer is based. Theisspace-territhoisry notion is also used to rule with certain sovereign violence which organizes and categorizes peopleÂ´s lives. As a territory which motivates the reflection of the Abzurd Festival, Latin America is our starting-point in order to comprehend the dynamics and relationships of power, which in turn define the cultural production structure, and in this context the production of art as a politicallygeared intervention strategy which is day-by-day more preponderant

if we choose to look beyond the pam phlet or re-productive speech. Thu s, the production of art that transits be tween the limits of what is permitted and what is proh ibited, between the limits of ae abnormal, sthetics, of the and revea normal or power, ling, in th become is manne r , the occu s neces lt within la sary. Organ nguage a izing nd Comm ittee 2012

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That is why this tra

nsit, this introduct

ion as

a visual arts festival is produced as being linked to the practices of performance and contemporary theatre, to this mutation which defines

itself as a space for theoretical reun

ion of a group of creators of ideas

with ready expe riences and know ledge to be shar collective ed, to be calve form, to in ideas in a vent new language s, to reliv e old spell Autho s. r:

SILVI

A TR UJ

ILLO

EN SALA DE REDACCIĂ&#x2013;N: http://saladeredaccion.com/revista/2013/11/del-festival-al-simposio-el-absurdo-2013/ 4

Descolonizar los saberes

From Gu atemala there co decolonizati on of knowle mes a reflectio nb dge with sciences and other e artsa, sseodcion the disciplines; yeint itthse al ems

to me that there still exists a lack of articulation which yanks us from thought, dialogue and group debate, and so some of the most valuable analysis are lose their power, the same power they could have on more ample platforms. And I fear that this dis-articulation favors various political, academic and social powers which always benefit from those

populations which do not reflect upo

n their history.

Author: ANABELL

A ACEVE DO

PLAZA PĂ&#x2122;BLICA: http://www.plazapublica.com.gt/content/hacia-la-descolonizacion-de-los-saberes 83

ABSURDO

coINHABITANCE ROSINA CAZALI INTERVIEWS WALTER MIGNOLO*

*(EXTRACT)

R. On that note, your visit to Guatemala was based on the realization of the Absurd Festival, and had especially to do with the art scene. One could say that these are two of the lesser roads taken for the local academic world. What surprised you the most during this experience and the various ways of disobedience within the festival? Did you recognize any ideas, theories of decolonial gestures within the participant’s unsettling?

W. Quite an interesting visit. And not only because it was my first in Guatemala, and my first stay in the hospitable Casa San Bartolomé, or because of the event. I saw three trajectories in the event. These are identified by what the participants express, although a participant cannot be identified with a certain trajectory. One, is the trajectory

initiated by the ¨Absurd¨ project. Curious enough, when I decided to study Philosophy I read, at my 15 years of age, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, by the Algerian and Paris resident Albert Camus. To Camus, an immigrant in a colonial country right in the heart of an Empire, the fundamental philosophical problem was whether life was worth living or not. From then on came the theory of the absurd: before the glorification of the individual and life in the warrior capitalism (he wrote this Turing the second massacre of occidental civilization called World War II—by this we´re speaking of the imperial European states, plus Russia, plus Japan and the United States which entered the global match at the end of the XIX Century. The rest of the world, it is to say, 90 percent of the world, had nothing to do with this second ¨world war¨.

2013 · absurdo SUPERAR LA HUMILLACIÒN

El amor decolonial

The ¨Absurd¨ in Guatemala comes forth—the way I see it—from colonialism, that is, from the absurd of modern rhetoric which hides the logic of colonialism. That is where the first trajectory dialogues with the second, the decolonial option which, by other means, comes to grand conclusions. This version of the decolonial emerges from the mestizo and immigrantes, that is, the version belonging to European descendants. The ¨absurd¨ embosses something similar to that which ¨the analisis of colonialism¨ embosses as well: in the ex-colonies life is not worth living under patriarchal and racial oppression and all its consequences (humiliation, exploitation, arrogance, expropiation, violence, etc.). The third trajectory is the one which thinkers, artists and indigenous activists brought on: this is the decolonial stream-of-thought which comes from a double source: the humiliation of modernity and the pride of the grand Mayan legacies, in this case, but also that of the Aztec culture. The cross-roads of these three trajectories.

