magazine
Publication by Living Art Room Celebrating 2 years. Success stories No 008. april, may, june. 2012
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director Catalina Restrepo Leongómez catalina@livingartroom.com editor and translator Daniel Vega serapiu@hotmail.com art director Rebeca Durán rbk_sara@hotmail.com
Omar Rosales, Suspension points , 2011
Contributors Franklin Aguirre Paulina Cornejo Carlos Pérez Bucio David Gremard Romero
Acknowledgements Gonzalo Ortega Julia Ortega Eugenio Echeverría Karla García
Photographies
Courtesy of artists and contributors Marco Casado Jorge Carerra 2
CONTENIDO Editorial
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Celebrating two years. Success stories. ARTICLE
Raúl Cárdenas. TOROLAB
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María García-Ibañez
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Rodrigo Facundo
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La Bienal de Venecia de Bogotá (part I)
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Omar Rosales Saúl Sánchez
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by Paulina Cornejo NEW ARTIST PORTFOLIOS by Iván Buenader by Ivonne Pinni Chronicles
By Franklin Aguirre
ARTIST PORTFOLIOS UPDATES
Carolina Rodríguez Marisol Maza 3
082 092 100
CURATOR PORTFOLIO UPDATE
Kerstin Erdmann
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Margarita Leongómez
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YO, PRIMATE
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Historias de Éxito
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Le Dernier Cri
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La Bienal de Venecia de Bogotá (I I parte)
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SPECIAL GUEST By David Gremard Romero RECOMMENDED at BORDER DIAGRAM By Catalina Restrepo L. INTERVIEW
by Carlos Pérez Bucio Chronicles by Franklin Aguirre MUSIC
A dark new day: present and future of the musical industry
by Daniel Vega 4
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www.LivingArtRoom.com
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Celebrating two years. Success stories. EDITORIAL
It’s been 2 years since the first editorial experiment of Living Art Room. Since then, LARMagazine has been edited tri-monthly, showcasing portfolios of artists and curators that have joined the website and our virtual platform during this time. It is incredible to have reached 77 thousand readers and 550 thousand unique visits to our publications, regardless of the www.livingartroom.com statistics, which have grown enormously thanks to the magazine.
Aguirre, its founder, tells the story step by step, about the experience of coordinating and living such an event, which turns 17 years old in its next edition, in 2012. We also invited curator Paulina Cornejo and artist Carlos Pérez Bucio to share, with articles and interviews, some of the success stories they have witnessed. Paulina tells us the story of an artist with whom she’s worked closely: Torolab/Raúl Cárdenas. Beyond describing its work, she tells us of the difficulties faced by Raúl, and what he’s accomplished as an artist in social art. Carlos, on the other side, shares us an interview he made with one of his greatest illustration idols: the LDC (Le Dernier Cri) collective, formed by Pakito Bolino and Marie-Pierre Brunel.
Our gift: a totally new website. Now, Living Art Room visitors will see that portfolios have a different structure, much easier to use and optimized for ipads and smartphones. Our celebration: a compilation of success stories that inspire us, starting by one that personally fascinates me, La Bienal de Venecia de Bogotá, and that if you ask me, is probably the most ingenious, rightful, necessary, effective and, to put it briefly, successful initiative that has ever been produced in Colombia. Franklin
Also in this issue, we recognize succesful initiatives that inspire us every day, like Centro Cultural BORDER and OMR gallery in Mexico City; Arteria and Esfera 6
from academic discourses chose to hand-embroider globally known contemporary art images, questioning with it the traditional notions of originality, authorship and reproduction, aligning itself with Walter Benjamin’s proposals in his famous text about art in the time of its technical reproducibility.
Pública in Bogotá; NoMínimo space in Guayaquil, Exit magazine in Spain among others. On this eighth edition we proudly present the portfolio of one of Colombia’s most recognized artists: Rodrigo Facundo. We also feature the portfolio of a very talented Spanish artist who lives in Mexico: María García-Ibañez. Also, updates from Omar Rosales, Saúl Sánchez, Carolina Rodríguez and Marisol Maza. And finally, the update of curator Kerstin Erdmann’s portfolio, who’s been working as a coordinator for OMR gallery, and as an independent curator from a few months ago.
I hope you enjoy this eight issue of LARmagazine as much as I do.
As a recommendation, we bring you a selection of images from pieces of I, primate, an exhibition featured in Centro Cultural BORDER since the 21st of march, in Mexico City. It presents the work of several Living Art Room members, like Juan Antonio Sánchez Rull, Emilio Rangel, Saúl Sánchez, Alejandra España, Rodrigo Imaz, Omar Arcega, Raúl Cerrillo and Sofía Echeverri.
Catalina Restrepo Director Living Art Room www.livingartroom.com
Our special guest in this edition of LARMagazine is Margarita Leongómez, historian, who far 7
Torolab from the social field of art, to art in the social field by Paulina Cornejo Valle
one degree celcius, 2008
“Public art is not about oneself, but about others. It’s not about personal taste, but about the other’s needs. It’s not about the artist’s anguish, but about the happiness and well-being of others. Not about the myth of the artist, but about his civic sense… Not about the emptiness between culture and public, but about looking to turn art public and the artist into a citizen again”. (Siah Armajani) 8
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orolab was founded by Raúl Cárdenas in the mid 90’s, a research and contextual studies workshop/lab that focuses in diagnosis and the use of art as a tool to improve the inhabitant’s quality of life, an initiative that added to the diverse proposals that later on would put Tijuana in the country’s most movable cultural epicenter. Today, after 15 years of work, Torolab has explored a great deal of themes in public and private spaces through the use of different strategies and numerous collaborations with multidisciplinary teams. Even if those proposals have distinguished themselves for their conceptual complexity, they have also achieved to position themselves effectively in social contexts, extending far beyond the institutional frame and of easily predictable spaces.
the politic, personal, collective, environmental, knowledge, cultural, economic, social or spatial limits or frontiers, whose breakpoints are sensitive to reconfigure new territories in order to generate new local models based on process and collaboration. With this, Raúl Cárdenas has achieved a flexible platform that allows collaborations between specialists (engineers, geologists, chemists, nutritionists, architects, sociologists, anthropologists, agronomists, etc.), institutions and communities, who work together for the creation of mechanisms that, through critical dialogue and participation, suggest alternatives able to detonate gradual change processes on a system.
Regarding the international scene, Torolab’s work enters in the kind of public actions Torolab’s proposals, the so-called Territories that, from the beginning of the 90’s, have in conflict, are born from a tension inherent to focused on conditions specific to the place 9
(economic, social, political, cultural, etc.) that have been designated as contextual, participative, and communitarian new genre public art, or art in public interest, among others. Despite the gradual acceptance of these projects, there is still a discussion going on, fed by the diversity of visions and perspectives, the skepticism, the lack of understanding, the difficulty to evaluate its effectiveness, and the questions about its relevance.
the realization of long term projects. It has also shown coherence in its career which, after being recognized in cultural spaces and first rate colleges in the US and France, slowly builds up a proper following in Mexico. Torolab has developed, as a creative platform for connecting processes, complex initatives oriented to specific results, such as One Degree Celsius (2008), Homeland (2009) and Granja Transfronteriza (in development).
Within the Mexican context, this controversy has been reflected on the difficulty to find the conditions, institutional support and financing to make the interventions, partly because of the impossibility to justify the expenses to the circles of art, used to immediate results and to the consumption of finished products. Before this outlook, Torolab represents an essential precedent, as well as a mandatory reference to social insertion art in Mexico, since it has made great efforts in the management and search for synergies for
One Degree Celsius bets to the power of transforming green areas into strategic sites, as well as recreational and activation spaces, because of the possibility these have to replicate infinitely to achieve a gradual environmental change that, in a metaphorical sense, would diminish global temperature one degree Celsius in a long term. This proposal is based on the study of the relationship between the human body, urban traces, weather and its 10
impact on the mood and quality of life. It proposes a replicable model of strategic interventions designed for each context, to take advantage of the “spaces�, the empty or abandoned territories of the urban trace, to recover them as green areas, to improve communities and establish micro weather networks.
Developing since 2009, Homeland/ territorios del hogar is a project that looks for alternatives for the economic and cultural survival of the Iu Mien, an agricultural community from China that, after several displacements through Vietnam, Laos and refugee camps in Thailand, established in Oakland, California. This initiative develops 11
strategies that seek to preserve not only the community’s agricultural knowledge, but also the memory of their journey and cultural heritage, while generating sustainable life forms that avoid the migration to other jobs. In 2011 a second farm was made active, looking to become a space for harvesting not only food, but knowledge, working under the idea that Iu Mien farmers turn into masters while doing their work, while the farm becomes a school to their visitors. Finally, the most recent project, also the most complex and ambitious, is Granja Transfronteriza, which not only alludes to a frontier territory destined to the agricultural activities of a community, but to the metaphoric space where the limits of different disciplines are blurred in favor of an interdisciplinary knowledge exchange. Working with immigrant communities in different states, some of them in Camino Verde, Tijuana (the
community with the highest food poverty rate in Baja California), Torolab elaborated a diagnosis that studies the relationship between income, capacities, territory and food culture. The objective is to design integral strategies and sustainable economic models that, through interventions that take advantage of the immigrants’ agricultural 12
Artistic, or social development practices? For many people, from common citizens to specialists, projects like the above mentioned generate uncertainty about the relevance of its development from the artistic scene and its effectiveness, since it is considered a social work that does not concern art and therefore must be promoted by good will and social development institutions. Although there are many unachieved actions that have not been effective either in the metaphorical or practical level (as in any other kind of practice), I would like to present the reasons why I consider that some specific interventions in this field, Torolab’s for the case, are inserted into an artistic, relevant and effective practice, that must be taken into account for their capacity to generate processes that bring forth new perspectives and change-inducing mechanisms.
securitree, 2004
knowledge, achieve to impact in the families’ incomes, as well as in health and nutrition, while stimulating creativity and learning in the community. The project has the support of public institutions, local, state and federal authorities, and civil organizations that have summed to the proposal. 13
1. Autonomy. While the efforts of social work are focused on generating a development through granted assistance, art uses strategies that allow it to intervene in reality and to function on multiple levels that go from symbolic action (detect tensions, make ironic statements, problematize, denounce), to specific products/mechanisms able to trigger an impact on the community. More than a provider, art acts as a mediator. 2. Integral nature. Unlike projects generated from social development institutions -with bonds limited to getting results from granted support-, artistic platforms have the capacity to effectively address various needs,through the transversal collaboration of different actors. 3. Artistic nature. The starting point, which makes social art practices radically different from social development efforts, is the intention to creatively intervene contexts with a processbased and participative approach. In these works the artist goes from being a solitary author to a committed citizen, while the “audience� is no longer a passive receptor of a self-referential object, but a co-author and active collaborator of the work. 4. Dialogue. The dialogic relations and the building process of the artwork are based in communication, which allows the exchanging of ideas, motivates reflections regarding relations 14
with context, and reinforces the social fabric through the creation of stronger community links. In many cases, the topics to be discussed or the finding of solutions are not as relevant, as the process of interaction among participants. 5. Originality. Working from the autonomy of art provides the possibility to respond uniquely and creatively to tension or conflict situations. The languages of art in social contexts can generate specific platforms of activation, which intervene the everyday and contribute in the solution of collective problems. 6. Visibility of conflicts. Artistic initiatives in social contexts have the potential to intervene in issues related to other fields, making visible the invisible or ignored. Likewise, they provide new perspectives that do not only offer a deeper and different understanding of things, but can also facilitate the negotiation of collective issues between the parties involved.
