The exhibit was curated especially for the UAG by Jennifer Flores Sternad, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis at NYU and a leading critic and scholar of political art in the Americas.

Arrhythmias showcased art practices developed in Argentina since the mid-1990s that demonstrate exceptionally creative, and widely diverse, modes of engagement with present-day social and political struggles. The artists featured in the exhibition combine artistic practices and the pursuit of creative experimentation with methodologies and epistemologies, such as those associated with militant research, radical pedagogy, direct action, community organizing, critical cartography, tactical media and Brechtian theater. Many of the projects in the exhibition were developed through direct contact with, or in explicit alignment with, left social movements. In some cases, the artistic practice was coextensive with popular forms of struggle or grass-roots organizing. Other projects include anti-imperialist historiographical interventions that interweave the Southern Cone’s colonial history with its present-day neoliberal order, studies of vast informal economies and the migrant and local labor that sustains them, and provocative street performances and media interventions that reveal the logic behind the discursive and legal system of anti-terrorism.

This work evolved in response to the various political and subjective tensions that accompanied the Argentine economic crisis, which peaked in 2001 and 2002. These include a profound negation of state institutions, the protagonism of autonomous social movements, and popular militancy and grass-roots organizing attached to aesthetic invention. Another important point of reference for these artists is their understanding of the period popularly dubbed “post-crises,” characterized by re-legitimation of the traditional political system, the repression and domestication of social movements and a turn towards a discourse of security. Described by its architects as a return to “normal capitalism,” this transformation has been hailed internationally—as well as by some sectors in Argentina—as a remarkable “recovery” and successful return to stability.

If, as Ruth Gilmore writes, “Crisis signals systemic social change whose outcome is determined through struggle,” the works in this exhibition trace the contours of this struggle over the past decade, up to the present. In doing so, they reject official representations of stability and development, defy the image of a kinder and gentler “normal” capitalism and interrogate the political theater through which these ideas are promoted. Dismantling the narrative of crisis and “recovery,” they instead reveal the conditions of stability for the crisis state, and what it costs in labor, terror and even life.

Click here to read more about the exhibition on the UAG website: http://universityartgallery.ucsd.edu

Click here to read more about the conference

Artists included in the exhibition

Ala Plástica is an NGO that has worked since 1991 on projects in which art, ecological regeneration and collective investigation play a primary role. The group’s activities often deal with ecological work, the conservation of native cultures and species, and the participatory recuperation of local economies and social tissue. Ala Plástica’s members and collaborators include artists, scientists, community organizations, other NGOs and researchers.

Eduardo Molinari is a multidisciplinary artist whose work centers on research through artistic methods and walking as an aesthetic practice. His l Archivo Caminante [The Walking Archive] is a meta-work that is both an archival collection he has, maintained since 2001, as well as the manifestation of his ongoing artistic-cum-research practice. This practice draws on varied epistemological frameworks and methodologies, including those associated with militant research, conceptual art, ethnography, post-colonial historiography, travel writing and psychogeography. El Camino Real, featured in this exhibition, is a diptych comprised of an installation that features documents drawn from the Archive and the book,El Libro Plateado y Real , appearing in its first English translation. In El Camino Real history unfolds in a non-linear and palimpsestic time that moves between the Southern Cone’s colonial history, Argentina’s hyper-neoliberalization in the 1990s and ensuing economic crash, and the potentiality of popular revolt and armed struggle seen in the country in the early 1970s. This work not only refigures a sense of national identity, but also proposes an especial understanding of the past — one that encompasses the unpredictable landscape of collective memory, fugitive events and experiences that have escaped the archival record, and the untapped potentialities still latent within them.

Etcétera… was formed in 1997 by a group of visual artists, poets, puppeteers, and actors. The group’s unique fusion of aggressive street theater, political critique, and direct-action protest, is equally marked by the group’s formative militancy within Argentina’s left human rights movement as it is the artists’ fealty to Surrealism. Beginning in the late 1990s, Etcétera… worked closely with the human rights group H.I.J.O.S. (Children for Identity and Justice Against Forgetting and Silence) in developing and popularizing escraches: popular exposure protests that are used to denounce unpunished perpetrators of state-sponsored terrorism, seeking a form of justice that is not beholden to the state’s legal and judicial institutions. Etcétera…’s particular style of surrealist street theater– sometimes grotesque, always irreverent – has played an important role in bringing visibility to unpunished acts of state violence while, at the same time, questioning rhetoric of victimization often emphasized in social justice struggles.

