Talking to Action: Art, Pedagogy, and Activism in the

TALKING TO ACTION
Americas is the first publication to bring together
scholarship, critical essays, and documentation of
collaborative community-based art making by
researchers and artists from across the American
hemisphere. This volume is a compendium of texts,
analysis, and research documents from the Talking to
Action research and exhibition platforms as part of
Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA, an initiative of the Getty.

Art, Pedagogy, and Activism in the Americas

Distributed by The University of Chicago Press
The School of the Art Institute of Chicago with Otis College of Art and Design
Chicago Social Practice History Series

Art, Pedagogy, and

Activism in the Americas

Edited by Bill Kelley, Jr.

with Rebecca Zamora
Kelley, Jr.
Cover image Design
Frente 3 de Fevereiro, Nou Pap Obeyi Jess Mott Wickstrom, Silver Egg Studios
[No Vamos Obedecer / We Will Not Obey] action,
2015. Photograph by Daniel Lima. Copyeditor
Kathy Macpherson
The School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Department of Exhibitions and Exhibition Studies Major support for this exhibition and publication is
Sullivan Galleries provided through grants by the Getty Foundation.
33 S. State Street, 7th floor
Chicago, Illinois 60603 With generous support from the Language
www.saic.edu/exhibitions Department LLC (languagedepartment.net) for
professional translation services.
Otis College of Art and Design
Bronya and Andy Galef Fine Arts Center Print
Ben Maltz Gallery The University of Chicago Press
9045 Lincoln Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90045 Distribution
www.otis.edu/ben-maltz-gallery The University of Chicago Press
1427 E. 60th Street
Volume Editors Chicago, Illinois 60637
Bill Kelley Jr. with Rebecca Zamora
ISBN-13: 978-0-930209-44-5
Series Editors
Mary Jane Jacob and Kate Zeller © 2017 The School of the Art Institute of

English-Language Editor
Chicago, the artists, and the authors. The
publishers have made every effort to contact
Art, Pedagogy, and
Ricardo A. Bracho the copyright holders of the material included in
this book. If there are omissions, please let us
Activism in the Americas
Spanish-Language Editor know ([email protected]) and further
Jimena Andrade editions will be amended.

The Chicago Social Practice History Series was developed by the School of the Art Institute of
Chicago’s Department of Exhibitions and Exhibition Studies as part of the series of exhibitions,
programs, and symposium launched in 2014 as “A Lived Practice.”

Talking to Action: Art, Pedagogy, and Activism in the Americas was developed by Otis College of Art
and Design as a research project, symposium, and exhibition as part of Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA,
a far-reaching and ambitious exploration of Latin American and Latino art in dialogue with Los An-
geles, taking place from September 2017 through January 2018 at more than 70 cultural institutions
across Southern California. Pacific Standard Time is an initiative of the Getty. The presenting sponsor
is Bank of America.

As part of an exhibition tour organized by Independent Curators International (ICI), Talking to

Action was presented in collaboration with the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Arizona State
University Art Museum, and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.

Otis College of Art and Design

The School of the Art Insitute of Chicago

Published with the assistance of the Getty Foundation

CONTENTS
63 María Fernanda Cartagena
Liberation Aesthetics: Social Transformation, Decolonization, and
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Interculturality
ii Kate McNamara, Otis College of Art and Design 71 André Mesquita
Pedagogies of Struggle: Art and Activism in Dialogue, Listening, and
iv Trevor Martin, School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Memory Experiences
v Bill Kelley, Jr., Otis College of Art and Design 83 Talking to Action: A Diagram
André Mesquita

ESSAYS

1 Karen Moss ARTISTS' PROJECTS

Talking to Action: An Introduction to the Project and its Platforms
89 Liliana Angulo Cortés 130 Clara Ianni and
91 Efraín Astorga Garay Débora Maria da Silva
7 Bill Kelley, Jr.
95 BijaRi 133 Iconoclasistas
Talking to Action: A Curatorial Experiment Towards Dialogue and
99 Giacomo Castagnola 136 Kolectivo de Restauración Territorial
Learning
102 Cog•nate Collective 139 Suzanne Lacy
105 Colectivo FUGA 145 Alfadir Luna
17 Grant Kester
109 Sandra de la Loza 149 Taniel Morales
Erasing Beuys's Blackboard: Art, Pedagogy, and Praxis
and Eduardo Molinari 152 Andrés Padilla Domene
113 Dignicraft and Iván Puig Domene
27 David Gutiérrez Castañeda
117 Etcétera... 156 POLEN
Sharing Intuitions: A Personal Letter to Liliana Angulo
121 Frente 3 de Fevereiro 159 Gala Porras-Kim
126 Grupo Contrafilé 163 Ultra-red
39 Paulina Varas
Living, Creating, Transforming: A Few Ideas on Autonomy as a Way of
Life in Mapuche Territory 167 Contributor Biographies

51 Jennifer Ponce de León 171 Bibliography

The Battleground of the Present: The Pocho Research Society,
Archivo Caminante, and Etcétera... 175 Index
Platform 4—Talking to Action: Art – Pedagogy: Culmination and Compendium

KELLEY, JR.
This final platform consists of publications, which include not only the pre-
viously mentioned gallery guide and artist-generated booklets and brochures, but also
this comprehensive volume of essays and photographs. This is not a catalogue per se,
but a culmination of the entire Talking to Action project: four years of curatorial research
on thought-provoking, socially engaged production of twenty-one artists and collectives;
a compendium of written texts, discourses, and debates generated by the advisors,
curators, and researchers associated with the project.
Following this introduction, in the first chapter, “Talking to Action: A Curatorial
Experiment Towards Dialogue and Learning,” Bill Kelley, Jr. delves into the challenges
and possibilities of a cross-hemispheric project between the two “LAs”: Los Angeles
(where social practice studies are found in fine art and art history programs) and Latin TALKING TO ACTION:
America (where these practices are imbricated into the social sciences and the public
sphere). Kelley also traces the hemispheric-wide influence of Paulo Freire’s writings on
A Curatorial Experiment Towards
decolonial and liberationist work and, crucially, how Freire’s critical pedagogy continues Dialogue and Learning ¹
to make a methodological path for contemporary dialogically-driven, community-based
art practices. Bill Kelley, Jr.
Given the histories of displacement, migration, and exile within the Americas
and the important confluence between artists and writers of the region, we only hope
that this exhibition, as well as the efforts of Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA initiative, To exist, humanly, is to name the world, to change it. . . . Dialogue is the
are the beginning of a more sustained dialogue of learning and pedagogical exchange encounter between men, mediated by the world, in order to name the world.
Hence, dialogue cannot occur between those who want to name the world
within the Americas. and those who do not wish this naming . . . 2
—Paulo Freire

The citation above frames the problem of dialogue between people who do not
1 The curatorial team extends its deepest gratitude to Director Kate McNamara and the entire Ben Maltz share a language. That language problem is the result of dealing with the co-participation
Gallery staff, past and present, whose efforts brought this exhibition to fruition. We thank our key that dialogue requires. Dialogue as co-participation must be mutual and intercultural if we
advisors Grant Kester, Suzanne Lacy, Ana Logoni, Sally Tallant, and Stephen Wright, and all the artists
and researchers who made this extensive project possible.
are here, in fact, to name the world together. With the challenges assigned to globaliza-
tion, interculturality asks the globalized to both understand and occupy ways of being in
2 Bill Kelley. Jr. took part in the Estar aquí hacienda algo as part of the De-Formación: prácticas the world beyond previous namings or knowing. One could sardonically say that for Latin
artísticas desescolarizadas, reflexión y acción event, organized by David Gutiérrez Castañeda at
the Centro Cultural de España en México—Faro de Oriente—Universidad Autónoma de la Ciudad America this historic challenge has been its lingua franca.
de México. Participants included: Jimena Andrade, Andrés Arredondo, Maria Fernanda Cartagena, From its inception, Talking to Action: Art, Pedagogy, and Activism in the Americas
Alejandro Cevallos, Maria Clara Cortés, Maite Garbayo, Suzanne Lacy, Alfadir Luna, Marco Moreno,
Katia Oldade, Mabel Tapia, and Paulina Varas. The Quito convening was organized by Maria
(hereafter referred to as Talking to Action) was meant to focus on dialogically-
Fernanda Cartagena and it was attended by David Gutiérrez Castañeda, Suzanne Lacy, Silvia Juliana driven, community-based art making across the Americas. Given the quick growth and
Mantilla Ortiz, Lucía Sanromán, and Paulina Varas. Artist group Proyecto Transgenero as well as academicization of the field that we call social practice in the United States over the last
several members of the Centro de Arte Contemporaneo’s education staff, including Paulina León,
also participated. decade, I was determined to say something about the intellectual and methodological
roots of these practices that were not simply anchored in northern-transatlantic thinking.
Thus, Talking to Action was a research project that was born of a need to redirect the
legacies of the past. Given this alternate mapping, it only made sense to begin with the

6 7
idea that we’re attempting to learn something and that this learning should take the Beginning in 2013, I sought out researchers from six different regions of the

KELLEY, JR.
form of a dialogue. This publication should be seen in this pedagological vein rather than hemisphere and proposed we collaboratively research the intersections of social art prac-
strictly an exhibition catalog. As I was asked to lead this Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA tices, activism, and pedagogy together within Talking to Action. After convening in Mexico
project at Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles, where I was a faculty member City, Quito, and Los Angeles, one key concern I had was confirmed: depending on where in
within a MFA program in community-based art practices, the intersections of art, activ- Latin America you find yourself, these practices emerge from, and are studied within, rad-
ism, and pedagogy across the Americas were natural frames for this research/curatorial ically different disciplinary frames than what I was taught in the United States. US-based
effort. This was a collective effort in terms of both the curatorial labor as well as the researchers of what is being called social practice often do not understand this point.
collaborative research undertaken by the scholars and artists featured in the exhibition. While working as a curator in Colombia in 2011 for the Encuentro Internacional
The Getty’s ambitious Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA initiative began with the de Medellín, an art biennial, I kept speaking to socially engaged artists who continually
textual assumption of a relationship: this LA and that LA. It is, like many titles, only lightly referred me to the same group of academics based in local universities working in
alluding to its intentions or aspirations. The challenge begins here with how one should violentology studies. Their central academic reference, undoubtedly emerging through
begin to interpret this relationship. For myself what came to mind was the realization the parties paying attention to their practice, were neither curators nor art historians.
that my own research needed to follow the artists’ methodology and engage in dialogical In this case, the key people studying and framing this form of art, which I might call
exchange. There was the necessity to put other sites in the hemisphere in a focused con- social practice in an MFA program in Los Angeles, were violentologists working within
versation with my own. Meaning that my context, Los Angeles, a city with the Social Sciences in Medellín.
a deep and historic relationship to Latin America, through Spanish co- Local Southern California and This should begin to tell you something regard-
lonialism, modern nation state formation, wars, and annexation, as well Tijuana-based artists convene
at Otis College of Art and Design The study of art ing the panorama of cultural studies in Latin America
as longstanding and often uneven migration of persons and resources, to discuss their participation in that makes having a conversation so important, and at
Talking to Action, August 19, has always been
puts into crisis the extent of the boundaries of “Latin America.” Talking 2015. Left to right: Karen Moss, the same time, so challenging. Despite being Latino, I
to Action’s contribution to LA/LA is the promise of what a dialogue about Omar Foglio, Misael Diaz, Amy an incredibly elitist was trained as an art historian in the United States and
Sanchez, Paola Rodríguez, José
dialogue, in the Freirean sense above, could bring. This publication, and Luis Figueroa, Sandra de la Loza, discipline marked by have no issue framing dialogically-driven, community-
Suzanne Lacy, Walt Senterfitt,
the exhibition it accompanies, should be read as an attempt to build a Jeseca Dawson, Consuelo the large social class based cultural practices as art and their practitioners
bridge of conversations amongst various interconnected regions in the Velasco, Leonardo Vilchis, and as artists, whereas my research colleagues in other
Americas, and not a dialogue that is, in any way, Los Angeles-centric.
Bill Kelley, Jr. Photograph by
Rebecca Zamora.
divisions and racism cities within the American hemisphere have no such
that has characterized desire. One can begin to understand why.
academic study The history of colonial empire is present in
day-to-day experiences. That complex past is felt by
in post/colonial
residents walking down historic city streets in Quito,
societies. Cali, or New Orleans. Alternatively, recent migrants
carrying deeply embodied epistemological knowl-
edge live side-by-side in cities like Tijuana, São Paulo, or Los Angeles. That colonial
history has not only marked the city, but the bodies that have traversed this hemisphere.
That history has laid out a path for how art has been framed and studied, but more
importantly it intimates who has had the historic privilege of studying it.
Art history in Latin America is not nearly as widespread an area of study as it
is in the United States, and most cities have few public universities where one could get
a graduate degree in, say, colonial art of the Andes. The study of art has always been
an incredibly elitist discipline marked by the large social class divisions and racism that
has characterized academic study in post/colonial societies. To say that the study of

8 9
art, particularly in cities with deep colonial infrastructures and intellectual anchors, is The thinking Subject cannot think alone. In the act of thinking about the object

KELLEY, JR.
s/he cannot think without the co-participation of another Subject. There is
not tied to that still-existing colonial reality and more recent economic developmental
no longer an “I think” but “we think.” It is the “we think” which established
narratives around cultural patrimony is to willfully forget the history of art. In California the “I think” and the contrary. This co-participation of the Subjects in the
as in many parts of the United States, we willfully have chosen to not confront present act of thinking is communication. Thus the object is not the end of the act
of communication, but the mediator of communication. . . . Communication
day colonial realities, both in academia as well as within our discourses around national-
implies a reciprocity which cannot be broken. Hence it is not possible to
ism. The paucity of immigrant or indigenous studies within a larger cultural and artistic comprehend thought without its double function, as something which learns
conversation within the humanities is one key example. and something which communicates.7
An important antecedent to this problem in Latin America is the history of how
the national liberation movements of the 1950s and 1960s led to the important develop- Within the history of aesthetics, the fundamental theory framing art in the Western
ment of liberation theory and socio-political movements. Following on the work of the world, the object (both linguistically speaking, as in the object acted upon by the sub-
historic Bandung and Tricontinental conferences3 and the post-war postcolonial move- ject, and phenomenologically speaking, as in the object placed in front of the subject)
ment within the global south, the liberation movements of Latin America are famously has a space of learning placed within its iteration. But Freire is asking for someone else
punctuated by the Cuban Revolution, but its effects reach deeply into the development to be present in this space of learning, not as a metaphorical construct in the mind, but
of cultural labor and research methodology. Those crucially important moments in hemi- as a co-educational effort of mutual liberation. Literacy and a communicative praxis is
spheric cultural history lead to the articulation of economic dependency theories, various a process of naming the world and building political subjects. There is a history and a
iterations of liberation theology, politically radical pedagogical work by Freire and many methodological platform here that informs dialogically-driven cultural practices, not
others, and finally the establishment of social science research centers throughout the only in Latin America, but extends north to the work of feminist artists and Chicano
southern hemisphere to support that larger decolonial liberation movement. Those centers cultural organizing work, both central historical anchors to any history of social practice
established in the 1960s and 1970s, and their consequential research throughout this peri- in Southern California that is yet to be written.
od, delineated a methodology of critical research that was fundamentally decolonial and These are important historic antecedents that help explain the art history/
extended to all forms of cultural and pedagogical experimentation. social science disjuncture cited above. On the one hand, it creates a way for Western
The hemisphere is too varied to be brought under one singular history, but Freire art discourses to open its doors to theoretical constructions developed outside of the
and his dialogically-driven pedagogical theories that emerge from this larger movement north-transatlantic channel. On the other hand, it unsettles certain academic histories
stand tall as a fundamental intellectual anchor in the Americas. His experimental theoret- regarding art’s role in social movements. This essay is not the place to tackle that
ical work, often enunciated with the spiritual tone of his liberation theology counterparts, issue. Grant Kester aptly discusses this in the following essay. Needless to say, there
is intrinsically tied to the long-standing struggle and liberation of the oppressed in the are occluded histories and intellectual trajectories that have not yet been invited to the
Americas. Having developed his ideas under the Brazilian dictatorship of the 1960s that discursive table.
sought to alienate the poor from any political process, he did not see his collaborative The argument for what Kester has called a dialogical practice8 is neither an
literacy project as simply learning your ABCs, but more as a way to learn to read and name argument for compromise nor an absolution for historical injustices. Latin America as a
your social context. “To exist, humanly, is to name the world, to change it,” he would say.4 whole must face its genocidal history with Native peoples as much as the United States
The difference between naming and being named is the colonial difference. must and has not. Colonial legacies can operate as easily within cultural institutions as
Thus, the act of literacy, the act of learning to enunciate, articulate and they do within government policies. The promise held within the practices highlighted
speak, to name your context and its joys and injustices, to name the world, is a human in Talking to Action are about developing a political voice and demonstrating that those
right. It is not only possible for the subaltern to speak,5 speech is imperative to being methodologies have had, and continue to hold, an emancipatory potential.
human. Freire theorizes dialogue as both life-affirming and an existential necessity.6 He
also lays out the principles for liberatory pedagogy and dialogical exchange in cultural
***
production. In speaking of the necessity of moving that dialogical experience away from
the autonomous individual learning from the object, but rather being co-learned with One aspect of Talking to Action that should be acknowledged is the inherent
another subject, Freire notes: problem of bringing in artists working in these practices into a gallery setting. One

10 11
can choose to see this as a translation problem, but it is also a pedagogical one. The choose to do so, as an intrinsic part of their larger practice, rather than because they were

KELLEY, JR.
question regarding what the exhibition will “look like” has been fielded more times than invited to do so by a curator.
I care to remember and it is a conversation that we had amongst the researchers, with The research team, made up of scholars grounded in various disciplines,
our curatorial consultant Karen Moss, and our researcher Rebecca Zamora. One way we working in various cities throughout the Americas, was invited to have long-term en-
chose to handle this problem was to do the gagement and collaborations with artists and cultural producers within Talking to Action.
following: We asked certain artists to engage There must be a respect This was proposed as a way to understand the practice as it evolves over time with
our students through courses, lectures, and various publics and iterations. There is no point asking researchers to parachute in and
alumni collaborations (such as Etcétera...
for the process of write about a practice that takes years to coalesce, and I have found, through my own
developing a workshop on the instrumental- collaboration and dialogue research experiences that in order to know a collaborative practice, one must find a way
ization of arts education with Otis grad stu- as the art form. In other to collaborate in research.
dents or Taniel Morales developing a course Jennifer Ponce de Leon’s reflection focuses on the role and (ab)uses of history
words, to paraphrase
on the history of political free radio for Otis in the long-standing struggle to create new political and social realities from the perspec-
undergrads). It anchored the artist’s method- Freire, these objects are tive of the poor. That this struggle goes back in time, to the early days of what we now
ology in real-life experiences which was an not the conclusion of a call Los Angeles and Latin America, is no small coincidence nor are the ruptured timelines
important and cohesive educational facet to dialogical praxis; they are that gather momentum, suffer repression, and reset themselves along reimagined pop-
the entire project. This capacity for artists to ular social justice movements across the continent. Ponce de Leon considers the work
continually triangulate between working with
often simply mediators of of Etcétera... and Eduardo Molinari, both based in Buenos Aires, as well as Los Angeles
students, communities, and exhibition venues ongoing dialogues. artist Sandra de la Loza, as practices that seek to re-read historic texts and gestures while
also speaks to the curatorial and educational finding ways to decolonize and democratize the archive of official histories.
capacity of the venues to which Talking to Action travels. Secondly, I asked artists Paulina Varas considers the historic violence against the Mapuche of Chile and
who wished to do new work to continue and extend their ongoing research, often with how their struggle for territorial rights and justice has led her to a slowly maturing under-
new collaborators, rather than create entirely new projects. This was done to support standing of Andean territorial mapping and contemporary forms of resistance. What does a
extended long-term research, an important facet to community-based practices, and resistance against violence and nationalist hegemony look like within a Mapuche episte-
to avoid commissioning new work just for the sake of something new (an example of mology, a distinct way of knowing and learning that has persisted centuries of colonization?
ongoing research is the work of Ultra-red, Union de Vecinos, and The School of Echoes What does a Mapuche territory look like under the current political condition? Varas considers
studying gentrification in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Boyle Heights). Thirdly, I the work of three artists collaborating and working in those contested territories and tackling
asked artists engaging in extended research to create new collaborative nodes with these issues: Gonzalo Cueto Vera, Jorge A. Olave Riveros, and Cristian Wenuvil Peiñan.
other artists, researchers, and community organizations. This was a curatorial experi- David Gutiérrez Castañeda writes a reflexive letter to Colombian artist Liliana
ment where some artists decided to work together for the first time (such as Eduardo Angulo about her research project, El Tiempo del Pacífico (Pacific Time). Here the artist
Molinari and Sandra de la Loza), or an artist worked closely with a local researcher investigates the geographic relationship between two port cities of the African diaspora,
(such as David Gutiérrez Castañeda and Liliana Angulo). These collaborative nodes were Buenaventura in Colombia and Oakland in California and the possibility of their connection
difficult to manage due to the experimentation involved and at the time of writing, all through the Black liberation movements in their respective regions. Given the epistemic
the nodes were still in full research and production. But this is part of the challenge in violence that both indigenous and African bodies have faced throughout the Americas,
understanding and curating social practice. There must be a respect for the process of Gutiérrez Castañeda asks larger questions regarding the practical demands of care in the
collaboration and dialogue as the art form. In other words, to paraphrase Freire, these face of oppression and what the arts can say about such forms of reconciliation. Whether
objects are not the conclusion of a dialogical praxis; they are often simply mediators of through the ritual acts of dance or faith, through community organizing and migration,
ongoing dialogues. Finally, I have chosen to work with artists who have both an interest such bodies have found ways to heal within their performative gestures.
and a stake in working with communities as well as within multiple aesthetic platforms. Maria Fernanda Cartagena investigates the current political discourses around
It was vital that these practices be visualized for the gallery by artists who continually decolonization and interculturality within the Ecuadorean context, leading to case studies