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Paulina Cornejo Moreno-Valle (MÊxico DF, 1979) Graduated in Art History at the University of Barcelona. From 2003 to 2007 she served as Deputy Director of the Museum Curator and Research Muros in Cuernavaca, where she was responsible for the Jacques and Natasha Gelman’s Collection of Modern and Contemporary Mexican Art. Since 2006, she is been focused on research about cultural policies implemented in Mexico and other countries of Central and South America aimed at the professionalization of practices such as curators, researchers and art criticism. From 2008 to 2010 he served as co-curator of the project RESIDUAL / artistic interventions in the city, a collaborative project of the Department of Visual Arts at UNAM and the GoetheInstitut Mexiko to sensitize the public about shared responsibility involved in waste management, and contribute to regeneration the ownership sense of people
COMA, 2006
homeland, Iu Mien Farm Tapes, 2011 16
Finally, I would like to recall that Torolab’s bet, and also of on public spaces. She currently works as an independent researcher and curator in projects those of us who believe in the urgency of linking certain focused on activation and social art. Paulina artistic practices to everyday life through intervention has been invited as a lecturer in curatorial programs about public art at the National and participative processes, does not reside on a messianic School of Plastic Arts at the Academy of San in Mexico, at the Universidad de los conception of art and the artist; it lives in the possibility of Carlos Andes in Bogotá, Santo Tomas University generating reflections from the microscale that, at least, can in Medellin, among others. She has worked for different publications such as Código, La put down the indifference of the inhabitants and, in the best Tempestad, Equilibrio, Arquine y ArtNexus, case, stimulate critical thought and motivate an action capable among others. of detonating the transformation of our physical and social territories. This is what Beuys meant when he talked about construction in a collective order, or a social sculpture where the individual becomes the architect or artist of his own destiny.
fotos: Cortesy of the artist
www.torolab.org
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NUEVOS ARTIST Facundo (Colombia) PORTFOLIOS Rodrigo María García-Ibañez (España)
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Drawings HPF, 2011
MARÍA GARCÍA-IBAÑEZ
www.livingartroom.com/maria_garciaibanez
Under the last stratus (fragment) by Iván Buenader
the possibility of one day becoming part of a clay jar or a sculpture, with all its strengths and weaknesses.
María García-Ibáñez’s work evidences and enjoys two usually confronted moments: that of the primary design, inspirational, clean and scientific, and that of the time passed over things that existed, exposed to real life and to everything that once laid over them. To look at her pieces is to ask ourselves if we are facing a present and active experimentation, or a series of findings that must be treated with archeological attention to detail. Inside the pieces there is medullar liquid as delicate and precious as porcelain, impossible to remove, just like the genetic information underlying in a landscape. The material chosen to build these pieces makes us conscious of our vital cycle, of our inevitable return to earth and
María makes an empirical research that tries to reach the very cell, the essence of the structure, but from learned female indications, questioning them with the vehemence of one who digs under a mountain, dissects a child to see what’s inside, peels the bones of a hand or examines people’s heads as a creature looking for fleas. In the process, the artist discovers that everything is made up of layers, and that under the last one there is one more, which probably is not the last. 21
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Drawings HPF, 2011
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Drawings HPF, 2011
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Series Windgaelle, 2011
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Series Windgaelle, 2011
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Instalaci贸n Estrato, 2011 31
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sleepwalking project, 2008/10
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Sistema migratorio�, 2011
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the hands, 2011
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Bones, stones, flowers, 2011 39
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De la serie “Mutantes aeromarinos�, 2011
rodrigo facundo
www.livingartroom.com/rodrigo_facundo
In Search of lost memories and identities Ivonne Pini
If there is one characteristic that marks recent Latin American art it is the eclecticism with which the more or less recent past is taken and mixed in. That attitude is accompanied by an experiential posture: the weight of one’s own experience. If we assume that the past is the space for interpretation, memory acquires a special significance: it is that which allows one to pick and discard. It is one of the various elements that construct identity and can be seen from two perspectives: a more personal and subjective one, referring to our memories, and another one that is more closely linked to rationality, Which is to say, that which provides us with information. Both memories are present in each of us; both influence our behavior and are difficult to separate despite the fact that the first moves in the private sphere and the second in the public.
So given the subjectivism and the experiential attitude already mentioned, various artists see the pasts as a stage for a series of individual and collective memories with which they can relate themselves, most often in order to reinterpret them. To look at the past, to rediscover it, allows one to assume difference with others and thus, to assume characteristics of identity. Rodrigo Facundo (1958, IbaguĂŠ, Colombia) aims to produce a meditation that transcends his personal history, in proposing to analize those signs that form part of the collective, centering his inquiry on a space that seeks to understand what is exterior to the self, avoiding remaining stuck in the narcissism of self contemplation.
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l have always been interested in domestic life. Those images one finds in family
In his series ‘Instante y huellas” (“Instant and Traces”) from 1991, he combined two elements charged with meaning: photography and clay, producing objects that sought to have a direct impact on our senses. By concealing the photographic processes, he left the spectator to find them, lost among the features of the clay. And from them emerged characters from art history, anonymous figures, natural disasters preserved by photographic memory from a certain oblivion (3).
photo collections, in department store catalogues… I take nothing from them but the taste, what I like about that image, I feel like a catalyst for all the images circulating in whatever place I find myself… I select those images consciously. That is how I find the signals(1): What relationship exists between the notion of knowing who we are and the form in which we handle memories? This is a question that appears again and again as the background for the formulation of his concepts. Reality becomes for him a space in which to reconstruct a world outfitted with archivistic resources storing images that reclaim and recontextualize
The sensation of a funereal place, of a place of loss and the experience of mourning, becomes concrete in works like Luz Perpetua (Perpetual light) and 108 (4) from 1992. The violence and the memory of those who have disappeared becomes a constant for those living daily reality of Colombia. Facundo attempts to sublimate this daily reality, to took at it in a more poetic manner, to reorganize it, recomposing the memory fragments. Within small niches laid out in rows, as they appear in cemeteries, he placed photographs blurred by the film of paraffin with which he covered them. Past time, memory, became present for our perception.
In the early nineties his initial painting was making room for highly textured surface in which photographs were combined. Reflecting on a statement by Susan Sontag All photographs are memento mori. To take a photograph is to take part in the mortality, vulnerability, mutability of another person or thing ( 2) Facundo takes the photographic image as a reflection of the past. It is the possibility of showing a moment or the passage of time and they possess the double alternative of being presence and memory for they permit the longing for or recomposition of another reality. They are the trace left by an instant that has passed.
The material the support was made of cracks and all that is left—as in reality— is the emotive nature with which present time charges those ecstatic images of the past. And the meaning of the photography changes: it is no longer the image that is 42
De la serie “Sociepez�, 2010 Phantographies, 2010
looked at indifferently in a newspaper that illustrates acts of violence. The frozen presence of the anonymous face seeks to incite the spectator to experience mourning as well, now a collective mourning.
with anonymous figures. His Objetos Melancolicos (Melancholic Objects) are cut out figures, printed on paper or fabric, coated with wax and
set among house hold plants. Leaning against the wall they produce a sensation Perhaps remenbering the reflections of of fragility, of lightness, of possible Baudrillard regarding objects, Facundo disappearance. Objects like revolvers, begins in 1993 to combine everyday objects bones, picture frames, are 43
camouflaged and allude as much to domestic violence as to external violence. There are the objects that accompany man, like his trace and his memories. Photography helps him probe the feeling and function of the everyday object but it also allows him to reconstruct history and death ends up recognized in an object that invites reflection.
And since memory is recovery, it is not forgetting, he goes on bringing those images into the present era. The fragments are set: in a new context in which the mixture of reality, subconscious personal experiences, and collective memories is not missing. In November of 1997, Facundo mounts an exhibit in the space of the Santa Fe Gallery in Bogota, an installation entitled En la punta de la lengua (On The Tip of The Tongue). In the exhibit catalogue he explains the following parameters of his inquiry: The distance that exists between our personal memories and the history of our country is more complex than the distance that exists between a “now” from which we remember and a “before” that is remembered. Personal memories and our understanding of history start to create a map whose composition is based on distinct, mutually exclusive languages and in both cases space manifests itself in a drastically opposed fashion. This dichotomy allowed me to come to the con1usiorr that our history takes place, in two parallel realities: in absence and inwardly.
In I 995, utilizing large format canvass and making use of mixed media, he looks into other possible gazes onto the passage of time. Photography doesn’t lose its central role and in works like El rey de los animales (The King of Animals) and Cocos ( Coconuts) he incorporates big photographic enlargements that take as their initial referents images taken from religious iconography of the colonial period. I know that there are prejudices against the figurative in painting. But I know that in this place where I live, a visual culture prevails that comes from the colonial period. It is a period that formalized a culture of naivete and produced the people we are. That is why my images use the colonial visual code that was basically for images of worship. I know that by combining different images in the pictorial space that what I am doing is switching temporal and social codes. In the end, all of my images are borrowed and sometimes I ask myself: what here is not borrowed? (5)
By “absence” I mean the way we constitute ourselves as passive witnesses of a history that is constructed using external elements as an official story that becomes an imposed, foreign memory. In a parallel fashion individual memory is developed “inwardly,” with a unique character and virtually impossible to transcribe . . .(6) 44
interest in photographic documentation, he seeks for resources in various techniques of visualization used in the nineteenth century, important antecedents in the development of cinema. His research on devices like the stereoscope and the zootrope formed the foundation for his circular Arquitectura del eco (Architecture of Echo) and Recuerdo de las formas ambiguas (Memory of Ambiguous Forms).
