Day 112 / Día 112

The debate in Buenos Aires was strange, polarized, and really long (“you are getting a good slice of Buenos Aires”, someone said). And although the discussion followed its own logic and making speakers fall in line was like herding cats, the evening did if anything, prove that Argentinians are certainly committed to debating. Victoria Noorthoorn started the debate with a studious series of reflections that tried to contextualize the SPU practice in the context of Argentinian art. She started talking about the project as “an affirmative attitude in regards with the power of action and the effective construction of a discourse and its possibilities”. Noorthoorn spoke about the (now unavoidable) subject of institutional critique and the recent article by Andrea Fraser where she says that I.C. always functioned within the system, as well as artists themselves. “the question is what kinds of institutions we create”, Victoria said. She later did an interesting review of practices and actions by Argentinians artists that related performance with pedagogy, starting from the avant-garde group Madí and the generations of the 60s to contemporary practice today. Artist and writer Alicia Herrero spoke about her interests in border issues and said that the term “Pan-American” is problematic to her, and that the very difficulties of the project to go from border to border illustrated the very impossibility of Panamericanism.

Azul Blaseotto questioned the statement by the SPU that it is a public art project, and she suggested to reconsider the meaning of this term, especially because in Argentina the term “public art” means “art sponsored by the state”. “ [the SPU] is a contextual practice, not a public one”.

Artist Eduardo Molinari threw a number of provocative ideas, amongst which was the question on whether we can turn the idea of “unrest” as an emancipatory force. He proposed to analyze the concept of education from the perspective described by the next Documenta, where there is a search for the right ways of doing an autonomous practice. Going to the dictionaries, Molinari showed the relationships between the definition of school with the military discipline, and established a parallelism with the rigid interpretations that pedagogy has in Argentina.

The presentations generated all sorts of responses that went from questioning the way in which a non-initiated public participates in public art to debating the current state of education institutions in Argentina.

At the end of the discussion, a number of enthusiastic and hungry participants decided to continue the discussion and, in a very Panamerican spirit, write the Panamerican Address of the People of Buenos Aires at the Restaurant La Americana. The text, which was written in the form of an exquisite corpse and which perhaps may have appeared attractive to the Grupo Madí, reads as follows:

THE PANAMERICAN ADDRESS OF THE PEOPLE OF BUENOS AIRES

At the barrio del Congreso, at the Pizzería de La Americana in the city of Buenos Aires, those who are here together declare:

On the first instance:

There is no truth nor falsity; all borders are hereby extinguished; hair removal is declared to all; we affirm the importance of ambiguity; we grant free access to all public spaces and the opening of all pubic spaces; we are simulacra; we are the institution; all cemeteries belong to the state.

On the second instance:

We are entirely separated (since this is the second instance); we live in a flat, over-lived space; situations construct statements; nor public nor private; they can be walked around by foot; true intimacy lies elsewhere.

On the Third instance:

Argentina had once a Pan-American School of Art, which had as its logo an image of La Gioconda. That is not the kind of school that we want today. There are neither schools nor universities in Buenos Aires. Our city limits lay where the Pan-American highway starts. La Panamericana is done at night, and it is a trap. There are many hotels there. Pablo, you should stay longer. Things here are not what they appear to be.

Signed: First instante: Diana Aisenberg, Ana Gallardo, Graciela Hasper, Alicia Herrero, Roberto Jacoby, Victoria Noorthoorn. Second instance: Sydzaga Babur, Andreu Badii, Victoria Márquez, Adetty Pérez De Miles, Megha Rapalati.

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La discusión en Buenos Aires fue extraña, polarizada, desordenada, y extensísima (“Te llevas un buen pedazo de Buenos Aires”, dijo alguien). Y aunque la discusión siguiera su propia idiosincrasia, sin duda, la velada demostró que los Argentinos definitivamente se comprometen a debatir. Al final de la discusión, un grupo de participantes entusiastas y hambrientos sugirieron proseguir el espíritu panamericanista y escribir el discurso de Buenos Aires en el restaurant La Americana: “En el barrio de Congreso, en la Pizzería La Americana de la ciudad de Buenos Aires, los aquí reunidos declaramos: No hay mentira ni verdad; Quedan extinguidas todas las fronteras; se ordena Depilación definitiva para todos; Se afirma La importancia de la ambigüedad; se otorga el Libre acceso a todos los espacios públicos…Somos simulacro- Nosotros somos la institución; Los cementerios son estatales….Estamos absolutamente separados …en este espacio liso vivido. La situación hace al enunciado ni público ni privado… La verdadera intimidad está en otra parte… Firmado: Diana Aisenberg, Ana Gallardo, Graciela Hasper, Alicia Herrero, Roberto Jacoby, Victoria Noorthoorn. Segunda instancia: Sydzaga Babur, Andreu Badii, Victoria Márquez, Adetty Pérez De Miles, Megha Rapalati.”

Day 111

Any visitor to Buenos Aires would agree in that it is the least Panamerican city of Panamerica. Its great attraction to the outside, as well as its own romance with itself, makes it such a self-contained universe that, in a similar way to New York or Mexico City, it exerts its own logic and its own laws. Additionally, the artistic life in Buenos Aires has intensified in recent years, and the amount of spaces, publications and daily events related to the visual arts have grown so much that there is now an intense activity that has attracted many artists from the outside.

