26.01.2010. 6:00 p.m.
Espacio 1414. Santurce, Puerto Rico.
Curated by María Inés Rodríguez.
Exhibition.
Tltle: Tatlin Whisper # 6 (Havana version)
Year: 2009
Medium: Behavior art
Materials: Stage, podium, microphones, one loudspeaker inside and one loudspeaker outside of the building, two persons dressed on a military outfit, white dove, one minute free of censorship per speaker, 200 disposable cameras with flash.
Images: John Betancourt / courtesy of the artist and the Berezdivin Collection.
@Tania Bruguera
This season, Espacio 1414 presents three exhibitions that propose reflections on the position of the artist towards the real, a confrontation of what the world is and what it could be. Both It Is It_, Swarm and the works selected for the Painting Room prove the complexity of the contemporary world and the geo-political, social and economic implications it entails. The new cartographies of power that have arisen in the wake of contemporary conflicts, have redefined new kinds of hierarchies and interests affecting civil society. Whether at a local or a global level artists generate, through their work, another kind of cultural construction that questions the universality of notions relating to territory, totalitarianisms, displacement, belonging or exclusion and, therefore, the limits of contemporaneity. Based upon the exhibited works, we state that art continues to be one of the few remaining possibilities we have to create interstices between terror and escape, room for reflection and discussion that allows both artists and public to build a critical position towards the context in which they live.
If, as writer Édouard Glissant pointed out, “the role of artists is to make certain things visible in the mind and the imaginary so that change can come about”, we might add that the role of the spectator, in turn, is to assume itself as an active and emancipated player towards what the artist proposes, so that the possible change suggested by Glissant can take place.
María Inés Rodríguez.