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Forms of artistic activism in Latin America, the 80s

Taller NN. Cartel del concierto de la banda Kaos, 1989.
Cortesía Archivo Alfredo Márquez.

Type of activity: Seminar
Dates: July 24 - 27, 2011
Place: CCE Lima (except where otherwise specified)
Organised by: Conceptualismos del Sur, Centro Cultural de España in Lima and Museo Reina Sofía

This seminar is part of a research project undertaken by the network Conceptualismos del Sur, a platform for thought, research and collective positioning that began in 2007. The seminar's aim is to reactivate a series of artistic practices that arose in Latin American countries mostly during the eighties, in contexts of political repression and violence. In these contexts, various artistic practices —which were adjacent to or articulated through social activism or counterculture movements— proposed forms of political resistance that were far from traditional activism; they burst creatively onto the street despite the terror that reigned, they did away with the socially accepted sexual identities, they experimented with inhabiting spaces far from established social and artistic institutions and they generated alternative networks of poetic communication.

This far-reaching project is being conducted by almost 25 researchers from Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, Peru, Colombia, Mexico and Spain.

This first public seminar by the network Conceptualismos del Sur in Lima will present the current situation of the research in each of its four main areas of work, with the idea of collectively discussing ways to activate processes of knowledge production that have a political influence on the public sphere. These processes have as their starting point the recovery of silenced memories, the socialisation of documentary archives and the sharing of ideas about how to build forms of anomalous institutionality. The network Conceptualismos del Sur is committed to giving visibility to a series of practices from the Latin America of the eighties, with the hope that, in the very near future, this reclamation will have direct repercussions on local contexts, giving rise to new ways of thinking about the original nature of those experiences and also to the possibility of making them current, valid for today's times.

Program

Sunday 24 of July 2011

Screening of Rosa Patria
6:30 p.m.

Film directed by Santiago Loza, 2009, 93 min.
Place: Casa Rosa

Round table: Suely Rolnik, Fernando Davis, Felipe Rivas San Martín and Leonor Silvestri
8 p.m.

Monday 25 of July 2011

Screening of El provocador
7:30 p.m.

Film directed by Silvia Maturana, Marcelo Gonnet Wainmayer and Pablo Navarro Espejo, 2011, 86 min.
Place: Casa Rosa

Round table: Ana Longoni, Jaime Vindel, Fernanda Carvajal and André Mesquita
8 p.m.

Tuesday 26 of July 2011

Seminar Presentation
4:30 p.m.

Manuel Borja-Villel, Teresa Velázquez and Jesús Carrillo. Museo Reina Sofía
Juan Sánchez. Centro Cultural de España, Lima
Ana Longoni, Miguel López, Fernando Davis and Fernanda Nogueira. Network Conceptualismos del Sur

Table 1. Challenging terror. Artistic activisms and creative practices linked to the human rights movement.
Network Conceptualismos del Sur. El Siluetazo: la política del acontecimiento, 2011. Video, sound, 23’40’’
Jaime Vindel. Beyond artistic activism: on the scope and boundaries of the notion in Latin America in the 80s
André Mesquita. Intersections between activisms from Sao Paulo and Argentina
Cora Gamarnik. The actions of photojournalists during the Argentine dictatorship

Moderator: Roberto Amigo
Coordinated by: Ana Longoni

Table 2. Visual delinquencies, creative marginalities. The party and occupation as a new policy
7:30 p.m.

Miguel López. Cultural revolution and creative orgy: the N.N. workshop (1988-1991)
Daniela Lucena. Café Einstein and the Parakultural in the underground scene in de Buenos Aires
David Gutiérrez. Mapa Teatro (1982-1993): Lab of the Social Imaginary
Sol Henaro. Indications of the counterculture in Mexico: a panoramic reading

Moderator: Alfredo Márquez
Coordinated by: Miguel López

Wednesday 27 of July 2011

Table 3. Disobedient bodies. The irruption of rebellious sexualities in artistic activism
5 p.m.
Fernando Davis. Bodies in flight. Disobedient sexualities, derivations of desire and micropolitical strategies. The critical writings of Néstor Perlongher
Felipe Rivas. Aesthetics and the politics of desire. Artistic practices and sexual activisms in Chile in the 80s and early 90s
Emilio Tarazona. Ashes, rubble and corpses. Early identities in the work of Grupo Chaclacayo
Fernanda Carvajal. Yeguas del Apocalipsis. The intrusion of the body as displacement and disrespect

Moderator: Leonor Silvestri
Coordinated by: Fernando Davis

Table 4. Networks of resistance and mobilisation. Mail Art as an extension of the body politic
7:30 p.m. to 9 p.m.
Clemente Padín. Por el arte y por la paz. Video, 1984 and Por la vida y por la paz. Video, 1987
Fernanda Nogueira. The body politic beyond its boundaries: network actions in the redemocratization process in Latin America
Paulina Varas and Francisca García. Guillermo Deisler: networks, textualities and graphic bodies

Moderator: Rachel Weiss
Coordinated by: Fernanda Nogueira

Performance by Leonor Silvestri. PornoMacumba Luddismo Sexxxual
9:15 p.m.