If you write from Buenos Aires to Europe, you can probably presume that people will know about the following: the debt crisis of the past year, the confiscation of bank accounts, and their visual counterpart in the corrugated-iron barricades (corralito) while armoured cars carried the money out of the country, the uprising (cacerolazos) on 19 and 20 December 2002, the escape by helicopter of the de la Rua government from the Casa Rosada, the ensuing wrangles with five presidents within ten days, the diktats from the IMF and the World Bank, the increasingly widespread homelessness and hunger, the development of low-paid jobs like those of the rubbish-seekers (cartoneros), the wave of emigration, the decline to becoming part of the »Third World«; but also blockades, occupations, barter markets, and district parliaments.

You can probably not presume that people will know what dimensions the neo-liberal, avant-garde position of Argentina has taken on. The Menem government sold the entire infrastructure and resources (motorways, gas, water, electricity, post office, telephone, railway, airports, oil, the most important ports, etc.) to international companies in the nineties – with all the usual corrupt dealings; now, the land itself is being sold. There are rumours about the glaciers at the southernmost tip being sold to an American company as a water reservoir, about a site in Patagonia where the Australian government stores atomic waste, and marshes on the Rio de la Plata being sold to the Dutch agricultural industry, specialised as it is in »land under water«. There are also rumours that more millionaires live in Buenos Aires than there are residents in Barcelona, owing to the fact that these sales produce amazingly enormous profits for many of those involved.

Is there an artistic practice that is reacting to these scenarios? Any answer to this question has, above all, to take into account the complete loss of credibility that affects every conventional political form of representation here. And the slogan »Que se vayan todos« (Everyone should get out) that is sung on the streets also includes the culture of the clase media, because their media politics of representation are a part of the manipulation carried out by the various political and economic cliques.

An example: on December 19, 2002, large demonstrations were announced for the first anniversary of the protests. It was a difficult celebration, for everyone knew that the spontaneous protests of the previous years acted as a facade allowing the opposing clique to get rid of de la Rua and put Duhalde in his place. The first lootings of supermarkets, photos of which appeared immediately in all the important newspapers, were commissioned. After the jockeying for position had subsided, the street protests, now no longer needed as a facade, were stemmed by exemplary shootings. However, this analysis, which was published some weeks later in the magazine »Clarin« (comparable with the »Süddeutsche Zeitung«), served not only to explain, but also to devalue the protests – which continued nonetheless – as a mere trick of political manipulation.

So we have the impression that the intellectuals of the clase media, who analyse all of this, are on the other side, together with artistic production, which is perhaps not quite so sharp-tongued, and indeed rather helpless. For this reason, it is good first to examine the intelligence and lifestyle of the clase media, which also affects the way the art scene sees itself. For the loss of credibility does not only affect the neo-liberal exploitation tactics of the Menem government in the nineties, but also the unatoned crimes of the Junta. In the feature sections of the liberal newspapers, the talk is of the tradition of intellectual mediation in Argentina between the poorer social classes and politics. They complain that this transfer no longer works. What they scarcely ever mention, however, is the fact that the last attempt at a cultural consensus, which was undertaken in the eighties by the Alfonsin government, had to become just as unbearable with its slogan »The house is in order« as the consensus in post-Fascist Germany, in Chile after Pinochet, or in Spain after Franco. ¹

The universities – and the branch of art training they include – enjoy a relatively autonomous status. This provided a chance for the intellectuals to withdraw from the lack of credibility of the new democracy to the »splendid isolation« of the academic space, from where they could try to take part in the international discourse while enjoying the consumer culture during the seemingly flourishing Menem epoch. The level of academic discussion in Buenos Aires is very high but, on the other hand – as the co-organiser of a magazine for homeless people relates –, social scientists analyse homelessness, for example, as a consequence of alcohol and drug-related problems, in accordance with European theories. This is quite an achievement here!

