SACO9 Now or never

MICRO-CURATING | Dagmara Wyskiel Self Proclamation From the geodemographic periphery we can see how over the past few decades curators, visual artists, and other agents have struggled to overcome the vast expanses that separate the larger cities of Latin America where artistic circles are concentrated and the territories agonizing and being reborn in a lack of opportunities. The entire offering of university level art programs are clustered together in an area less than one-fifth the length of Chile, as well as archives and other spaces specializing in the research and dissemination of art. There is unequal access to art institutes and universities and as a result, a professional void going back three generations that widens the knowledge gap, excluding the majority in terms of fostering creative potential, due to both lack of resources and distance (The only university art program in the north was shuttered at the start of the dictatorship). In this panorama marked by absence, where neighboring countries are in the same situation, whoever assumes the role of curator must proclaim him or herself so, becoming a one-man band (managing spaces and funds, curating, museology, staging, publicity, recording, graphic design, social media, among other roles). And if no such person is involved, the project ends in frustration for failing to be materialized, shared and seen by the local community.

According to research conducted by the production team, a project like this one had never been seen before, a strange fact when one stops to consider how, in keeping with dynamic and sometimes even oral traditions, informal cultural arts education is often horizontally spread throughout many fields of knowledge and occupations. Which begs the question: why aren’t there any workshops about curatorship in cultural venues, why aren’t there any seminars offered through the university extensions in any of the regional capitals? Why is it that city governments and regional cultural councils so rarely provide this kind of offering to the people of their communities?

It’s safe to say there is a consensus that without a curator a microscene ends up hobbled, and that the work of a curator is indispensable for the establishment of a diverse and multidirectional map of art; and so we are faced with a paradox. On one hand we know we need them, but on the other hand, we don’t do anything to help them appear and make themselves known to us. What is it about the job of curator that would appear to be incompatible with the non-center. There is, doubtlessly, an aura of sophistication, which is evidenced by the way they speak, their extensive travels through the world of art, and their networks and connections to important exhibition spaces that turns their world into a sublime and intellectual bubble, one that is increasingly less permeable to the realities that might wish to approach the curator while exercising their profession. In Latin America there are worlds that don’t intersect, whose existences go unknown even 138