This extended quote allows the reader to come closer to the concept that lay at the base of the research for this project: the recognition of the coexistence of two parallel levels of memory. Such is his reflection on the particular situation in Colombia in which memory is fragmented and broken apart in a society with a proclivity to amnesia. And without wishing to arrive at singular answers regarding how to construct a national identity he attempts in his work to show the encounters and separations existing between collective memory and the subjective and personal map of autobiographical memory. The proposed goal in these meetings from diverse dimensions is to begin to remember, questioning with its images an official story that runs the risk of becoming an imposed memory.
Assuming that memory allows us to gather together very personal fragments of reality~ Facundo very rapidly “shoots� images that, through the means of metaphor, are transformed and converted into symbols diametrically opposite to their originals. There is an intention to make manifest how certain values associated with certain symbols are subverted by the passage of time: abundance, poverty, freedom oppression, and so on. It is as if he wished place us once again before the past so we might be capable of reclaiming ourselves from the amnesia and able to discover and understand the real history beyond the traditional accounts.
In his use of three key words places , people, and thoughts- he chooses a series of images provided by his family album and by the documentation of historic events in addition to the emblems, flags, and even cartoons that in one way or another provide a graphic summary of events.
And in this gaze, aimed equally at collective history as at the personal, there continues to be an aspect of a search for identity. That return to history is a return to the sources, to the public spirit as well as the spiritual heritage of the nation. He doesn’t seek
Because history so frequently .attempts to immortalize itself through monuments that become spaces with the peculiar quality of eternalizing memory, Facundo takes up this notion and the reworked images to create his own monuments. Without forsaking his 45
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Princesas de oto単o, 2007
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Phantographies, 2010
to create an imaginary one so much as to You have the illusion you exist for something and to break the continuity of nothingness. reconstruct it through new perspectives. But deep down you know that you don’t add In 1998, his inquiries have led him to anything to the nothingness of the world, propose a series of Anonimos (Anonymous), for you form a part of it. Out of fear of attaching histories to fictitious characters, not desiring anything you would prefer to as they approximate certain attitudes one desire nothingness. Existence is that which can find in everyday life and which form one doesn’t have to give oneself over to. It part of the recognizable stereotypes. And has been given to us as a consolation prize, there again appear memory and identity and there is no need to believe in it (7). in the way that through his images he intends to show how a contrasting duality Facundo seeks not only to explain the exists between the external ideals shown past but also to understand the present, by publicity like models of happiness, of concerned with the accelerated ideological individual achievement, and the reality and political destabilization due to the crisis in social identities. people actually live. The past has been his connecting theme, exploring the use of materials and techniques extracted from the material culture, from everyday life, from collective imagination. And in the recovery of valid resources for creation there are no innocent representations of the past, as thought of as much from a perspective of inquiry into identity as of a questioning of the accounts.
The sources for his images come from magazine and newspaper advertisements and his visual discourse has the opposite effect from publicity: instead of announcing utopias they announce desperation. With digitally manipulated images, he burns offset plates which function not as the basis for a mass-produced piece but rather as the matrix of the piece. To it he incorporates, in the style of an assemblage, cut-out objects. Skepticism seems to be gaining ground in Facundo’s work and the text by Baudrllard that accompanies his “Desilusionada” (“Disillusioned”) could be the frame of reference by which to conceptualize the images: 48
Notes: 1. Text by Rodrigo Facundo in the exhibit catalogue Por mi raza hablara el espiritu (Mexico-Colombia, April-June 1996, 19) 2. Susan Sontag, Sobre la fotografia (On photography) (Editorial Sudamericana: Buenos Aires, 1977) 25. 3. Ivonne Pini, Rodrigo Facundo, Juan Fernando Herran, Doris Salcedo:al rescate de la memoria, “Atlantica, no. 15, invierno 1996, Centro Atlantico de Arte Moderno, Canary Islands, 98-99. 4. The title refers to the 108 policemen murdered in Medellin and was made with photographs that had appeared en newspapers. 5. Exhibit catalogue, “Por mi raza”, 19. 6. Exhibit catalogue, “En la punta de la Lengua” Santa Fe Gallery, Bogota, 1997. 7. Adapted by Facundo from the text by Jean Baudrillard in El crimen perfecto, Editorial Anagrama, 21-22.
Ivonne Pini Proffesor at the National University of Colombia. Executive Editor for Art Nexus
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Phantographies, 2010
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Sketch, 2008
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Sketch, 2008 57
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En la punta de la lengua, 1997 59
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Retratos grafol贸gicos, Status Specials, 1998 61
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Venice bogota’s
Biennale Between independence and dependence By Franklin Aguirre The Bogota´s Venice Biennale National Prize to New Visual Arts Practices Department of Culture of Colombia/2005
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he Bogota’s Venice Biennale has realized, from 1995 to the present, a dynamic function between art and the city: to extend the contemporary artistic production to new spaces and audiences; to set out its practices as means of possible interaction and communication with unknown territories and communities by moving the attention of cultural production to the Venice Neighborhood in South Bogota. It also distinguishes itself for being a project with non homogenous urban groups, without having a paternalist or assistive political culture. The Biennale has been pioneer in its way of using the urban spaces as an artistic, curatorial and management lab, one that builds a community as a space for the interchange of ideas, dreams and knowledge. On those terms, it represents a change in perspective that has taken artists to overwhelm the studio production, rethink their activities in the urban space and their relationships with society. In that sense, it represents initiatives that understand contemporary art as a reinvention of the autonomy notion, which instead of taking for granted the inherited territory of a discipline, proposes different operations and freeing practices that question the social and cognitive limits, as well as the valuation and definition of arts. Born from a game of words (The Bogota’s Venice Biennale), it has created a decisive symbolic operation by transforming the marginal into central. In each of its five editions, it has been a meeting place that connects the international biennales circuit and other artistic events with the local. Even though it involves the participation of artists from many continents, the Biennale still 65
represents a space for the other, where the artistic, pedagogic and recreational becomes alive, and evidences the artist’s social function as a dynamic agent of culture. Because of this, we unanimously give the 2005 National Prize to New Visual Arts Practices in Visual Arts to The Bogota’s Venice Biennale which, after ten years of existence, has been relevant to Visual Arts in Latin America and is a precedent for other regional events. The Biennale convincingly proposes the experimental, political, conceptual and organizational value of new artistic practices. Prize Act of the Jury Cuauhtémoc Medina Gloria Posada Miguel Rojas Sotelo
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Introduction The Biennale was born in Bogota in 1995, as a chance to extend the art field to new spaces and audiences. The Biennale can also be seen as a halftime show, an open sentence, a multi-disciplinary lab, a cultural construct, or a work in progress. This event started as a word game towards Italy’s Venice Biennale, but unlike its European referent, the BVB states another kind of relationship with the spectators by actively involving them on the process of creation, realization, circulation and insertion of artistic practices that take place in it. Far from being a simple display of autobiographical works, so usual in museums and galleries, The Bogota’s Venice Biennale is an event that has taken the neighborhood as its basic theme, extended today to the town of Tunjuelito (1) , in South Bogota. Besides, this event has turned,
with the passing years, in a symptomatic display for contemporary Colombian art and its relationship to the usual, the local, the neighborhood and the urban.
The in situ character of the Biennale has shaped its sense, as well as the relational artistic projects that happen there. 67
Justification The Bogota’s Venice Biennale (BVB) takes place because it is considered important that pedagogical projects are developed from and towards the community through artistic practice, such that aim to provide the neighborhood with symbolic-cultural spaces. This new context will allow potential expressions and cultural practices born from the inside to be developed and optimized. The BVB’s mission is to draw the artists and the community together through a pedagogical strategy that takes art as its central activity, and is articulated in the neighborhood context. Within the Biennale, pedagogy is a space where different knowledge around art, its role and its audiences, circle and confront. The BVB supports the community’s self-search to transform its way of life, exploring new elements of day to day life interpretation, as well as new references to read and experiment this relation with the urban space, the neighborhood and itself. This is how the BVB brings new elements and strategies to the efforts of different sectors, social, public, professional and academic, to update 68
concepts and practices of the community. For the participant artists, this represents a different commitment with the work’s consequences, since the Biennale proposes the search of other solutions, conditions and fields of action for their projects in a unique scenery: the neighborhood.
Venice, The Neighborhood and Tunjuelito, the Locality The Venice Neighborhood belongs to the 6th Tunjuelito Locality in South Bogota. This locality is limited by Puerto Aranda and Kennedy on the north, Ciudad Bolívar to the west, Usme and Ciudad Bolívar to the south, and with the locality of Rafael Uribe to the east. Initially, Tunjuelito was a Ranch owned by Don Pedro Nel Uribe. He then sold it to Don Jorge Zamora Pulido, who farmed it and gradually turned it into a capital neighborhood. In the early twentieth century, it was common to see artisanal brick factories on that sector. Today, the industry remains on the sector, although it has raised its technical level. Tunjuelito is crossed by a river of the same name, one which features complex pollution problems due
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to the farming houses that use it to deposit waste in improvised black water sewers, built by the informal housings and by other commercial enterprises such as mechanical workshops, car washes, etc. Tunjuelito’s first population came from Santander, Boyacá and Cundinamarca, as a basic consequence of the forced displacement due to the violence of the times, the 1940s. This mixture of regions turned the locality into a diverse and rich place that, due to its high “floating” population (people who work in the locality but do not live there) lacks homogeneity in their social practices and distinctive features. Despite this, there are some peculiarities in the locality, like the emblematic residential place El Tunal, the Tunal Park with its mega library, Venice Neighborhood’s great commercial and industrial activity, and the sector’s strategic placing, a gateway to an important Township of the department. Tunjuelito has around 198,000 inhabitants, distributed in more than 30 residential compounds and 19 neighborhoods. The Tunal Metropolitan Park, the Police Academy, the Artillery Academy and the industrial zone are part of the context, which coexists with the locality and its dynamics.
