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1st Biennial of the End of the World 2007
by Teresa Riccardi*
http://www.latinart.com/exview.cfm?start=3&id=254
….In one of Ushuaia’s tourist ports, Alicia Herrero’s
The Paradigm Confine Tour acted a kind of (de)constructive search
for historical and critical temporalities. The “tour”
consisted of a three hour navigational experience across the frontier
waters of the Beagle Canal had almost 40 passengers on board.
The “guided” tour was presented as a contemporary
reflection away from the scientifically and exotically oriented
paradigm of “landscape” and “confine.”
It was a purposeful strategy given the frequency of contemporary
readings within the discursive platforms of Modernism. The installation
of a discussion platform whose artistic practice allowed the status
of today’s biennials to be appreciated “in their situation”,
was encouraged as a result of a flexible laboratory integrated
by Carla Zaccagnini and Alicia Herrero, along with thinkers such
as Francisco Ali-Brouchoud, Mieren Jaio and Jaime Iregui, predominantly
active within the realm of institutional criticism. A magazine,
MIS6 (magazine in situ, sixth edition, an ongoing project by Herrero
since 2004), dealing with “service oriented” art,
discusses the biennial’s format (although not without assistance
from biennials themselves) addressing the issue of the problematic
distinction between exchange and participation that the political
biosphere manages in terms of our experience of contemporary life.
Herrero posits an escape from the subject-object confinement situation
by creating other criteria of coexistence between art and life;
a coexistence meant to challenge the “art” institution.
Without a doubt, Francisco Alí-Brouchoud’s participation
was a playful attempt to signal out the “reclusion”
suffered by art at the hands of the spectacle society articulates
throuogh its cultural machinery. The sagacity of his text Gran
Hotel Abismo alludes to the famous image that Lukács used
to describe the symptomatic deterioration of the German intelligentsia
against whom he fiercely fought…
Complete Text:
1st Biennial of the End of the World 2007
by Teresa Riccardi
1.
The first edition of the End of the World Biennial was presented
during April of this year in Ushuaia, capital of Argentina’s
Tierra del Fuego Province and of the Southern Atlantic Islands.
Promoting the southern tourist pole of “end of the world
city” with the Ushuaia municipality, a joint initiative
was carried out by the Patagonia Arte y Desafío Foundation
and the Parlamento Latinoamericano of San Pablo Memorial Foundation.
With tight programming and a planning schedule that spanned over
a year and a half, these institutions carried out the titanic
task of bringing together, in this small city, around 60 artists
from various places in the world. They were directed by a Brazilian-Argentinian
co-production under the general curatorship of Leonor Amarante
(Brazil) and Corinne Sacca Abadi (Argentina) and assisted by adjunct
curators Hernández Abascal and Florencia Battiti, respectively.
On the whole, and in tune with devices displayed by biennial exhibits
these days, the End of the World Biennial in its curatorial presentation
appropriated and emphasized its setting as a tourist attraction,
taking on the city’s site-specificity with a very wide spectrum
of productions. Many of them, presented as installations or signposts
within the local urban territory, intervened in the landscape
or reworked territorial aspects of the Tierra del Fuego setting.
At the same time, but undoubtedly less successfully, they attempted
to underscore the environmental problems specific to the particularly
tenuous position that certain polar regions presently hold in
relation to the planet’s overall environment. While the
curatorial presentation adhered to the celebration of the polar
region’s international day, the key issues with which this
scientific program deals with --such as the polar environmental
situation, the sustainability of circumpolar societies or the
interconnection between polar and global processes-- were little
understood by the public and by some of the artists. The difficulty
posed by this gap is of a curatorial nature and stems from the
difficulty involved in presenting recent technological innovations
within the field of scientific investigation and in knowledge
of the polar regions themseves, all of which requires a more complex
exercise than a mere signalling. At present, environmental legislation
and scientific investigation, at least in Argentina, fail to make
their presence felt or, one might say, to be active in our every
day community. In other words, they fail in helping to design
ways for us to think and move in such a diversified world. Unfortunately,
only through voluntary cooperation by civil minorities and by
a number of associations concerned with stimulating collective
awareness, is it possible to obtain visibility of this matter.