The Errorist International was founded by Etcétera… in 2005 as a response to the US-led “War on Terror” and the passage of international counter-terrorist legislation in Argentina. The Errorists stage situational performances to uncover the strategic operations of the state’s terrorism discourse and explore its repercussions in the media, language, and visual culture. They disseminate manifestoes, communiqués and videos about Errorism: a “practice and philosophy based on error as a way of life.” The Errorists’ works include performances in the midst of political demonstrations, unannounced street actions that target unwitting passersby (or even police), videos, photo-novels, poetic manifestoes and media interventions and hoaxes.

Grupo de Arte Callejero [Street Art Group]’s aim to “militate politically through art” is perhaps best exemplified in the way the group has worked with Argentina’s popular and left human rights movement since the 1990s, particularly in the organization and visibilization of escraches. One of GAC’s most visible contributions to the escraches are street signs that identify the locations of former concentration camps and signs and maps that lead demonstrators to the front doors of former military officers, complicit doctors and priests, and “economic genocidas”. With their maps, street signs, posters and anonymous interventions GAC creates a counter-mapping of the city — on that refuses the juridical and military obviation of both collective trauma and militancy. In the Argentine context, the way GAC inscribes symbols of state terror into spaces of the post-dictatorial present renders deeply ambivalent the official representation of the institutions of the neoliberal democratic state that has been consolidated against the violence of the past dictatorship.

Julian d’Angiolillo is a visual artist, filmaker and playwright whose work explores questions of urbanism, spatial practice, public space and memory. This exhibition features his recent feature-length film Hacerme Feriante [Become a Stallholder], along with documentation of its creation. The film is the product of d’Angiolillo’s intensive research on a massive informal market known as La Salada. Condemned by the European Union for violations of brand copyright laws, La Saladais the largest informal market of its kind in Latin America, attracting migrants from Bolivia, Peru, Paraguay and the Argentine countryside. D’Angiolillo’s film examines the coordinated efforts of stallholders, local bosses or caudillos, and visitors who open the fair in the middle of the night or pre-dawn hours twice weekly. Italso explores the ways in which the market is far more than a site of commerce, and is also a place for celebrations, religious ceremony and popular assemblies and a strategic field where the identity of immigrants and workers is reaffirmed.

Taller Popular de Serigrafía [The People's Screen-Printing Workshop]was born in 2002 in the context of the popular assembly movement in Buenos Aires. The collective worked closely with neighborhood assemblies and participated in myriad demonstrations organized by piquetero [picketer] movements and occupied factory workers. The artists worked by determining a popular struggle or action in which they would take part and then collectively developed a graphic image that would communicate the spirit of the struggle. They disseminated these images at demonstrations by screen-printing the image onto posters and attendees’ shirts in situ, using their portable printing table that was mounted in a shopping cart. The exhibition will feature posters and T-shirts from over 50 different actions the group realized between 2002 and 2006.

Iconoclasistas‘ projects in tactical media, “agit-pop” graphics and radical cartography all grow from the group’s understanding of communication as a political praxis. They create bold graphic works that articulate counter-hegemonic social imaginaries and aim to support popular left struggles. These images are just one part of an ongoing collective research practice through which they and their myriad collaborators generate representations of grass roots justice struggles throughout Latin America and synthesize and disseminate this information in such a way as promote consideration of actual and possible connections and broader resistance movements. Their collective mapping workshops bring together people from diverse social movements and communities to foment dialogue about local problematics, promote direct inquiries into the specific sites of conflict or struggle, and create visual representations of this collective knowledge.

La Tribu is an independent radio based in Buenos Aires. Their work for this exhibition is curated by the cooperative media conglomerate Diego de la Vega LLC.

The Archivo Provincial de la Memoria [Provincial Memory Archive] is a public institution that aims to give historic value and meaning to sites that are part of the history of state terrorism in the state of Córdoba, Argentina. Diego de la Vega LLC is a Mexican coin-operated media conglomerate that works under the secret agenda of “another world is possible ” with the goal of creating collective common goods while working in the logic of a globalized information economy. Diego de la Vega’s CEO, writer and media artist Fran Ilich, created a piece for the exhibition in collaboration with the Memory Archive that is based on a dialogue between Ilich and activists who work with the Archive and with the human rights organization H.I.J.O.S. Córdoba.

