The methods of map-making and linking memories to specific places used by the group, contribute to the dedication (in the first sense of the word) of the space to their repressed memories.
We can see the importance of the GACís procedures by the communityís appropriation of some of them. They were utilized by several district assemblies when commemorating the anniversary of the 1976 coup díetat. The residents prepared maps showing the homes of those from the area who disappeared and then, in procession, followed the indicated path.
According to Carolina Golder, a member of the GAC, during the journey to Venice the groupís work lost all its meaning, the work became decontextualized and lost its impact. The experience of the Biennial led to an intense discussion taking place within the group, and the artists had to rethink several matters, among them signature and authorship.
If you place a card in the street saying that a victim of genocide lives here, are you going to sign it? If it is an element occupying a public space. To sign it would be contradictory even to the elements we create. That poster is in the street and must be integrated with the public by the viewer. The message is worth more than he who gives it, in the same way as the form of the message does not matter.(8)
The reflections of an artist open themselves to a series of questions on art and art systems, and it would be very simple to only mention the power of global society to appropriate and speculate on the strongest criticisms.
I think, however, in this case that the most important thing is the appearance of the marginal, the secondary, the suburban — arising from the actions of these artists — at the centers of the system.
Nowadays, when the natural paths of art and politics appear to have changed places, the predominant question for many artists lies in how to develop a process that gives answers within a system that is capable of neutralizing and incorporating any disturbance. The rejection by the objects and the escape for the actions of the group could be, rather than a solution, a survival tactic. To transform the Plaza Mayor into a suburban laundry, to scatter other flowers at the foot of the flowering trees, to write on a wall until it becomes white, to print posters with the names and addresses of unemployed persons, to map the sites of torture and oppression...
These appearances, brief and unexpected, can serve to confirm how much of the suburban can still arise from the cracks of the metropolis, inside the centers to remember, with a slogan from May 1968, that the beach is — still — under the flagstones.
-Belo Horizonte, August 2003- July 2004.
(7) Irmí£s. 28-08-2003. Sin editora.
(8) BOURRIAUD, Nicolas. Esthétique Relationnelle. Paris : Presses du réel, 1998. p.10.
(9) Cf. BOURRIAUD, Nicolas. Esthétique Relationnelle. Paris : Presses du réel, 1998. p.10 e ss.
(10) Cf. http://www.universes-in-universe.de/car/venezia/bien50/survival/s-calle.htm
(11) http://www.universes-in-universe.de/car/venezia/bien50/survival/s-calle.htm
(12) The H.I.J.O.S. faction is integrated by the children of the disappeared, the murdered, the exiled and the former political prisoners during Argentinaís military dictatorship, which also includes young people that identify with their basic premises. Cf.: http://www.chez.com/hijosparis/hijos-puntos.htm
(13) http://www.lavaca.org/notas/nota326.shtml
(14) http://www.lavaca.org/notas/nota335.shtml
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