Maybe due to these reasons it was hard for us to find a site for the SPU. After one year of negotiations and proposals with a long list of organizations, we ended up arriving to this city without a host. Fortunately, the Foundation START, which produces Ramona magazine and is directed by artist Roberto Jacoby, opened its doors to us, thanks to the recommendation of curator Victoria Noorthoorn.

Despite the little we know about the complex visual art world in Buenos Aires, the one thing that appears self-evident to us is that it is a highly argumentative and verbal community (Ramona, which is a visual arts magazine, is a text-only publication). So it is not surprising that even before the debate we found ourselves in the interesting situation of having a debate about the debate, at a meeting between Jacoby, Noorthoorn, and SPU coordinator Jennifer Flores Sternard. The group speculated and argued over what the different participants would argue, how these comments would be representative (or not) or the Argentinean community, the way in which different political positions will make themselves evident at the discussion, etc. For starters, there are already certain positions formed about the project here. Upon my arrival, one person told me: “I essentially see this as a failed project”. Antonio Muntadas, who happens to be here in Buenos Airs and who saw the first debate in New York, said: “ I see this project as Body Art”. In any case, and whatever way the debate will take place here, we do hope it will be representative of the way in which artists in Buenos Aires see art making in general from their own moment and circumstance.

Day 110

On the bus in Formosa, Argentina

I believe to have entered into a state of semi-depression, partially due to the low energy I have, the continuing difficulties of the trip, my tightening budget, and the growing sense of dislocation for having been away from home for so long. It also has not helped to travel through countries where one sees so much poverty and corruption that it is hard to maintain a positive outlook about things. In this sense, Asunción turned out a particularly exciting –and saddening— place to be.

Being in Asunción revived in me a feeling that I had while traveling through Eastern Europe over the last few years. I would call it “the melancholy of the silent periphery”. Paraguay, like Eastern Europe, is an area that incorporates all the references of the West, but in an obtuse manner. While they follow the music, culture, and fashion of the outside, and they emphatically see themselves as part of Latin America, they also accept their role in this process as of mere spectators and consumers, which creates a strange environment where they seem to accept that their local reality can never be referenced whatsoever, nor that they can ever aspire to be heard.

In some cases the melancholic countries of the silent periphery have attractive and interesting idiosyncrasies. Nevertheless, their sense of identity is vague at best, and aside from the regular nationalistic affirmations, there seems to be a resignation toward the exterior model. But in contrast to the Slavic countries, whose economy is improving thanks to its gradual integration with Western Europe, countries like Paraguay do not see any light at the end of the tunnel.

Paraguay, which by most standards is the poorest country in Latin America after Haiti, has such a painful history of failure, has accumulated so many problems and vices amongst its ruling class, and has carried over so many economic, social and political conflicts that it is not surprising that most Paraguayans see their own country as hopeless and turn to the U.S. as the only alternative for protection and stability.(although it was U.S. policy which supported and encouraged the rise of Stroessner to power). “The only thing left here is to put the U.S. flag in the country”, told me a sixty-year old Paraguayan woman who sat next to me on the bus. “Things have just gotten worse. In the last five years, crime has grown so much that I now have a rifle, one rottweiler, and a doberman”.

Incidentally, Stroessner died a few days ago, after a long exile in Brasilia, at age 93. In a local magazine that comments on the dark Stroessner legacy, there are accounts of people who personally went through torture and imprisonment under this dictatorship, all of which are seen as normal. The “archivo del terror”— a recently discovered archive created during the Stroessner regime that documents the many atrocities it did to its citizens— is only but an example of the trauma of this country. In many conversations I had with Paraguayans, many spoke about having a collective inferiority complex. More than in any other place, I saw a country that had a very peculiar richness, and yet such a deep sense of failure that most appear to have given up.

In a context like this one can ask what could possibly be the role of contemporary art in a place like this. The internationalism of contemporary art only feels like a reminder that there is no art market here, no great stimulus to make art, and little interest from the outside.

While I left with this sense of hopelessness, at the same time I had the strong feeling that this was the absolute best place to be for an art project such as the one I was bringing. As opposed to some art communities that felt too international or sophisticated for a project like this, or felt that they did not need to be lectured by what they see as a privileged artist from the “center”, here the sense was an infinite thirst for anything that would come from outside, and the desire to be part of something larger. In Paraguay I quickly became known as “the Mexican”, or, like local artist Mónica González called me after a workshop: “the Panamerican psychiatrist”. Two weeks are left before I take the plane back to New York. So much has happened since I boarded La Panamericana on that spring day in Anchorage. Neither myself, nor the continent has remained the same

At this point, and after having crossed seventeen borders, there is a cacophony of memories in me. It is hard to make sense of all this. There are too many voices, too many images, and too many roads that have taken me through (or away from) the Panamerican highway. Yet, Panamerica is appearing to me in the form of informal commerce, of splendid landscapes, endless waits in gray rooms, the savage “every man for himself” nature of the borders and the highways, human kindness and human violence, ingenuity and sarcasm, deep fried yucca foods, Shakira everywhere, local beers and cell phone companies, and a myriad of accents, most of them saying things I don’t comprehend, but that I still am trying to connect.