12 13
that highlight the possibilities found within art making. Cartagena outlines three char- This is when things get interesting. This is when what we learn is not as

KELLEY, JR.
acteristics that describe the current field: creative work as critical reading, collective important as why we learn it. The ideas and strategies written in this book predate the
empowerment towards strengthening of social fabrics, and the promotion of creative 2016 US election cycle and yet they take on a particular discursive quality now. It is
labor and potential in all people. She describes a “liberation aesthetic” that is born difficult to say what that quality is at the moment of writing, but my hope is that it also
from the long-standing influences in the region of both liberation theology and the generates conversations around pedagogy and the role art and cultural education takes
experimental pedagogical work that nurtured a radical shift in theological work as well in that larger civic project.
as foundational research in decolonial studies undertaken alongside epistemological As noted earlier, Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA begins with the textual as-
inquiries. By first following her local context and sharing two case studies currently sumption of a relationship between this LA and that LA. In this regard, the Getty has
active in the Ecuadorean context, Cartagena then outlines key projects within Talking to attempted a monumentally ambitious and necessary conversation amongst cultural
Action that follow similar methodological lines. institutions within the Americas. If it does anything, it should afford us the opportunity
André Mesquita asks us to consider the act of listening as cultural practice. to consider what we might learn from the vastly diverse peoples who inhabit this hemi-
What do we hear? Who is speaking? In the contemporary world, it is a question that sphere. I will argue for the following two assertions/perspectives:
takes us to a larger set of conversations regarding power and community experiences. PST: LA/LA is simply an opportunity: An opportunity for institutions in the
He asks the art world to consider what the appropriate response is to violence. From the United States and, in this case, Southern California, which have never truly considered
secret burial grounds of the Perus cemetery in São Paulo where the poor and margin- art from a Latin American or Latinx perspective to finally do so. If you’re reading this in
alized are hidden away, to the economic displacement of largely Latino communities Latin America (that LA) this assertion regarding the cultural institutions in Los Angeles
in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Boyle Heights, the struggle to have a voice and be (this LA) might be hard to believe, but it is unfortunately true. The lack of curatorial and
heard is a central frame for what learning in art can be about. If creating monuments institutional leadership in confronting, much less researching, the communities and the
for the victims was enough, we would have solved these issues some time ago. The accompanying epistemic world views that make up over half of this city is a historic fact
dialogical relationship inherent in listening and speaking are, as Freire might say, a way that should not be forgotten nor swept under the rug (there is something to learn here).
of acknowledging the humanity of the other. But if we are to look forward, this is a key moment for our city’s cultural producers to
Finally, our invited guest theorist Grant Kester creates some space for us acknowledge that past and ask questions about what we can learn from these forms of
to consider the pedagogical platforms and discourses that are a part of the art world. knowing and being in the world that are amongst us, living side by side, but not neces-
Beginning with arguably the most well-known teacher-artist Joseph Beuys, who would sarily face to face.
famously claim, “to be a teacher is my greatest work of art,” Grant points to Theodor Secondly, PST: LA/LA is not a map or a mirror. It should designate neither
Adorno’s suspicions towards cultural practices seeking to bridge art and politics. Adorno’s a detached discursive frame of where this relationship is headed nor what one side is
vexed and conservative response to student protests echoes the work of later theorists reflecting in the other. It should be considered a lived methodology of curiosity and
such as Benjamin Buchloh and Terry Atkinson, who find Beuys’s pedagogical-performative learning. If the first assertion is true, then the second is plainly obvious.
efforts to create social change simplistic and naïve. If the effort to create a socially As a whole, there were many risks taken by decentering the curatorial role
and politically transformative dialogical space is simply adolescent diversions, then into one of collaborator and co-learner. If Talking to Action attempts to methodologi-
the monumental legacies left behind by Freire and liberation theologians throughout cally walk the talk when it comes to research and learning, we can only hope that the
the Americas would certainly have left Adorno, and many Western theorists who agreed objects, films, and documents that make up the exhibition component of this project
with his cautionary assessment, with a head scratching conundrum regarding the role speak to our aspiration for dialogue.
of theory in “objective” analytical political work.
Perhaps Adorno’s and Buchloh’s theoretical platforms, ones based on auton-
omy and distantiation, aren’t meant to make sense within a social form of collaborative
praxis that seeks to create solidarity and social change. Perhaps this is precisely the 1 The author would like to thank the following people for their support and analysis: Sara Daleiden, Monica
Jovanovich, Karen Moss, Lena Taub Robles, Stephen Wright, Rebecca Zamora, and Carol Zoe.
problem. Perhaps we’re opening a conversation with other theoretical inheritances and
“ecologies of knowledge”9 occluded until now. 2 Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972), 88.

14 15
 3 During this post-war period, colonies like India, Burma, Ghana, Tunisia, and Libya were able

KESTER
to effectively pressure a weakened western Europe, then demand and subsequently achieve
independence, while other nations to-be such as Kenya, Vietnam, Cameroon, Zimbabwe, and South
Africa had to resort, often for sustained periods of time, to armed liberation wars. It is under these
conditions of liberatory struggle that the converging power of Socialist movements and nationalist
discourses grew to form emerging nation states tied to anticolonial and imperial critique. The
strongest indication of this movement was exemplified in the historic meeting of newly independent
nations in Indonesia called the Bandung Conference of 1955 and the Non-Aligned movement that
resulted thereafter (1961). The conference gained great symbolic power as the first postcolonial
international conference. The twenty-nine countries that participated at the Bandung Conference
represented a population of 1.5 billion people. The resulting proposal was a New International
Economic Order which was taken up and incorporated by the UN in 1974 as a Declaration and
Programme of Action for the Establishment of a New Economic Order. The move towards economic
issues and priorities was a recognition of the shift that was taking place from colonial struggles

ERASING BEUYS'S
to economic struggles that achieving the former did not preclude the latter. In regard to continued
economic imperialism, the priority of economic dependency contributed to a “radicalization” of

BLACKBOARD:
the language in the Havana conference of 1966. The conference would be the first time that the
countries of Latin America—along with the other continents of the global south, Asia and Africa—
were brought together. The resulting alliance from Havana, called the Tricontinental, focused
on liberation struggles in Vietnam, Dominican Republic, and Palestine, as well as opposition to
apartheid and racial segregation, suppression of foreign military bases, and support of the nuclear
Art, Pedagogy, and Praxis
disarmament option, among other issues.

4 Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 88. Grant H. Kester

5 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?” in Marxism and the Interpretation of
Culture, ed. Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988), 275.
To be a teacher is my greatest work of art.
6 Raymond Allen Morrow and Carlos Alberto Torres, Reading Freire and Habermas: Critical Pedagogy —Joseph Beuys
and Transformative Social Change (New York: Teachers College Press, 2002), 38.

7 Paulo Freire, Education for Critical Consciousness (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013), 122. Housed in secure, temperature controlled storage vaults at several major inter-
national art museums are a set of blackboards containing chalk-drawn notes and diagrams
8 Grant H. Kester, Conversation Pieces: Community and Communication in Modern Art (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2004). created by the German artist Joseph Beuys, and used in a series of lectures he delivered
during the early-to-mid 1970s.1 The blackboards mark a key transition in Beuys's work from
9 Boaventura de Sousa Santos, “A Non-Occidentalist West? Learned Ignorance and Ecology of
Knowledge,” Theory, Culture & Society 26 (2009): 103-25, doi:10.1177/0263276409348079.
sculpture and performance-based practices to the creation of new institutional forms and
new modes of political action and pedagogy, which he would literally map out or diagram
in these talks. This transition was anticipated in his famous claim in 1969 that “to be a
teacher is my greatest work of art.” “The rest,” as Beuys continued, is “the waste product,
a demonstration. If you want to express yourself you must present something tangible. But
after awhile this has only the function of a historic document. Objects aren’t very important
any more.”2 One can only imagine the machinations necessary for museum conservators
to preserve Beuys's crumbling chalk inscriptions, which were only ever made in order to
be erased (in 1991 the blackboard from his 1976 lecture at the Nova Scotia College of Art
and Design was covered with plexi-glass and sold to the Art Gallery of Ontario for nearly
$250,000). The simultaneous sanctification and commodification of these artifacts pro-
vides us with a case study in reification, as the museum struggles to preserve the singular
authority of the artist’s hand, and the reassuring physical presence of the art object, at

16 17
TALKING TO ACTION:
A DIAGRAM

This diagram illustrates connections between key concepts

and practices found in the research project and exhibition,
Talking to Action. These lines demonstrate multi-directional
movements of various bodies, both physical and symbolic—
from those engaging in dialogue within communities and spaces
of learning and resistance, to actions in the street, or those
crossing physical, subjective, political, or invisible borders.

The diagram was designed by André Mesquita in 2017, with the

theoretical support of Bill Kelley Jr., David Gutiérrez Castañeda,
Jennifer Ponce de León, Lucía Sanromán, Maria Fernanda Cartagena,
Paulina Varas, and Rebecca Zamora.

83
 TALKING TO ACTION: A DIAGRAM
TALKING TO ACTION:
A Diagram

André Mesquita

Copyleft. Free distribution at https://issuu.com/talkingtoaction

84 85
ARTISTS' PROJECTS

Biographies

Project descriptions

Responses to this question posed by curator Bill Kelley, Jr.:

Teaching and learning go hand in hand, like action and reflection
in Paulo Freire’s notion of dialogical praxis. How do these ideas
manifest in your practice?
 ANGULO CORTÉS
LILIANA ANGULO CORTÉS
b. 1974, Bogotá, Colombia

BIOGRAPHY

Liliana Angulo Cortés is a visual artist; she graduated from the Universidad Nacional de Colombia
with a specialization in sculpture and from the University of Illinois at Chicago with a Master of
Fine Arts degree (Fullbright scholarship). In addition to several individual and group exhibitions in
Colombia, she has participated in exhibitions in Europe, Asia, America and the Caribbean. In her
work Angulo investigates the notions of body and image in relation to issues of gender, ethnicity,
language, history, and politics. Her commitment to communities of African descent has led her to
explore issues of representation, identity, discourses of race and power, as well as performative
practices, cultural traditions, historical reparations, and direct collaborative work with social
organizations in the African diaspora. She develops her artistic production in different media such
as sculpture, photography, video, interventions, installation, performance, and sound, among
others. Understanding artistic practice as informed and connected by all of her efforts, she also
has worked as a researcher, creator, educator, organizer, administrator and curator.

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

Tiempo del Pacífico (Pacific Time) follows the urban trail of Black and Afro-Colombian Social
Movements in Colombia and the United States. In this project, Angulo identifies connections and
people in the United States along with their support systems: namely migrants to cities from
rural communities who, along with successive generations, became urban and then left with no
sufficient means of subsistence. The project examines the crisis of impoverished Black people in
Colombia and the United States as they respond to systemic racism as one of the main conditions
of capitalism.

Tiempo del Pacífico aims to recognize and document the tactics used in the struggle and resis-
tance against different forms of structural violence. It focuses on the deadly tension of assim-
ilating into or perishing under the capitalist development imposed by global necropolitics. It is

88 89
a macroeconomic development that victimizes communities by forcing them to migrate to large

ASTORGA GARAY
cities, displacing them from their ancestral land, destroying their communal bonds, and in effect,
killing them and their way of life.

In her approach to these conflicts, Angulo studied the collective community struggles and the
“polizones” or stowaways traveling to the "North" on cargo ships from the Colombian port city
of Buenaventura. She looked at the role of global culture through the movement of goods and
merchandise, but also through agents like stowaways who, upon arrival at their destination,
inserted themselves into the US culture and labor market. The project took a special interest in
the accounts of the stowaways that had contact with the Black Power Movement and the Black
Panthers in the twentieth century. Tiempo del Pacífico used these points of contact to illuminate
EFRAÍN ASTORGA GARAY
the shared history of global resistance, mobility, and struggle of Black communities in both
countries (Pacific coast of Colombia and Pacific coast of the United States—Buenaventura and
Los Angeles/Oakland). b. 1977, Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico

WORKS
BIOGRAPHY
Tiempo del Pacífico [Pacific Time]
2015-2017 Efraín Astorga Garay is an artist whose work encompasses many disciplines, including drawing, com-
3-channel video installation ics, hip-hop music, puppetry, and theater. At the end of the 1990s and beginning of the 2000s, he was
active in the political and social activist movements in Juárez by creating art and graphics for protests.
Previously, he was a member of the Fronte Toons collective based in Ciudad Juárez. He worked for eight
View from a fishing boat towards a vehicles years at the Fundación Rarámuri Voces Indígenas as an illustrator and workshop presenter with the Tara-
carrier unloading cars in the Port of humara Community. Throughout his life he has collaborated in art projects and acted as an independent
Buenaventura. Photograph by Liliana Angulo.
cultural promoter within the urban musical scene. In addition to the production of comics, he currently
works as an urban artist, producing comics, and presenting his Makiloko Machin Marionetas puppet
show in different parts of the city of Juárez, such as parks, street markets, schools, and private parties.

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

The Makiloko character came into being in the year 2000 as the result of the artist’s experience
working in the maquiladora industry and his work with the Fronte Toons collective. The term has an
ambivalent connotation in this context since it is used pejoratively to speak of a certain type of em-
ployee. Generally migrants, these employees were seen as working like robots, due to their capacity
for hard work and constant exceeding of production goals, which raised the bar and made more work
for everyone. As a result, they were rapidly promoted; this aroused distrust among the local workers.
Makiloko represented the robot-like workers (symbolized through the image of a human being with
a robot’s head). With the passing of time, Astorga realized that some employees proudly identified
with Makiloko as the opposite of a lazy worker. Robotic activities soon extended to most aspects of
people’s daily lives, which gave rise to the concept Makiloko (crazy machine), that in turn paved the
way for a project in which the artist makes use of all his art disciplines.

The universe he creates is both fantastic and realistic, and hinges on the pride of being or not
being Makiloko.

90 91
 ASTORGA GARAY
Two panel layouts of Historia del
Makiloko, ink (marker) on paper, 2016.
Created by Efraín Astorga.

92 93
RESPONSE TO QUESTION

BIJARI
My life project also is my art project and, as such, has evolved in different ways depending on
my interests. My artistic work has linked learning and practice from the outset. I am self-taught,
without academic training, and my creative process has led me to search for the information
and resources that I need for my practice. Upon defining the concept behind my project, my
learning needs become clear and, unlike graduates of various art institutions, art techniques and
trends have not dictated my work. Since I have never been part of academia, I have enjoyed the
creative freedom that comes from a lack of artistic prejudice or the prejudices of the education
institutions. I consider my work to have emerged from popular culture and therefore it finds echoes
in the daily life of the spectators as they enjoy the marionette show. Their identification with the
BIJARI
characters is almost immediate; the characters arise from the collective unconsciousness of
the border, with a certain amount of fiction. In conclusion, I think learning can come from one’s
surroundings when there is a burgeoning creative force waiting to upset reality. Date of formation: 1997; active in São Paulo, Brazil

WORKS
BIOGRAPHY
Ciudad Juárez MAKILOKO TV real Ciudad Juárez MAKILOKO: El negocio perfecto
2009 2014 BijaRi is a collective of artists, architects, and designers who met in 1997 as students in the School
Video Video (animation) of Architecture and Urban Planning at the Universidade de São Paulo. Their interests and investiga-
1 minute and 8 seconds 3 minutes and 37 seconds
Music by Efraín Astorga Beat by Sonido Griyo
tions focus on the struggles that various social actors and groups endure in the fight for the right to
the city. The group aims to find a synthesis between art practice, urban design, and political action
Ciudad Juárez MAKILOKO tercer cuento: El miedo Ciudad Juárez MAKILOKO TV prohibido through projects that lie in the intersection of art, spatial critique, and urban life.
más grande 2006
2010 Video (animation)
Video (animation) 53 seconds
With the aid of a diverse range of resources and technologies, including poster campaigns,
2 minutes and 35 seconds Color by Ricardo Varela A.K.A Dj Buda; animation by cartographies, large-scale video projections, installation, performance, and VJing, BijaRi creates
Music contains sample from "The Grand Duel (Parte Efraín Astorga; and music by Jaime Karim Ávila A.K.A JMK tactical actions in public spaces, independent of established circuits of art. Operating through
Prima)" by Luis Bacalov from the Kill Bill Vol. 1 these cracks and gaps, BijaRi is interested in the friction of such realities in order to configure
original soundtrack (Rhino/Warner Bros., 2003). Sketches from Somos o Eres animación
2007
new poetical and political places.
Ciudad Juárez MAKILOKO TV Somos o Eres Ink (marker) and colored pencil on paper
2007 8 1/2 x 11 in. (21.59 x 27.94 cm) PROJECT DESCRIPTION
Video (animation)
1 minute and 6 seconds Layout of Historia del Makiloko
Editing by Oliver Arce 2016
The Contando con Nosotros [Recounting on Us] project was developed in Comuna 1, a zone
Ink (marker) on paper located on the north-east hills of Medellín that was informally established and built by people
Makiloko—Jefe 17 x 11 in. (43.18 x 27.94 cm) escaping the guerrilla warfare in the countryside and by those forced out of the urban centers due
2016 to rising costs of living and financial setbacks. These settlements grew into configurations of neigh-
Marionette: felt, papier-mâché, and marker Makiloko Cómic
29 1/2 x 12 1/2 x 3 in. (75 x 32 x 8 cm) 2005
borhoods such as Santo Domingo Savio, Nuevo Horizonte, Granizal, Popular 1 and Popular 2 that,
Ink on paper although geographically connected, remain divided into ghettos due to criminal gang disputes. As a
Makiloko—Obrero 8 1/4 x 5 in. (21 x 13 cm) result of public security policy, resources have been invested in the area such as the construction
2016 of an aerial transportation system—the Metrocable—as well as many social and cultural facilities,
Marionette: felt, papier-mâché, marker, and glitter
22 1/2 x 9 3/4 x 3 in. (57 x 25 x 8 cm)
causing a great impact on the urban tissue. BijaRi set out to investigate the shifts and tensions in
the socio-economic and cultural fabric of the community of Comuna 1 that have resulted from these
new facilities and programs. In order to approach the community, BijaRi relied on the support of
local leaders like art-educator Manuel Mahecha, who encouraged the community to use the “box of

94 95
 BIJARI
BijaRi, Assembling textiles on the rooftops of
Santo Domingo Savio (Medellín) for the project
Contando con Nosotros [Recounting on Us],
2011. Intervention supported by Encuentro
Internacional de Medellín MDE11 and the
Museo de Antioquia, Medellín, Colombia.

stories and secrets” (a handcrafted cardboard and plastic box equipped

BijaRi, Recording testimonies in Santo
Domingo Savio (Medellín) with the Caja
with a sound and video recording device) to which people were asked to
de Historias y Secretos for the project
recount and record their personal histories, wishes, secrets, and conflicts
Contando con Nosotros [Recounting on Us],
2011. Intervention supported by Encuentro
as part of the local collective memory. Selections of narrative fragments
Internacional de Medellín MDE11 and the
Museo de Antioquia, Medellín, Colombia.from the recordings were then painted on large pieces of cloth, and in-
stalled on the roofs of houses directly located under the path of the
Metrocable. Passengers could read them as they passed overhead. The pieces were designed to
be read individually or as a sequential narrative, like a story spread over the rooftop “pages” of
the neighborhood. This Project was supported by Encuentro Internacional de Medellín MDE11 and
Museo de Antioquia.

