Losing the human form

Conversations about the 80s in Latin America

26 - 27 October 2012
Place
Nouvel Building, Auditorium 200
Related links
Ral Veroni. La Muestra Nómade, 1990-1991. Afiche
Ral Veroni. La Muestra Nómade, 1990-1991. Afiche

The exhibition Losing the human form: a seismic image of the 1980s in Latin America rescues a series of art practices occurring in this decade in different Latin American contexts and presents them to today's viewers. The selection is intended to give visibility to episodes that used forms of political resistance outside of activism's traditional channels, occupied spaces other than art institutions and generated networks that were translated into emotional ties.

The image that the exhibition conveys of the 1980s in Latin America does not intend to be panoramic or representative, but rather a possible sketch of the transformations, the irruptions and the historic, artistic and political tensions that crisscrossed this period. The allusion to the seismic nature of the image is a metaphor for how multiple temporalities came together and clashed with each other during this decade.

Program


Presentation of the project
Friday, 5 p.m.
Jesús Carrillo and Conceptualismos del Sur (Jaime Vindel, on behalf of the curatorial team)

Doing politics with nothing. Marginal materiality and artistic activism
Table 1. Friday, 5:30 p.m.
Participants: Guillermo Giampietro, Eduardo Kac, Marta Cocco and Mauricio Guerrero
Moderated by: Fernanda Nogueira and Ana Longoni

Disobedient Bodies. The irruption of rebellious sexualities
Table 2. Friday, 7:30 p.m.
Participants: Francisco Casas (Yeguas del Apocalipsis), Sergio Zevallos and Maris Bustamante
Moderated by: Fernanda Carvajal

Under scenes. Fiesta and urban occupation as the new politics
Table 3. Saturday, 10:30 a.m.
Participants: Alfredo Márquez, Sarah Minter, Ral Veroni, Gonzalo Rabanal (Los Ángeles Negros)
Moderated by: Miguel López and Daniela Lucena

What do the 1980s tell us today?
Table 4. Saturday, 5 p.m.
Participants: Rachel Weiss, Ana Alvarado and Roberto Amigo
Moderated by: Sol Henaro and André Mesquita

Participants


Jesús Carrillo , professor of art history at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid and head of cultural programs at Museo Reina Sofía.

Jaime Vindel , art historian, member of the curatorial team of Losing the human form and of the network Conceptualismos del Sur.

Guillermo Giampietro , artist, founder in 1979 of the group Cucaño, an activist collective that carried out numerous performances, installations and literary publications in Argentina.

Marta Cocco , founder of the TIT (Taller de Investigaciones Teatrales-Theatre Investigations Workshop), a performative collective that, towards the end of the Argentine dictatorship, spliced the artistic avant-garde with politics as its program. Researcher in cultural studies and professor.

Mauricio Guerrero , artist, active participant and agglutinating agent of the mail art networks of Latin America.

Eduardo Kac , artist, researcher interested in the interaction and blending of art and science, one of the movers of the Brazilian underground scene in the 1980s.

Ana Longoni , researcher and writer, member of the curatorial team of Losing the human form and co-founder of the network Conceptualismos del Sur.

Fernanda Nogueira , researcher, translator and literary critic. Member of the network Conceptualismos del Sur since 2008, and part of the curatorial team of Losing the human form.

Francisco Casas , poet and writer, is the founder, along with Pedro Lemebel, of the collective Yeguas del Apocalipsis, who proposed a queer identity and body during the dictatorship in Chile.

Maris Bustamante , artist, professor, member of the Mexican collectives Polvo de Gallina Negra, along with Mónica Mayer, and of the No-Grupo, along with Melquíades Herrera, Alfredo Núñez and Rubén Valencia.

Sergio Zevallos , artist, member of Peru's Grupo Chaclacayo in the 1980s.

Fernanda Carvajal , sociologist and researcher, interested in theatre and contemporary art in Chile. She has been a member of the network Conceptualismos del Sur since 2009.

Miguel A. López , researcher and independent curator, member of the curatorial team of Losing the human form, and also of Conceptualismos del Sur.

Alfredo Márquez , visual artist and cultural activist. His work falls within the counterculture of Lima. He has taken part in collectives such as Bestiarios, Taller NN, Made in Perú and Perúfabrica.

Sarah Minter , filmmaker associated with the Mexican punk movement. She has worked with documentary, fiction, video and video-installation.

Ral Veroni , poet and artist, active in the graphic art publications of Argentina in the 1980s and 90s, where he developed important graphic and poetic actions in the public space.

Gonzalo Rabanal , artist and performing artist, a member of the Chilean collective Los Ángeles Negros in the 1980s, along with Jorge Cerezo and Patricio Rueda.

Rachel Weiss , art historian and professor at the Art Institute of Chicago, co-curator, along with Jane Farver and Luis Camnitzer, of Global Conceptualism: Points of Origin, 1950-1980 (Queens Museum of Art, New York, 1999).

Daniela Lucena , sociologist and professor at the Universidad de Buenos Aires and FLACSO.

André Mesquita , researcher specialised in cartographies of artistic activism, on of the curatorial team of Losing the human form, and also a member of Conceptualismos del Sur.

Sol Henaro , art historian and member of Conceptualismos del Sur, she was the curator of the exhibition No-Grupo: un zangoloteo al corsé artístico in the Museum of Modern Art of Mexico (2010).

Ana Alvarado , artist, playwright and scenographer, was a founding member of El Periférico de Objetos, an Argentine group that played a key role in the reinvention of theatrical narrative dealing with violence, repression and torture, from 1989 onwards.