This phenomenon of enlightened isolation is something that is perhaps typical of the cultural space of the middle classes: how they make their houses and apartments secure, make use of the many underpaid services, move in the public space (in a sort of bubble made up of taxis, shopping malls, delivery services, climate-resistant restaurants, and the fear of being mugged), and how they separate themselves off from the current political movements of self-organisation. The protest has arisen »despite« the bourgeois Left, the intellectuals, unions or party associations and their governors.

[b]Political art[/b]

This is an approximate and extremely concise description of the framework and field of conflict in which, at the latest towards the end of a year of protests, a discussion about political art had become overdue. This discussion was launched in October 2002 by the exhibition »Arte y Politica en los ’60«, which took place in Buenos Aires in the Palais de Glace, financed by the Banco Ciudad. It gave a very good overview of the Argentinean avant-garde from the sixties to the time of Peron’s short return (1973). This exhibition can be used to explain the historical background of the contemporary art scene.

The exhibition is one of the few to be devoted to a »local« Argentinean political history of art. It included union-affiliated groups that felt committed to a South American realism, for example the Grupo Espartaco (formed around the painters Ricardo Carpani, Juan Manuel Sanchez and Pascual Di Bianco) towards the end of the fifties, the rediscovery of the group Nueva Figuracion (Luis Felipe Noe, Jorge de la Vega, Antonio Segui, Antonio Berni), which is currently receiving the most attention, Arte destructivo, Fluxus, groups and artists associated with the Di Tella Institute – in short, the whole spectrum of the post-war avant-garde that was developed at the same time as and together with fellow artists in the western world. The exhibition, however, also shows the political background to this simultaneity: how, in 1961, after the revolution in Cuba and the uprisings in Uruguay and Bolivia, the USA developed a cultural programme that bore the name »Alianza para el Progreso«. Later, when the Vietnam War began, and after it was discovered that this form of cultural diplomacy was paid for and spied out by the CIA, there were fierce protests by artists against the Di Tella Institute, the Rockefeller Foundation, which was involved in many institutions, and the biennials in Cordoba and São Paulo, initiated by the industrialist Kaiser and the Esso company. An open letter by artists to the Instituto Di Tella claimed that its programme showed no awareness of the country’s social realities, and that its affirmation of progress and technology displayed conformism to US foreign politics. This critical stance – there were, for examples, actions during which artists burnt their works directly in front of the Instituto – gained even more momentum through the repressive Ongania government (put in place by the Americans in 1966). This government was the first to pursue neo-liberal policies, selling or destroying entire industrial complexes like the sugar mills in Tucumán. In 1968, photos of hungry children from Tucumán province made the rounds (in a similar way to December 2002). These caused a group of artists and sociologists to carry out research there about working conditions on the plantations and in the sugar mills, about the planned bankruptcies, unemployment, impoverishment, and the political and economic caste that benefited from them. The research led to an exhibition in the rooms of a left-wing, relatively independent union in Rosario. Its aim was to use a large number of pictures, film footage, audio documents, and protocols to depict the social »truth«, the facticity of the conditions in Tucumán as vividly as possible. One may smile at the naivety of such a gesture of political education; but it was an element in the ethics of a generation that was later murdered for it. The word »Tucumán« was sprayed everywhere on the walls of houses in the cities; later, the word »arde« (is burning) was added.

The exhibition »Arte y Politica en los ’60« made a great impression, as it showed, for the first time, a piece of history that was repressed during the military dictatorship and forgotten during the decades of the Alfonsin/Menem governments, although some of the artists from back then now have influential positions or are involved in teaching. At any rate, this exhibition was the most consistent contribution yet by the institutionalised art scene to a potential political artistic practice, and one could ask why this only seems possible in historical retrospective.