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IT CONTINUES
at
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ARTIST PORTFOLIO Rosales (Méxco) UPDATES Omar Saúl Sánchez (Colombia) Caroina Rodríguez (Colombia) Marisol Maza (México)
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Controlled expansion, 2010
OMAR ROSALES www.livingartroom.com/omar_rosales
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Suspension points , 2011
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Ambiguous color, 2011
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Duck or Rabbit, 2011
saĂşl sĂĄnchez www.livingartroom.com/saul_sanchez
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Paciencia, astucia, prudencia, 2011
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Esto es solo para un museo, 20112011
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Constante pero esforzado ejercicio de repetici贸n, 2011
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Duck or Rabbit, 2011
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Vitamina D series, 2012
carolina rodrĂguez www.livingartroom.com/carolina_rodriguez 93
GenealogĂa, 2011
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GenealogĂa, 2011
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GenealogĂa, 2011 97
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MARISOL MAZA www.livingartroom.com/marisol_maza 101
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Before After, 2011
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My Monsters 2010
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My Monsters 2010
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CURATOR PORTFOLIO UPDATE Kerstin Erdmann (Alemania)
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Kerstin Erdmann www.livingartroom.com/kerstin_erdmann
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Bremen, Alemania / 1979 She held a Bachelor of Art Degree in Culture Studies from Europa Universität Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder), Germany and a Masters Degree in Art Studies from Universidad Iberoamericana, Mexico City. Currently works as Coordinator at the OMR gallery, where she is responsible for registration and control of work, coordination of exhibitions and fairs, public relations and Institutional links. Previuosly Kerstin was Head of International Relations at the University Museum of Contemporary Art (MUAC), and guest curator at the Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil and the MACAY Foundation, Mérida, Yucatán.
Museum of Contemporary Art of Oaxaca (2011), Lie. Cheat. Steal. (Arturo Vega) at OMR gallery (2011), Nan Goldin, and Lo vi con mis propios ojos (Tom Früchtl) within the FIAC (Contemporary Art Festival), Leon, Guanajuato (2009), 2 suitcases, nothing to declare, during Cali Contemporaneo in Cali, Colombia (2009), Interior-Exterior at Futurama, Mexico (2009) and Vistazo. La transformación de lo cotidiano at Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil, Mexico (2008).
She is the author and coordinator of diverse exhibition catalogs and articles about contemporary art, artists, exhibitions and art market. She has participated in numerous art conferences, symposia and congresShe has worked as an independent ses and has been a reader and commentator curator of the projects, for example; of undergraduate and graduate theses. White Noise (Gabriel de la Mora) at 115
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Gilberto Esparza, Plantas N贸madas, 2010
Gilberto Esparza, Plantas N贸madas, 2010 118
Jer贸nimo Hagerman, Camino, 2010 119
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Amor Muñoz Proyecto Maquila Región 4, 2010-2011 Curated by Kerstin Erdmann and Ariadna Ramonetti Exhibition: Lo escuché y lo olvidé, lo vi y lo entendí, lo hice y lo aprendí, 2010 Ex Convento de San Hipólito fotografías Marco Casado
Mónica Espinosa, Espíritus elementales, 2007
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Curated by Kerstin Erdmann Exhibition: White Noise, 2011 Gabriel de la Mora Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Oaxaca MACO, Oaxaca, México photographs: Courtesy of the artist and OMR Gallery
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SPECIAL GUEST
MARGARITA LEONGÓMEZ
Text by David Gremard Romero 126
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Some thoughts on the work of
Margarita Leongómez
From first seeing her piece, the hand-embroidered copy of a
Takashi Murakami print in the living
allowed me to crystalize some ideas that
room of Cata’s house, I felt that the
had been forming in my brain regarding
painting embodied certain ideas that
her work, and why I liked it so much.
teased at my brain with complex ideas revolving around representation and
To begin, the piece is extraordinarily
the meaning of authenticity in the work
beautiful. It is an image of hundreds
of art. I was happy yesterday to have
of cartoon flowers with manic faces,
the opportunity to talk about this piece,
like a drugged vision of an early
and the one she is currently working on
Disney cartoon, rendered the more
which is a copy of a photograph of a
so by the thick and luscious texture
piece by Jeff Koons, with Cata, yesterday
of the brilliantly colored thread she
during our exploration of Mexico City. It
uses to do the embroidery itself. This 129
is in contradistinction to the original
hand, over hundreds of hours, filled
Murakami. I am not sure precisely what
with the idiosyncrasies and lovely
the source is, but I imagine a print,
imperfections which are the inevitable
which, if so, would have been flat and
result of the hand-made piece, while
computer generated, with absolutely
the original is flat (in fact, Superflat, as
no texture. The embroidered version is
the artist calls his brand of painting),
deeply textured, and clearly made by
clearly embraces modern, technical 130
means of production, and
upon it his signature. The conception of
is machine made. It is not
the artist is given primacy, and the work
without a certain irony
of the hands, the craftsmanship itself, is
that the version made
considered irrelevant to the meaning of
by Cata’s mother must
the final piece.
certainly have taken an amount
This conception of art has its origin,
of time to make, while
or was first articulated, in the work of
the original, so lovingly
Walter Benjamin, prior to world war II.
copied, must surely have
He described the original, traditional
taken a great deal less.
work of art as possessing an aura, which
unimaginable
is imbued by the hand of the artist and It is telling that the two
in effect transforms the work of art into
pieces thus far conceived
a reliquary or sacred object, because
are both by artists whose
of its absolute uniqueness. However,
work is specifically conceived in a
because of the new, modern ability
mode which rejects traditional ideas
to reproduce art through mechanical
of authorship in the work of art. Both
means, images of art would become
artists work with studios who execute
“ephemeral, ubiquitous, insubstantial,
their works, so that it is not uncommon
available, valueless, and free,� and the art
that the artist will not have touched a
piece itself would come to be stripped
piece at all, until the time comes to place
of its aura of value and meaning. I 131
think that this prediction of the work
What Benjamin described was a new
of art in the modern age was always
form of visual meaning in the world,
doomed to fail, in part because the
which did not destroy the old order,
uniqueness and meaning of the original
but merely came to coexist along side it.
work is altered, but not destroyed, by
Thus, Murakami’s prints are made in a
its mechanical reproduction, and partly
computer, without ever being touched,
because of the voracious ability of
physically, by the hand of the artist. An
capitalism to commodify the object and
indefinite number could theoretically be
create value where none should exist.
produced, all identical to each other, but instead they are made in limited editions and hand-signed by the artist (which provides the “aura” and transforms them into “unique” objects). This is an artificial means of creating value, in order to accommodate the
market. There
is
no
“original” in a Murakami print, but a grouping of 1’s and 0’s in a commuter monitor, thus bringing
into
stark
reality
Benjamin’s conception of the 132
133
work of art as existing only as a reproduction, only an illusion, but one which in the end comes to have great value through the
inevitable
manipulations
of
a capitalist system. The deep irony in the appropriation of the print by Cata’s mother is that where there was literally no original, no aura but the one falsely devised by a market, she has created one which is indeed, inarguably,
almost
fetishistically
hand-made, unique, and impossible to separate from the hand of the living artist, as each of the many thousands of threads patiently and painfully attest. The work becomes a 134
reproduction, what is the original sign, or referent, which relates the image in this world of images we now reside in, to a human scale, and a human meaning? Cata’s mother creates that meaning, with her hands, imbuing an illusion with human reality, thought, and labor. This is in a tradition of critique by artists which extends back a least to the 80’s. In particular, I have been thinning of Sherrie visual paradox; it is a copy of the work
Levine. In her famous 1980 exhibition at
of another artist; it is purely original,
the Metro Pictures Gallery, titled “After
because no original exists to be copied.
Walker Evans,” she hung in the gallery
It creates the value that had never
untitled pieces which were photos she
existed, the aura which had never been,
had taken of Evans photographs, from
but by copying an idea which does
his book, “Let us Now Praise Famous
not actually exist. It brings into focus
men.” She subsequently had exhibitions
the anxiety which exists at the heart
in which she presented photographs
of Walter Benjamin’s argument; that
taken of photographs of paintings by Van
in a world of illusions brought about
Gogh and others in art history textbooks.
through capitalism and mechanical
These pieces are a rather cold illustration 135
of Benjamin’s ideas, and illustrate the
herein lies another paradox,for it is within
extent to which it is impossible to see
that very act that meaning is created.
the original work of art any longer, for we are so exposed to reproductions
This strikes me as a metaphor of our
that the original disappears behind it;
relationship to images in general.
even when looking at the original, say,
Quite
outside
for example, the Mona Lisa in Paris,
outside
of
it is impossible to separate it from the
techniques, all images are illusions,
many reproductions in books and on
existing outside ourselves and visible
mugs, posters, T-shirts and the rest. The commodified image becomes the reality. What is true of the Mona Lisa is true of any other reproduced image. The embroidered Murakami represents that triumph of illusion; it is as though all of the thoughts of the artist are wrapped in this illusion, for so many countless working hours, as she contemplates the reproduction, which is to say, that which does not exist. However, 136
of
reproductions,
modern
image-making
to ourselves only through the sadly
Everything that exists is in some sense
inadequate perceptions of our eyes. We
an illusion. Her painful task of making
are imprisoned within our bodies, and
meaning where none exists is like our
all images appear to us from without,
existence in this world, created stitch by
and the work of interpreting what we
stitch.
see is painful, slow, and personal, like that which Cata’s mother did in her embroidered piece. We can none of us
Images of previous works from photographs of graffiti
truly know what it is we are looking at.
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RECOMMENDED exhibition
YO, PRIMATE at
BORDER ZACATECAS 43. cOL rOMA MEXICO D.F
21.03.12 - 25.04.12
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Rodrigo Imaz Chango, 2010
The Project I, Primate is born from the proposal of various artists –coming from different cities and contexts- that reflect, from the figure of the monkey, upon situations and attitudes relative to the human being. The pieces for this exhibit work as a kind of projection of human features onto different species of monkeys, which have to do with a great variety of references, cultural, scientific, religious, historic and popular. The ape (1), or monkey, has always been directly related to man, since they both share an evolutionary past as hominids. This symbolic charge is linked to positive and negative connotations. It is in some cases related to the instinctive, impulsive, primitive and natural part of a human, which itself alludes to a sense of liberty. Other times the representation of the monkey is associated to a lack of intelligence and manners, in other words, the supposed antithesis to a human being, who is hairless, straight, modern, educated and evolved.