RESPONSE TO QUESTION

In general, the artistic process entails the circular movement of making/reflecting/making while
reflecting as a modus operandi of the construction of knowledge and meaning on the art work/
art-making.

BijaRi engages in artistic processes that take place specifically in urban contexts; it is funda-
mental to us to interfere in the dialogical and permeable attitude of the social objects that are
by definition unstable and inconclusive.

To assume a certain degree of ignorance (or incomplete state of knowledge) allows a more dis-
armed and open immersion in these contexts. It is not a matter of denying individual knowledge
of each participant or collaborator (artists and community), but of affirming their specificities

96 97
and qualities based on a more circular and less monodirectional exchange. This echoes Freire’s

CASTAGNOLA
proposal of overcoming the subjection of the teacher/student relationship in his Pedagogy of the
Oppressed, and which is also the basis for learning.

This dialogical communion (artist/context/public/work) has a strong transformative character,

as we push ourselves to a constant search for knowledge—in its critical, reflective and produc-
tive state—to access authentic and dangerous thinking because, as Freire said: “Education [like
art] is an act of love, and thus an act of courage.”

WORKS GIACOMO CASTAGNOLA

Contando con Nosotros [Recounting on Us] Caja de Historias y Secretos [Box of Stories and
2011 Secrets]
Digital film 2011 b. 1976, Lima, Peru, active Mexico City and San Francisco, CA, United States
10 minutes Painted cardboard shoebox with straps with opening
Intervention supported by Encuentro Internacional de connected to plastic audio funnel and audio recording
Medellín [MDE11] and the Museo de Antioquia, device
Medellín, Colombia 16 x 8 x 6 in. (40 x 20 x 15 cm) BIOGRAPHY
Intervention supported by Encuentro Internacional de
Clips of Contando con Nosotros Medellín MDE11. Museo de Antioquia. Giacomo Castagnola received a Master of Science in Art, Culture, and Technology (SMACT)
2011
degree from the School of Architecture and Planning at Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Digital film Contando con Nosotros
8 minutes 2011 (original), 2017 (print) in 2013 and an undergraduate degree in architecture from the Universidad Ricardo Palma (URP)
Intervention supported by Encuentro Internacional de Digital photograph in Lima, Peru. From 2003-2010, Castagnola lived and worked in the Tijuana/San Diego region
Medellín MDE11. Museo de Antioquia. 16 x 12 in. (40.6 x 30.5 cm) where he established Germen Estudio of architecture and design to research and explore the
Intervention supported by Encuentro Internacional de
“informal” self-constructed sectors of cities, which constitute about 40% of urban and mobile
Las Heridas Expuestas al Sol [Wounds Exposed to Medellín MDE11. Museo de Antioquia.
the Sun] infrastructure in many Latin American cities. Currently, Castagnola works between Mexico City
2011 (original), 2017 (reproduction) Contando con Nosotros and San Francisco on exhibition designs that investigate new ways to present material culture
Banner: acrylic paint on cloth 2011 (original), 2017 (print) and art archives. He proposes to treat the museum as a public space through the use of dif-
reproduction: 72 x 108 in. (182.88 x 274.34 cm); original: Digital photograph
ferent structures and exhibition systems that explore the interstitial space between document,
78 3/4 x 118 1/8 in. (200 x 300 cm) 12 x 16 in. (30.5 x 40.6 cm)
Intervention supported by Encuentro Internacional de Intervention supported by Encuentro Internacional de body, furniture, and architecture.
Medellín MDE11. Museo de Antioquia. Medellín MDE11. Museo de Antioquia.
PROJECT DESCRIPTION
En Estos Morros Tan Verdes [In These Green Hills] Contando con Nosotros
2011 (original), 2017 (reproduction) 2011 (original), 2017 (print)
Banner: acrylic paint on cloth Digital photograph Giacomo Castagnola developed the Estructura Vertical de Alambrería [EVA - Vertical Wire
reproduction: 72 x 96 in. (182.88 x 243.84 cm); original: 12 x 16 in. (30.5 x 40.6 cm) Structure] as a result of his collaboration with the workshop of the craftsman Jesus Aguilar
118 1/8 x 157 1/2 in. (300 x 400 cm) Intervention supported by Encuentro Internacional de Pérez, a metal weaver who designs hanging systems for street vending in Mexico City. The
Intervention supported by Encuentro Internacional de Medellín MDE11. Museo de Antioquia.
EVA is a hanging storage system developed from this vernacular technology in order to support
Medellín MDE11. Museo de Antioquia.
small, independent, and informal economies. Metal weaving is the most pervasive solution
No Me La Quitaran [They Will Not Take It Away from Me] used to display merchandise on the streets, particularly in the downtown historic center. Its
2011 (original), 2017 (reproduction) design logic results from the encounter between land use policies and the dynamics of street
Banner: acrylic paint on cloth
vending: the need to keep merchandise off of the ground and to display as many goods as
reproduction: 96 x 72 in. (243.84 x 182.88 cm); original:
157 1/2 x 118 1/8 in. (400 x 300 cm) possible in a small space. In turn, the compact wire ware construction technology provides
Intervention supported by Encuentro Internacional de the micro-business infrastructure that enables the informal markets to physically consolidate
Medellín MDE11. Museo de Antioquia. themselves. With metal screen as walls, folding ladders to hang pants, and shelves and hooks
for shirts, this modular and lightweight structure is an open and flexible system that provides

98 99
many opportunities for mobile, semi-mobile, and fixed commerce. The EVA can be used as a

CASTAGNOLA
single unit or as a system for display and storage, but, like its predecessors, has an indeter-
minate future purpose.

WORKS

Estructura Vertical de Alambrería [Vertical Wire

Structure]
2017
Metal covered in vinyl and bent, plywood (shelves)
156 x 16 x 16 in. (396.24 x 40.64 x 40.64 cm) ea. unit.
Giacomo Castagnola in collaboration with Jesus
Aguilar Pérez

(below) Germen Estudio, Estructura

Vertical de Alambrería [EVA - Vertical
Wire Structure] - model for unfolding
technique, 2015.

(opposite) Giacomo Castagnola, EVA

installed in La Casa del Hijo del Ahuizote
for Rrréplica 02: Encuentro de Imprentas
Desobedientes [Forum of Disobedient
Printers], Mexico City, 2016.

100 101
 COG•NATE COLLECTIVE
COG•NATE COLLECTIVE
Date of formation: 2010; active in Tijuana, Mexico/Los Angeles, CA, United States

BIOGRAPHY

Since 2010, Tijuana-Los Angeles based artists + researchers Misael Diaz and Amy Sanchez have
collaborated as Cog•nate Collective to develop community-based research projects + public
interventions + experimental pedagogical programs in the US/Mexico border region.

Their work has interrogated the evolution of the border as it is simultaneously erased by
economic policies and bolstered through increased militarization—tracing the fallout of this
incongruence for migrant communities on either side of the border.

Siting their practice primarily within markets, they seek to analyze how popular + informal forms of
cultural + economic exchange taking place between transnational communities can be mobilized
in defiance of solidifying political boundaries—proposing an understanding of the border not as bi-
furcating line, but as a region expanding and contracting with the movement of people and objects.

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

MICA (Mobile Institute for Citizenship + Art) is a nomadic platform that seeks to construct alterna-
tive modalities for political dialogue and collective action through artistic + pedagogical projects that
foster social/cultural exchange with/in migrant communities throughout the TJ/LA border region.

MICA takes public/informal markets throughout Southern California and Northern Mexico as primary
sites for research and intervention, mapping the intersection of transnational economic and cultural
(top) MICA trailer stationed at
the Santa Fe Springs Swap Meet. networks through such markets, and developing strategies to amplify, mobilize and/or hack these
Courtesy of the Artists. networks to create points of resonance and political solidarity between spaces and communities.
(bottom) Students from the Spurgeon
Intermediate School Social Justice Club With such gestures, MICA seeks to transform these sites (and the greater border region) into incuba-
participate in protest balloon-making
workshop. Courtesy of the Artists. tors for reimagining ways of understanding and enacting citizenship in spite of national delimitations.

102 103
RESPONSE TO QUESTION

COLECTIVO FUGA
Our practice is interested in questioning the contradictory nature of the US/Mexico border—which
we’ve lived and experienced growing up between Baja and Alta California as something that is at
once concrete and abstract, sited and dislocated, experienced spatially (as physical structure),
but also discursively (as narrative).

Dialogical praxis models how dialogue can oscillate between the abstract and concrete,
between theory and practice, between reflection and action, and back. For this reason, Freire’s
critical pedagogy became instructive to undertaking a dual process (praxis) of interrogation and
intervention in relation to the border.
COLECTIVO FUGA
With MICA, we have been interested in using dialogue to facilitate moments for reflection and action that
reformulate problematics at the border as polemics that arise from limiting conceptions of citizenship: Date of formation: 2014; active in Otavalo, Ecuador
notions not attuned to the increasing transnationalism of communities shaped by migration.

BIOGRAPHY
Following Freire, it is important to engage communities on equal footing as part of this process:
developing platforms where participants (ourselves included) have a sense of being both teachers
and students always and already—engaging not just to listen and learn, but to speak and to teach. FUGA, cofounded by Jairo Mena Herrera, Efrén Rojas Endara, and Wilman Trujillo Páez, was es-
tablished in the city of Otavalo in 2014 as an attempt to recuperate visual actions developed
To this end, we site such dialogical platforms in quotidian spaces to facilitate access and acknowledge in the public sphere. The group grew out of encounters with numerous artists from different
that it is from the space of the everyday that transformative critical frameworks must emerge. These backgrounds. This provided a broad vision of cultural practices nationwide able to share, discuss,
frames (of/for reflection and action) must include and be responsive to the experiences of those most and reflect on the specific needs not only of artistic-cultural practices, but also on the role of art
impacted by oppressive structures like the border and the limiting models of citizenship it sustains. in the local social and political setting. Art as a social process can configure people’s sensibility
and imaginary by transmitting the history of those who have lived and forged the local past. This
WORKS
social aspect is expressed through ideologies, utopias, symbols, rituals, myths, and sociocultural
practices. Confronted with the risk of losing popular memories, the collective FUGA employs
MICA (Mobile Institute of Citizenship + Art) Tres Américas (MAP:LA Document) * processes for the reconstruction of group memories; the collective reflects on the role, forms,
2012-2016 Tres Américas (MAP:TJ Document) ** and materials of memories, and aims to produce a method that allows for their reconstruction
Trailer (1983 Perris Pacer) 2016 without losing memories in the context of current information.
156 (l) x 84 (w) x 90 (h) in. (396.24 x 213.36 x 228.6 cm) Prints (silver fulminate explosive residue on paper),
plywood panel, acrylic (plexiglass) panel, steel a-frames;
PROJECT DESCRIPTION
MAP:LA/TJ Research Archive sandwich board sign (plywood and metal hinges)
2016 Various dimensions
Handbound Text Archive (paper), acrylic (plexiglass), vinyl, The Museo incorruptible [Incorruptible Museum] project was developed in three fundamental
Cartonera books (paper and compact discs), CD player, Aerial Market View (MAP:LA Document) * stages. 1) FUGA approached local geographies by diagramming the imaginary plane through
audio headphones, piggy-bank (plaster), and table Aerial Market View (MAP:TJ Document) **
Various dimensions 2016
published visual and oral histories of the Guajaló neighborhood in southern Quito. 2) Then they con-
Digital photo prints, monitor to showcase footage ducted interviews in strategic places (houses, churches, plazas, public and private institutions)
Protest Balloon #1, #2, #3, #4 (MAP:LA Document) * 12 x 18 in. (30.5 x 45.7 cm) ea. with community members ranging in age from 18 to 80, via talking points such as: the history
Protest Balloon #1, #2, #3, #4 (MAP:TJ Document) ** behind the neighborhood’s name, trade, funeral rites, neighborhood celebrations, transportation,
2016 *MAP:LA Documents were produced in Los Angeles
Ink on Mylar; plexiglass and wood shadowboxes and traveled through Latin America.
popular games, and public figures, among others. 3) FUGA collated the results of these first stages
20 x 20 x 1 in. (50.80 x 50.80 x 2.54 cm) **MAP:TJ Documents were produced in Tijuana and into eleven illustrations that created an historic timeline of Guajaló. The designs emulate the
traveled through the United States. style of indigenous chronicler Felipe Guamán Poma de Ayala (whose drawings depict the native
vision of the Andean world and make it possible to reconstruct aspects of post-conquest Andean
society). Through this project, local narrators "reconquered" their historical memory, a memory

104 105
that was never reflected in any existing texts or research on their neighborhood. Their stories (opposite) Colectivo FUGA, "El azar de la huaira" [A game of (below) Colectivo FUGA, “Un porque de Guajaló” [One meaning

COLECTIVO FUGA
chance - La Huaira] from Museo incorruptible, 2014, graphics on of Guajaló] from Museo incorruptible, 2014, graphics on ceramic
were stamped on ceramic floor tiles and installed in the plaza next to the church, a historic ceramic tiles. Project supported by al zur-ich XII Encuentro de tiles. Project supported by al zur-ich XII Encuentro de Arte y
meeting place in Guajaló. An edited archive of the interviews, documentation, and audiovisuals Arte y Comunidad (2014), Quito, Ecuador. Comunidad (2014), Quito, Ecuador.

was submitted to the neighborhood leaders and family members who collaborated in the project.
They are now the owners and defenders of the neighborhood’s incorruptible museum.

106 107
RESPONSE TO QUESTION

DE LA LOZA / MOLINARI
The collective translates its practices into profound, shared reflections, which are laid bare upon
contact with local participants. It is important to understand that the members of the collective
are born into, and are formed by, a community setting in which conversation is the convergence
that channels reflection. In turn, reflection creates a space where attempts to transform the local
imaginary are shaped. Our approaches to languages and their musicality seek to consider two
issues. First, by recognizing that we begin from an environment of vulnerability, we are able
SANDRA DE LA LOZA +
EDUARDO MOLINARI
to build a political-cultural future; working within different communities and opportunities have
made these pursuits develop through a horizontal dialogue in which FUGA has remained open
to acknowledging and learning from the community’s memory, its history, its lived experience.
Second, generating reflections from this practical interaction, in which an inclusive language is
developed, produces daily life and an intimacy that comprises art in any of its forms. In the case
of the Museo Incorruptible, memory resides in these images. It is necessary to observe and recall b. 1968, Los Angeles, CA, United States / b. 1961, Buenos Aires, Argentina
community memory parallel to the written history as told by voices external to the neighborhood.
The images represent the local culture that survives in oral memory and that still retains its
BIOGRAPHIES
generational links and value. This exercise of recollection becomes a self-delegated responsibility
for the children and grandchildren to shoulder and combines self-worth, historical-cultural family
memory, the value of community work, and symbols of moving forward together. The project Sandra de la Loza’s work examines underlying power dynamics embedded in social space often
represents the importance of neighborhood memory in the construction of a lasting, incorruptible drawing upon extensive archival research and mobilizing community-based networks. She is the
cultural archive. founder of the Pocho Research Society (PRS) (2002), a project that explores the elasticity of the
artifact and the mythmaking aspects of “History” through conceptual, performative, social, and
WORKS
aesthetic strategies that result in multi-media installations, video, photographic work, social
engagement, publications, and public interventions. She also co-generates autonomous spaces
Museo Incorruptible Museo Incorruptible, catalogs for artistic production, community action, and critical dialogue. These efforts have resulted in
2014 2014 collectively run community centers, pedagogical spaces, and multi-disciplinary events such as
Ceramic tiles Ink on paper the October Surprise (2004), Arts in Action (2000-2004), decolonize LA (2016) and at land’s
c. 14 x 8 in. (35 x 20 cm) ea. 8 x 8 in. (20.32 x 20.32 cm) ea.
Project supported by al zur-ich XII Encuentro de Arte y Project supported by al zur-ich XII Encuentro de Arte y
edge (2016-2017). Currently, de la Loza collaborates with a variety of groups including Everything
Comunidad (2014), Quito, Ecuador Comunidad (2014), Quito, Ecuador is Medicine, the North East Alliance, and the School of Echoes to employ creative strategies to
mobilize residents and shift the debate around gentrification. As a result, these collaborations
Museo Incorruptible, images from neighborhood al zur-ich XII Encuentro de Arte y Comunidad produce alternative knowledges and practices to enact one's agency to reshape and redefine our
research Quito, Ecuador, poster
2014 2014
relationships with the various social, cultural, and ecological landscapes we inhabit guided by
Photograph Ink on paper a decolonial impetus.
6 3/4 x 10 in. (17.15 x 25.4 cm) reproduction: 18 x 12 in. (45.72 x 30.5 cm); original:
Project supported by al zur-ich XII Encuentro de Arte y 19 3/4 x 27 1/2 in. (70 x 50 cm) Eduardo Molinari is a visual artist and research professor at the Visual Arts Department of the
Comunidad (2014), Quito, Ecuador
Museo Incorruptible, poster
Universidad Nacional de las Artes (UNA), Buenos Aires. At the core of his work are walking as
Museo Incorruptible, images from neighborhood 2014 an aesthetic practice, research with art-based tools, and multidisciplinary collaborations. His
research Ink on paper body of work is made up of collages, photographs, installations, interventions in public space,
2014 6 1/2 x 8 3/4 in. (22.11 x 16.21 cm) ea. drawing, painting, films, and publications. In 2001 he created the Archivo Caminante [Walking Ar-
Photograph Project supported by al zur-ich XII Encuentro de Arte y
6 3/4 x 10 in. (17.15 x 25.4 cm) Comunidad (2014), Quito, Ecuador
chive], a visual archive in progress that delves into the relationships between art and history; and
Project supported by al zur-ich XII Encuentro de Arte y develops critiques of the dominant historical narratives, actions against the mummification of
Comunidad (2014), Quito, Ecuador 3/4 social memory, and exercises in collective political imagination. Since 2010 he has co-directed,
with the artist and teacher Azul Blaseotto, the independent cultural space La Dársena_Plataforma
de Pensamiento e Interacción Artística [The Dock_Platform for Artistic Thought and Interaction],

108 109
 can serve as a smoking mirror to conjure visions, open portals for other modes of knowing, being,

DE LA LOZA / MOLINARI
and envisioning that can guide future/present actions through the exercise of collective memory
and political imagination

RESPONSE TO QUESTION

Art and learning are two sides of the same coin in our respective practices. Through the pos-
sibility of materializing our imaginaries, we believe that art provides an enormous potential for
creating social change. The pedagogical triad of “informing, teaching, and transforming” is at
the center of our work, which is always context-based. It is not a question of thinking of politics,
memory, and history as “topics” or of representing anyone, but of being present with others in
the daily construction of history itself. Research using art-based methodologies and tools allows
for the creation and transference of knowledge, as well as the creation and strengthening of
community bonds.