This is despite the fact that - not only since the »crisis«, but since the end of the nineties - there has been a close cooperation between political protest movements and groups of artists that takes place on the streets or in occupied factories. Groups like Etcétera or the Grupo de Arte Callejero (GAC) work with the H.I.J.O.S. movement ², which has organised the »escraches« since the end of the nineties. »Escraches« are demonstrations in front of houses belonging to criminals from the time of the Junta, and make the neighbours aware that they have a torturer or mass murderer living near them. These demonstrations lead to a social ostracism of the person concerned. The GAC marks the way to and the immediate surroundings of the house with street signs and symbols giving information about the identity and dwelling of the perpetrators. The group Etcétera organised performances in front of the house, partly to divert the police’s attention from the »escrache«, the throwing of bags of paint or other ways of marking of the house. Last year, during the protests, Etcétera put on a number of performances that deliberately operated with found objects – trash – of surrealistic iconography: the general, the capitalist, the policeman, are all clichéd figures that are, however, reanimated in political reality in a strange way, like frozen political zombies. Last year, GAC devoted its attention above all to the memory of those who were shot by police during the December protests. It stuck large traffic signs with the names of those murdered to the ground at the place where they were killed, and cemented platforms into the road for the candles and flowers of relatives. There is film footage showing how anonymous security personnel try at night to destroy these platforms. These operations in the public space are far more dangerous than people in Europe can imagine, owing to the despotic action sometimes taken by police. Another group, Taller Popular de Serigrafía, is a sort of mobile screen printing workshop (taller), which prints protest icons and logos on the clothes and T-shirts of demonstrators.

There are also the many groups that are involved in the documentation and recording of political events, like Indymedia Argentina, Argentina Arde, Intergaláctica, or Cine Piquetero (which is now also featured at the Biennale in Berlin). This documentation is not only an important protection against police attacks at demonstrations, but also serves as evidence. In July last year, two piqueteros ³ were deliberately murdered by the police; the official media showed pictures that »proved« that these piqueteros killed each other with weapons concealed in their sticks. But this lie was revealed by the many photographs telling a different story.

The cooperation between cultural spaces and occupied factories such as the IMPA (an aluminium factory), Grissinopolis (a large bakery), and the Brukmann clothing factory should also be mentioned. In some of the rooms in these factories, exhibitions or film evenings are put on, while the self-managed work goes on in the other rooms. This cooperation also allows public support to be mobilised quickly in the case of police raids.

This short survey giving examples of artistic cooperation with protest movements only applies to Buenos Aires, but every province has its own movements and co-operations, if perhaps not as prominent as those in the capital. What all these initiatives have in common is that they try to create a form of public and autonomous communication, because this communication simply does not exist otherwise. (For example, in the provincial capitals of Posadas or Tucumán, the museums have been closed for ages; there is no place for cultural communication.) In the district Ingeniero White in the port of Bahía Blanca, there is, for instance, a small museum (Museo del Puerto) that is devoted to the everyday history of the surrounding area. It records the stories of old people and collects objects from the immigration era. But it gives back these stories again by setting up a television on the streets of the barrios, where neighbours can watch the interviews. In this city, near to the fourth-largest port in the world for grain export, the trucks carrying the cereal wait for days for their freight to be unloaded, and the residents sweep up the grain on the sides of the roads to feed the hens that they depend on for survival. The museum also publishes books: for example, a cookery book with recipes that can be made on 150 pesos per month (this is how much a family with two children receives in social welfare payments, and is approximately equal to 50 euros).

All these are examples of an artistic practice that gets involved within political movements or everyday social situations. Now, in December 2002, there was a first, half-institutional attempt to take notice of this current involvement. This involved the organisation of a meeting at a venue called Tatlin to which the various self-organised artistic and political groups were invited. The meeting was arranged by the Proyecto Venus and Roberto Jacoby. The Proyecto Venus is a sort of meta-self-organisation of a group that, in its turn, supports other groups with money from the Guggenheim Foundation. Roberto Jacoby is the mentor of various local scenes. ⁴ On this evening, around twenty different groups were invited. They were asked to respond to a specific list of questions: what they did, how they were financed, why they were doing it and for whom, what problems the organisation had. Each group had five minutes to answer, leaving no time for discussion. All those present, squashed together in the stuffy room, went home unsatisfied. Originally, the meeting was planned as an exchange between the political groups and artistic initiatives like Zapatos Rojos, which runs a small publishing house and a book shop, or Belleza y Felicidad, a space that is a sort of alternative gallery, art supply shop, and small publishing house. ⁵

After this evening, a process of automatic resentments was set in motion that reproduced the classical division into »Bohemian« and »protest«. But, in the current political situation, when young Bohemians groan about the jargon of the politically oriented sounding the same as it did thirty years ago, it has a rather macabre taste to it.

