Historically (or perhaps historiographically) many of the changes in the arts have been generated from social, political, economic, technological, existential and varied ontological ruptures of a “before” and a possible “after” devoted to uncertainty and/or direct action when paradigms or ways of understanding a world had to be questioned and transformed.
In this column I do not intend to establish unnecessary divisions related to Chilean “consteer”, particularly in terms of the visual arts, because even the most conventional expressions, formally speaking, could be considered as positive sums to show the fractures that we have been living in Chile for many decades. However, I think it is necessary to mention some aspects of the fundamentals and ways in which I cannot agree when it comes to finding new ways of organizing and giving results to the urgencies of a society, and, why not to say, optimistically, of a culture.
I would like to mention two situations as examples: some traditional galleries in the spatial sense of pro-laying the works such as the Isabel Croxatto Gallery, D21, Museo Palacio Cousiño, Gallery 3.14 and Factory de Arte Santa Rosa recently ended up exhibiting a series of artists convened from the social political situation of Chile. In very short terms, todxs artists in all these galleries (and a museum) literally displaced, in many cases, semiotic and semantic resources whose thickness has been found in the very acts of the demonstrations in the streets, and the expressions that they have left and continue to make. By this I mean that the displacement of a place (territorial and symbolic) of conflict to galleries traditions (several of these commercials) I can only see it as an anecdote, dog T-shirt type mata pacos hung on any “art validator” wall. The last thing is quoted because in several of the galleries mentioned above it can be seriously questioned the actions of both contemporaneity in the arts, because their strategies are aimed at creating country brands of artistic models, which never go from being formalities of fairs and biennials, that is, to establish models of trademarks-country following models of updating. Contemporary art, to paraphrase Agamben, cannot be the present, because today involves connotations of derogatory normativeness regarding the arts that we would like to think and do today.
The second example is about the speech given by the artist Nicolás Grum, winner of the CCU art scholarship, which has become viral. Reading the speech given by the artist in his award, good intentions and a thematic occupation regarding the civil oppression he embodied in his works (before the “social outburst”) can be noted. However, at the end of his speech he mentions that today in Chile there is no need to “make art” because it would be in the streets, and that there is no need to write, because the streets would be “full of unpublished pages”. At this point an aporia is created, because if it refers to a metaphor, the validating discourse of real facts lacks political power, but if it is a literal coffers and conmination, the power of the creative act would “completely” leave its existential power to become in the possible category of a “todxs”, and this, in steadily, does not leave in a “nothing” on the subject. The work’s problem, as a result of art, was a problem in much of the avant-gardes of the 20th century. The work, in this case, was the problem of art, not art itself, hence various movements decided by the act, or action above the statute of the result. The discussion in Chile may not yet be ancient, but this is probably because of the country’s endless tardomodernity.
If artists do not find ways to deal with a new crisis, and, accordingly, literally or invite them to stop doing, we would also easily approach invitations to stop reading, for “the important prayers and texts are found in life”. It’s like the old phrase “I study at the university of life,” not in books. You have to be very careful, especially in times of crisis, where it is very easy to exacerbate the ruptures of “everything” by not wanting, understanding, or feeling creatively incapacitated to generate new potential and act relationships. If the “traditional” manifestations, in the formal, of art are weakened it is because the performative force on the streets of the cities surpasses it. This does not mean, at the moment, a replacement. Artists, meanwhile, continue to do what they know how to do, and that’s the problem (at least as a principle).
Art must change, not stop making it or mimic what is given in the streets (the latter is how to underestimate people who do not go to protests and tell them, come and see some of the things that happen today in Chile through their artists). We must reformulate ourselves to be partof and modest collaborators of, let us hope for a new world; just because we don’t know the ways does not mean that they do not exist and are in the power that must be operated in conjunction with the common in the community, as long as the people we are, historically, wounded and maddened. “Today”, in our local culture, we have the opportunity to change the arts of the world and its relationship with relationships.
The content poured into this opinion column is the sole responsibility of its author, and does not necessarily reflect the editorial line or position of El Mostrador.