As humble artists walking in territories, sometimes overwhelmed by their scale and complexity,
we carry out archival work as we try to be active and present in our historical moment and in
our specific contexts seeking to inhabit the micro and macro dimensions
(opposite) Eduardo Molinari,
Confluencia 2: Los Angeles River, that coexist in them. We co-create social spaces in which we co-learn
DOC AC/2016, collage. by dreaming, creating language, and doing. Through ways we cannot
Buenos Aires, and the publishing house unproblema+. Between 2007 and 2008 he was a resident (below) Sandra de la Loza, find anywhere else, we enact processes that are not clear or necessarily
Confluence of the Arroyo Seco defined, but that take shape, appear, and disappear along the way. We
artist at the Akademie der Künste in Berlin and at the Weltecho Art Center, Chemnitz, Germany. and Los Angeles Rivers, June 28,
2016, photograph. continue creating our own structures, chasing ideas, conceiving ideas
PROJECT DESCRIPTION

In donde se juntan los ríos: hidromancia archivista y otros fantasmas [where rivers
meet: archivistic hidromancy and other phantasms], Eduardo Molinari and Sandra de la
Loza deployed a decolonizing research-based investigation to explore the production of space
and landscape as a historic and ongoing process in their respective cities, Buenos Aires and
Los Angeles. Through constant dialogue in the form of “cartas caminantes” [itinerant letters],
field investigations, archival research, and “encuentros” [encounters], a multitude of con-
cerns surfaced including: the building of urban infrastructure both past/present, the relation
between the city and nature, buried and living indigenous knowledge, extractivist economies,
speculative housing markets and their impact on displacement and the re-figuration of the
city, fights for space, the impact of agribusiness on landscape, invisible histories, moments
of social destabilization with emancipatory impulses, and the role and responsibility of art
institutions in these practices.

By engaging local actors, and visiting archives and sites relevant to their investigation, the artists
gathered different types of visual, archival, sound, and textual registers that are woven into this
installation/archive. Within their process, the idea of a brujería archivista [archivist witchcraft]
and/or paraarchivismo emerged to describe methods deployed to both unlock and reveal obscured
narratives and hidden ghosts embedded in archival material while simultaneously employing
methods of ritual and reassemblage to explore how the material detritus of our past and present

110 111
through materials, which inevitably mean that learning and teaching are always present. Our

DIGNICRAFT
action demands reflection, and reflection leads to action.

WORKS

donde se juntan los ríos: hidromancia archivista

y otros fantasmas [where rivers meet: archivistic
hidromancy and other phantasms]
2015-2017

DIGNICRAFT
Installation of postcards, photographs, photographic
collages, altar objects, ceramic objects, found
objects, various seeds, obsidian, rocks, painted
banners, and soundscape
Various dimensions

Letter to Eduardo/Carta a Eduardo

Date of formation: 2013; active in Tijuana, Mexico
2017
Digital film
Directed by Sandra de la Loza BIOGRAPHY

Dignicraft is a hybrid between an art collective, media production company, and distributor of
cultural goods, inspired by human dignity and justice, the artisanal process of creation, and the
(top) Eduardo Molinari, Confluencia 1: Los Angeles potential of collaboration to spark change.
Police Museum, DOC AC/2016, collage.

(bottom) Sandra de la Loza, Women’s March, Downtown The essence of the collective’s art practice is to encourage encounters normally not seen be-
Los Angeles, January 21, 2017, photograph.
tween people of different backgrounds. The group accomplishes this by producing documen-
taries, distributing cultural goods such as films, or imparting a collaborative workshop as part
of a contemporary art project. The most important outcome for Dignicraft is the quality of the
relationships they establish and their consequences.

Dignicraft was born of the evolution of collective work that was started in 2000 under the name
Bulbo and Galatea audio/visual together with other people. Dignicraft includes Paola Rodríguez,
José Luis Figueroa, Omar Foglio, Blanca O. España, David Figueroa, and Araceli Blancarte.

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

The Collaborative Piñata is a long-term project to establish a dialogue between Purepecha crafts
people and cultural agents from the region of Baja California, Mexico and Southern California, United
States. The border city of Rosarito, Baja California, is home to a community of up to 250 families who
migrated north more than 1,500 miles from their ancestral homeland located in the island of Janitzio,
Michoacán, and adopted the making of piñatas as their craft and main source of living.

The first phase of the project happened in Rosarito throughout 2015 with a series of creativity and
self-representation workshops with four families of Purepecha master artisans where they creat-
ed a series of piñatas as tools to share their memories and identities, as well as a documentary
short film to record the process and provide a glimpse of each family’s daily life.

112 113
 The second phase consisted of a series of encounters that started in 2016 between the families of

DIGNICRAFT
master artisans and cultural agents based in Los Angeles to explore issues like fair trade, cultural
rights, community organizing, design, marketing, and the distribution of piñatas.

RESPONSE TO QUESTION

In recent years, our practice has revolved around what we like to call “encuentros” [encounters],
where dialogue and respect are vital, as is the possibility of communicating through actions
or practical activities. For these encounters to happen there is an extensive period of work
to create the circumstances for participants to come into contact. This necessitates creating
an environment for empathy where everyone will feel comfortable to share their thoughts,
memories, knowledge, experience, etc. This often implies that we serve as moderators or
translators between languages and cultures.

There is no predetermined agenda about the outcome of an encuentro. In the case of the “Collaborative
Piñata,” the encuentros began in 2012 when we first met the Purepecha families of artisans from
Rosarito, Baja California. Throughout the years, our conversations evolved to the point of outlining
common goals and focusing our time and energy to achieve them via these on-going exchanges.

(opposite) The piñata artisans Edwiges In the Fall of 2016, we organized and attended a meeting between
Solorio and María De la Luz Solorio prepare
the piñatas that are the result of their self-
Xóchitl M. Flores-Marcial (California State University Northridge);
representation project, 2015. Gaspar Rivera-Salgado (UCLA Labor Center); and Bill Kelley, Jr.
(below) Close-up of handiwork of the
(Otis College of Art and Design) with Raúl Gúzman and Eduviges
piñata artisans as they apply colored foil, Solorio, Purepecha master artisans of the piñata. The conversation
2015. Courtesy of Dignicraft. Photographs
by David Figueroa.
revolved around how to transform a piñata so that it is connected to
the experience, memory, and culture of the artisans. This particular

114 115
 ETCÉTERA…
ETCÉTERA...
Date of formation: 1997; active in Buenos Aires, Argentina

BIOGRAPHY

Formed in 1997 in Buenos Aires, Etcétera... is a multidisciplinary collective composed of artists

of poetry, visual arts, and theater. The group was founded on the intention of bringing art to the
site of immediate social conflict—the streets—and of bringing this social conflict into arenas of
cultural production, including media and art institutions. In 2005, they were part of the formation
meeting helped to inform another encounter in 2017 with students from Piñata artisans workshop in Rosarito,
of the INTERNATIONAL ERRORIST movement, an international organization that proclaims error as
Baja California, Mexico, 2015. Courtesy of
Otis College of Art and Design and several artisan families from the Dignicraft. Photograph by David Figueroa. a philosophy of life (http://www.erroristas.org). In 2013, Etcétera... won the second edition of
Purepecha community in Rosarito. As a group, they reflected upon how the International Award for Participatory Art in Bologna, Italy for their project C.R.I.S.I (Commune
these new piñatas would take shape. of Research for Inclusive Social Imagination) (https://crisiproject.wordpress.com/). In 2015,
they received the Prince Claus Award at the Royal Palace in Amsterdam, the Netherlands
The encounters produce an exchange of knowledge and experience among all participants, (http://www.princeclausfund.org/en/network/grupo-etcetera.html).
one that is enriching for all involved and could be considered as a multidirectional educational
process. This is not the main purpose; it is simply an outcome. Etcétera... also develops their activities collaboratively with other collectives and individuals,
inside and outside art institutions, and in the educational and academic sphere field. Currently,
WORKS
Loreto Garín Guzmán (Chile) and Federico Zukerfeld (Argentina), cofounders of the collective,
continue to coordinate the archive, exhibitions, educational activities, and other initiatives.
La Piñata Colaborativa Janitzio su pesca y sus piñatas
2015-2017 2015-2017
Piñatas (cardboard, newspaper, and tissue paper), Video digital PROJECT DESCRIPTION
photographs (digital, inkjet on matte), outline of the 8 minutes
map of Mexico and the border region of the United A collaboration between Dignicraft and the Guzman The installation is the collective result of a four day laboratory called “NO-WORK NO-SHOP” that
States (acrylic line drawing) with postcards and notes Solorio, Jacobo Solorio, Gonzalez Solorio and Solorio
attached Pineda families, with support from the Programa de
Etcétera... conducted at Otis College in March 2017 with students, faculty, and artists. Through the
Various dimensions Apoyo a las Culturas Municipales y Comunitarias exchange of knowledge and personal experiences, the participants created an extra-disciplinary
A collaboration between Dignicraft and the Guzman (PACMYC). and de-educational space using different languages, backgrounds, and tools. The laboratory exam-
Solorio, Jacobo Solorio, Gonzalez Solorio and Solorio ined the concepts of crisis (of representation, economy, and imagination), migration (diaspora and
Pineda families.
racism), neocolonial extraction of natural resources, and the contemporary states of exception and
emergency imposed around the world.

116 117
 ETCÉTERA…
Etcétera...posed the following questions: action as forms of collective enunciation. The collective embarked on the self-taught path it
has followed to this day. We believe we have had the fortune of “learning” through the practical
PRODUCTIVISM and T-ERROR: What is the precariousness of life? How does it influence exchange of knowledge with others, and through the implementation of theory with artists or
our subjectivity and the extraction of natural resources? Where do we find traces of intellectuals, workers from employee-owned recuperated factories, unemployed workers’
cognitive extraction? organizations, adolescents in their school classes, or the homeless. It is the “school of life,”
as many call the universal experience that is seldom taught in universities but is often learned,
THE TRAP: What are the relationships between the privatization of natural and digressing through the interstitial spaces upheld by educational academic programs.
cultural resources? Is it possible to de-educate ourselves from hegemonic thinking?
Since the founding of the International Errorist movement in 2005, we perceive that error plays a
INCLUSIVE SOCIAL IMAGINATION: With what social tools can we “imagine”? Where fundamental role in education, in an individual’s intellectual and emotional development. Error is
are the failures by which we can transform an economic model? Can we make a big a negative affirmation, a speculation on another possible result. Traditional education has taught
error together? us to fight error at all times. We have been taught that error is something negative, forbidden, and
unacceptable. To err is wrong and anyone who makes a mistake must be
Emphasizing the effects that models of exploitation have on the fields of the creative industry and the (opposite) Etcétera..., “NO-WORK penalized. But who does not make mistakes? In traditional education,
NO-SHOP” with Otis students, March 11,
education system, the graphic intervention included timelines, stories, and collages (photographs, 2017. Photograph by Bill Kelley, Jr. error is used as a variable to measure knowledge, to pass or fail a pupil.
videos, archives, recordings) jointly created by the participants in the “NO-WORK NO-SHOP” laboratory. Society has been taught to persecute those who digress and condemn the
(above) Etcétera..., “NO-WORK
NO-SHOP” with Otis students, March 12, errorist. For us, the errorists, experiencing error is experiencing knowledge:
RESPONSE TO QUESTION 2017. Photograph of Etcétera... and the path of love and liberty. Error is the most practical and real means
participants at Kenneth Hahn State
Recreation Area with the Inglewood Oil Field
of education; error educates, transforms, and revolutionizes. We must
Since our collective started in 1997, the members of Etcétera... decided to de-educate ourselves in the background. Left to right: Catherine de-educate ourselves from concepts and false truths such as triumph,
Scott, Dana Duff, Loreto Garín, Celia Rocha,
from everything—everything we believed—that inhibited the autonomy of our thinking. Unlearning David Russell, and Federico Zukerfeld.
success, and efficiency. Errorism, as a philosophy and practice, is an
what we inherited culturally in the society of success so as to prioritize critical thought and Photograph by Jeanette Degollado. affirmation of the urgent need for a worldwide de-education campaign.

118 119
WORKS

FRENTE 3 DE FEVEREIRO
“NO-WORK NO-SHOP,” Errasmus Mundus,
Resistir la Extracción Cognitiva [Resist Cognitive
Extraction]
2017
Graphic on vinyl
Graphic installation occupied a space of 113 x 245 in.
(287 x 622.3 cm) on glass walls
Workshop participants included Anna Ayeroff, Jeanette

FRENTE 3 DE FEVEREIRO
Degollado, Dana Duff, Mark Farina, Pilar García,
Jessica Hirst, Bill Kelley, Jr., Raghubir Kintisch, Xochi
Maberry-Gaulke, Karen Moss, Margo Mullen, Celia
Rocha, David Russell, Gina Valona, Lauren Vazquez,
and Rebecca Zamora. Final design by Loreto Garín
Guzmán and Federico Zukerfeld.
Date of formation: 2004; active in São Paulo, Brazil

BIOGRAPHY

Frente 3 de Fevereiro [February 3rd Front] is a transdisciplinary art and research group. The
group’s artistic interventions create new forms of protest pertaining to racial issues and provoke
new understandings of the fragmented information promulgated by the mass media. Frente 3 de
Fevereiro connects with the artistic legacy of earlier generations who conceived of new ways to
interact with urban space in light of the history of the Afro-Brazilian struggle and resistance.

Daniel Lima is a multimedia artist that explores design and space in the urban environment. Coming
from a trajectory of interventions and interferences in the metropolis of São Paulo, he uses visual
resources to create unexpected and potentially deconstructive situations of the urban scene. He
is the director of the production company Invisíveis Produções (http://www.danielcflima.com/).

Felipe Teixeira Gonçalves holds a degree in International Relations from the Universidade de
São Paulo and a Master’s degree in Economics from the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro,
Brazil. He is a specialist in public administration, is a DJ, and is currently working on the docu-
mentary Saída de Emergência [Emergency Exit] with artist Daniel Lima.

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

Frente 3 de Fevereiro created a documentary, photographs, and recordings resulting from the
research and actions of the group as they investigated the transnational exchange of the meth-
ods of militarization and social control directed against the urban poor currently taking place in
Latin America. Beginning in Rio de Janeiro in 2010, Frente 3 de Fevereiro addressed the issue of
the simultaneous construction of walls surrounding the slums and the creation of the Pacifying
Police Units (UPP), which permanently occupy the favelas. They realized that this apparatus
of occupation first appeared in Medellín and, as a result, traveled there in 2011 to further their
research on Operación Orión and stage urban interventions. These explorations led them to

120 121
 FRENTE 3 DE FEVEREIRO
Frente 3 de Fevereiro, Nou Pap Obeyi
[No Vamos Obedecer / We Will Not Obey]
action, 2015. Photograph by Daniel Lima.

122 123
Port-au-Prince, Haiti where Brazilian units operate as a repressive force as part of the United ¿Qué sueñan los tambores? [What do drums “Haiti Aqui” (action for the film Arquitetura da

FRENTE 3 DE FEVEREIRO
Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) after the crisis generated by the presidential dream?] Exclusão)
2011 2010
coup in 2004. Frente juxtaposes this against Haiti’s history of resistance (its independence won Video vignettes Photograph
by former slaves) and its continued marginalization from global financial aid. Frente 3 de Fevereiro 6 minutes 18 x 24 in. (45.72 x 61 cm)
is creating a powerful narrative diagramming the exportation of control technologies and their Created by Frente 3 de Fevereiro (by Daniel Lima and Created by Frente 3 de Fevereiro
development in Latin America. For each of these steps, they produced different cartographies and Felipe Teixeira)
¿Qué sueñan los tambores? [What do drums
audiovisual recordings. Nou Pap Obeyi [No Vamos Obedecer / We Will dream?]
Not Obey] Date: 2011
RESPONSE TO QUESTION 2016 Photograph
Film 18 x 24 in. (45.72 x 61 cm)
16 minutes Created by Frente 3 de Fevereiro
Central to our research and production is the concept of “self-education:” the processes of Created by Daniel Lima and Felipe Teixeira
creation, action, and reflection are fed back as part of a loop, generating a possibility of self- Nou Pap Obeyi [No Vamos Obedecer / We Will
education in a non-alienating, collective and horizontal practice. This path of understanding Nou Pap Obeyi [No Vamos Obedecer / We Will Not Obey]
education refers to the practices and theories of Paulo Freire, in the belief that we ourselves can Not Obey] 2015
Date of creation: 2016 Photograph
be educators and educated, where the process of teaching and learning forms a virtuous cycle. Video animation 18 x 24 in. (45.72 x 61 cm)
A question is a way to go forward and formulate an artwork, which is itself a question that takes 3 minutes and 12 seconds Created by Daniel Lima
us forward again. “One step forward and we are no longer in the same place.” Another important Created by Daniel Lima
issue in this process is the systematization of this knowledge. How can we generate signs,
“Haiti Aqui” (action for the film Arquitetura da
elaborate concepts, and forms of language for the organization of this produced knowledge? Exclusão)
We propose a praxis that acknowledges the complexity and transversality of the knowledge 2010
production process. In other words, critical knowledge reserves are collected to generate a format Photograph
that does not reproduce objective, unilateral scientific thinking, but rather creates diagrams with 18 x 24 in. (45.72 x 61 cm)
Photograph by Cris Ribas
several input and output ports so that the viewer, the reader, and the participant can organize, in
their own way, the pieces that comprise this puzzle of contemporaneity.

WORKS

Brasil Mundo Cartography Horizontal Monument in Tribute to Flavio Sant'Ana

2011 2004 (reproduction in exhibition)
Graphic on vinyl Graphic on vinyl
62 1/2 x 60 in. (158.75 x 152.4 cm) (body) 72 x 24 in. (182.88 x 70 cm); (rectangle) 75 x
Designed by Frente 3 de Fevereiro and Afrofuturismo 48 in. (190.5 x 121.9 cm)
(by Daniel Lima and Felipe Teixeira) Designed by Frente 3 de Fevereiro
(Flavio Sant'Ana died in 2004 from a gunshot; the
Nou Pap Obeyi Cartography [No Vamos Obedecer military police claimed that they had mistaken
/ We Will Not Obey] Sant'Ana for a suspected thief and that his death was
2016 due to “resisting arrest.")
Offset print
17 3/4 x 25 3/4 in. (45 x 65 cm) Arquitetura da Exclusão [Architecture of
Designed by Daniel Lima and Felipe Teixeira Exclusion]
2010
Film
15 minutes and 27 seconds
Created by Frente 3 de Fevereiro and Afrofuturismo

124 125
Grupo Contrafilé, “Monument to the Invisible

GRUPO CONTRAFILÉ
Turnstile,” Program for the De-turnstilization
of Life Itself, June 2004, São Paulo, Brazil.
Photograph courtesy of Grupo Contrafilé.

GRUPO CONTRAFILÉ
Date of formation: 2000; active in São Paulo, Brazil

BIOGRAPHY

Grupo Contrafilé is a transdisciplinary group that investigates the possible links that can be es-
tablished between art, politics, and education, and how such links broaden the right to engage in
urban creative production. Their projects include: Programa para a Descatracalização da Própria
Vida [Program for the De-turnstilization of Life Itself] (2004) and A Rebelião das Crianças [The
Children’s Rebellion] (2005), which gave rise to Parque para Brincar e Pensar [Park for Playing
and Thinking] (2011) and O Quintal [The Backyard] (2013). The group has taken part in various
exhibitions, among them: Playgrounds 2016 (MASP, São Paulo, 2016), 31st São Paulo Art Biennial
(2014), Radical Education (Slovenia, 2008), If you see something, say something (Australia,
2007), Normality (Argentina, 2006) and Collective Creativity (Germany, 2005). Today the group
consists of Cibele Lucena, Joana Zatz Mussi, Jerusa Messina, and Rafael Leona.

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

In June 2004, the art collective Grupo Contrafilé participated in the Zona de Ação [Action Zone]
exhibition, which was held in various parts of São Paulo as urban intervention sites. Grupo Contrafilé
decided to work in the city’s eastern sector, with which they had little or no knowledge or con-
nection. The group addressed the theme of distance (visible or invisible, economic and social).
They began to recognize distance as a barrier, and, in turn, as a turnstile between the urban
center and the eastern sector. During public meetings, the collective conveyed their project
ideas, gathered personal testimonies from the residents, and recorded those that articulated
ideas of spaces where there are physical or subjective turnstiles. The turnstile became a symbol
of biopolitical control in visible and invisible arenas.