Featured Artists: Omar Arcega, Raúl Cerrillo, Sofía Echeverri, Alejandra España, Rodrigo Imaz, Emilio Rangel, Gabriela Rodríguez, Juan Antonio Sánchez- Rull, Saúl Sánchez Curator: Catalina Restrepo Leongómez
As a part of this investigation, a video is shown, that compiles different clips from youtube, related to the behavior of both species, although this time from the perspective of popular culture and media.
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Alejandra Espa単a, El transcurso de la vida, 2006
1 Ape is a common term, without a taxonomical equivalent, which is used to name a wide group of ape-like primates. Ape and monkey are originally Spanish synonyms, although there is a tendency to separate their meanings in English.1.
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SaĂl SĂĄnchez What is paintig?, 2011
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SofĂa Echeverri, Serie Saturninos, 2012
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RaĂşl Cerrillo Cheesewiz, 2010 Flor de loto, 2010
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Alejandra EspaĂąa Changuilocuente, 2007 Emilio Rangel Serie: ChimpancĂŠ fisicoculturista, gay, metrosexual, 2007
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Omar Arcega HomĂdidos, 2009
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Gabriela RodrĂguez Historia Natural, 2011
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Juan Antonio Sรกnchez-Rull Casa Darwin, 2009 155
Living Art Room
Success Stories
Initiatives, projects, publications, spaces, galleries and projects that inspire us to move forward - by Catalina Restrepo Leongómez
Centro Cultural Border (México) border.com.mx Founder: Eugenio Echeverría
EXIT (España) exitmedia.net Director: Rosa Olivares
It started in a small place located in La Roma neighborhood in Mexico City some years ago and is now considered a very important space for artists from different areas, including: Street art, electronic art, animation and video, among others. A main aspect of BORDER is its workshops, which complement very effectively the aim to promote artists who are selected for its active program of exhibitions.
It is one of the most important publications of contemporary photography in the world. Each issue develops a particular subject and presents research of great interest. For the quality of its articles and published photographers, EXIT is not only a conventional magazine but a current theoretical and visual reference for everyone today.
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Esfera Pública (Colombia) esferapublica.org Founder: Jaime Iregui What has made this website for criticism of contemporary art is unprecedented. Thanks to it has been promoted in the public the interest to stay informed, to think and question intelligently about everything related to the artistic creation today with the use of discourses related to the critical point of view of artists in relation to social, political and cultural context surrounding them.
Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo MUAC www.muac.unam.mx Director: Graciela de la Torre In its few years of life this area has achieved unprecedented quality standard in the context of museum management in Latin America. The quality of its exhibitions of contemporary art is indisputable, and reflects the tradition of cultural diffusion of the UNAM. The MUAC has facilities unrivaled in the country, and also has an auditorium, an area of Experimental Sound, Library and area for high quality educational activities.
Arteria (Colombia) periodicoarteria.com Founder: Nelly Peñaranda
Other links
This is an initiative that came to fill a very obvious need of specialized community and interested in contemporary art in Bogota, Colombia. Thanks to its content ranges from information about upcoming openings, until very complete articles that invite to make a serious reflection on contemporary art, Arteria has made the general public interested in these issues.
. www.ccromacondesa.mx .www.fotologia.org . www.art21.org . vernissage.tv . universes-in-universe.org . www.casasriegner.com . www.kioskogaleria.com 157
Living Art Room
Success Stories OMR Gallery Founders: Patricia Ortiz Monasterio y Jaime Riestra www.galeriaomr.com Zona MACO zonamaco.com Founder: Zélika García It is certainly the most important contemporary art fair in Latin America. Its evolution has been remarkable over their past versions and has achieved worldwide recognition. Zona MACO has established a quality standard so high, that exceed by a quite a lot other similar initiatives.
It is one of Mexico’s most important galleries. It is worthy of admiration its exhibition program and the quality of its artists. Over the years the OMR has distinguished itself by taking risks and supporting projects that do not necessarily have the ultimate purpose of economic gain, but have opted for experimentation. His alternative space, called “52”, has achieved great recognition in the short time since it opened its doors, and is very clear evidence of this vision.
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Galería Nueveochenta Director: Carlos Hurtado www.nueveochenta.com Being a relatively young Colombian gallery, it has managed to position a large number of Colombian artists abroad. Its management has set an example in this country, the professionalism in the operation of a gallery, a commitment to their collectors and support of their artists beyond a commercial context, creating links with major institutional spaces such as museums, biennials and festivals.
NoMínimo Espacio Cultural Founders Eliana Hidalgo y Pilar Estrada www.no-minimo.com It is a space in the Guayaquil city, Ecuador, which has been centralized contemporary artists and has taken the important job of educating and sensitizing the public over everything that involves artistic creation today. 159
Galería Nueveochenta Founder: Luis Aristizábal w.la-galeria.com.co Probably what best distinguishes this gallery is the vision of its founder, Luis Aristizabal, who has been able to select artists of unquestionable quality that today are undoubtedly the exponents of contemporary Colombian art worldwide. The gallery is an example of dedication and teamwork, as artists and director collaborate in great complicity and professionalism.
. agenciaenartes.com . neter.com.mx . www.videodumbo.org . plataformabogota.org . www.lasillavacia.com . boladenieve.org.ar . vernissage.tv . www.museoamparo.com . somamexico.org . www.r-a-t.com.mx . www.replica21.com . www.pintomiraya.com
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LE DERNIER CRI By Carlos Pérez Bucio
INTERVIEW WITH PAKITO BOLINO AND MARIE-PIERRE BRUNEL, ABOUT THE EXHIBITION EL ÚLTIMO GRITO, FROM THE FRENCH ART COLLECTIVE LE DERNIER CRI, IN VÉRTIGO GALERÍA.
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S
ome years ago, a friend of mine, a plastic arts professor, introduced me to Le dernier cri, a French collective of drawers and illustrators with a mission to populate the world with visceral, sexual, meat and homicidal images. Besides silk screen prints and limited edition books at affordable prices, they create animated pictures that luckily remind us there is life beyond Pixar. Everything is made with the highest quality standards, from the trenches of selfmanagement. I went to meet him on his latest visit to Mexico. Thanks to Clarisa Moura’s (director of VÊrtigo Magazine) intervention, I was able to talk to Pakito Bolino, high priest of Le dernier cri and his partner, draftswoman Marie-Pierre Brunel
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Pakito: I studied Fine Arts in the province and, as many others, went to Paris in the mid 80’s seeking to work as Pakito Bolino: Because of Jorge Alderete, an illustrator and to publish my comic who took a peek on my workshop two books. It was a time when the editorial years ago, when I had an exhibition in world was facing a decline, many comic Aix-en Provence, on a graphic novel books and graphic novels ceased to exist festival. He came to check out Le dernier and the big editorial houses stopped cri’s work, saw the walls covered with investing. Many authors got organized, images, the books, and he told me: “as created self-publishing associations and soon as we open a new space, we´ll make structures; Le dernier cri was one of an exhibit”. Then, the idea was for Vertigo’s them. It was the first time since the 70’s inaugural exhibition to be ours, but it was that authors got organized, edited their postponed, and now we are finally here, on own work as well as other artists’, since the second anniversary of the gallery, and there wasn’t any support for these types of we are quite happy. work. Carlos: Were you surprised to have Carlos: Le dernier cri has always been self so many followers and raise so much sustained, which means you´ve always had enthusiasm in Mexico with Le dernier cri? total freedom. Have you ever applied for any public subventions? Pakito: I believe, from a graphic point of view, there are many similarities Pakito: .: Yes, we have applied many times between Le dernier cri and Mexican art, for specific projects, such as our animated in intention, content, color. Many of the films. For the most recent, which was two collective’s artists have Mexican popular hours long, we asked support from the art influences, so I’m not that surprised PACA region (Provence-Alpes-Cote d’Azur) that our work is appreciated here. but didn’t got it, I think because of the fact that our work does not fit in a single Carlos: Le dernier cri has been working hard for 18 years now. In what context was category. It seems a bit comfortable for the deciding party to say that our work “is it born? Carlos Pérez Bucio: How did this exhibit came about?
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idea from the start was to assemble a silk screen printing workshop, since it is a technique that allows for high-quality small number printings and, at the same time, for artists to get directly involved in the project. Carlos: And right in time for this event, El Último GRITO!, únicamente la infección has just been published, a compilation of images made specifically by artists celebrating Le dernier cri’s visit to not graphic novel, not art brut, nor art, not Mexico. Apart from correctly digesting illustration; it is a little bit of everything”, popular Mexican imagery, the book has and well, it is all that at once. I think art certain nods towards the reality of the should be that way, but these people have country today, the moment of violence. to classify it because there is not a whole Did the information about the cartels, lot of budget for this or that projects. Also, murders, etc. had any influence on you at we got a modest support from the city of all? Marseille, which we used to rent a premise, an old factory named La Friche, which Pakito: Actually the only information we was rehabilitated as an art centre with get from Mexico from a year back is about workshops for artists, that kind of stuff. the drug cartels wars, we get warnings Fortunately, this support has allowed us about going to certain cities because it’s to punctually pay the rent for many years dangerous. But farther along, for example, although, since it is a modest subvention, are Fredox’s images; he works with it doesn’t help much in developing new clippings from popular newspapers such projects. as Alarma! He has come to Mexico many times and knows all about it, but we also Back to the self-sustaining subject, my like to play with stereotypes. 164
Carlos: Politically, I place Le dernier cri among those who oppose globalization. There’s a sequence in the film Les religions sauvages where an American dollar passes off as a penis…
veterans, which may be a reflection of the multicultural mosaic of today’s France.
