DGC: The description of the FLORA project presents various initiatives. A specialized library, a cafeteria, a website to disseminate information on art, workshop spaces, and above all a focus on extending the museological approach, with one space devoted solely to sound art, another to exhibitions, and a proposed residency space in Honda, Tolima. Furthermore, some curatorial concepts are already being promoted: El Gabinete (an extension and collaboration with the Lugar a Dudas’ Vitrina project), Phylum (to review the cultural and political processes of botanical etymology), Álbum (to extend the art-literature relationship), Archivo Audible (focusing its work on the sound-art space), Curador en Residencia (to generate links with international curatorial work) and Beca Flora (to mobilize the national scene). On what museological contexts and processes was this approach based?

JIR: The house that FLORA will be working out of was a typical 1950s home in a middle-class Bogotá neighborhood, so we let the structure of the house define our spaces rather than trying to force a pre-established program onto it; we didn’t decide to demolish the house to build something completely new either (that’s what many builders proposed, and in fact it would have been cheaper and faster to do that, but we decided it was important to keep the memory of the house, so we’ve been doing structural reinforcement and remodeling work that has turned out to be more complicated than we’d imagined). So what was the entrance to the garage will now be a display window giving out onto the street; the garage will be a small auditorium; the living room will be an information space where visitors can find posters, postcards, invitations, flyers, magazines, and so forth on exhibitions and art activities in Bogotá and elsewhere ; the former dining room will be the library; the kitchen the cafeteria; on the second floor two enormous rooms will be joined together and turned into a project room, and the other two rooms will be offices. We’re building a third floor on what used to be the terrace, as we want to have two places where we can house guests for short periods (long residencies will be in Honda) and we’re going to build two workshops so as to have two artists in residency who won’t actually be living there, but they’ll have a workplace that they’ll be able to make use of for a year, like a grant. Since the residencies will last for a month at the longest, we don’t expect to put on a complete, finished exhibition at the end; consequently what will be shown in the Project Room will be the process. Since we don’t have a space for workshops, these will be conducted in the same exhibition room, given that what will be displayed are the processes, acting as a kind of report to the community. All the components that’ll make up the whole will have a curated part, to which I’ll invite artists whose work I’m interested in, and a part chosen through an open invitation.

DGC: How have you conceived the processes of public mediation and education?

JIR: I’ll be working with volunteers initially, while I work on drawing up agreements to establish a more solid education program. Several projects have already been defined, such as a two-semester art and nature course with field outings and theory presentations; workshops dealing with each project; opportunities for the public to meet the artists we invite; film screenings – not necessarily like a cinema club or showing a series of videos, but as events in themselves; a program dealing with local cuisine; a weekly internet radio program, and several programs featuring neighborhood institutions. These will be implemented little by little, in keeping with project needs and FLORA’s operating capacity, as for the moment we only have a staff of two: my wife and I.

DGC: How do you plan to articulate the website platform with the activation of the space?

JIR: All participating artists or curators will be expected to post several entries on the blog, so in that sense they’ll be articulated. For the moment I’m the one who’s fleshing out the website, but we’ve applied for funds from several institutions so as to be able to hire writers (artists, historians, curators) to create web content. On doing the editorial design I’ve avoided making it a typical institutional webpage and have tried to make it more like a magazine that you can revisit to read things that interest you, or to keep up with what’s going on in the arts in Bogotá.

DGC: How do you think FLORA will fit into the current international visibility of Colombian-made art?

JIR: I hope artists will appropriate it and feel that it’s a place designed with them in mind; that they’ll come and visit because they’ll feel at home doing some reading, researching or having a coffee, not just to view exhibitions. The rest will fall into place of its own accord. Since we’re not a gallery, our visibility will not translate into sales to help us to keep going, but it should provide greater possibilities for local artists to achieve visibility, and act as a link with the international scene.

Notes:

1) Interviewer’s note: a 2003 version of this essay can be read here: http://www.universes-in-universe.de/columna/col50/index.htm A version that makes it easier to consult the images referred to in the essay regarding the exhibition Historia Natural y Política (2008) held at the Biblioteca Luis Ángel Arango and curated by Mauricio Nieto Olarte can be viewed here: http://www.banrepcultural.org/blaavirtual/exhibiciones/historia-natural-politica/flora.html

2) José Roca is referring to the Río Magdalena, a river that has marked Colombian history. Honda is the port on the river that runs close to Colombia’s capital, Bogotá; a port with strong historical connotations.