The group acquired an old turnstile and anonymously installed it on a pedestal (that previously
supported the bust of the writer Guilherme de Almeida), outside the Cultural Heritage Depart-
ment. With that action, Grupo Contrafilé inaugurated the “Programa para a Descatracalização

126 127
da Própria Vida” [Program for the De-turnstiling of Life Itself] and converted a space for is self-educational, which means that it is born of our own bodies. The idea is to listen to the problems

GRUPO CONTRAFILÉ
monuments into a landmark of resistance. The “monument” sparked controversy and inspired and pressing needs we come across, and engage in a permanent exercise to name whatever aspect
articles and editorial cartoons. The image of the turnstile and the concept of “de-turnstiling life” of the world prompts us to act. It involves creating various tools, devices, and performance actions.
went viral and took on a life of its own in popular culture. Grupo Contrafilé collected and recorded
the various press materials and popular reuses and presented them along with diagrams and We seek creative paths to develop possibilities, be it of thought or images, but we also reflect at
critical texts in subsequent exhibitions. all times on the how, why, in what way what is happening is happening, in what way what’s being
produced can reverberate and change into new processes, without coming to a close. The past
RESPONSE TO QUESTION few years in Brazil and the world have made it increasingly clear that we are not alone, but sur-
rounded by a gamut of rather complex macro-political structures. Therefore, in these processes,
Grupo Contrafilé views its practice as being artistic, political, and educational. For us, these dimensions we often feel we are in a profound crisis that is tearing us apart inside. And that is also why we
are not ready, closed work platforms; they are an ethic, an exercise, a way of being in the world, a are artists, because some things are only possible by means of artistic practice: through art we
meaning that we are continually shaping and learning. Therefore we see are able to speak from the crisis, but also create “images of the possible” that help us imagine
Grupo Contrafilé, “Diagram: Study for the
them as being interconnected, inseparable. On stating that our work is Undertaking of an Event,” Program for the
and inscribe dissident worlds. We thus not only come into creative contact with what hurts us as
educational, we are not implying that we do it to teach. Above all, our work De-turnstilization of Life Itself, 2005. the raw material for our work, by effectively creating spaces in which other relations can occur,
but also disseminate these processes of imagination and collective learning.

WORKS

Program for the De-turnstilization of Life Itself “Fuvest [São Paulo University admission
2004 - 2005 examinations board] uses rusty turnstile as theme
Newspaper clippings and ephemera for composition”
Various dimensions January 10, 2005
Newspaper clipping
Diagram: Study for the Undertaking of an Event Folha de São Paulo. Photo: Renato Stockler
2005
Graphic on paper Itau Bank Advertisement: “Applicant, de-turnstilise
your life. Open an account at Itaú bank.”
Photographs of Public Assembly of Thought (in January 11, 2005
the east zone of São Paulo with local leadership) Newspaper advertisement
2004 Itau Bank — Folha de São Paulo
Composite photograph
FIRE ON THE TURNSTILE — Demonstrators set a
Monument to the Invisible Turnstile [Monumento turnstile alight before invading the Fuvest building.
à Catraca Invisível] The theme for the admission examinations’
2017 (reproduction) composition was the ‘de-turnstilisation of life’; they
Ink on paper criticize the compulsory fee to be paid in order to take
the examinations.
“Invisible Turnstile occupies a statue’s pedestal February 11, 2005
in Arouche Square” Newspaper clipping
September 4, 2004 Folha de São Paulo. Photo: Ayrton Vignola
Newspaper clipping
Folha de São Paulo. Photo: Jefferson Coppola. Program for the de-turnstilization of life itself:
Turnstile, Control, Indispensable
“Homem-catraca” from the cartoon Piratas de 2005
Tietê by Laerte Coutinho Posters: ink on paper
September 2004 - February 2005 From Collective Creativity, an exhibition at the
Newspaper cartoon Kunstalle Fridericianum, Kassel, Germany (May 1 -
Laerte Coutinho — Folha de São Paulo July 17, 2005).

128 129
 IANNI
CLARA IANNI IN COLLABORATION WITH
DÉBORA MARIA DA SILVA
b. 1987, São Paulo, Brazil

BIOGRAPHIES

Clara Ianni is based in São Paulo, Brazil. Her research focuses on the relationship between art
and politics, exploring the relationship between the political act and the artistic deed, through
various media including video, installation, intervention, sculpture, and text. She holds a BFA in
Visual Arts from Universidade de São Paulo (USP) and a MA in Visual and Media Anthropology
from Freie Universität Berlin, and is currently a PhD candidate in the School of Communications
and Arts at USP. Clara has worked as assistant to the curator Regis Michel, Louvre Museum,
Paris, and as assistant in the 7th Berlin Biennale, curated by Artur Zmijewski, together with
Joanna Warsza and Voina. She is a contributor to Krytyka Polityczna political magazine. Her
work has been included in exihibitions such as Neither Forward, nor Back: Acting in the Present,
Jakarta Bienal, Indonesia (2015); 19th Panorama Videobrasil (2015); Como (...) das coisas que
não existem, 31st São Paulo Biennial (2014); P33, 33rd Panorama de Arte Brasileira; Museu de
Clara Ianni and Débora Maria da Silva,
Apelo, 2014, video stills. Courtesy of
Arte Moderna de São Paulo (2013), Conversational Pieces, n.b.k., Berlin (2013); Untitled (12th
Clara Ianni. Istanbul Biennal), Istanbul (2011). Her residences include HIWAR I Conversations in Amman, Jordan
(2013); Culturia, Berlin (2011); Bolsa Pampulha, Museu da Pampulha, Belo Horizonte (2011); and
Casa Tomada, São Paulo (2010).

Débora Maria da Silva is the founder of the Mães de Maio [Mothers of May] group, which brings
together family members of victims of state violence—specifically the hundreds of murders in
2006 known as “Crimes de Maio” [May Crimes], attributed to police and extermination groups
with ties to the military police. The majority of the victims were young Blacks, indigenous and
poor, who were executed in little more than a week, among them, Débora’s son, Edson Rogerio
Silva dos Santos. Mães de Maio has received the Santos Dias Prize for Human Rights in 2011; and
the Chico Mendes Medal of Resistance and the Human Rights Award in 2013 (the highest award of
the Brazilian government to individuals and entities that stand against human rights violations) in
the category “Confronting Violence.” The group also was awarded the Braz Cubas Medal in 2014,
in recognition of the group's struggle.

130 131
PROJECT DESCRIPTION

ICONOCLASISTAS
Apelo [Plea] is a video produced in collaboration with Debora Maria da Silva, founder of the
Mothers of May Movement. Filmed at the Dom Bosco Cemetery in Perus, São Paulo, the piece is
situated at the intersection between documentary and fiction. By combining those two formats,
Apelo records the dramatic speech by da Silva (a jointly-authored text based on stories collected
from other mothers in the movement) and documents the collective burial of homeless people.
The setting for the film, Dom Bosco Cemetery, was the site for a clandestine mass grave created
by the military regime and where a monument commemorating the dead and the disappeared was
built during the 1990s. The cemetery currently is used to bury the poor. Together with the video,
a series of workshops and thematic debates were held on behalf of the education sector of the
ICONOCLASISTAS
31st São Paulo Biennial. In addition to cultural institutions, the video has been shown in different
venues, such as courts, public hearings, schools, and therapy sessions.
Date of formation: 2006; active in Buenos Aires, Argentina
RESPONSE TO QUESTION

BIOGRAPHY
I think art should not be taught from the top down, it should be practiced. To that end, I try to
create platforms and spaces for collective enunciation and practices in which knowledge is not
transferred from one to another, but built in common and by each person, including me. Thus Iconoclasistas is an Argentine duo formed in 2006 by Pablo Ares and Julia Risler. They organize
establishing a shared terrain on the basis of dissent, difference, and listening. This collective projects combining graphic art, creative workshops, and collective research. Their productions are
practice takes place both during the process of producing the work and while participating with posted on the internet though creative commons licenses, thus boosting their free dissemination
museum education staff through workshops, discussions and chats, or exploring other means and derived use. In 2008 they started experimenting with various map-making tools in collec-
of disseminating the work: schools, public hearings, therapeutic events, courts. In fact, I have tive-work spaces. This gave rise to collective mapping workshops and processes to engage in col-
thought of starting a school, or a pedagogical program, of an experimental, practical nature. laborative research on territories. By activating graphic devices and designing an arsenal of tools,
Through my practice, I investigate and explore the way art making relates to political acts. they encourage critical reflection to give impetus to resistance and transformation practices. In 2013
Despite the current circumstances affecting art production, characterized by accelerated produc- they published the Manual on Collective Mapping: Critical Cartographic Resources for Territorial Col-
tivity, I think art is nevertheless a gesture of denial and a call for the world to be different. This laborative-Creation Processes, in which they systematize and share methodologies, resources and
is why it has always played a fundamental role in society. I have some criticisms of the process dynamics for the self-organization of workshops. As a space that is always changing and linked to
that currently promotes the academicization of art education and the appearance of museums the processes that unfold on implementing projects, Iconoclasistas forms part of a dynamic network
as educational institutions. of affinity and solidarity scattered around different points of the mapa mundi. That multiplicity of
encounters creates visual supports that run through that political and affective storyline and provide
WORKS
the possibility of adapting the production of playful and pedagogical resources to a tactical horizon.

Apelo [Plea] PROJECT DESCRIPTION

2014
Digital video Between 2008 and 2010 Iconoclasistas took part in various encounters in Argentina, engaging in
12 minutes and 57 seconds
mapping exercises with movements and assemblies fighting against the pillaging and plundering
of common space and resources. Those encounters were key factors for bringing together move-
ments, organizations, and assemblies from different parts of the country. They were held in Jujuy
and Cordoba, organized by the Union of Citizen Assemblies (UAC), and in Buenos Aires, Bariloche,
Tucumán, El Dorado (Misiones), and Ciudad del Este (Paraguay) following a call to action by the
pedagogy-for-the-masses team, Pañuelos en Rebeldía [Handkerchiefs in Rebellion]. In these
get-togethers, in addition to sharing forms of knowledge and information, systemic guidelines
were improved, which in turn strengthened the development of their work by stages.

132 133
 ICONOCLASISTAS
(above) Iconoclasistas, Panel of woman
working on map from "Collective
Mapping in Two Stages: Tools for
medium-sized gatherings with the aim of
bringing together and presenting shared
That working process led to the creation of two collective maps: information and knowledge," 2010.
We view mapping as a practice that is set in motion through the ability we all have to take a
1) The critical cartography “X-Ray of the Heart of the Soy Wheel” bird’s-eye view (perceptive, sensory, imaginary, critical) of the territory to be mapped. The map
(opposite) Iconoclasistas, Panel of
(2010) shows a complex set of issues revealing the expansion of group working on map from "Collective
is a key instrument that enables us to work with workshop participants using a common platform
transgenic soy monocrops, produced and concentrated in a few Mapping in Two Stages: Tools for that triggers intervention. In constructing situated knowledge through exchange, we reveal previ-
medium-sized gatherings with the aim of
hands, through the implementation of a technological package that bringing together and presenting shared
ously unseen aspects that could not be accessed or contemplated by working with tools that only
includes machinery, transgenic seeds, and herbicides and pesticides information and knowledge," 2010. focus on rational knowledge. The subsequent production of what we call critical cartographies
that contaminate and are highly toxic. 2) The critical cartography syncretizes that collaborative process through a graphic tool that, on the one hand, is a tool
“Mega-mining in the Dry Andes” (2010) highlights the mountain-mining projects and endeavors for communication that highlights specific topics, and, on the other, is a pedagogical resource
of multinational companies (mostly Chinese and Canadian), which involve separating minerals serving as the starting point for continuing the work process.
through a toxic process that requires large amounts of water that contaminate both air and
water, damaging the countryside and ecosystems, and undermining the rights and health of Throughout the work process, our practice also changes as it incorporates new subject matter;
residents and communities. polishing the poetics and modes of doing; and discarding or adapting methodologies that are not
working to their full potential.
RESPONSE TO QUESTION
WORKS
Our source of learning and inspiration is the tradition of critical pedagogies—such as Paulo Freire
and the Zapatistas—and the organization, along the assembly, self-governing and horizontal lines Collective Mapping in Two Stages: Tools for Medium-Sized
of social movements (for instance, post-2001 experiences in Argentina or the 15M movement in Gatherings with the Aim of Bringing Together and Presenting
Shared Information and Knowledge. “X-Ray of the of the Heart
Spain). This "learning by doing" intends to put forward other forms of knowledge and skills to en-
of the Soy Wheel” and “Mega-mining in the Dry Andes”
courage collaborative research, speed up the visualization and building of shared points, and rebuild 2010
a network of alternative practices to facilitate the activation of transformation practices. Inkjet on paper

134 135
 TERRITORIAL RESTORATION KOLLECTIVE
KRT (KOLECTIVO
DE RESTAURACIÓN
TERRITORIAL) [TERRITORIAL
RESTORATION KOLLECTIVE]
Date of formation: 2000; active in Mapuche territory, southern Chile

BIOGRAPHY

KRT (Kolectivo de Restauración Territoria) [Territorial Restoration Kollective] is a collabo-

rative network made up of Jorge A. Olave Riveros, Cristian Wenuvil Peiñan, and Gonzalo Cueto
Vera, all of whom are visual artists from Wallmapu, Araucanía. They have been working together
since 2011, developing contextual actions in the territory and in different spaces that promote
art. Among those actions are Transferencias de Memoria [Memory Transferences], Trafkintü del
silencio, desterritorio, and Samplerdungün. As an artist, each member of KRT also develops their
own personal paths of creation. As such KRT is more than a collective; it is a cell that creates a
network of collaboration in which actions are coordinated from a territorial perspective. KRT uses
various media such as critical cartography, trial video, exploration of sound, and artistic creation
in order to activate processes to regenerate community memory.

PROEJCT DESCRIPTION

In a territory that has become heavily militarized under the pretext of ethnic and forestry con-
flicts, KRT seeks to establish community actions to restore territory in both material and symbolic
terms by generating Interzona [Interzone], an antibase (presence) just a few meters from the
training and operations center of Chile’s special forces and riflemen.

By applying community-organization strategies and art-based tactics, KRT generates a dialogue

to foster reconnections around local memory, water, ethnobotany, sound- and starscapes based
on elements of the Mapuche cosmovision and its concept of the three earths: subterranean,
surface, and celestial (minche, nag, and wenu mapu respectively).
(top) Kolectivo de Restauración Territorial,
nighttime photo of Interzona’s antibase within
Interzona was designed as a clearing in the form of a kultrun (drum
the workshop Wenumapü, 2017. used by a machi [shaman]) in the middle of a meadow; four working
(bottom) Kolectivo de Restauración Territorial,
points were established from which actions and dialogues radiate.
Detail of contextual map of Interzona. The Interzona-base was developed in seven days and generated field

136 137
research and techno-artistic explorations aimed at the community of Ercilla. Here we sought

LACY
intimate contact with the territory and its memory in order to break up the logic of militarization
that was imposed, and restore the dynamics and relations of communal living.

RESPONSE TO QUESTION

Collective creation, understood as praxis of constant experimentation with a dialogical focus in

which artists and communities come together in a process of mutual feedback and guidance,
develops artifacts, processes, and visualizations that speak to the neoliberal machinic assem-
blage in our territorial context. It is here that the collective initiates a process of almost physical
framing to understand conversations with individuals and communities through field exploration.
SUZANNE LACY
Data collection, both territorially and online, is where the process of framing the issue begins;
after which, it challenges the reality imposed by the representation and social articulation of
neoliberalism through the body and conversation. Chile was the first country in the world where b. 1945, Wasco, CA; active in Los Angeles, CA, United States
the elites and economic powers imposed political control following the military coup of 1973
and its subsequent cultural perfecting by the democratic governments under the current military
BIOGRAPHY
constitution. This is where KRT rises to the challenge as an example for engaging in reflection
and creation in territories affected by the impact of neoliberalism in different dimensions. We be-
A visual artist whose prolific career includes performances, video and photographic installation,
lieve that artistic creation, with a strong focus on experimentation and receptive to collaboration,
critical writing, and public practices in communities, Suzanne Lacy is one of the Los Angeles
provides possibilities for dismantling an oppressive system to open moments of reflection and
performance artists active in the 1970s who helped shape the emergent art of social en-
creation that resignify, visualize, and experience another state of affairs where it may be possible
gagement. Her work ranges from intimate, graphic body explorations to large-scale public
to live outside of the neoliberal limits.
performances involving literally hundreds of performers and thousands of audience members.
She has exhibited at Tate Modern, Museo Reina Sofia, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in
WORKS
Los Angeles. Her book, Mapping the Terrain: New Genre Public Art (1995), was responsible for
Interzona [Interzone] coining the term and articulating the practice. Lacy was founding chair of the MFA in Public
2015-2017 Practice at the Otis College of Art and Design. She holds a Master of Fine Arts from California
Text of Llellipun, blessing by the Machi to the Trayenco Institute of the Arts and a Doctor of Philosophy from Gray's School of Art at Robert Gordon
Zomo, and drought data (adhesive vinyl), serigraphs
University in Scotland. She currently teaches at the University of Southern California Roski
(ink on gauze), video with sound, silver-plated eight-
pointed stars, wood, maps and documentation from School of Art and Design.
Ercilla, Wallmapu, Chile (ink on paper)
Various dimensions PROJECT DESCRIPTION

On the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, the city of Quito, Ecuador
presented the culminating performance of Suzanne Lacy’s year-long project focusing on the
aesthetics of relationship, activism, and social transformation.

De tu puño y letra (By Your Own Hand) intersected public, legal, and educational institutions’
efforts to fight violence against women with a populous organizing project performed for al-
most 2000 people in the Plaza Belmonte bullring. Working with the city government, colleges,
non-profits, leaders, volunteers, and youth to address violence against women, the project was
built on the earlier “Cartas de Mujeres” campaign where 10,000 women submitted written testi-
monies on personal experiences of violence.

138 139
 LACY
Men read from the letters and experiences of
Ecuadorean women in the Plaza Belmonte bullring
as part of the performance De tu puño y letra,
November 25, 2015. Photograph by Raúl Peñafiel.

140 141
 Discrepancies show up in the power relations that shape how narratives are developed. There are

LACY
always different opinions about what the art should look like and how it should operate. In Quito,
for instance, animal rights activists thought we should not use a bullring, as they were trying to
eliminate bull fights. We thought that the image was all the stronger for reframing male valor as
an act of empathy in an arena where male dominance was on display. Although I retain strong
aesthetic control, even this is subject to constant negotiation.