R. Of all reunions there come barters. After your stay in Guatemala and after the symposium, you leave knowledge behind, and take with you the honourable title of ¨Tata Mingo¨, according to Benvenuto Chavajay. What other ideas, dilemas and learning expectations do you take back from the country?

W: The nickname ¨Tata Mingo¨ fills me with pride. Patrice Naiambana, an immigrant actor of the Shakespeare Royal Company, who, by the way, is also an activist and leads his own project (Tribal Soul) has called me his ¨uncle¨. ¨Uncle¨ is of great value to me. Mainly because it is no small thing to me, it´s more than an academic acknowledgement, it is a co-inhabitance acknowledgement, one that comes from a decolonial love, I would say. And, curious enough, it does not come from European indigenous cultures, but from Central American and African cultures. No, it is no small thing what I got out of the barter.

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Furthermore, all that I am saying here could not have been true had it not been for my stay in Quetzaltenango, in CELA, these last three days, not to mention the other two days I traveled, and the other filled with angst of my arrival, and the other filled with reflection at my parting.

The colonial wound manifests itself in rascism and patriachalism and expresses itself in totalitarism, dictatorships and wars whose victims are seen as expendable lives: those who are of no value to patriarchal projects and rascists who linger around states and economic growth projects.

Finally, having co-inhabited with all of you and your ways of sojourning upon memories and the consequences of thirtysomething years of war, Â¨the cultural logic of late-colonialismÂ¨, to paraphrase Fred Jameson and to acknowledge that which he did not: the logic of late-modernity and late-capitalism is, in fact, the logic of latecolonialism. The same colonialism which in Europe generated Nazism, Franquism and Fascism and which in Central/South America and Africa generated full-fledged dictators.

Fuente: http://waltermignolo.com/en-guatemala-sobre-decolonialidad-entrevista-de-rosina-cazali-escobar-con-walter-mignolo/ MORAR EN LAS MEMORIAS

screamfilled spaces Having a horizon of life has become necessary, especially one as creative as the horizon of capitalist life, because this one has instilled in us the desire, the desire of having, of buying though it may be discarded the next day. What is the horizon of decolonial life? If we achieve a visualization, if we are able to work towards that horizon, I believe we can be creative, and at this moment the colonial womb of power has made a society that, rather than work for a living, lives to work. The last horizon of the regeneration of life, not only of human life, but of life on all of the planet. -Walter MignoloTranscriptions:

ABSURDO 2013

ABSURDO

WALTER MIGNOLO

The fundamental question is to create a desire, in which capitalism was quite ingenious. What we must find is another desire that will envelope people, and that desire cannot be one other than the regeneration of life and not capital accumulation and the economic growth which is producing death. The concept of the regeneration of life has to do with spirituality, with a place in the heart which the Nahuatl already knew of, as well as many other people, but no one is going to convince you with mere speech, the mind is used to articulate sentiment, and modernity has only repressed it. The acknowledgement of this is important in the formation of communities. I do not wish to be recognized by certain people if they are not the people with whom I wish to build a community.

JULIO SERRANO

I am thrilled with this space, because it is what we needed. Many of us

needed it because there are a great number of sanctions and complex contradictions which, in strange ways, connect us.

PABLO JOSÈ RAMÌREZ

I believe, in the end, that there are things that find you, though you´re not looking for them. When we began the Absurd project, all that existed and which still exists, is a great discomfort with the Cartesian rationale, and also, a reaction to the traditional and very orthodox Marxism, in Guatemala´s case. What other spaces can you construct beyond this? These spaces must be absurd, and it is in the absurd where you find that limit, that thing which causes discomfort. We do not wish to decolonize or emancipate, it is not a company we wish to create. This is a space of reunion, of search. It seems to me that after this re-existence project, of other epistemological searches, of action in which we do not only think, but act as well, we can closer ourselves to something similar to Holloway´s scream: that explosion, that moment in which you

2013 · absurdo REGENERACIÒN DE LA VIDA

Estar juntos

feel unsatisfied with something, and this dissatisfaction moves you to react. And this is a crossed reaction expressed through positions, through looks. And if we can understand this space as a scream, or rather as many screams, we can think on how to construct it as a forum, and that is why it is so important for everyone to participate: friends, artists, centers of investigation… WALTER MIGNOLO

