SACO9 Now or never

MEDIATING ABSENCE | Gabriel Navia y Carlos Rendón Guiding visitors in Sitio Cero was a tremendous challenge. We knew the situation in the country was not the best, from the social uprising to the pandemic; that selective and classist event, so convenient for the economic elite. A pandemic that keeps all of the icons of consumerism increasing its earnings while everything that might save us from mental breakdown is turned off.

It’s a situation that hit the cultural sector hard (and still is), leaving artists impoverished and cultural centers with no public, while the minister in charge, totally disconnected, uses degrading language to talk about people who work in culture. In the middle of all this, the main exhibition of SACO9 took place, which was also affected by a change of location.

The new space was not seen by visitors as a place for appreciating art. Knowing that in advance, we faced the challenge of looking for new strategies, beyond the classic invitation through social media and guided visits. The number of visitors ceased to be a decisive factor in order to establish if an exhibition had been successful or not. Sometimes we even had the sensation that “less was more.”

The exhibition was huge, diverse, thoughtful and very interactive. Everything was set up in a way that invited the public to take a pause –that “now or never” that the festival was pursuing– in that lapse of time that the end of the year and holiday season allows for. The route was designed to begin with the transpacific dialog of Sand, moving on to the linguistic games of Concurrences, then on to the song of Antofagasta´s win d, with the piece: Somewhere, Sometime. The next stop allowed for an observation of the sun’s reflection through 45 Degrees, and after sitting in the Open Circle, visitors passed the modular piece, Container City, before finally experiencing Domes, the most challenging piece to mediate, due to its invisibility.

There was the case of a couple, in which the woman only wanted to go out to lunch and was practically forced to attend the exhibit by her partner. During their visit, talking and learning about each project, they admitted that it had been a life-changing experience. That is the mediator´s greatest satisfaction. There were also people who already knew about the festival or who had participated in prior activities, and it was nice to listen to them talking about what they had learned about contemporary art thanks to some of the activities we had earlier led in the city.

Perhaps the most interesting situation during this festival was the visit of a homeless man to the exhibition. Respectfully, he came in and asked if admission was free. He refused the mediation very kindly and went to see the artworks by himself. Probably, among all the visitors, he was the one who spent the most time 170