COLLABORATORS AND TEAM

María Fernanda Cartagena, Curator

Oderay Game, Producer
Paulina León, Executive Coordinator, Centro de Arte Contemporáneo
Gabriela Ponce, Scriptwriter
Bruno Louchouarn, Sound Designer
Mónica Moreira, Chief Recruitment team
Chía Patiño, Stage Director
Timm Kroeger, Workshop Designer
Alex Schlenker, Azucena Sono, Creative consultants
Sofía Coloma, Chief Production Team
Arturo Yépez and Raúl Teba, Director’s Assistants
Daniel Andrade, Director of Photography and Light
Felipe Aizaga, Grecia Albán, Milton Castañeda, Mariela Espinoza de los Monteros,
On November 25, 2015 the audience entering the bullring was greeted At the end of the performance, the
men climbed into the bleachers for Emile Plonsky, Mónica Moreira, Musicians
by Mediators who served key roles in bringing them into the conver- an intimate reading of the letters with Javier Andrade, Director AV Documentation
sational nature of the event. The first three acts featured a relentless audience members. Photograph by Christoph Hirtz, Director Photographic Team
Patricio Estebez. Francois “Coco” Laso, Video Director, A Blade of Grass
narrative drawn from the voices of Ecuadorean women as read by
Alegría Mateljan, María José Salazar, and Yauri Muenala, Coordinators
men—on childhood, the body, and intimate partner violence. The ring
Colectivo 3+1: Alejandra Pinto, Esteban Calderón, Karina Fernández and
slowly filled with 350 men of all ages and from all walks of life, who subsequently climbed into Natalia Dueñas with Canela Samaniego and Andrés Miño
the bleachers to share the letters in intimate readings to audience members. The performance Gina Manrique and Freddy Cevallos, Logistics and Production Assistants
ended with the demonstration, in effect, of a massive public conversation on violence. Juan Esteban Suárez, Logo Designer
Mateo García Game, Mediators coordinator

RESPONSE TO QUESTION
SPECIAL THANKS TO

I enter every project interested in what I will learn about people’s experiences and the issues we Mauricio Rodas Espinel, Mayor of Quito
will represent together. The process of listening deeply and respecting individual voice is critical Daniela Chacón, Deputy Mayor of Quito
to all social practices. I would never presume to dictate what people actually say in any large- María Fernanda Pacheco, President Patronato
Pablo Corral Vega, Secretary of Culture
scale public conversation, or how they represent their experience, although I definitely could
Viviana Maldonado, German Society for International Cooperation (GIZ)
not work on a subject that was not in line with my values. Still, I am very open to exploring my Julio Echeverría, Instituto de la Ciudad
own prejudices and lack of information; what I learn is the truth of individual experience and my Jorge and Stephanie Gabela, UDLA School of Medicine and Global Health
practice is to support its transformation into social action. Bettina Korek, ForYourArt

MUNICIPAL INSTITUTIONS
There is a continual reciprocal learning. In the elaborate lead-up to a performance, I teach my
collaborators how to make artistic images that communicate to broad publics. In turn, they
Unidad Patronato Municipal San José
educate me about the nature of their multiple experiences and how to produce an artwork within Secretaría de Inclusión Social
their specific and particular context. Secretaría de Coordinación Territorial y Participación Ciudadana
Secretaría de Seguridad y Gobernabilidad
Secretaría de Salud

142 143
Instituto de la Ciudad

LUNA
Policía Metropolitana de Quito
Quito Turismo
Empresa Metropolitana de Agua Potable y Saneamiento
Centro de Apoyo Integral ‘Las Tres Manuelas’
Fundación Teatro Nacional Sucre

INSTITUTIONS

Escuela de Medicina y Programa de Salud Global de la Universidad de Las Américas

ALFADIR LUNA
COCOA de la Universidad San Francisco de Quito
Facultad de Artes Universidad Central del Ecuador
Facultad de Arquitectura y Diseño de la Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador
Facultad de Comunicación de la Universidad Salesiana
Cruz Roja de Pichincha
Fundación Tierra Nueva
b. 1982, Mexico City, Mexico
Fundación Hierbabuena
Policía Nacional del Ecuador

SPONSORS BIOGRAPHY

Fundación Museos de la Ciudad Alfadir Luna graduated from the Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas (2008) and studied aes-
United States of America Embassy in Ecuador thetics, art, and violence at the Colegio de Saberes (2010-2011). He is currently completing a
The Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center
German Society for International Cooperation in Ecuador (GIZ)
Master’s degree in Art and Environment at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM).
A Blade of Grass Fellowship for Socially Engaged Art His work primarily takes the form of drawing and action art; it begins as reflections revolving
ONU Mujeres around knowledge processes, which usually culminate in site-specific interventions. Since 2006
Creative Time’s Global Residency Program by the Robert Sterling Clark Foundation he has developed his work within the framework of the social structures that constitute public
ForYourArt
Diners Club
markets in Spanish-speaking contexts, and since 2013 in sites of migrant crossing. His work has
Teleamazonas also been shown in different public platforms both in Mexico and abroad. Since 2013 he is a
Urbano member of the "Teatro Línea de Sombra" [Shadow Line Theater] company, where he is managing
Sonotec the “Ruta Migrante” [Migrant Route] project and teaches in the certificate program “Transver-
sales” as part of the company. He also teaches at the "Fábrica de Artes y Oficios" (Oriente) [Fac-
WORKS
tory of Arts and Trades (East)] in Mexico City, one of four cultural centers and training facilities
De tu puño y letra (By Your Own Hand) supported by the city government.
2015-2016
Digital video, letters, and documentation of community PROJECT DESCRIPTION
collaborations and organizations

The Procesión del Señor de Maíz is a project of action art in which a figural sculpture covered
in corn is carried annually through twelve markets of the commercial zone known as La Merced,
in Mexico City. The artist agreed to perform this action for a period of ten years (2008-2018),
ensuring that it remains for at least one year in ten of the twelve markets. For this purpose a
stewardship of merchants was formed.

The procession is accompanied by a band of wind instruments, empty baskets, a cane, a braid,
and banners that illustrate trading strategies most commonly used by the participating markets
(the banners act as symbols of the individual identity of each market). The various elements of
the procession are political gestures to express the merchants’ concerns.

144 145
 LUNA
Alfadir Luna, Procesión del Señor de Maíz
[Procession of the Corn Man], annual ritual
action, 2011, chromogenic print. Photograph
by Idaid Rodríguez.

The exhibition project consisted in presenting some of these objects as well as in establishing RESPONSE TO QUESTION
a dialogue between merchants of Santa Ana and La Merced to realize a sculpture made of corn
kernels in Southern California. The sculpture addressed problematics and cultural situations in Procesión del Señor de Maíz is a dialogue-based project that hinges on direct experiences in
common among those involved. Luna, as promoter and interlocutor, proposed to approach the the market and the collective organization of the annual ritual action, the model for which has
symbolic-economic relationship between participating traders and this grain. The sculpture ap- been open to adaptation since 2008. Therefore the changes made have served as a starting
peared only in Los Angeles because of its proximity to the place of manufacture and was returned point for comparison and reflection in relation to the symbolic and operational aspects of the
to Santa Ana before the tour—a key condition of the agreement between the artist and the action and of the piece as a whole (i.e., of all the factors that make the collective performance
merchants of La Merced; the Señor de Maíz only travels by land and accompanied by stewards. possible every year).

146 147
For their part, the vicissitudes of the market play a fundamental role in the tone of the project;

MORALES
thus, for example, the project initially centered on celebratory situations, and today focuses on
the context of unity in the face of political crises.

The terms used in the Procession have been “experience” and “to know”. In the markets, it is
not practical to work according to a schedule, as changing rhythms demand their own timing.
This in turn creates direct knowledge from labor dynamics and practices. The actions that tend
to be approached in universal terms are those that are identified as being extraneous to markets.
“Procession...” naturally follows those dynamics.

WORKS
TANIEL MORALES
Procesión para unir a un hombre de Maíz / Bags of seeds
Procesión del Señor de Maíz [Procession to unite 2017 (original design 2010) b. 1970, Mexico City, Mexico
a man of corn / Procession of the Corn Man] Seeds, plastic (bags)
variables
Mannequin
2017 (original design 2009) Documents printed on paper BIOGRAPHY
Fiber glass, corn, and adhesive 1. Internal agreement about the registration
49 1/4 x 23 3/4 in. (125 x 60 x 60 cm) approx. process in the copyright registry Taniel Morales is a multi-disciplinary artist and educator, who was part of the free radio art
2. Letter from stewards authorizing Luna as a
projects, theater, performance, video, and sound art since the early 1990s. He received a degree
Series of 12 standards spokesperson or representative abroad
2017 (original design 2008) 3. Photograph of La Merced stewards and in Visual Arts from the Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas (ENAP) at the Universidad Nacional
Brass-plated post and satin fabric embroidered families holding ritual objects Autónoma de México. He was awarded a Jóvenes Creadores fellowship from the Fondo Nacional
with texts (gold thread) 4. Graphic visualization of the conceptual para la Cultura y las Artes (FONCA) in the category of Alternative Media; he has exhibited in
86 5/8 x 55 1/8 x 2 in. (220 x 140 x 5 cm) each proposal of “Procesión...”
Mexico, Canada, Spain, and the United States, among other countries.
5. Outline/script of the ritual action “Procesión...”
Wooden cane covered in ribbons with bells 6. Diagram or graphic document of the formal
tied at ends structure of the work “Procesión...” In addition to his work as an artist, Morales has twelve years’ experience teaching a contemporary
2017 (original design 2010) art workshop at the Faro de Oriente in Mexico City. This workshop represents efforts of de-schooling
Wood, ribbon, metal bells Procesión para unir a un hombre de Maíz/
and non-formal education, and focuses on social visual arts, strategies of contemporary art, artistic
43 5/16 x 1 5/8 in. (110 x 4 cm) Procesión del Señor de Maíz
2010 process, and the body. This workshop has been replicated at the National School of painting, print-
Braided ribbons with bells at ends Chromogenic print making and sculpture “La Esmeralda,” Soma, and Uva, among other visual arts institutes.
2017 (original design 2010) 120 x 90 cm (35 7/16 x 47 1/4 pulg.)
Ribbons and metallic bells Photograph by Idaid Rodríguez Romero
PROJECT DESCRIPTION
150 cm (59 pulg.) lineales
Procesión para unir a un hombre de Maíz/
Incense burner Procesión del Señor de Maíz The project stems from the artist’s experience with low intensity radios of the Zapatista move-
2017 (original design 2010) 2017 ment of 1994 and its resonances in the critical movements of Los Angeles. During the past
Fired clay, pigment, and varnish Video HD mono channel transferred to DVD
23 years, critical discourses have been constantly transformed and updated according to the
7 7/8 x 6 in. (20 x 15 cm) 10 minutes (approx.)
Directed and edited by Rodrigo Cervantes and Carlos specific communities that develop them. Palabra Viva understands speech as an ecosystem, a
Printed cards (front: image of sculpture; back: Abrajam system in equilibrium where words are nourished by one another. The project takes the form of a
text description of annual ritual action) glossary where each word is defined from Los Angeles and Mexico City, showing the differences
2017 (original design 2010)
and coincidences between two communities. The research developed from journeys through
Inkjet on pearlescent paper
2 3/4 x 2 in. (7 x 5 cm) the cities and from specific interviews with activists, militants, and artistic communities. The
glossary is a formal resource, a document created with superimposed maps of Los Angeles and
Mexico City and a QR system for the propagation of audio stories.

148 149
For the project, Morales was a visiting artist at Otis College of Art and Design in the radio class,

MORALES
Creative Action an Integrated Learning Program, with Professor Michele Jaquis where they worked
on how to update radio as a medium. Radio in the 1990s represented the possibility of invading
the private space of the house, work, and the car. Currently, with the development of new tech-
nologies, the private space to be invaded is the cell phone; the QR technology allows for the
transmission of radio stories directly to personal devices.

RESPONSE TO QUESTION

I sympathize with critical pedagogies, particularly with the notions of popular education (Freire)
and de-schooling (Ivan Illich). I believe that the idea of “school” should be transformed into a
society that aims to create emancipated humans outside of systemic violence. In my practice,
however, I investigate non-formal education as an even wider field, where practices that do not
conform to the traditional idea of schooling are found.

Curiously, I arrived at this research interest through experiences in social and visual arts. I
continue to seek a model of participatory art where the artist-public relationship is horizontal,
outside of the structures of power and coincidental with the inter- Artist Taniel Morales conducted a
actions constructed in non-formal education workshops. I interpret workshop with Otis students as part of
the Creative Action course on Community
the model of non-formal workshops, de-schooled and centered on the Radio, February 2016. Photograph by
Zapatista model of “Lead by Obeying,” as a piece of expanded art of Allison Knight.

Artist Taniel Morales's notes from social practice. The relationships between “guide” and “students” are
the workshop with Otis students as
part of the Creative Action course much more profound than those between artists and publics.
on Community Radio, February 2016.
Photograph by Michele Jaquis.
Another point of interest in this transformation of artwork and education is
to accept that “art” is a space in which to generate knowledge; therefore,
it is a space for the construction of an equal pedagogical relationship between two subjects. As
in the field of art, “school” has been opened up to possibilities and social relations that no longer
resemble “education.”

I like to think of my practice as hacking “art.” With its current formal freedom, art remains elusive
to the legitimizing efforts put upon “education.”

WORKS

Palabra Viva: El radio como contenedor de La Palabra

[Living Word: The Radio as a Container of the Word]
2017
Audio files

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 PADILLA / PUIG
ANDRÉS PADILLA DOMENE +
IVÁN PUIG DOMENE
b. 1986, Guadalajara, Mexico / b. 1977, Guadalajara, Mexico

BIOGRAPHIES

Andrés Padilla Domene received a degree in media arts from the Centro de Arte Audiovisual
de Guadalajara. Both his solo and collaborative work has been exhibited in various festivals and
exhibitions internationally. His artwork is centered in research and often addresses technology
by exploring the very devices developed and employed in the work’s production. His films and
videos reside in the border between documentation and documentary. He is also a member of
the artist collective Astrovandalistas (astrovandalistas.cc), and currently is an artist fellow at Le
Fresnoy - Studio national des arts contemporains in Tourcoing, France.

Iván Puig Domene lives and works in San Miguel de Allende and is a member of the collective
TriodO with Marcela Armas and Gilberto Esparza. He spent his first years between the streets of
Guadalajara, the tropical jungle of Comala, and the auto junkyards of Tijuana, circumstances that
where important for his later art production. He studied electronics in Guadalajara and received a
degree in Fine Arts with a specialization in engraving from the Universidad de Guanajuato. Puig’s
varied techniques and works are connected by a critical perspective and humor present in his
observations of the social environment.
SEFT-1 (Sonda de Exploración Ferroviaria
Tripulada), On the tracks with the Citlaltépetl PROJECT DESCRIPTION
(Pico de Orizaba) volcano in the background,
2010. Photograph courtesy of the artists.
SEFT-1 (Sonda de Exploración Ferroviaria Tripulada) [Abandoned Railways Exploration
Probe] is a trans-disciplinary project centered around a futuristic, artist-designed vehicle or
Probe that is equipped to move both on land and rail. SEFT-1 was created by Iván Puig Domene
and Andrés Padilla Domene to explore abandoned railways throughout Mexico. They were able
to map the history of development and industrialization through the rise of the rail system and
later trace the decline of modernity’s promise through the abandonment of the same rail system.
The artists explored how the ideology of progress is imprinted onto historic landscapes and
reflected on the two poles of the social experience of technology: use and obsolescence. The

152 153
artists’ journeys led them to the notion of modern ruins as places and systems left behind in the

PADILLA / PUIG
recent past, not due to a lack of functionality, but for a range of political and economic reasons.
During its run, the crew engaged in reflective and creative processes, which took the shape of
physical, photographic, sound, and other kinds of samples. In some of the settlements visited
by the Probe, the railnauts presented the information gathered on previous journeys to strike up
dialogues and act as a shuttle for stories and questions about the people and places that make
up the history of the rail system, developmentalism, and its socio-cultural consequences.

RESPONSE TO QUESTION

We think of SEFT-1 as a shuttle for stories and questions. From the beginning, we asked ourselves:
What is happening in the abandoned railway spaces after privatization? This question framed the
hundreds of testimonies recorded during the Probe expeditions throughout the network of train
tracks abandoned in the country. From the re-crossing of these roads, of transporting histories,
images, and objects from one community to another, the project proposed a dialogical reconnec-
tion between communities, perhaps distant, but united by a common loss.

The design of the SEFT-1 constantly aroused curiosity as a means of transport. In all seriousness,
we acted as railnauts aboard her, a profession that resides in the boundaries between artist-re-
searcher and character of science fiction. This role allowed us to interact playfully, but also with
the formality of the researcher at the same time. Our interlocutors participated in this game, thus
nourishing this project of dialogues. Our crossing was an interaction with specific spaces and
moments that continue to be transformed. It is difficult to know what part of the project survives
in the memory of these communities, but we could see that the encounter with SEFT-1 was as
significant for some people as it was for us.
SEFT-1 (Sonda de Exploración Ferroviaria
WORKS Tripulada), the Probe has analog and digital
navigation instruments, 2010.

SEFT-1 (Sonda de Exploración Ferroviaria SEFT-1. Entering Black hole #1 in Atoyac,

Tripulada) over Metlac Bridge, Veracruz Veracruz
Line drawing of Veracruz route Muestrario Lunar [Collection of Lunar Samples]
2010-2012 2010-2012
2017 2017
Digital photograph Digital photograph
Digital rendering Catalogue
36 x 48 in. (91.4 x 121.9 cm) 12 x 18 in. (30.5 x 45.7 cm)
Approx. 36 inches wide 111 pages: illustrations (color)
SEFT-1. The Probe has a navigation system that Ex-railroad workers guiding SEFT-1
SEFT-1 (Sonda de Exploración Ferroviaria
combines analog and digital instruments. 2010-2012
Tripulada)
2010-2012 Digital photograph
2011
Digital photograph 12 x 18 in. (30.5 x 45.7 cm)
Book (Mexico City: Dirección General de Publicaciones
12 x 18 in. (30.5 x 45.7 cm)
del Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes, 2011)
Lunar samples from the Veracruz route
223 pages: illustrations (some color); 23 cm; 1 color
Residents of Esperanza, Puebla on the platform of 2010-2012
poster 42 x 48 cm folded to 21 x 16 cm
the abandoned train station Various dimensions
2010-2012
Digital photograph
12 x 18 in. (30.5 x 45.7 cm)

154 155
 POLEN
POLEN
Date of formation: 2008; active in Tijuana, Mexico / San Diego, CA, United States

BIOGRAPHY

POLEN is a Tijuana based collaborative team created in 2008 by Adriana Trujillo and José Inerzia
that develops artistic projects through the use of film and media. They have been working col-
laboratively to develop films, community workshops, and installation-based artworks. They have
also curated film programs that combine a broad range of disciplines and media, such as video,
photography, multi-projection, and expanded cinema.

Their work has been part of many exhibitions and festivals: Museum of Latin American Art MOLAA;
International Film Festival, Guadalajara, Morelia, Iowa, and DOCSMX; Habitat Center in Nueva
Delhi; Sci-Fi Home Movies, Liverpool; Other Projects Gallery, London; Pop-Up Space Finland;
Trans-Border Institute USD, MECA Art Center Almería, Arte Alameda Lab, Mexico; Medellín Arts
Biennale MDE11; Citi-Lab, Barcelona; Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego; Zaragoza History
Museum, Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico; Voices Breaking Boundaries, Houston; California Art
Institute, among others.

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

Nido de Lenguas [Nest of Tongues] is a requiem of the last Yuman survivors in the northwest
of Mexico near Baja California. Intertwining their latest myths and magic through geo-symbolic
elements, the film mixes history, science fiction, and experimental ethnography. It is a utopic
and futuristic elegy about the imminent death of a people, associated with post-colonization
contradictions, modernity, and a dreamless world.

With a plastic, dreamlike visuality, the film is a portrayal of the Yuman geography and the
POLEN, Nido de Lenguas [Nest of Tongues], 2017, principal myths that touch upon topics such as territory, memory, and fears through the issues of
video stills. A utopic-futuristic elegy and science-
fiction documentary film by Adriana Trujillo and
colonialism, exclusion, and rural climate conditions that have been imposed on them throughout
José Inerzia. the years.

156 157
Through Nido de Lenguas we pose questions about our inability as a human species to deter our

PORRAS-KIM
own self-destruction. Although we begin to become aware that something is happening in our
world, we put aside the exceptional and make looting, laziness, and violence a quotidian occur-
rence through marginalization and oblivion. Today, it can seem as if no return is possible. Nido
de Lenguas is an ode to that imminent death, resulting in an elegy and a reflection on the causes
and consequences of that which we experience increasingly: The extinction of our own humanity.

RESPONSE TO QUESTION

At POLEN we build pieces using film and media as active vehicles for deconstructing traditional
processes and approaches of collaboration, recording, and training. We shun the representational
GALA PORRAS-KIM
model, and instead focus on performativity and intersubjectivity, by seeking to create spaces for
polyphonic communication in which reflexivity is explicitly or implicitly put into practice. We have
taken three concepts from Freire. The first is the notion of reinventing power, which in Nido de b. 1984, Bogotá, Colombia; active in Los Angeles, CA
Lenguas [Nest of Tongues] is manifested through recreation using playful strategies and staging
of actual actors—non-actors of their imagined reality and in reversal of anthropological tradition.
BIOGRAPHY

The second concept is that of education; given that we work on the basis of dialectical processes
Gala Porras-Kim received her Master of Fine Arts degree from the California Institute of the
as a strategy for community approach, we generate educational exchanges using multiple visual
Arts (2009), a Master of Arts degree in Latin American Studies (2012), and a Bachelor of Arts
resources, while always experimenting with educational-participatory methodologies.
in Art and Latin American Studies (2007) from the University of California, Los Angeles. Her
work has been included in Made in L.A, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; CURRENT: LA Public Art
The third concept of Freire’s we have undertaken is that of historical notion; in POLEN we artic-
Biennial 2016; AÚN, 44th Salón Nacional de Artistas, Colombia; and in the collection of Frac
ulate projects with strong links to historiographic elements, which we dislocate geographically
Pays de la Loire, France. She received the Artadia Award and Rema Hort Mann award in 2017,
and temporally. In Nido de Lenguas [Nest of Tongues], the natives reinterpret their decline in
Joan Mitchell Foundation Award in 2016, Creative Capital Grant and Tiffany Foundation Award in
a game in which science fiction and documentaries cross in a future, displaced timeframe. We
2015, and a California Community Foundation Fellowship for Visual Artists in 2013. In addition
view performative strategies as having high imaginative, testimonial, and autobiographical value.
to Talking to Action: Art, Pedagogy, and Activism in the Americas, in 2017 Porras-Kim’s work
Using media such as intimate journals, confession, and testimony, we make tangible our direct
will be included in exhibitions at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Commonwealth and
relationship with our interlocutors by seeking new ways of seeing, interpreting, and imagining
Council, and LABOR.
the world.