Pakito: Yes, but unfortunately there are not as many Arabian drawers as we would like (laughs). We have people from Finland, Japan, but the most common Pakito: Sure, the globalization of money, are foreign artists who work from their of financial markets that control the life countries. They have this do it yourself of the people is a stupid thing. However, globalization as we do it, meetings among motivation. Like the case of Ichiba artists and editors from different countries, Daisuke, from Japan, who has self edited his work for the last fifteen years. I found is something that should exist on a his books before I knew him. If he had broader scale, it’s the positive side of that phenomenon. It’s a good thing that people not made his books probably no one meet, work together, create cultural bonds would know him. Most of the involved edit themselves, which creates links: first and find connections, since all countries through books, then through animated of the world have a thing in common: films and the possibility of accepting art. You just need to take a glimpse into resident artists in our workshop to work on history, check out some of the primitive impression. And there are the exhibitions, arts. We visited the pyramids yesterday. of course. In my travels, I always look for I saw sculptures of certain gods which reminded me of Asian art, and even some new authors that could be published in aspects of ancient European sculptures. It’s Le dernier cri. I think that, in the future, like carnivals, so deeply-rooted in popular we could return to Mexico with a more culture around the globe: there are carnival ambitious project. costumes in Switzerland which resemble those of La diablada, in Bolivia. That’s why Carlos: Speaking of Young artists, we have Marie Pierre here. Mary, how did you I try, be it on drawing or design, to find approached LDC? all of these links and show that there is the same essence, life, even when we draw María: When I finished art school I found skeletons. Skeletons are life! myself a little bit isolated. I started looking for a collective for young drawers, like LDC, Carlos: In LDC, we find artists that to have a wider exposure; when you are on come from different places with different the underground, it is very difficult to find trajectories: there are youngsters and 165
an editor. Collectives like Le dernier cri are an opportunity for young artists to show their work and publish monographic books. That motivates us to keep on working. Carlos: I’m very happy to know that in France there are not only artists like Boltanski, Messager, Sophie Calle. Le dernier cri may be one of the best things to happen in the history of images, probably since the time of… “Picasso!”, (claims Bolino laughing)
novels we could find for a few coins in newspaper kiosks. As you can see, it is not the same notion of “unique piece”, but a notion of spreading our work in the widest, cheapest way, to reach the largest number of people and have a real braininfection effect on the masses, but doing so with intelligence.
Contemporary art is elitist; you require certain codes to be accepted in it, while our images are accessible to anyone. If you give one of our books to a guy in the street Pakito: I agree. The problem with the who reads Alarma!, he will get it instantly art market is that we are talking about a for sure. He will even laugh, because it is global market. The art market is galleries that bloat the artist’s prestige, a few elected perfectly able to find the parody side of whose careers are under the gallery owner’s the matter, as in Fredox’s images. Now, the same thing in a 2 meter wide format in shadows. It has always been like that, and a gallery would not have the same effect today is worse. For example, every day or price. As a matter of fact, there is no the number of galleries that take risks gallery in the world that would allow with new artists is reduced. They are not something like that in their walls because worried of establishing a real line, such then the system would be at risk, since as happened in the 1950s and 1960s. It is the objectives are not similar. What ones tougher every day. understand for spreading is not the same, even when we also are willing to make Contemporary art is a completely some money selling our work. incestuous medium; you finish art school, a good student, accumulate residencies around the world, while we inflate your prestige. That is how artists are bloated. Carlos: I have a friend in the art We, for a change, are artists who first of underworld who claims that a piece can all have the will to show our work through be any thing, but the artist has to be very accessible prices because we come handsome. from the book culture, from the graphic 166
Pakito: Well, McCarty is interesting when covered in shit and ketchup. Carlos: Finally, I would like to ask you: what does a young artist needs to do to identify with LDC, to get close to you? Pakito: He just needs to visit www. lederniercri.org and send us images of his work. That’s how I got to edit Sekitani, another Japanese artist. He first sent me an image. I asked him for more and he sent me his work from the previous two years, which nobody in his country would publish. That’s how he became a collaborator. We keep all the contact information from artists who get in touch with us, and get new images when we publish announcements for new projects. The Mexico special will include a 10% of artists that I don’t personally know. Carlos: As far as the immediate, what will your next project be about? Pakito: A compilation of drawings made by Mexican-american prisoners. In U.S. jails, chicanos make drawings on napkins to send to their families, who then sell them. Their aesthetics are related to that of tattoos. There’s a guy who recovered more than a hundred of these drawings, and will make an exhibition about it, while we take care of the catalog. That is true popular art: prison art
for more information:
Le Dernier Cri
www.lederniercri.org 167
continued from page 71 Versión 1.0
The first Bogota Venice Biennale was born in a very particular moment of Bogota’s art, where discourses and contemporary art spaces were wearing out, reiterative in their limitations, over-politicized and somewhat distant.The initial idea was to move art from the convenient and official spaces to other less common ones, to recruit new audiences and suggest a twist in the process of every artist, confronting it with a specific context by having to relate its work with the new 168
neighborhood. This dialogue between artists of different platforms generated a Sarcasm and paradox, a consequence of the kind of camaraderie and team work around mimetic reflection expressed from the start this relational art practice that, with time, by the Biennale with its Italian counterpart, would become one of the main qualities of became effective publicity hooks that the Biennale. massively turned the media onto the event. The impact was such that, although many During the event, the artists rewarded the personalities of the art world were not population’s support through conferences, present, they were indeed paying attention workshops and guided visits, which took to the development thanks to articles and place freely in the BVB facilities during the magazines that, from different angles, event. These activities were generally aimed to children, adolescents and elders of the constantly registered all that happened. locality. The BVB invited artists living in the locality to show their work in these spaces since, for obvious reasons, it was them who could go closer and more precisely to the reality of the space, having lived in it for years. The remaining artists, some of them summoned, some invited by the organizers, permitted the coexistence of different views and different ways to approach the spectators that would read it afterwards.
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Versi贸n 2.0
Under the same general parameters, the second BVB developed in the same space, Venice Neighborhood Community Hall. This time the artists, most of them widely known in the national art world, proposed to appropriate the urban spaces. This way, a high percentage of the works were showed in parks, stores, houses and all kinds of alternate spaces far from the community hall, where the pieces were first showed using the typical habits of a gallery. 170
The media interest in the Biennale was justified thanks to the quality of the participants and the recursion of the proposals. Local artist’s work was contrasted by that of renowned artists. This feature forced the Biennale to discuss a way to classify this works and processes, something that would come into fruition later, with the implementation of a Local Hall, which would serve as a prelude to the participation of local artists. Unlike the first edition, where participation itself was considered a prize, the second edition prized five pieces by popular demand, thanks to voting ballots placed at the hall’s entrance. This time, IDCT(2) and
The Biennale was set out, in the beginning, as something eventual that took a processional character and demanded continuity in time. The artists and the art circle, with a growing interest, were already talking about a third edition. The event grew and so did the troubles since, because of the event’s growing dimension, the initial support was becoming insufficient. Because of this, and from this moment, resource management became one of the main points in the BVB’s schedule.
other entities supported the BVB. That way, different companies started to show interest in the event, and would subsequently support it. Local commerce was equally interested and thanks to it we not only got its support, but earned the community’s trust on the Biennale. 171
The memory project, 2011
Versi贸n 3.0
Our focus changed on the third edition. Media positioning was not as important as the approach that could be made to the Venice Neighborhood inhabitants. The number of local artists grew, compared to the previous Biennales. In order to achieve this, we contacted artists associations, informal and independent artist organizations in order to gather them, explain them the project and invite them to take part. The result was very interesting and the event was 172
gaining popularity in the context that gave it able to give a special recognition to the birth, gradually assuring its place in Bogota’s winner of this edition, a round-trip ticket to Venice, Italy. The circle was completed plastic art scene. that way, and the artist was able to visit the Artists were still interested in the urban space. context of the Italian Biennale and draw Some of the projects were about interesting its own conclusions by creating in Rome modifications made to the neighborhood the same piece he made in Bogota’s Venice and new channels of communication, while neighborhood, after enjoying his visit to Italy. others made commentaries about violence in the less favored sectors, or enunciated The media was so interested on these proposals about the diverse paradigms of particular dynamics that the Biennale’s contemporary art. The result was interesting presence in magazines and newspapers did too, but the proposals differed in quality due to not decreased. On the contrary, it drew the the disparity in the performers’ background, attention of the international media, critics, and the lack of a clear methodology for curators and artists. The recent interest in this the presentation and execution of artistic atypical process was what took the Biennale projects, not only for such an event as the as a study case for various academic events, Biennale, but for any Art Room. For that locally and internationally. reason, it was decided to follow a curatorial line or a horizon of sense, and to invite a group of consultants and external advisors who would optimize this processes.
Thanks to an official link with the Istituto Italiano di Cultura, a cultural institution dependant of the Italian Embassy, we were 173
Versión 4.0
The Biennale’s high visibility at this point generated a series of particular reactions. A great number of the summoned artists pretended to take part in the event without a previous approach to the neighborhood, something that is marked in the official announcement. Other artists presented works that involved public spaces and certain communities that apparently rhymed with the BVB’s spirit, without the least interest on approaching the neighborhood.
Some local artists demanded their inclusion just for living in the same neighborhood, suggesting that the pre-selection (necessary in any event of this kind) was a form of discrimination. The loan of the space, gently ceded before, was negated for this edition, since the event’s visibility was taken by some people as a financial aptitude, something way far from reality. In fact, the Council for Communal Action (3) charged an impossible to pay rent, so it was necessary to
174
rent an empty commercial place to realize the event. This presented us with many logistical inconveniences and a certain trouble with artists and organizers, which fortunately were solved afterwards. Thanks to the inclusion of the Biennale in the Nexo Project of the Andrés Bello Agreement, we were invited to an academic event in the Pirelli Room for Young Art in Caracas, in 2000. We took advantage of this visit to invite Venezuela as a Guest of Honor in the Biennale. Thus, the BVB became an international event with a wider range, and the possibility to present new perspectives that could enrich the initial process and promote links with important international cultural entities. One of them, the Italian Embassy, reaffirmed its support and offered a gallery in the Istituto Italiano di Cultura as an alternate space for the BVB, allowing it to get closer to different communities and audiences in Bogota. This time, and to allow all artists to participate in the “same terms”, a theme for a curatorial line was established: Art & Gastronomy,
that with the motto: “Because not everything enters through the eyes”, set out an interesting discussion from a concept that, seen from different angles and articulated in the specific context of the Venice Neighborhood,provided the artist with interesting tools to propose a solid project, objectual or processal. This way the artists, from any origin or background, had to carry out the specific theme, make a proposal from the neighborhood as territory and articulate it with its process, techniques and particular interests to officially take part in the Biennale. The experiment was successful and the pieces were a lot clearer and stronger. The public space was used in an effective way and some local artists got into artistic events such as the Biennale, unlike other official processes that did not cared about the work’s relevance within its context, but turned into simple samples arranged in a communal space, which only coincidence was the creators’ common geographical sector.
