Juan Carlos Romero. Ahora todos somos negros.
Intervention, 2007-2011.
Type of text: Manifesto
Date of publication: February 2009
Museo Reina Sofía aims to question the dynamic of fragmentation and dispersion affecting the material and immaterial legacy of the poetic-political practices arising in Latin America since the 1960s. It also intends to imagine and set in motion decolonial practices and more horizontal logics of shared knowledge production, as opposed to the conventional model of acquisition and displacement of Latin American documentary assets to central countries.
The Conceptualismos del Sur network is an exercise in research as political resistance, based on the premise of recovering an expropriated memory and with the presence and diffusion of artistic productions and documents.
Collaboration between Conceptualismos del Sur and Museo Reina Sofía does not consist of selecting research topics according to the interests of the institution, nor of researchers' locating new acquisitions. The idea is rather to build a public and digital archive that returns the public nature of the documents of Latin American Conceptualism which, because of its political and social context, represents a statement of protest against the dictatorial impositions present all over the continent.
In this regard, the Museum is working with Southern Conceptualisms on a series of projects that not only aspire to produce an active critical platform, but also to transform the policies of cultural patrimonialization upon which modern museums are founded. Reina Sofía attempts to question the colonial model of collectionism (which follows the rules of the market based on the scarcity of goods) so as to encourage debate on the need to consider museums as custodians, not owners. It is our intention to create collections-archives that are shared with other local institutions and that permit an interrogation of property law and the restrictive constitution of reproduction rights: a battle we believe is important in building a critical memory that does not plunder the memory of others. Museo Reina Sofía and Conceptualismos del Sur have joined forces precisely to reverse the flow that is draining the memory of that period and also to revive its legacy in the present by means of research, exhibitions, publications and the creation of databases accessible to all, such as the one currently underway, which will be made public in the near future.
The presence of critical mass in Latin America has now brought about the real possibility of an effective reactivation of the relational and contextual potential of the archive. The Museum is committed to providing support for this initiative in the form of policies and to seeking out resources that will allow the project to be carried out, digitalised and published on-line, thus opening new possibilities for study and debate.
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