How can we think of this within the decolonial frame and how does it relate to the absurd…? Where do we stand? It depends on the single stories, which is all we have. The decolonial project is one where we place life first. It has to do with the healing of the colonial wound produced by the colonial difference. And what is this healing? Resistance, regeneration, re-emergence, linked to our own personal stories, to the groups to which we belong, to the personal trajectories, and that re-emergence is what offers us another orientation, one different to what Liberalism called Democracy, what Christianism called salvation, what Marxism called Socialism. And for this, there are no maps, they are in the making, and no one can control it, and that is the beauty in all of this,

because we ourselves are disengaging from the universal abstracts of Marxism, Liberalism, Christianism, control…there is no plan here, only an orientation…

SILVIA TRUJILLO

The way I see it, there is another key I wish to propose as a result of this space. Every time we get together (or at least, the few times we have gotten together, because, sadly, the dynamics of our lives force us to create within solitude) we leave with this hype, though it dies out eventually. At this day in age it seems difficult to get together, to create collectively…all the hegemony and colonialism has lead us to live in solitude, alone. I wish to rescue the nutrition which comes from the making of these spaces which allow us to come together and construct knowledge together.

ROSINA CAZALI

We must admit that this space is not the only one, there are sprouts in different places. I am pleased with this space, with Ciudad de la Imaginación, it seems to me that we must

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recognize the role they are playing. We must pay attention and take action in these places, because of the way they are emerging, the unexpected answers which they are giving and the questions as well…If I anchor myself to something, it will be to this possibility which permits us to enter into these spaces that are in construction.

that one thing that is true has to do with one times that we were with Benvenuto Chavajay and Marvin García, and we were having a nice chat at a local store, drinking a few beers, thinking that friendship was a sort of organization of knowledge.

REYES JOSUÈ MORALES ANDREA TOCK

Sometimes I feel we are a bit too romantic, we must be careful not romanticize certain groups, collectives, certain things. I am aware that outside of the Capital City there are really cool things, like Kastajinem in Totonicapán; and I believe that within the city there is also a battle ground filled with potential. Just because we are from the city does not mean we cannot have a certain degree of empathy, maybe the struggle won´t be the same because we are not Maya K´iche´… but it does not mean we cannot have empathy, sympathize.

JULIO SERRANO

To vindicate empathy as a form of knowledge organization. But let´s say

I think it´s very special when words of love, friendship, empathy come from a space of political thought, and I believe it is a symbol of our time, when so many things are coming together. I remember when things happened, and I got into a discussion with many people, because I was there, I saw those who died, and I remember I fought with many, I felt the need to hear the world say something, to see those who wrote, write, to see those who made art, make it, that urgency, that strong urgency and I entered a tough process, and I fought with many, and it came about because of the empathy I needed to feel…I complained about intellectuals, because they never manifested, because they weren´t on the roads with us, and then I realized that what truly mattered were the connections and that everyone could act from within their own space…And it moved me deeply when we heard,

2013 · absurdo REIVINDICAR LA EMPATÍÌA Y LA AMISTAD

El papel de cada uno en la red

in Totonicapán, that the committee came out of Congress and outside were many young people with signs saying «Atanasio Tzul Lives On» and that they were from the city, and it was you!

ANDREA TOCK

Yes, it was a small piece of paper, a very informal thing, and it was about five of us, and a friend of mine wrote in pen, «Atanasio Tzul Lives On». There were five of us, but I tweeted that there were fifty of us, and that more should come, and then there came twenty, and then five police cars closed down the street where the president lives…they´re afraid of the connections, they saw everyone, all that youth from the Capital complaining about what happened in Totonicapán… REYES JOSUÈ MORALES

You´re right, you don´t have to be Maya K´iche´ to empathize, and empathy and ethics lead to other things.