Let us return to institutionalised artistic practice. In the past few months, there were some examples where works containing references to current political reality were presented: for example, the group Doma, which had an exhibition in December 2002 in collaboration with two photographic artists.6 The group produces logos and comic-like pictures that it stuck on the wall. These works seemed to be about the security phobias of clase media and the despotism of the police. The logos showed surveillance cameras, sirens, blockades and other »signal givers«; scenes of shootings were also shown. But in this exhibition, the signs and figures were used like a purely formal pattern that spread over the entire space. Even the museum was highlighted as a place of security, because the decoration was often centred around the security cameras. There was also a dummy lying in the pool belonging to the institution. It was meant to commemorate a boy who, in an act of pure mischief, was thrown by police into the polluted border river of Riachuelo (between the city and the province of Buenos Aires) and died. We wondered why, when the potential political references were so obvious, every connection with the current political situation was denied in the talk held with the artists, and also why the dedication to this boy was only mentioned to us as insiders. Perhaps because concrete political messages would devalue the work’s universal validity? The fear of this devaluation seems to be so great that it even prevents a personal political statement. It is thus not only a formal debate, contents and methods, that are at issue, but a social transgression, a sort of conscious rejection of the universal availability that apparently forms a part of professional artistic discipline.

Another example is a picture by the painter Tomás Espina that received a special prize from the Banco de Ciudad. It was hung in the exhibition at the Museo nacional de Bellas Artes where the bank presented the award-winning works along with those that made it to the short list. ⁷ In the foreground, the picture shows police in front of the body of one of the two murdered piqueteros; it is divided into the structure of rough monitor stripes to make clear the media provenience of the subject, the paint is porous because gunpowder has been added to it. The painter has dedicated the picture not to the two piqueteros, but to Goya.

A final example is found in the exhibition at the Proa Foundation in the district of La Boca. ⁸ This exhibition was devoted more explicitly to various political and artistic initiatives. However, it did not make clear the contexts in which they arose. One of them was an initiative of designers and artists who developed an advertising campaign with the slogan »Argentinos Seleccionados«. (Fabian Trigo was responsible for the installation at the Proa.) The target groups were academics and the young middle class. A web page, posters and fliers, and all the tools of »corporate design« were used to advertise a company that sends Argentineans in a futuristic capsule to the land of their desires, where a splendid career awaits them. According to the accompanying text, 200,000 enquires came in. All the elements of the campaign were technically very elaborate, and copied perfectly the appearance of exclusive consumer articles. There really is a brain drain of academics who find the situation in Argentina very painful, and the campaign may, in its own way, perfectly reproduce the undertones of Darwinist selection that are played in a sector of the middle classes. It reminded us of the science fiction film »Gattaca«. But one can’t rid oneself of the impression that, despite all the elaborateness and cleverness, in the end there is no insight and no denunciation here, just cynicism; perhaps because it is not clear for whom the work is actually speaking and why the work was created. In Spanish, by the way, career is »exito«.

Finally, let us mention the crisis of »representation« that is talked about in the feature sections here when the unbridgeable gap between the protest movements and the bourgeois intelligentsia and its political caste is meant. This crisis also has to do with the failure of academic contemporary art to express political reality. This may be caused by the fact that institutionalised artistic practice, with its repertoire of pop, post-modernity, irony, appropriation, and the other techniques that are learnt in academies and postgraduate programmes, only allows political reality to be depicted via a long referential structure of artistic conventions that does not disturb the contract with bourgeois presentation and commerciality. But in the end, this is not only a question of a methodological discussion between idealistic and operative aesthetics, totalising haikus and political narration, but about whom one is sharing one’s life with, and for whom one gets involved.

 

Translated by Tim Jones

 

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