PROJECT DESCRIPTION
WORKS

Nido de lenguas [Nest of Tongues] In these pieces, Gala Porras-Kim researches Zapotec, a tonal language, and the distinctions of
2017 its variants within Oaxaca, Mexico. She focuses on Zapotec language from the Tlacolula Valley,
Video whose word content and semantic inferences are communicated partially through intonation and
30 minutes (projection), 7 minutes (gallery)
can be communicated through whistling. Porras-Kim examines whistling as a means of carrying
A utopic-futuristic elegy and science-fiction
documentary film by Adriana Trujillo + José Inerzia hidden transcripts and as a strategy of dissent and a tool of resistance against the Spanish
Produced by POLEN, IIC-Museo UABC authority during the colonial period. By communicating through whistling, the indigenous popu-
With: Inocencia González, Martín Rodríguez, Martín lation disguised their conversations as musical diversions. The graphite drawing demonstrating
Rodriguez Jr., Reyna Muró, José Ochurte, Bernardino
whistling techniques, the LP recording (a regional story translated into whistling), and the map
Ochoa.
offer aural and graphic tools made as a result of the research process.

158 159
 PORRAS-KIM
(above) Gala Porras-Kim, Notes after G.M.
Cowan, 2012. Courtesy of the artist and
Commonwealth and Council.

(opposite) Gala Porras-Kim, detail of Mapping

Tones (all the documented Zapotec variants
in Oaxaca), 2012. Courtesy of the artist and
Commonwealth and Council.

160 161
RESPONSE TO QUESTION

ULTRA-RED
I consider making work as the process of learning. I enrolled in the Master’s Degree Program
in the department of Latin American Studies at UCLA with the purpose of making art within the
department. I set out to make WaLT, a translation of spoken Zapotec into its whistled form, there-
by forming the parameters in which the other objects were made. I began by learning Zapotec
and made For Learning Zapotec Verbs as a studying tool. Through the process of learning and
making, I organized the verbs not by subject, but by tone, as a scale; this way it fit the physical
qualities of the language better. The rest of the works were produced similarly, and in a way, they
are remnants of my process of studying, but could be used later as tools for teaching. ULTRA-RED
For a similar project, I collaborated with an elementary school teacher in the community of San
Isidro Llano Grande in Oaxaca where, together along with an elder woman, we made signs in
Chatino using the Latin alphabet of all the public spaces in the town. I first presented the idea Date of formation: 1994; active Los Angeles, CA, United States
to the instructor who was teaching the Chatino language to his students. He asked his friend, an
older woman in the town, to help him come up with the spelling of all the public spaces such
BIOGRAPHY
as the store, the water reserve, the government building, etc., since it is not simple to figure out
how to use the Latin alphabet to write this tonal language. Then I fabricated and installed the
signs around the town. In the process of making this collaborative work, which was meant as a Ultra-red is a sound art collective founded in 1994 by two Los Angeles AIDS activists. Utilizing
teaching aid, I learned these new spellings. a practice called "militant sound research," Ultra-red investigations unfold over time alongside
social movements wherein listening serves as the medium and as a site of inquiry. Ultra-red
WORKS
have exhibited and performed extensively in Europe and North America, published essays, and
released over a dozen recordings. While Ultra-red have teams of members working across North
Notes after G.M. Cowan Mapping Tones (all the documented Zapotec America and Europe, the Los Angeles-based team of Ultra-red includes Elizabeth Blaney, Dont
2012 variants in Oaxaca) Rhine, Walt Senterfitt, and Leonardo Vilchis.
Graphite on paper, post-it, wood 2012
Approximately 12 x 12 x 1 in. (30.5 x 30.5 x 2.54 cm) Graphite, ink, tape, pins, post it, paper, wood (detail
[with variations]
School of Echoes Los Angeles is a collective of organizers, popular educators, and artists
included in image)
30 x 40 x 4 in. (76.20 x 101.60 x 10.16 cm) founded in late 2012. With over a dozen members, School of Echoes Los Angeles operate as
WaLT Score an open listening process of community-based research to generate experiments in political
2012 Whistling and Language Transfiguration action. The collective also serves as a space for critical reflection on the conditions in working
Wood, paper, ink 2012
19 1/2 x 13 1/2 x 2 1/2 in. (49.5 x 7.6 x 6.3 cm)
class and poor communities, including (but not limited to) struggles against gentrification and
LP album, ed. 100 unique cyanotype prints
Record: 12 x 12 in. (30.5 x 30.5cm); record player: for the human right to housing. Drawing on their participation in Los Angeles’s anti-gentrification
dims variable; audio: approximately 11 min movement, School of Echoes Los Angeles have recently embarked on a two-year research and
collective writing project with a forthcoming book on the agents of gentrification and tactics for
resistance. Members of School of Echoes Los Angeles who have contributed to organizing the
Los Angeles Library for Anti-Gentrification include Anthony Carfello, Daniela Lieja, Betty Marin,
Tracy Jeanne Rosenthal, and Christina Sanchez Juarez.

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

Struggles against social erasure define the history of Los Angeles. Since its founding as a mission
outpost under Spanish viceregal rule, Los Angeles’s geographic and social fabric has evolved
through resistance to land theft, real estate speculation, white supremacy, nationalism, and
border regimes. Today’s struggles against gentrification in Los Angeles are the local expression

162 163
 In each of the above scenes of struggle, community members and organizers produce videos,

ULTRA-RED
posters, and printed materials to communicate analyses and actions from one neighborhood
to the next. Often produced very quickly and always collectively, the media collected in the
Los Angeles Library for Anti-Gentrification has the function of strengthening the political mili-
tancy of movement members while connecting to potential members and allies, many of whom
live in fear of losing their homes and their support networks due to the violence of displacement.

Some of the fronts in the city’s anti-displacement movement have been organized by the citywide
L.A. Tenants Union with its multiple committees and five neighborhood assemblies. Other groups
include Boyle Heights Alliance Against Artwashing and Displacement, Defend Boyle Heights, and
Union de Vecinos. Each group has their own membership, tactics, and scale of focus. Many of
these groups also share members in common as is the nature of multi-front movement building.
Consequently, while Ultra-red and School of Echoes Los Angeles collected materials for the
Los Angeles Library for Anti-Gentrification, members of both groups are also participants in the
organization of the city’s anti-gentrification movement.

Items in the Los Angeles Library for Anti-Gentrification were created during the period from the
founding of School of Echoes Los Angeles in late 2012 through the mounting of the Talking to
Action: Art, Pedagogy, and Activism in the Americas exhibition in September 2017. The library is
a snapshot of five years of organizing and mobilizing for the defense of the right to housing and
against mass displacement.

WORKS
of a global movement against financialized speculative development. The “No Nos Vamos a Dejar” [We Are
Here to Stay], Citywide March
organized resistance to gentrification in Los Angeles assumes specific ver- Against Displacement, Lafayette Park, Los Angeles Library for Anti-Gentrification |
naculars given that the most vulnerable to displacement are working class Los Angeles, September 22, 2016. Biblioteca de Los Ángeles contra el aburguesamiento
Photograph by Timo Saarelma / L.A.
and poor communities of color, often migrants from the global south, Tenants Union.
2012-2017
Printed booklets, posters, and short videos
particularly Latin America. Those struggles became more acute in 2017
due to the election of Donald Trump and the collaboration between city governments and his admin-
istration around policies of “urban renewal,” infrastructure development, and increased deportation.

Los Angeles Library for Anti-Gentrification | Biblioteca de Los Ángeles contra el aburgues-
amiento compiles printed materials and videos made in the context of a multi-front movement of
tenant resistance. In Boyle Heights, tenants push back against the encroachment of art galleries
that lead a new wave of gentrification in some of the poorest neighborhoods in Los Angeles. In
Hollywood, a cross-class alliance of middle class renters, working class Latino residents, and
homeless advocates fight the conversion of affordable rent-controlled housing into luxury con-
dos and hotels. Residents in Northeast Los Angeles fight against landlords who use the refusal to
make repairs as a form of de facto eviction. In the Vermont and Beverly area that stretches from
MacArthur Park to Los Feliz, tenants resist landlords who use cash-for-keys scams to flip entire
neighborhoods. When tenants refuse to give up their apartments for a few thousand dollars,
more and more landlords make threats of calling immigration police or forcibly removing tenants
from their homes. While on the Westside, tenants fight to preserve affordable housing from the
corporate monopolization of real estate.

164 165
 BIOGRAPHIES
Contributor Biographies

María Fernanda Cartagena lives in Quito, Ecuador. Currently, she is Director of the Museo de
Arte Precolombino Casa del Alabado. She holds a degree in History of Art from The American
University Washington D.C., and a Master of Arts in Visual Cultures form Middlesex University,
London. As curator and researcher, she has been exploring the links between art and politics, the
insertion of art into the public sphere, community art, alternative pedagogies, and the relation
between culture and colonialism. Previously as Executive Director of the Fundación Museos de
la Ciudad in Quito (2014-2015), she organized Spiritualities in Quito, a series of exhibitions and
public art events about the richness and diversity of spiritual and religious practices alive in
the city. She was curator of De tu puño y letra. Diálogos en el ruedo, a large scale public art
intervention under de artistic direction of Suzanne Lacy (2015). She also served as editor of the
bilingual online journal LatinArt.com (2006-2014). Jointly with Christian León, she was in charge
of the conceptualization of the New National Museum, Ministry of Culture of Ecuador (2012).
Cartagena was coordinator of the First International Meeting in homage to Monsignor Leonidas
Proaño, “From Liberating Education to Liberation Theology,” (participants consisted of educators,
ecclesiastic agents, and community artists), Ministry of Culture (2010). Lastly, she is a member
of the Red Conceptualismos del Sur.

David Gutiérrez Castañeda (Colombian, born in 1983) received his degree in sociology from the
Universidad Nacional de Colombia (2006), Master's in History of Art at the Universidad Nacional
Autónoma de México (UNAM) with a focus on contemporary art (2011), and a Ph.D. in Art History
at the same institution. He is a full-time Research Professor at the National School of Higher
Education (ENES) at the Morelia Campus, UNAM. He also is a member of the research group
Workshop Critical History of Art (since 2006) and the Red Conceptualismos del Sur (since 2008).
He was a professor at the Universidad Pedagógica Nacional in Colombia (2008-2009), a research
professor at the Universidad Panamericana (2007-2008), a researcher in Museology and Heri-
tage Management at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia (2006-2009), and a teacher at the
Mexican Academy of Dance (2013). He received the Colegio Mexiquense Scholarship from the
Ford Foundation under the program Lay Liberties in order to investigate secular art and politics
at the Colegio de México (2006). He was awarded the National Prize for Art Criticism from the
Ministry of Culture of Colombia in 2010. His research projects include: Looking Beyond, Going In:

166 167
Arts and social interests in Colombia (Universidad Nacional de Colombia, 2006), Gathering: imagen sísmica de los años ochenta en América Latina (Museo Reina Sofía, 2012) and contributor

BIOGRAPHIES
Cultural Processes and Movements for Self-Affirmation (Universidad Panamericana, 2007-2008), to the accompanying exhibition publication. Also, he was the co-curator of the exhibition Politici-
Contemporary Art Practices as Source for Significant Learning (Universidad Pedagógica Nacional, zation of Friendship (Moderna Galerija/Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova, Ljubljana, 2014).
2008), Mapa Teatro 1987-1992 (UNAM, 2009-2012), and Care Exercises. Concerning ‘La Piel de Currently, Mesquita investigates the theme of secrecy and its relationships with contemporary
la Memoria’ (1996-2011) (UNAM, 2012-2016). Gutiérrez Castañeda’s current research concerns societies and artistic practices. A detailed list of his texts and projects can be found at http://
performance studies; he is a curator, advisor, and author of several articles on contemporary art andremesquita.redezero.org.
practices and social processes in Latin America.
Karen Moss is an art historian, curator, and educator who has worked in museums and academic
Grant Kester is professor of art history in the Visual Arts department at the University of California, positions since 1980. Currently, she is Interim Chair and Adjunct Professor of the Graduate Public
San Diego and the founding editor of FIELD: A Journal of Socially Engaged Art Criticism. His Practice MFA program at Otis College of Art and Design. At Otis she is also curatorial consultant
publications include Art, Activism and Oppositionality: Essays from Afterimage (Duke University for Talking to Action: Art, Pedagogy, and Activism in the Americas, a multi-platform exhibition of
Press, 1998), Conversation Pieces: Community and Communication in Modern Art (University of social practice artists from Latin America and Los Angeles that will be at the Ben Maltz Gallery
California Press, 2004, second edition in 2013), The One and the Many: Contemporary Collaborative as part of the Getty’s Pacific Standard Time LA/LA initiative. Moss is also Adjunct Faculty in the
Art in a Global Context (Duke University Press, 2011), and Collective Situations: Dialogues in Art and Curatorial Practices MA Program at Roski School of Art and Design at the University of
Contemporary Latin American Art 1995-2010, an anthology of writings by art collectives working Southern California (USC). Previously, Moss was Deputy Director of Exhibitions and Programs and
in Latin America produced in collaboration with Bill Kelley, Jr. (Duke University Press, forthcoming Curator of Collections at Orange County Museum of Art (OCMA) from 2005 - 2010. She co-curated
2017). He is currently completing work on a new book that develops a more detailed theoretical State of Mind: New Art from California Circa 1970 for the Getty’s Pacific Standard Time initiative
account of dialogical aesthetics. in 2011 and subsequently the exhibition travelled to various sites in the United States and Canada.
Moss was co-curator and catalogue essayist for the 2006 California Biennial and organized
Bill Kelley, Jr. is an educator, curator and writer based in Los Angeles. He holds a Ph.D. in Art artists’ residencies, performances, and public programs for the 2006, 2008, and 2010 biennials.
History, Theory and Criticism from the University of California at San Diego and a Masters in Colonial Moss has a B.A. in studio art and art history from UC Santa Cruz, and her PhD in art history from
Art Studies from the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. His current research focuses on col- USC. She has taught undergraduate and graduate level art history, critical theory, and curatorial
laborative and collective art practices in the Americas. Bill has written for such journals as Afterall, studies at art schools and universities including California State University, Long Beach, Otis
P.E.A.R., and Log Journal. He served as co-curator of the 2011 Encuentro Internacional de Medellín College of Art and Design, San Francisco Art Institute, and University of Southern California. Moss
MDE11 and was the former Director and Co-Editor of the online bilingual journal LatinArt.com. He cur- has authored numerous museum exhibition catalogues, written guest essays for arts publica-
rently holds the position of Assistant Professor of Latin American and Latino Art History at California tions, and contributed to scholarly journals.
State University Bakersfield. Bill has co-edited an anthology with Grant Kester of collaborative art
practices in the Americas entitled Collective Situations: Readings in Contemporary Latin American Jennifer Ponce de León is an Assistant Professor of Latina/o/x Literature and Culture in the
Art 1995-2010 (Duke University Press, forthcoming). He is currently Lead Researcher and Curator of Department of English at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research focuses on intersections
Talking to Action: Art, Pedagogy, and Activism in the Americas, a research, exhibition and publication between radical left politics and contemporary cultural production in the 20th and 21st centuries. Her
platform investigating pedagogically-intensive art practices for Otis College of Art as part of the writing and teaching engage with literature and the visual arts, Latin American and Latina/o/x
Getty’s Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA initiative. studies, and Marxist and anticolonial thought. She is currently completing a book project provi-
sionally entitled Radical Politics Across the Arts of the Americas: Engagement & Experimentation
André Mesquita is based in São Paulo and conducts research on the articulations between art, in the New Millennium, which is an interdisciplinary and transnational study of politically en-
politics, and activism. He received his PhD in Social History from the Universidade de São Paulo gaged and extradisciplinary literature, art, and performance produced by artists in Argentina and
in the Faculty of Philosophy, Languages and Literature, and Human Sciences with the thesis Chicana/o/x and Mexican artists in the United States. It maps a transnational generational for-
Mapas dissidentes: proposições sobre um mundo em crise (1960-2010). He is the author of the mation of left cultural producers whose work critically responds to social transformations brought
following books Insurgências poéticas: arte ativista e ação coletiva (Annablume/Fapesp, 2011), about through neoliberalization and which bears the imprint, in its politics and aesthetics, of the
Esperar não é saber: arte entre o silêncio e a evidência (2015)—realized with funding from Bolsa influence left social movements. Ponce de León’s writing has appeared in the edited collections
Funarte de Estímulo à Produção em Artes Visuais 2014, and co-author of Desinventario: esquirlas Dancing with the Zapatistas, Live Art in LA, Art and Activism in the Age of Globalization, and
de Tucumán Arde en el archivo de Graciela Carnevale (Ocho Libros, 2015). In 2014, Mesquita was MEX/LA: Mexican Modernisms in Los Angeles. It has also appeared in journals such as e-misférica;
the resident researcher at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Spain. As a member GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies; Contemporary Theatre Review; The Journal of American
of the Red Conceptualismos del Sur, he was one the curators of Perder la forma humana: una Drama and Theater; and Interreview.

168 169
Paulina Varas is a researcher and independent curator. She received her Bachelor of Arts from the

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Universidad de Playa Ancha and holds a PhD in the History and Theory of Art from the Universidad
de Barcelona. She is a member of CRAC Valparaíso, a collaborative non-profit research platform
that works in the city of Valparaíso. With artist residencies, research action, critical pedagogies,
and radical architecture, CRAC proposes a critical entanglement with the public sphere, the city,
and the territory as a network of connections and associations of social experiments. Since 2007,
she has been a member of the Red Conceptualismos del Sur where she has participated in a
number of publications, public presentations, support operations, and working groups in Chile,
Spain, Argentina, Peru, among others. She has authored or co-authored the following books:
Muntadas en Latinoamérica (Caldas, 2009), Revisión/Remisión de la historiografía de las artes
visuales chilenas contemporáneas (Santiago de Chile, 2011), and “Guillermo Deisler. Archivo, Bibliography
textos e imágenes en acción” (Santiago de Chile, 2013). Amongst her curatorial projects, she
has notably curated or co-curated Cierto tipo de poética política (Valparaíso, 2008), Subversive
Practices. Art Under Conditions of Political Repression, 60s-80s South America-Europe (Stuttgart, Adorno, Theodor W. “The Artist as Deputy.” Translated by Shierry Weber Nicholsen. Vol. 1 of Notes to Literature,
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la Luz Donoso (Santiago, 2011), Artist for Democracy: el archivo de Cecilia Vicuña (Santiago,
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Latina (Santiago, 2016). She has participated in projects of archive reactivation: CADA (Colectivo
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Esther Leslie. New Left Review I, no. 233 (January–February 1999): 123–136.
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was a research associate in the Scholars Program at the Getty Research Institute. She graduated
with a Master’s Degree in Latin American Studies from the University of California, Los Angeles. Agamben, Giorgio. Estancias: la palabra y el fantasma en la cultura occidental. Valencia: Pre-Textos, 1995.
She has worked on and contributed to two exhibition catalogues, The Color of Life (J. Paul Getty
———. Means without End: Notes on Politics. Translated by Vicenzo Binetti and Cesare Casarino. Minneapolis:
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2012). Expanding upon her Master’s thesis, she published “Preserving a Legacy: Shifra Goldman
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Ahmed, Sarah. The Cultural Politics of Emotion. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2000.
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et al., 293-324. Bogota: Instituto Unidad de Investigaciones “Gerardo Molina” – UNIJUS, 2012.