ROSINA CAZALI

To fortify these connections that do not only have to do with intellectuality, but also with that friendship of which Julio

speaks, because precisely one of the greatest strategies of war those 30 years were to attack the connections of intellectual relationship (…) it is important to create awareness of what role we have within these connections…And one term that has me worried, which I leave there, which has been used many times and I still do not understand: the economies of friendship and affection. WALTER MIGNOLO

I read here: Julio Serrano Echeverría, writer. I will no longer say that I am an intellectual, I will say I am a warrior of the word. Your reflection made me remember Winona LaDuke, a Native American activist and academic, and one of the things she says the most is that to achieve a win in our battles, we must be satisfied with ourselves, and I believe that what you said is a bit of this, because if we are not well with ourselves, we act with bitterness, and that is never effective… Another thing I wished to say has to do with body and theory, and I believe that all we are speaking of fairs in the same direction, but from different experiences (…) the problem is within the form in which we relate to the world and what shoes we wear. The theorization which becomes part of my body at the time of the struggle, of the moment

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when I realized what they have done to me (…) I realize, at this moment, of art so I can summon it in some manner, of the theory so I can summon it in some way, it is the way we respond to what we feel in our bodies (…) art, theory, knowledge become instruments which at that time must respond to what the body feels: the indignation, the rage, the humiliation, etc. The question here is that there is no real way to respond, but what is truly important are the connections and how we work together from where we find ourselves.

What calls on us to do the best we can within our own rhetoric or intent of decolonization is that each and every one of us knows to what extent we can give, and up to what point we are comfortable. No one can make a connection before connecting with oneself. We are organic, and to be so we cannot discard all the ideas that cross our paths, because we are bodies intersected by the stories of our fathers, children, of our own stories, of our own country.

ROSINA CAZALI

I also leave with many doubts. Doubt is one of my anchors. I did not come to leave without doubts.

CAROLINA ESCOBAR SARTI

I suppose that my own search caused me to theorize about the body (…) bodies continue to be colonialized, and not just the head, amongst a continuum of violence. So it was brought to my attention when we spoke of decolonizing (…) never before did anyone theorize about the body as is done now, and yet I do not know how far we have gotten to our own body and how colonialized it truly is.

PABLO JOSÈ RAMÌREZ

AWe must continue the conversation in Guatemala City, in Totonicapán, in the nearest saloon, at Julio´s house, it doesn´t matter where, the important thing is that it happens… A toast because we are here.

2013 · absurdo SOMOS ORGÁNICOS

La sociedad polĂ&#x152;Ătica global

Isabel Rodas: I believe I take with me, from the symposium, an ample circle of friends. In this state of fragmentation, of segmentation, of which we have spoken in the last three days is of great importance, we are small and individual circles. I take this possibility of entering in contact with people that do not belong to my every-day circle of friends in the city. That amplifies the analytical perspectives, those used for political action. From these small spaces, change, reflection over the ideas one has, the exposition and adaptation of what one knows so others can come in contact with the fact that one knows what they have done. Carol Zardetto: I take with me the possibility to deconstruct a whole series of concepts that are limiting and open possibilities of creating other things, new things, new ideas, new perspectives, and new actions.

we realize that we are not alone and that the answers are within the exchanges and in the capacity we have to articulate ourselves and to construct a community.

Walter Mignolo: Before the corporatization of universities and the restriction of those places for thought and creation of collectives of thought and critical action by present society, of globalized society; yet, on the other hand, looking towards the future, a future that is not yet evidently programmed by development and globalization, but futures that are being created with the urgency of global political society. Knowing very little of Guatemalan history, but knowing enough, these spaces are evidently crucial for healing wounds; not only those which come from the colony, but also the wounds that come from war in the second half of the XX Century.

Fernando Jerez: It is enriching to find myself with these other voices that are fighting, as I am fighting in my space, to have these reunions within my reach, because 93

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Isabel: Thinking, most of all, upon which new political society we need; funding ourselves on the aesthetic dimensions of sensibility; of what we need to fill before a society which presents itself more violent by the day. What can we offer as spaces of relation, of solidarity, of affection, but also accompanied by reflection, history, comprehension of why and how we got into this situation, and what the independent role of those forces is, what role we have played as people, as individuals in the reproduction of this society. Carol: The next Absurd already has a lesson plan, it already has a theme which emerged today, and not out of thin air, but out of what hurts all Guatemalans, of the problem of the senses and of what is in our vocabulary, and what is, in the end, hurting us at the heart. It helps locate ourselves and establish connections between things. Behind all of this lies the possibility of solidarity.