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Versi贸n 5.0
The Biennale was again invited to an In Madrid, Spain was officially invited as the
academic event, the discussion tables in the Guest of Honor for the 5th edition in 2003.
ARCO Contemporary Art Fair, in Madrid, This time, the theme was America 3 for 1, 2002, where it raised a lot of interest pay 1 get 3, referring to the utopia of the
because of the number of versions, the union of America in a sole sovereign state, sustaining of the initial theme and its ability and to the immigration phenomena that hit
to accommodate to the new conditions of Spain and other Latin American countries
the medium, as well as the plastic avatars in around that period. It also referred to the Latin America.
Colombian exodus caused by the violence,
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and the informal selling strategy used in the This version had the support of the Spanish
Venice Neighborhood streets, where sellers Embassy and the Spanish Agency of International Cooperation for the planning
usually yell: “pay 1, get 3!�
With the intention of continuing with the process qualification program, the Biennale implemented the creation of the first Local
Room of Venice, which became, since that
moment, a prelude to the BVB. There, local (4)
artists planned the realization of different
works under the same parameters as those
of the Biennale. They were exhibited in the local Library El Tunal, a beautiful space that
allowed the works to be appreciated by a large
audience, mostly made up of local students. Thanks to the Local Room, the Biennale got meticulously close to the processes of
and development of these processes. The
Embassy granted the Biennale’s Prize, which consisted of two round trip tickets
to Madrid, in order for the winner to visit
museums and cultural centers where they could share their experiences and serve as
Ambassadors for the BVB. Sadly, two of
the winners did not return to Colombia. After officially thanking for the support, the Biennale made clear to the Embassy that the winners traveled with the commitment
to return. Since then, the BVB decided to cancel all travel prizes.
the local artists, took care of their execution
and created links with previous participants
such as artists, investigators and managers, to achieve the tuning sought for since past editions.
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Versión 6.0
This time, the Guest of Honor was the United Kingdom (Wales, specifically), with the
central theme Exclusion/Inclusion, attending
to the latest activities of the Biennale and its work group TAI/The Art Incubator
(5),
which was invited to Liverpool to transcribe the BVB’s exercise in Kensington, an area of
the city with features similar to those of the Venice Neighborhood in Bogota.
The basic intention was around planning
strategies, solutions or designations that 178
took on concepts like exclusion/inclusion with the context. They also presented some of as an articulating tool for the minorities to their work, and talked about their processes new contexts, as a coexisting strategy or just in public libraries such as El Tunal and El
as a knowledge and experience interchange Tintal from the Biblored network, and in the that could qualify tolerance, communitarian Arts Faculty of the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana de Bogota.
welfare and team work in some way.
In this edition, the Biennale took place in A great amount of public attended this
a neighborhood mall. There were exhibited 6th edition of the BVB, thanks to the references of works that appropriated the decision of using the local mall as the main
neighborhood’s public spaces, and also some venue. Many people, especially during the
private ones, which some citizens of Venice weekend, attended the exhibits and were
kindly lend. The works were mostly exhibited an active part of the Biennale. It is planned
in the neighborhood, coexisting with to keep a permanent presence in this space houses, streets and people. Some also used or in a similar one, since this will allow to
closed circuit TV, the “video jukeboxes�(6) in continue with the already started process convenience stores, and the public TVs in and to reinforce the relationship with the community.
the mall.
British guest artists were Alice Forward Despite the great decisions, the need for a and Michael Cousin, who were in the specialized group for each of the areas was
neighborhood for some weeks creating evidenced, as well as the reinforcement of works based on their experiences, their the volunteers and local leadership. particular searches and their relationship
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Versi贸n 6.5
In this version, we made a stop in the way to reread ourselves and redesign new strategies for the optimization and sustainability of the BVB. A group of people got associated and started the Visiva Foundation, an institution that gave legal life to the event and that today allows the linking of proposals generated towards the Biennale. The chronological walk through the BVB allowed us to see some of the interventions 180
that had taken place in the neighborhood, and the didactic activities that had occurred alongside these projects. In the same manner, it allowed us to take back effective strategies and review our mission, vision, mandates and local dynamics, national or international, for its improvement. On two separate platforms, the Colombian National Artists’ Hall, and ARTBO, the International Bogota Art Fair, the Biennale’s fourteen year labor was visualized, and an invitation was made for the public to bring their documents, registers and experiences in order to widen and optimize the archives and register the memories, which would serve as reference for students of today and tomorrow. 181
Versión 7.0
For 15 years, the BVB has established alternate and emergency dynamics against the usual paradigms in the work-space-audience system, simultaneous to the development of contemporary artistic practices in Bogota and the rest of the country. This time, upon turning 15 years old, the Biennale turned to a usual social practice in Latin America: the quince años (15 years) party. This celebration would serve as a
metaphor to couple a series of imaginaries, dynamics and contents that would allow us to have a transversal look, not only of the neighborhood and the art that’s being made in the city, but of ourselves. In this version, artists and collectives generated co-construction synergies and dynamics between a contemporary art exhibit and a traditional birthday party; 15 teenagers from the Venice neighborhood and its surroundings 182
were gathered, teenagers whose birthday was the same day as the Biennale. The proposals were inspired and derived from the typical protocols for organizing these traditional events, such as a serenade, the changing of shoes (or the Mexican doll), the waltz, etc. Given the mappings of these kinds of celebrations in Latin America, Mexico’s been present in the hybridization of different cultures, beliefs and social customs that let us see its multiple origins. For this and other reasons, it was decided that Mexico would be the Guest of Honor in the 2010 edition. That is why the curatorial theme for this edition was the quince años celebration, a common practice in Latin American societies. Thanks to this process, the BVB was invited to Oaxaca, Mexico, to take part in the 2010 Humanitas Festival, organized by the Government of the State of Oaxaca, and to make an artistic residency in an alternative space called La Curtiduría (7) . An interesting
Villegas, the coordinator- took place; they were able to articulate the work of these artists towards the 15 year celebration of young Ana Yazmín Lázaro Silva, resident of the Jalatlaco neighborhood, in a record time. The starting point of this practice was the search and visualization of common areas between both cultures by celebrating a party that represents the symbolic step from girl to woman, and the presentation in society of the young woman who will soon get involved in different social dynamics. This was also a metaphor for the Biennale. After 15 years of reinventing and redirecting ourselves, and assuming new practice dynamics that refer to our past, the BVB registered and documented our present and projected us into the future, a complex one maybe, but full of possibilities.
experience with a group of artists –led by Demián Flores, the director and Mónica
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Towards the 8.0 Edition
Although some key words proposed in the 7th edition for the future development of the 8.0 BVB (habits, mode and fashion), the emergence of artistic collectives against “official production”, the need of interpretation processes for contemporary artistic practices and the reviewing of the “Biennale” format as a hegemonic scenery, have included different reflections in the landscape. A special interest in artistic residencies will also be dealt with, especially its boom as an extension of academic formation, settling as growth and specialization spaces for emerging and established artists. Another interesting theme is the inclusion of private companies in artistic practices, wrongly called “independent” (since we always depend of something or someone), and their positive or negative influence in finished cultural products. Among different conditions that may give birth to a new Biennale is the also clear influence of social networks in co-curatorships, where the spectators become active agents with voice and vote. On the other hand, there is a need to implement 184
pedagogic and information-formation processes, optimized and continuous, with official, legal and commercial participation from public, private and informal entities from the sector. *** This edition is in construction at the date of publication of this document.
Alternate activities to the BVB To unite communities through arts
(Bogota-Liverpool)
In October 2004, thanks to the kind invitation of Metal Culture, an important cultural institution in London, TAI/The Art Incubator, the support group of the BVB, was taken to the Liverpool, in the UK. An articulating process took place with local communities through art, something quite similar to what took place in the Venice Neighborhood. The general process included a series of projects proposed independently but related at the same time. The mission was to create a kit for pedagogic activities that may be taken to different contexts and audiences to enrich and continue with this adaptation and nomadic strategy, with the objective of implementing this process to any town in Bogota, the country, or even the rest of the world. The basic intention of this activity is to propose and execute a series of artistic practices in a particular place with a determined group of people, in order to create links, optimize processes, get communities closer, raise tolerance and promote teamwork, all through art. 185
The Venice Museum
(First Neighborhood Museum in Bogota) The Venice Museum of Bogota, planned as a neighborhood museum, seeks to establish itself as an open, dynamic, inclusive and versatile space. Through visual arts in their most open manifestations, we search for a perfect scenario where communities of a particular territory get involved in such dynamics, and to generate a space where their imaginaries are visualized, registered, developed, shared and well kept. For 17 years, the BVB has used a great share of its efforts and resources to find the right spot, with the necessary museographic features to carry out the BVB and other cultural events of the neighborhood. Right now, our big objective is to establish a place to make our activities and reaffirm our processes, so that our links to the community do not weaken. Likely, this space should turn into the perfect arena to replicate some of the more than 150 didactic activities that have taken place throughout the BVB’s 17 year history. Local leaders will also be trained for these initiatives to be applied from their particular interests at the right time. A database will be made including artists, managers, leaders and audiences to generate a usable and constantly updated micro system. In 2009, thanks to the cooperative work established between the Design and Architecture Faculty of the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana de Bogota and the VISIVA Foundation, Manager of the BVB, a forward thinking project named 186
The Venicen Ephemeral Museum was developed which, acting at the same time as a metaphor and multipurpose artifact, was generated thanks to the following parameters: -From the different materials in the area, which generate a harvesting cartography to locate the available materials and evaluate its possible use according to closeness, comfort, quantity and aesthetical criteria. -The museum is designed in real time from individual contributions in a think tank, knowing the place, analyzing the peculiarities of the environment and knowing the materials and their possible couplings. It is collectively built after learning all the base criteria while, through different agreements, decisions are made, fulfilling the needs and interests established as the project’s requirements. -To break with the design from the desk schemes, since it does not allow in situ changes. -We seek to link the community with the creation of the museum. Starting with the neighbors who donated materials, there were also workshops in surrounding schools to help co-design the museum, entwining the community to take part in the conceptual and formal construction.