In this sense, the curatorial initiative chose to give pre-eminence
to this approach and took into consideration small groups of artists
concerned with thinking about “natural” aspects from
the perspective of art, thereby making such an approach attractive
within the local context while getting to know some of Tierra
del Fuego’s productions. Nonetheless, we understand that
creating a device for dealing with environmental matters and signaling
them through artistic productions involved in the topic may trigger
another problem: How to demonstrate these concerns without making
it an obviously pedagogical, illustrative process, or over-simplifying
a scientific problem?
The curatorship attempted to articulate answers from two vantage
points. On the one hand, and smartly so, it created an educational
program in schools that brought together researchers and educators
from various areas, and on the other hand, it designed strategies
with several artists for working with the site-specificity of
Ushuaia, which conceptually presented highly varied problematics.
Nonetheless, the questions regarding what was to be made visible
of that place through production? How long will they last? Or
questions regarding whether these productions may or may not be
re-localized were matters that the curatorship was unable to figure
out with ease, particularly when it pertained to distinctions
to be made among site-specific signposts. Perhaps in a different
direction, it turned out to be a more difficult undertaking bringing
to the fore inquiries concerning how to show the world art from
the Southern Cone in dialogue with other works, this being the
position that the biennials generally propose. Another challenge
was how to articulate an exhibition platform that integrates a
scientific-technological reflection while simultaneously considering
environmental concerns. The result here was less successful but,
on the other hand, the effort to include projects related to a
service-oriented art, or to note art practices pertaining to territoriality
(of the flaneur type, or situational) should be deemed important.
At the same time, it included trans-national dialogues arising
from the discursive debates that emanate from cities, forms of
appropriative urban marketing and facilitated by the marketing
of destinations.
2.
Recently, in Ruinas --a brilliant and devastating essay by the
Lebanese artist and critic Jalal Toufic-- the issue was raised
regarding contemporary art representations in the Arab world and
their contexts as follows: What does Lebanon have that is site-specific?
In search for an answer, the narrative intricately progresses
as it gives shape to the idea of ruins as places stalked by survivors
inhabiting a city that has been devastated by the Israeli wars
of invasion from 1982 through the present. In the process, he
describes a city that, by its ornaments and patrimonial details
–like some spatial-temporal labyrinth— recovers today’s
memory of what has been a certain place in history and, along
with it, today’s history of the reconstruction of Beirut’s
central district.
Toufic’s experience of migration and exile with his family
in 1982 is important, in this narrative, and surely in many other
life narratives, which explains why it was appropriated by the
curatorial intelligentsia when it made up its mind to incorporate
for the first time Lebanon’s pavilion in the 52nd edition
of the Venice Biennial. No matter how distant the latter may seem,
the globalized scenario in which we find ourselves today forces
us to think through these resonances and to imagine and adapt
our perceptions in the face of experiences difficult to ignore.
1982 is a key year. Ushuaia --located 600 miles from the Malvinas
Islands and now a British territory-- is the closest witness to
a war that many Argentineans find difficult to forget, one that
is recalled through a traditional, wakeful commemoration on the
night of April first at the Monument to the Islands, far away
from any biennial. If we are forced to imagine, then we know how
easy forgetting can be, how simple it can be to deviate from the
actual memory of an event or to put a slice of fiction in its
place. Going back to the Biennial, we know that it dealt with
other matters and that it chose to refer to a different type of
urgency, although we can not help observing, in a self reflexive
way, allowance for a different way of remembering.
3.