Walter: It seems important to me (this we spoke of with Pablo) that we feel the necessity to connect this project with similar ones that are marching on in other Latin American countries, like Ecuador, Bolivia, Argentina, Colombia and it is possible to do something so this may continue, but not only in Latin America, but also in Europe and the United States.

Interviewer:

LESLIE MARTINEZ

Transcriptions:

ABSURDO 2013

2013 路 absurdo CONECTAR Y CONTINUAR

2009/Bordering Citizenships: It is from playing with the absurd that we can imagine roads and alternative worlds to the already established. The beginnings of the Absurd on the streets, in performance, exercises for active citizens, youth and transformation.

2010/Diverse sexualities: The political inclusion, from the stand-point of diversity, of leaving to a side the concepts of gender and sexuality in order to transcend a concept of equal citizenship and to promote individual and collective rights. Three days of recreational activities in which the artists interact with citizens in order to reflect on the necessity of transcending gender topics and constructing citizenship.

2011/Subject, life and space: To understand this relationship as historical truth, as a metaphor, as a body, from the stand-point of the ecological problem, from exile and immigration, as power relationships and forms of production, among others, in order to imagine alternate forms of life, of constructing other languages and practices. Transiting from imposed normality to proposed abnormality, to play and invent in order to conspire and co-inspire from absurd dreams.

2012 Violence, sovereignty and territory: To think of violence as a characteristic trait of XXI Century capitalist societies for the expropriation and neo-colonization processes. The production of art as a political intervention strategy, beyond the pamphlet or the re-productive speech; art that transits between the limits of what is permitted and what is prohibited, of aesthetics, of the normal and the abnormal, uncovering the occult of language and power.

Picture:

DETALLE DE PERFORMANCE, ABSURDO 2012

In memoriam:

JUAN MIGUEL ARRIVILLAGA

2013 From gesture to decolonial thought: To stimulate a profound analysis of the Â¨matrix of powerÂ¨ established by the Western World and the use of critical tools used to expose the contradictions of colonialism. The Absurd takes on the form of a symposium in order to generate spaces which reflect in a more rigorous manner, parting from a critical articulation effort around art and the contemporary as epistemic triggers.

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Lugar:

CIUDAD DE LA IMAGINACIﾃ誰

Contexto:

SIMPOSIO ABSURDO 2013

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Carolina Escobar Sarti (Guatemala) Sociologist, poet and essay writer. National director of La Alianza. Her professional trajectory includes teaching, communications, literature, philosophy, social investigation and development projects. She has received multiple acknowledgements for her work in relation to education and justice. Invited speaker of Absurd 2013. Liz Rojas (Costa Rica) Actress, performer, producer and theatrical trainer. Bachelor in Art from Universidad Nacional de Costa Rica with a major in Scenic Arts. Her work revolves around design ambience, theatre, art and visual communication. Producer of Absurd 2011 and 2012. Marco Canale (Argentina) Playwright and scenic creator. Lives in Guatemala since 2008. His plays, a mixture between the political and the autobiographical, have been presented or published in various countries of America and Europe. Presently works in investigation and interdisciplinary creation beside social and political collectives such as Las Poderosas Teatro. Invited speaker of Absurd 2013.

Pablo José Ramírez (Guatemala) Curator, political scientist and essay writer. Executive Director of Imagination City (2011-2014). Currently Associated Curator. His interests revolve around contemporary subjectivity, power relationships and visual arts. Founder and coordinator of Absurd. Rosina Cazali (Guatemala) Curator, essay writer and specialist in contemporary art in Guatemala. Founder of projects such as La Curandería and Centra Diacrónica. She has participated in various expositions and reunions of Latin America and Europe. In 2013 she formed part of the coordinating team of Simposio Absurdo. Walter Mignolo (Argentina) Director of the Institute for Global Studies in Humanities, William H. Wannamaker. Professor at Duke University. Author of The Idea of Latin America and The Darker Side of The Renaissance. His work explores topics such as global colonization, geopolitics of knowledge and border thinking, among others. Invited speaker of Absurd Symposium 2013.

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