Black Bucket Essays
Volume 1, Issue 1
“The survival of my own ideas may not be as important as a condition I might create for others’ ideas to be realized. ”
- Mel Chin
Natalia González Requena
Thoughts on Transference
Are the ´conditions’ to which Mel Chin aspires plastic in all social spheres? By plastic, I ask whether this model could best be transplanted for purposes of infrastructure, rather than aesthetics, in a disparate context like that of contemporary Bolivia.
Being configured in a multicultural/ethnic/linguistic meshwork whose colonial history weaved a dominant minority of more or less European descent that has, until recently, retained monopoly of political and economic life; Bolivia is convoluted. In light of these particular conditions, Chilean curator/art critic Justo Pastor Mellado, offered an acute estimation of the Bolivian urban setting in terms of how Bolivian artistic practices and art spaces can be positioned:
To what extent does performance [sculpture and installation] fall short in a society that lives in constant street protest mobilization, where the political march and the carnival configure an extremely complex corporeal presence; or (…) the presence of hundreds of indigenous merchants in the streets of La Paz, who have the staunchness to generate a domestic space in the midst of the street? 1
https://vimeo.com/40868944
Claudia Joskowicz, excerpt of Every Building on Avenida Alfonso Ugarte - After Ruscha, 26 min. video, appeared in SIART Bienale 2011 curated by Mellado. Here, the
slowness of impeccable, continuous shots, contrast with the raw unease amidst protest, festival, passersby, in the precarious makeup of the street. In highly structured societies that lack the necessity or habit to produce organic or impromptu interferences - Chin´s model works. Conversely, in a backdrop like that of Bolivia, of constant social and political unrest, within the multiple streams of existence, might require other modes because those fertile conditions already exist.
https://vimeo.com/117203227
Other work considering pre-existing conditions is Grafikantes Collective´s Memorias de la tierra, land-art intervention video, 2014. Located in the outskirts of La Paz, 300 houses were destroyed by a massive landslide. This collaborative action documents some of the victims as they returned to their former habitat to commemorate/retrace boundaries of possible living/wandering spaces.
https://vimeo.com/111796368
In, Aún a costa de la vida. Santa Cruz, Bolivia. 2014 (Natalia González R.), a coded overlap between a maritime national hymn, literature, and scenes of present-day
Santa Cruz discloses the standings of a failed/failing modernity. Intellectual confinement is the ultimate result of unrestrained importing of foreign models when they are reproduced in ways that are fast, inconsiderate and implacable.
These works respond to given conditions, not the other way around.
The conditions suggested by Mel Chin are urgently needed- insofar as they pertain to art spaces, projects, or ways in which art can exist in a public place- this bypasses giving art exclusively practical usefulness, directed by an agenda. Artists can opt to step away from institutionalized centers, creating alternative projects, co-curated by artists, possibly anonymous, in which contextualizing is not left to the hands of a person who formulates a statement a priori, but out of an amplified listening.
1 Castro J., Carolina (interviewer) & Mellado, Justo P.. Justo Pastor Mellado: “Siart no es una bienal para acceder a los circuitos del primer mundo”, Aug. 23, 2011. Retrieved from Artishock, revista de arte. Site: http://www.artishock.cl/2011/08/justo-pastor-mellado-siart/
Volume 1, Issue 1
“The survival of my own ideas may not be as important as a condition I might create for others’ ideas to be realized. ”
- Mel Chin
Natalia González Requena
Thoughts on Transference
Are the ´conditions’ to which Mel Chin aspires plastic in all social spheres? By plastic, I ask whether this model could best be transplanted for purposes of infrastructure, rather than aesthetics, in a disparate context like that of contemporary Bolivia.
Being configured in a multicultural/ethnic/linguistic meshwork whose colonial history weaved a dominant minority of more or less European descent that has, until recently, retained monopoly of political and economic life; Bolivia is convoluted. In light of these particular conditions, Chilean curator/art critic Justo Pastor Mellado, offered an acute estimation of the Bolivian urban setting in terms of how Bolivian artistic practices and art spaces can be positioned:
To what extent does performance [sculpture and installation] fall short in a society that lives in constant street protest mobilization, where the political march and the carnival configure an extremely complex corporeal presence; or (…) the presence of hundreds of indigenous merchants in the streets of La Paz, who have the staunchness to generate a domestic space in the midst of the street? 1
https://vimeo.com/40868944
Claudia Joskowicz, excerpt of Every Building on Avenida Alfonso Ugarte - After Ruscha, 26 min. video, appeared in SIART Bienale 2011 curated by Mellado. Here, the
slowness of impeccable, continuous shots, contrast with the raw unease amidst protest, festival, passersby, in the precarious makeup of the street. In highly structured societies that lack the necessity or habit to produce organic or impromptu interferences - Chin´s model works. Conversely, in a backdrop like that of Bolivia, of constant social and political unrest, within the multiple streams of existence, might require other modes because those fertile conditions already exist.
https://vimeo.com/117203227
Other work considering pre-existing conditions is Grafikantes Collective´s Memorias de la tierra, land-art intervention video, 2014. Located in the outskirts of La Paz, 300 houses were destroyed by a massive landslide. This collaborative action documents some of the victims as they returned to their former habitat to commemorate/retrace boundaries of possible living/wandering spaces.
https://vimeo.com/111796368
In, Aún a costa de la vida. Santa Cruz, Bolivia. 2014 (Natalia González R.), a coded overlap between a maritime national hymn, literature, and scenes of present-day
Santa Cruz discloses the standings of a failed/failing modernity. Intellectual confinement is the ultimate result of unrestrained importing of foreign models when they are reproduced in ways that are fast, inconsiderate and implacable.
These works respond to given conditions, not the other way around.
The conditions suggested by Mel Chin are urgently needed- insofar as they pertain to art spaces, projects, or ways in which art can exist in a public place- this bypasses giving art exclusively practical usefulness, directed by an agenda. Artists can opt to step away from institutionalized centers, creating alternative projects, co-curated by artists, possibly anonymous, in which contextualizing is not left to the hands of a person who formulates a statement a priori, but out of an amplified listening.
1 Castro J., Carolina (interviewer) & Mellado, Justo P.. Justo Pastor Mellado: “Siart no es una bienal para acceder a los circuitos del primer mundo”, Aug. 23, 2011. Retrieved from Artishock, revista de arte. Site: http://www.artishock.cl/2011/08/justo-pastor-mellado-siart/