Between past and present, the works presented made the invisible
visible. From the curatorial perspective, site-specific projects
were chosen that marked an institutional interest in favor of
historical places, museums and cultural areas of the city. And
if it is true that the proposal managed to establish links with
the history of the place, the very nature of the spaces themselves
neutralized the exhibitor’s experimental risk and the discursive
quality of the works. For example, one might consider the successful
installation of collages that make up León Ferrari’s
L’Obsservatore Romano series at the historical prison, along
with José Rufino’s “furniture” constructions,
and also the installations and drawings by Alexis Leyva Machado
(Kcho) at La Casa Bebán. But considerably less successful
were the prison themes photographs by Rochelle Costi installed
at the sports centre. The site managed to dilute one’s readings
of a project dealing with the analogies packaged into the notion
of “deviation” between cross-eyed individuals and
prisoners. This work, if considered at the prison site, might
have lead one to consider the regulatory and social reinsertion
mechanisms imparted within disciplinary societies while taking,
as starting point, current normalized and “aestheticized”
behaviors.
Installation and video tend to be considered canonical at many
present day biennials and this case was no exception. Nonetheless,
the inclusion of body-centered performances is worth noting, among
them the performance Cara o cruz versus Cruz and Jorge Orta’s
blood donation for the Malvinas; the works of Brazilians Falminio
Jallegas and Patricia Gerber; Bijari’s collective actions,
and Gabriel Guaraci’s RaioXexpandido, along with the ironic
and surprising proposals by Canadians BGL –all suspect strategies
that without a doubt, held the public’s attraction.
More consciously, the artists resorted frequently to fiction in
order to place into perspective Ushuaia’s specificity and
the strategic game that tourism brings to the site. There were
projects that managed to stand out and which articulated heterotopic
meanings. This contrasted with strong localizing factors but were
nevertheless persistent in the imaginary display of a territory
inhabited by a multiplicity of regimes. Ushuaia presents itself
as a prosperous place where the supply of tourists grows and their
demands enter into the “free play” of the service-oriented
market. This dynamic makes watching and observing the region’s
panorama, very interesting. With so much recent prosperity, Ushuaia
lives thanks to diverse immigrants. This fact reveals a generational
absence or lack of Tierra del Fuego natives and problematizes
the idea of an end of the world landscape, to include issues of
escape or flight. Those who arrive from elsewhere, as immigrants,
create fictions, compose new sites, settle in, dwell, and build
in a place where the history bears no weight. They give birth
to new mythologies and refer back to other stories. The sound
recordings, drawings, and photographs by Paul Senderowicz in Transient
shelter, are about memories over distance, like a fragile refuge,
ephemeral, made of ice, created so that the histories or mythologies
appropriated by their sensory double will “settle”
here.
With this perspective as part of their vision, but mediated by
a criticality that kept their “enchantment” with the
landscape in check, the work of artists such as Herrero, Julián
D´Angiolillo, Daniel Trama, the Grupo del Borde and the
collective work of Jorge Haro+ Nicolaj Callesten+ Mai Stautsager,
uncovered the discontinuities and fissures in the self-reflection.
They add movement, breaking away from the positivist idea of contemplation
as something that is static and frozen in time. In D’Angiolillo’s
case, a tricycle moves taking his body or someone else’s
to wander throughout the city. He tries to strike real-estate
deals in ruinous terrains, on what is left of them. He draws his
plans in empty factories, makes up story boards, only to stop
at the space provided by the sports centre. There he leaves a
log or register of all these actions, inside a basket containing
a TV set and a video, possibly a postponed performance, setting
off into the distance.
In one of Ushuaia’s tourist ports, Alicia Herrero’s
The Paradigm Confine Tour acted a kind of (de)constructive search
for historical and critical temporalities. The “tour”
consisted of a three hour navigational experience across the frontier
waters of the Beagle Canal had almost 40 passengers on board.
The “guided” tour was presented as a contemporary
reflection away from the scientifically and exotically oriented
paradigm of “landscape” and “confine.”