Atkinson, Terry. “Beuyspeak.” In Joseph Beuys: Diverging Critiques, edited by David Thistlewood, 165–173.
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Beverley, John. Latinamericanism After 9/11. Durham: Duke University Press, 2011.

Biro, Matthew. “The Art of Joseph Beuys.” The Journal of the International Institute 2, no. 2 (Winter 1995).
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INDEX
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Association of American Geographers 96, no. 3 (2006): 566–585.

Sobrino, Jon. Spirituality of Liberation: Toward Political Holiness. Translated by Robert Barr. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis
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Stachelhaus, Heiner. Joesph Beuys. Translated by David Britt. New York: Abbevillle Press, 1987.

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Index
Streib, Heinz. “The Religious Educator as Story-Teller: Lessons from Paul Ricoeur’s Work.” Religious Education
vol. 93, no. 3 (1998): 314–331.

Svampa, Maristella. La sociedad excluyente. Argentina bajo el signo del neoliberalismo. Buenos Aires: Taurus, acts of iteration and quotation, 34
2005. Adorno, Theodor: 14, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22
African diaspora, 13, 30-31, 33, 37, 89
Sztulwark, Pablo. “Ciudad Memoria.” ForoAlfa. http://foroalfa.org/es/articulo/18/Ciudad_memoria/. Afro, 4, 27-37, 89, 121
ancestral lands, 39, 47n7, 48n10, 68-69
Taussig, Michael. Defacement: Public Secrecy and the Labor of the Negative. Stanford: Stanford University Angulo Cortés, Liliana, 5, 12, 13, 27-28, 31-36, 89
Press, 1999.
antenna artist, 44
Ultra-red. 10 Preliminary Theses on Militant Sound Investigation. New York: Printed Matter, Inc., 2008. Apelo, 4, 23, 75-76, 76, 77, 78-79, 80n13, 130, 132
appropriation, 47n3, 58-60, 69
———. “An Open Letter to Hyperallergic.” Boyle Heights Alliance Against Art Washing and Displacement, June 10, Araucanía, 39, 41, 45, 48n10, 137
2016. http://alianzacontraartwashing.org/es/coalitionstatements/ultra-red-an-open-letter-to-hyperallergic-ingles. Archivo Caminante, 51, 55, 57-58, 60, 109
Ares, Pablo 3, 133
Verbitsky, Horacio, and Juan Pablo Bohoslavsky, eds. Cuentas pendientes: los cómplices económicos de la Argentina, 2, 42, 51-57, 60n2, 61n5, 61n6, 61n7, 109, 117, 133-134
dictadura. Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI, 2013.
armed struggle, 16n3, 30, 34, 52, 57, 60n3
Arocha, Jaime, 30, 32
Walsh, Catherine. “Lo pedagógico y lo decolonial. Entretejiendo caminos.” In Pedagogías decoloniales.
Prácticas insurgentes de resistir, (re)existir y (re)vivir, 23–68. Quito, Ecuador: Ediciones Abya-Yala, 2013. Artforum, 24n2
Astorga Garay, Efraín, 91-94
Yank, Sue Bell. “How Can Artists and the Eastside Generate Change Together?” KCET Los Angeles, November 16, Atkinson, Terry, 14, 19
2012. https://www.kcet.org/shows/artbound/how-can-artists-and-the-eastside-generate-change-together. Atlantic Ocean, 47n4
autonomy, 3, 14, 19, 21-24, 39-40, 46, 47n7, 68, 118
Zibechi, Raúl. Genealogía de la Revuelta. Argentina, la sociedad en movimiento. La Plata, Argentina: Letra Libre, 2003.
Bandung Conference (Afro-Asian Conference) of 1955, The, 10, 16n3
Baja California, 3, 104, 113, 115, 157
Beuys, Joseph, 14, 17-21, 23, 24n1
BijaRi, 3, 95-98
Black Nation, the, 33-35
Black Panther Party (BPP), 33, 42, 90
Blaquier, Carlos Pedro, 53, 54, 61n10
Blaquier, Nelly, 53, 54
Boal, Augusto, 20
Bogotá, 27
Boston Museum of Fine Art, 24n1
Boyle Heights, 3, 12, 14, 23, 73-74, 79-80n6, 164
Brazil, 2, 3, 4, 10, 74-79, 95, 121, 124, 127, 129, 131-132

174 175
Buchloh, Benjamin, 14, 19-20 dialogical aesthetics, 64

INDEX
Buenaventura, 28-29, 29, 30, 32-35, 90, 90 dialogical practice, 4, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 70n2, 98, 104, 138
Burma, 16n3 dictatorship, 10, 42, 48n11, 51-53, 57, 60n2, 61n11, 76-78
Butler, Judith, 43 Dignicraft (Paola Rodríguez, José Luis Figueroa, Omar Foglio, Blanca O. España, David Figueroa y Araceli Blancarte),
3, 5, 69, 113-116, 114, 115, 116
Cameroon, 16n3 disappeared, the, 4, 23, 41, 42, 54, 60n2, 61n8, 61n11, 74-79, 132
Camino Real, El, 51, 62n13 displacement, 6, 14, 21-22, 23, 58-59, 73, 80n6, 90, 95, 110, 164, 164-65
care, 13, 28, 35-36 divinity, 20-21
cargo ship, 29, 32-33, 90, 90 Documenta 5, 18
“cartas caminantes,” 4-5, 110 Dom Bosco cemetery (Perus), 4, 14, 23, 75-79, 130, 132
Cartas de Mujeres, 4, 139 Dominican Republic, 16n3
Cartagena, María Fernanda, 2, 6, 13-14, 63-70, 83, 143, 167 donde se juntan los ríos, hidromancia archivista y otros fantasmas, 110-112, 111, 112
cartography, 3, 31, 95, 124, 133-135, 137 Durán, Felipe, 39, 40, 47n2
Castagnola, Giacomo, 4, 99-100 Düsseldorf Art Academy, 18, 21, 24n4
Catrileo, Ana María, 43 Düsseldorf, 18-19
Centro Cultural de España in Mexico City, 2, 6n2 Dutschke, Rudi, 18
Chihuaihuen, Marcela, 43
Chile, 2, 3, 13, 23, 39-43, 45, 47n3, 48n10, 48n11, 68, 137-138 economic dependency, 10, 16n3, 57
Chiloé archipelago, 48n4 Ecuador, 2, 4, 13-14, 63-68, 105-108, 139-142
citizenship, 30, 32, 34, 35, 64, 66, 103-104 Encuentro Internacional de Medellín, 2011 (MDE11), 3, 9, 96-98
class violence, 52-54 escrache, 53-54, 61n6, 61n7
Cog•nate Collective, 2, 5,103-104 Estructura Vertical de Alambrería EVA, 4, 99-100, 100, 101
Colectivo FUGA, 68, 105-108 Etcétera..., 5, 12, 13, 51-55, 60, 117-18, 118, 119
collaboration, 2-5, 12-13, 23, 44, 63-65, 67-68, 72-73, 75, 89, 91, 99, 103, 106, 109, 113, 117, 132, 133, 134, 135, exploitation, 32, 45, 46, 52, 54, 68, 118, 133-135
137-138, 157-158, 164 extractivism, 40, 45, 46-47, 65, 110, 117-120
Colombia, 2, 4, 9, 13, 27, 29-36, 89-90, 95-97, 98, 159
Colombian Constitution, 32 Faro de Oriente, 6n2, 149
colonialism, 8, 9-10, 11, 29-30, 43, 46, 47n3, 47n7, 48n10, 57-58, 63, 65, 69, 157 Frankfurter Rundschau, 18
Community Councils, 32 Frankfurt School, 20-21
community, 1-6, 7-9, 12-14, 23, 28, 34-35, 43-44, 47n3, 58, 65-68, 71-74, 90, 91, 95, 97, 103, 105, 108, 109-110, 113, Free International College for Creativity and Interdisciplinary Research, 18-19
115-116, 137-138, 154, 158, 163, 165 Freire, Paulo, 6, 7, 8, 10-12, 14, 20, 22, 42, 71-72, 98, 104, 124, 134, 150, 158
conscientisation, 22 Frente 3 de Fevereiro, 4, 121-124
Contando con nosotros, 95-98, 96, 97 Fundación Museos de la Ciudad, 2
container ship, 32-33
Coro del Silencio, El, 67-68 Garín Guzmán, Loreto, 5, 117-120
counterrevolutionary violence, 51-52 gender, 63, 66-67, 89
Cuban Revolution, 10 genocide, 11, 52, 57, 60n2, 74-75
Cueto, Gonzalo, 3, 13, 45, 47, 137 gentrification, 2-3, 12, 23, 58, 69, 73-74, 109, 163-65
Ghana, 16n3
Daleiden, Sara, 2, 15n1 globalization, 7, 69, 70n2, 89, 90, 125
da Silva, Débora Maria, 4, 23, 75, 76, 77, 78-79, 130, 130-132 Green Party, Germany, 18
De Ayala, Guamán Poma, 63, 68-69, 105 Grosfoguel, Ramón, 46
Declaration and Programme of Action for the Establishment of a New Economic Order, 16n3 Guattarí, Felix, 42
decolonization, 10, 13, 47, 63, 65, 68, 109, 110 guerrilla art, 51-53, 59
De-Formación: prácticas artísticas desescolarizadas, reflexión y acción, 6n2 Guggenheim Museum, 24n1
de la Loza, Sandra, 2, 4, 5, 8, 12, 13, 51, 58, 59, 60, 109, 110, 110-111, 112 Gutiérrez, Gustavo, 20
De tu puño y letra (By Your Own Hand), 4, 139, 140-141, 142, 142-144 Gutiérrez Castañeda, David, 2, 6n2, 12, 13, 27-38
Der Spiegel, 25n11 Grupo Contrafilé, 126, 126-129

176 177
Haiti, 4, 124-125 memory, 2, 3, 4, 23, 25n20, 40, 41, 44, 47, 52, 55, 58-59, 62n15, 65, 68, 74-78, 97, 105-108, 109-110, 113, 115, 132,

INDEX
Hiroshima, 42 137-38, 154, 157
Huellas del Ingenio, 53, 53-55, 61n8 Merced, La, 3, 69, 145-146, 148
human rights, 29-34, 39, 43-44, 48n10, 52-55, 61n8, 61n11, 66-68, 73-79 Mesquita, André, 2, 14, 71-81, 84-85
Metrocable, 3, 95, 96, 97
Ianni, Clara, 4, 23, 75-79, 76, 131-132 Metz, Johann Baptist, 23, 25n20
Iconoclasistas, 3, 133-135 Mexico City, 2-3, 6n2, 9, 69, 99, 145-148, 149
immigrants, 5, 10, 68, 72, 80n6 Mexico, 2-3, 6n2, 9, 69, 91, 99, 103-104, 113, 145-148, 149, 153-154, 157-158, 159
India, 16n3 Michoacán, 3, 113
indigenous, 2-3, 10, 13, 32, 47n3, 48n10, 57, 65-66, 68, 105, 110, 131, 159 migration, 2-3, 6, 8, 9, 13, 31, 32-33, 58, 69, 89-90, 91, 103-104, 113, 117, 164
interculturality, 7, 13-14, 63, 65 militant sound investigation, 73, 79, 163
Interzona, 3, 23, 45, 49n22, 68, 136, 137-38 militarization, 4, 103, 121, 137-138
invisibility, 28, 30, 44, 51, 57, 58-60, 68, 69, 75, 78, 110, 127-129, Mobile Institute of Citizenship + Art, 5, 102, 102-104
modernity, 32, 55, 63, 153, 157
Juan Currín, Chile, 43 Molinari, Eduardo, 4-5, 12, 13, 51, 55, 56, 57, 60, 62n14, 109-110, 111, 112
Juárez, Ciudad, 97, 100 Morales, Taniel, 5, 12, 149-151, 150, 151
Moss, Karen, 1-6, 8, 12, 120
Kelley, Jr. Bill, 1, 6, 6n2, 7-16, 8, 87, 115, 119, 120 Museo Incorruptible, 68, 105-108, 106, 107
Kenya, 16n3
Kester, Grant H., 6n1, 11, 14, 17-25, 64, 70n3 Nagasaki, 42
Kolectivo de Restauración Territorial (KRT), 3, 136, 136-138 nationalism, 10, 163
nation states, 8, 16n3, 45, 48n10, 68
labor, 2-3, 8, 10, 14, 23, 36, 54-55, 60n2, 69, 90, 148 Native, 11, 55, 68-69, 105, 158
Lacy, Suzanne, 4, 6n1, 6n2, 8, 139-143, 140-141, 142 natural resources, 45, 117-118, 134
Law 70 of 1993, 32 neoliberalization, 52, 54-55, 57, 60n3
Ledesma Blackouts, 54, 61n8, 66n10 New International Economic Order, 16n3
Ledesma Corporation, 53-54, 61n8, 61n10 New Orleans, 9
Ledesma Mill, 54, 61n8, 61n10 Nido de Lenguas, 68, 156, 157-158
leftists, 52, 55, 57, 60n2, 79 nineteenth century, 43, 47n3
León, Paulina, 2, 6n2, 67, 143 Niños de la Soja, Los, 55, 57
Letter to Eduardo/Carta a Eduardo, 112 “NO-WORK NO-SHOP,” 5, 117-120, 119
Levinao, Cristián, 47n2 Nueva Crónica y Buen Gobierno, 63, 68
liberation, 10-11, 13, 14, 16n3, 20, 47n2, 48n9, 67-68
liberation aesthetics, 14, 63-70 Oakland, 13, 33
liberation theology, 10, 14, 20, 22, 64 ocean, 31-32
Libro Plateado y Real, El, 56, 57, 61n14 Olave Riveros, Jorge A., 3, 13, 45, 46, 136, 137-138
Libya, 16n3 Operation Invisible Monument, 51, 58-59, 59
Limarí River, 48n4 Organization for Direct Democracy Through Referendum, 18
Lobkowicz, Nicholas, 21 Oury, Jean, 42
Lof Meu, 43
López, Jim, 32 Pacific Ocean, 47n4
Los Angeles, 1-6, 8-9, 12-15, 27, 51, 58-59, 73-74, 90, 103, 109-112, 115, 139, 146, 149, 159, 163-65 Padilla Domene, Andrés, 3, 152, 153-155, 155
Luna, Alfadir, 2, 3, 6n2, 69, 145-148 Palestine, 16n3
Parque Biblioteca España, 3
mapping, 3, 4, 7, 13, 23, 44, 103, 104, 133-135, 153, 159, 162 Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 42, 98
Mapuche, 3, 13, 23, 39-40, 43-45, 47n2, 47n3, 48n4, 48n5, 48n7, 48n9, 48n10, 48n11, 68, 136-138 piñatas, 3, 69, 113, 114, 115, 115-116, 116
Marcuse, Herbert, 24n4, 25n15 Pinochet, Augusto, 48n11
Marx, Karl, 21, 23, 25n19 Plaza Belmonte bullring, 4, 139, 140-141, 142

178 179
Pocho Research Society of Erased and Invisible History (PRS), 51, 58-60, 59, 109 Sonidos de la Resistencia, 44

INDEX
POLEN, 68, 156, 157-158 Southern Cone, 47n4
police, 2, 4, 21, 23, 74, 75, 77, 78, 79, 121, 124, 131, 164 South Africa, 16n3
political prisoner, 39, 47n2, 76 state, the, 3, 23, 32, 39-40, 43, 45, 47n2, 48n7, 48n10, 48n11, 51-55, 57, 58-59, 60n2, 61n7, 64-65, 68, 70n2, 74-76,
Ponce de León, Jennifer, 5, 13, 51-62 78, 117, 121
popular education, 64, 72, 151 state terrorism, 30, 43, 48n11, 52-54, 57, 60n2, 74-75, 77, 78
Porras-Kim, Gala, 159-162, 160, 161 state violence, 2, 3, 4, 13, 29-30, 31, 42-43, 51-55, 74-75, 78, 121, 131
Port-au-Prince, 4, 121 Steyerl, Hito, 41, 49n11
Povinelli, Elizabeth, 29 stowaways, 32, 32-33, 35, 90
praxis, 11, 12, 14, 22-23, 104, 124, 138 subsistence, 29, 31, 33, 69, 89
Proceso de Comunidades Negras (PCN), 33, 34 sumak kawsay, 65
Proceso, el (Proceso de Reorganización Nacional), 52-53, 54, 60n2, 60n4, 61n5 survival, 18, 31, 33, 35, 68, 108, 157
Proyecto Transgénero (PT), 6n2, 66-67 sustainability, 28, 36, 40, 42-43
Puig Domene, Iván, 3, 152, 153-155, 155
Purepecha, 3, 69, 113-116, 114, 115, 116 Tate Museum, 24n1
Taussig, Michael, 74-75
Quito, 2, 4, 6n2, 9, 68, 105-108, 139-144 Temuco, 41, 42, 48n9, 48n10
Ten-Point Platform, Black Panther Party, 33
racism, 4, 9, 23, 29-31, 32-34, 74-79, 89-90, 117, 132 territory, 3, 13, 23, 28-35, 40-45, 47, 47n2, 47n3, 48n4, 48n7, 48n10, 48n15, 58, 67, 110, 133, 135, 137-138, 157
reification, 17, 24, 46 Tiempo del Pacífico, El (Pacific Time), 13, 27, 35, 36, 37, 89-90
repression, 13, 21-22, 39-40, 41, 42, 44, 48n11, 54, 57, 74, 124 Tijuana, 3, 9, 99, 103, 113, 153, 157
right wing violence, 52-55 Tosquelles, François, 42
Risler, Julia, 3, 133 trade, 3, 29, 33, 45, 69, 99-100, 105, 115, 145-146
Rivera Cusicanqui, Silvia, 45, 46-47 Tricontinental Conference (The 1966 Solidarity Conference of the Peoples of Africa,
Rockhill, Gabriel, 52 Asia and Latin America), The, 10, 16n3
Roldán, Roque, 32 Tunisia, 16n3
Rolnik, Suely, 44
Rosarito, 3, 113, 115-16 Ultra-red, 2, 3, 12, 23, 72-73, 79, 163-165, 164
Union de Vecinos, 12, 23, 73, 79-80n6, 165
Sanromán, Lucía, 2, 6n2 United States, 1-2, 7, 9-10, 11, 15, 33-35, 42, 58, 68, 89-90, 99, 103-104, 109, 113-116, 117-118, 139, 157, 163-165, 149
Santa Ana, 5, 146
Santiago de Chile, 49n19 Valparaíso, 3
Santo Domingo Savio, 3, 95, 96, 97 Varas, Paulina, 2, 3, 6n2, 13, 23, 39-49
São Paulo, 3, 4, 9, 14, 23, 75-79, 95, 121, 126, 127-129, 131-132 Vietnam, 16n3
Schiller, Friedrich, 19
Schrödinger, Erwin, 41, 49n11 Wallmapu, 39, 47n4, 137
School of Echoes, The, 12, 79-80n6, 109, 163-165 Walsh, Catherine, 63
sea, the, 29, 32-33, 45, 90 Wenuvil Peiñan, Cristian, 3, 13, 41-45, 42, 136, 137-138
SEFT-1 (Sonda de Exploración Ferroviaria Tripulada), 3, 152, 153-155, 155 workers, 25n19, 33, 52-55, 57, 60n2, 60n4, 61n10, 72, 79, 79-80n6, 91, 118
Segundo, Juan Luis, 20 working class, 23, 52, 54, 57-58, 60n2, 163-64
self-determination, 27, 29, 31, 32, 33, 45, 47n7 World War II, 42
Sharp, Willoughby, 24n2
sixteenth century, 4 Yuman, 68, 157-158
slavery, 20, 29, 31, 78, 124
Sobrino, Jon, 20 Zamora, Rebecca, 8, 12, 15n1, 120
Socialist German Student Union (SDS), 18-19, 24n4 Zimbabwe, 16n3
social practice, 1, 2, 6, 7, 9, 11-12, 22, 24, 37, 105, 142, 151 Zukerfeld, Federico, 117
solidarity, 14, 23, 25n20, 33, 35, 66, 71, 75, 103, 133

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