For more details: http://a57arquitecturaencolombia.blogspot.com/2009/09/el-proyecto-requeria-una-inteligencia.html 187
Art to the south
(Our center is the south) In cities the size of Bogota and other great Latin American capitals, unplanned and overwhelming growth is a reality. Strategies previously planned to cover the needs of the population fall short not only in economical and mobility terms, but in recreation and culture. Cultural scenarios are usually developed around historical or administrative downtowns, but not everyone has access to them. Even a large part of the population is unaware of the existence of these scenarios, and of the fact that they can make use of them and get involved in their dynamics. Bogota suffers from this problem in both south and north extremes, since its cultural scenarios are placed close to the center and in the near north. It is important to say that the west does not have important cultural places either, apart from the Teatro Mayor Julio Mario Santodomingo and the Museo de Arte Contemporรกneo del Minuto de Dios. Thanks to the optimization of curricular projects from the whole city, students from the south can now have quality education in colleges that owe nothing to private ones. This process of optimization in education is part of a broader project of the Township of Bogota. Today, graduates seek career options different than the usual, and are getting interested in human sciences and arts, health science, economy and law. However, it is essential to give these students places where they can work their artistic abilities in depth and scenarios for their possible development, just as there are for other areas of knowledge. In other words, we have to generate spaces for the development of creativity south of Bogota City. 188
From basic inputs from the Kennedy seat in the Bogota Commerce Chamber (8), we will make a series of conferences, talks, workshops and work tables with visual artists from the south of the city, professionals or not. The mapping of local talents, achieved with support from previous administrations’ local Townships and their Departments of Culture, will allow us to capture a series of potential partners to create a system that can announce, classify, optimize, and put the talents from the south into circulation and insertion. Results from this process will not necessarily be visualized through traditional exhibitions, although the goal is to make a professional following of the artists and their processes. The final objective is to give them a visibility space in the seat and surrounding spaces, and of course, the Bogota International Art Fair, ArtBo (9) . The view of the BVB implies strengthening local cultural projects that are already in process, and to set the conditions to apply a series of communitarian cultural centers in Venice and other places. This has the objective of turning the participation dynamic into a common thing for local artists and new audiences, articulating them with day to day activities and the local cultural offer. We also want to get closer to their entertainment and information interests, or simply to set out active links to the community from different perspectives. We dream that, in the next few years, The Bogota’s Venice Biennale will have a place of its own and an optimized work team, for it to turn into a favorite space for artists and cultural managers to form; these people will be in charge of promotion, press and sustainability for the BVB and other high caliber cultural events in a very near future. 189
Sites:
E-mails:
www.bienal-venecia-bogota.blogspot.com www.fundacionvisiva.org
bienalveneciabogota@gmail.com contacto@fundacionvisiva.org franklin.aguirre@hotmail.com
Footnotes: 1 Bogotá City is administratively divided in 20 localities. One of them is Tunjuelito, where the Venice Neighborhood is located. 2 District Institute for Culture and Tourism. Around that time, it was the entity in charge of formulating public policies towards plastic arts on a district level. Today this entity is called the Department of Culture of Bogotá, while the one in charge of arts is called IDARTES. 3 The Community Action Committee is an organism created in 1958 to draw the communities close to the central level of the District Administration.
4 Local artist refers to those who live in Tunjuelito. 5 The TÄI/The Art Incubator Group is a multipurpose artistic lab that gathers all the volunteers for the BVB. This group is generally constituted by students of art, design, architecture and other related disciplines. 6 Videojukeboxes are jukeboxes with a screen for videos, adapted as an exhibition device. 7 La Curtiduría (Oaxaca, México). It is an independent and self-managed space founded in 2006 by artist Demián Flores, whose purpose is to open a center for dialogue, interchange and contemporary artistic production in Oaxaca. 190
8 The Bogotá Chamber of Commerce is a private, non-profit organization in charge of managing the commercial registers of companies and societies created in Bogotá, and thus represents the interests of the businesses and society in general. 9 Bogotá International Art Fair. Planned and directed by the Bogotá Chamber of Commerce it has consolidated, after seven editions, as the main commercial showcase for the strengthening of cultural industries in Bogotá and artistic interchange in Latin America. It takes place every October in the Corferias fair compound.
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A dark new day:
Present and future of the music industry by Daniel Vega
The CD was the protagonist of music’s last great boom. Numerous bands were able to sell millions of records in this format. Ultra commercialized artists like Michael Jackson, Madonna and Led Zeppelin, whose greatest hits hypnotically spin on dead nostalgia radio stations, sold more copies of their music in CD than in any other format, even years after their peak. I’ve been buying music since I was eight years old. In junior high I bought at least one record every Friday; after school I would
of CD burners was around, and we were surprised to get a CD for one fourth of its commercial price. Slowly but surely, copies of every kind started to gain territory to the original CDs distributed by the record companies.The disease spread in little time and doctors had no idea what was going on. I remember those ridicule copy protected discs that included personalized players to avoid the scattering of copies on people’s PCs: band aids for gangrened arms. I don’t know if they still exist, because I’ve not bought a CD in years.
<<Slowly but surely, copies of every kind started to gain territory to the original CDs>> get lost for hours looking at covers, listening to albums, looking for songs. It was around that strange year of 1998, when the rumor
The minds that control the music industry have always been some of the most perverse and ridiculous, something that time has only accentuated. From Coronel Parker squeezing King Elvis like a juice to his last consequences; going through David Geffen,
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President of Geffen Records, who sued Neil Young, artist of his own company, for doing “music uncharacteristic of Neil Young” (???); reaching the limits of the ridicule with Warner Brothers, who, because of a management mistake, technically paid twice for Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. These are evidences of what the artist may turn to in this business, a tool, a monolith that will draw the masses, who will give them some of their money as worship through records, concert tickets and souvenirs. Many people like to blame the fall of the industry to the digital download sites that started to show their little heads towards the end of the 20th century. From Napster, Limewire and Soulseek, until we discovered the simplicity of Megaupload and its proud heir, Mediafire, who at least have supplied me of more albums than my dad’s allowance ever did. But the seed of the problem was present from the start. Of course, this has generated heated
debates about the legality of downloading music. There are mixed opinions among the artists; some of them see downloading as an aberration, while others consider it as another way to make themselves known to the public. The issue is more regulated in countries like the U.S., but the dilemma is still in its moral stages in Mexico. I know very little persons that still get their music on original
Neil Young, considered the second most important songwriter only behind Bob Dylan, was sued by his own record company for not mantaining a creative line in his albums. 193
still interested in discovering new music, despite of the natural adaptations of the listening ritual. This relationship between music executives, who usually give little importance to creative processes or
artistic ideologies and artists, have always been a weird one. Record companies have to look for the best way to increase sales. Records themselves are already expensive. Then comes the confrontation with these real artists who propose something new and different and do it coherently; those who come from little independent companies, where their creativities live freely, who many times bluntly crash with the comproCDs. The most common ways are unofficial downloads or unoriginal CDs with complete mises they acquire when signing with big discographies. Yes, it is not the same experi- transnationals. Many have rapidly lost to this reality shock, going from being a little ence and music enters our brain in a different way, different than when we used to get known but well respected to being projected into the mainstream, with the inherent loss home, play the disc and read the lyrics. But in the end, the important issue is that weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re of seriousness in the eyes of their original
Alt-country band Wilco was fired from Reprise Records because their album, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, was considered unreleasable.
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followers. Yes, surely their music will reach a broader audience, but it will probably do so by being contaminated by some of the producer’s formulas, different production techniques designed to compete and be successfully mixed with the current trends in music. And so, all of that will die some not very far away (dark?) day. The infection is in place, it’s only a matter of time. Some transnationals have already succumbed to the impossible modifications they never accepted. Upon trying to keep functioning in this new reality as they did twenty years ago, old models have become unusable. Sometimes it’s simple greed, but there are other factors such as the uneasy transition into new formats, mainly because of the lack of a unanimous and prevailing way of selling music. Recent platforms as Myspace gave the industry a much needed rush of air, especially to independent bands that, through this website, made themselves known to the world without the need of a contract. The site allowed users to create a personalized
profile that could include recordings, videos, tour dates, etc., with the idea that any artist, without having to belong to a record company or having a contract, could promote in the internet in an easy and free way. And even though the format became obsolete after a couple of years, it set an important precedent: all you need to make yourself known is a decent website and a somewhat creative distribution. Unfortunately, talent wasn’t a requirement to register, what made us prey of an avalanche of trash, minimum quality “music”. Towards the end of the 21st century’s first decade, many veteran artists reached the end of their long contracts, many of them signed at the beginning of the 90s. While the majority renewed or signed with smaller companies for survival’s sake, many more have successfully transitioned into new distribution models. The idea of eliminating the artist/company/promoter triangle was out, and many big names decided to self-distribute their music, creating their own companies to promote new material. But despite
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the changes, the inertia from the old system is still alive, and industry dinosaurs have created some new superstars, figures that can still move thousands of copies.
distributors among its ranks, have reached acceptance among the audiences and artists, who have already signed contracts to distribute their music through this portal.
We live in 2012. More than a decade has passed since the first mp3 boom, and there is still not a person who knows how we will get and listen to our music in the mid-term future. The music industry is in anarchy, it jumped thousands of years into the past, something that has its advantages and disadvantages. Some dinosaurs still live. But new minds have imagined effective methods
The future is uncertain and there are no smoke signals in the horizon, but the latest tendencies are based on digital distribution, while the gross of the income is, as was in the beginning, in live shows and merchandise. Although the industry is no longer the monster it used to be, the good news is that today there are a lot of possibilities to present a new project, and many times itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s talent, hidden in some lost neighborhood, who projects this new << The music industry is in anarchy, it bands into the spotlight. In the jumped thousands of years into the past>> end it is comforting to know that talent, presented and prothat, even though will never reach the sales moted wisely, can still draw the attention of of the past, have found new ways to keep music lovers everywhere. the boat from sinking. Sites like Spotify, where one pays a monthly fee to listen to a catalog that already counts many important 196
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