It was a purposeful strategy given the frequency of contemporary
readings within the discursive platforms of Modernism. The installation
of a discussion platform whose artistic practice allowed the status
of today’s biennials to be appreciated “in their situation”,
was encouraged as a result of a flexible laboratory integrated
by Carla Zaccagnini and Alicia Herrero, along with thinkers such
as Francisco Alí-Brouchaud, Mieren Jaio and Jaime Iregui,
predominantly active within the realm of institutional criticism.
A magazine, MIS6 (magazine in situ, sixth edition, an ongoing
project by Herrero since 2004), dealing with “service oriented”
art, discusses the biennial’s format (although not without
assistance from biennials themselves) addressing the issue of
the problematic distinction between exchange and participation
that the political biosphere manages in terms of our experience
of contemporary life. Herrero posits an escape from the subject-object
confinement situation by creating other criteria of coexistence
between art and life; a coexistence meant to challenge the “art”
institution. Without a doubt, Francisco Alí-Brouchoud’s
participation was a playful attempt to signal out the “reclusion”
suffered by art at the hands of the spectacle society articulates
throuogh its cultural machinery. The sagacity of his text Gran
Hotel Abismo alludes to the famous image that Lukács used
to describe the symptomatic deterioration of the German intelligentsia
against whom he fiercely fought.
Proyecto Casa Nómada by the Grupo Del Borde, is presented
as a temporal and mobile make-shift dwelling that travels from
one place to another on a tree trunk. Lacking any sort of fixed
residence, it moves constantly. The project was parked for only
a day at the Paseo de las Rosas in Ushuaia, before embarking on
another journey. They move unto the Bahía Encerrada, perform
and stop once again momentarily at the Barrio Felipe Varela, not
without first inviting all those who wish to stop by and visit
with them to dance a tango, drink some hot brew, or simply chat
with them at their house. In another more distant dialogue, Haro
Callesten and Stautsager draw upon the similarities between Ushuaia
and a Danish city help of publications, conversation, field recordings
and photographic records.
Daniel Trama’s work insists upon going over a different
territory: the installation format. His proposal’s concern
with how to recycle temperatures translates itself into a simulacrum
toying with the idea of circuitry. Ice blocks, represented on
blue wax, melt with the aid of cables fed by hot stoves crossing
a landscape and back again. The cable becomes a line in the drawing
and serves as an energy conduit in a self-sustaining feeding system.
The cables are also a system of passages and transformations on
the state of the material that turn it into a self-referencing
circuit. Helical lights act as a conceptual oscillation and manage
to project a very potent rectangle of light on the wall, transforming
the drawing into something pictorial and thereby disarticulating
the limits proposed by the format.
4.
Aves Migratorias, a project carried out in several stages and
coordinated with the assistance of schools by Edith Matzen Hirsch
and Fernando Goin as well as Prácticas Sensibles, directed
by Marcelo Giménez and Alicia Romero, were initiatives
linked to the educational sphere. In this way, an in situ platform
and a virtual one were articulated as part of the promotional
effort, teaching, training, and artistic discussion. Interviews
and information were available through a website showing the activity
by the artists of the Patagonia region. Environmental concern
was to be found in videos by Andrea Juan, who worked with a team
of glaciologists and geographers registering performances in the
Antarctic.
Charly Nijenshon also inscribed his work in this line through
his lanscape projects. Among other artists who also focused on
ecological emergencies, Jorge Fargas presented the Modelo de centinela
climático, a gigantic information collecting sunflower
that is sensitive to meteorological changes.
5.
Finally, we might say that what is specific to a site can be thought
of only through repetition. This biennial amounts to a first exercise
of perception upon place. Self-Reflexivity is no doubt a point
of departure. Only insistence and (dis)continuity will give this
movement new possibilities capable of actualizing a small story
that is to begin at the end of the world.
/
* Art Historian, art critic and curator, she had member of Duplus
Project
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