Jennifer Flores Sternad is a scholar and curator whose research focuses on militant and activist art, performance, and artistic practices developed within or in alignment with social movements. Since 2001 her work in these fields has included extensive research in Argentina, Brazil and Chile, as well as on Xicano/a and Latino/a art and theater in the U.S. Her texts have been published in books and academic journals in the US, Europe and Latin America, including Art and Activism in the Age of Globalization (NAi, 2011); Live Art in LA, 1970-1983 (with Suzanne Lacy, Routledge, 2011 forthcoming); Zona de Poesia Árida: Coletivos de Arte (Universidad de São Paulo, 2011 forthcoming), MEX/LA: Mexican Modernisms in Los Angeles (with Ricardo Bracho, Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2011 forthcoming); Haciendo Tiempo: Arte Radical, 1999-2004 (Universidad Autónoma de la Ciudad de Mexico, 2010); and the journals GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies; Contemporary Theatre Review; The Journal of American Drama and Theater and Interreview. She has directed and produced public art events in Argentina, Chile and California and she is co-founder with Fran Ilich of the media art/research project Collective Intelligence Agency. She holds a BA in Literature from Harvard, an MA in Art History from UCLA, and she is currently a doctoral candidate and MacCracken Fellow in American Studies in the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis at NYU.

Banner Image: Still from Hacerme Feriante, video, 2011 Julian d’Angiolillo

The Access Youth Academy at the 2011 Best in the West squash tournament

Students playing at the San Diego Squash Club

Access Youth Academy goals are to:
- Teach students to take responsibility for their actions and choices
- Help students appreciate and enjoy physical activity
- Develop students sense of good sportsmanship on and off the squash court
- Promote understanding and friendship between people of different backgrounds
- Engage students in service projects that help their community.

The program initially started with 18 students in grades 6th through 8th. This current academic year, 2009-2010, we have enrolled 40 students in grades 7th through 10th. The students attend The Preuss School, a charter school on the UCSD campus. The students will commit to the Access Youth Academy program 2-3 times per week for 3 hours per day. During this time they will be engaged in academic tutoring as well. The community service part of the program will be held on selected Saturdays. Some examples of community service projects include distributing food and clothing for homeless shelters, cooking and enjoying time with elderly, and playground and beach cleanups. All court time, squash instruction, tutoring, athletic equipment, transportation, and field trips are provided free of charge to Access Youth Academy team members. In return, the program requires of its participants regular attendance at practice and a commitment at all times to try hard, to respect fellow team members and to take school as seriously as sports.

To learn more about Access Youth Academy or to donate, please visit: www.accessyouthacademy.org

Students at the 2011 Best in the West squash tournament

Students at the 2011 Best in the West squash tournament

The End of the World at the Edge of the Earth.

Juli Carson’s bilingual book The Limits of Representation: Psychoanalysis and Critical Aesthetics (Buenos Aires: Letra Viva Press, 2011), considers the following questions: If there’s a Lacanian aesthetic in contemporary art, how does this practice incorporate post-structuralist theories by such thinkers as Roland Barthes or Jacques Ranciere? Would this “critical aesthetic” then deconstruct the dialectical conversation between Walter Benjamin and Theodor Adorno? If so, what remains of the Avant-Garde in contemporary practice? The Limits of Representation examines these propositions through careful explication of “case study” artworks by Kelly Barrie, Steve Fagin, Andrea Geyer, Mary Kelly, Roberto Jacoby, Cristóbal Lehyt, Dorit Margreiter, Florian Pumhösl, Kerry Tribe and Dolores Zinny/Juan Maidagan.Many of these projects were featured in Carson’s curatorial program at UC Irvine’s University Art Galleries, which is committed to promoting an inter-generational dialogue between 60s/70s neo-avant-garde art and contemporary visual culture in its most expansive poetic form.

The End of the World at the Edge of the Earth is a film in progress by Juli Carson and Bruce Yonemoto, 2008 Creative Capital fellows. The film began with the poetic observation that two things were simultaneously growing in Argentina: 1) a glacier named Perito Moreno in Patagonia; and 2) a clinical psychoanalytic practice founded by Jacques Lacan. The film’s two main components are a time-lapse capture of Perito Moreno, which includes an original score by Mayo Thompson, and a contemporary restaging a 1966 Happening by the Argentine artist/critic Oscar Masotta, entitled Helicopter.The project elegantly combines Carson’s Lacanian research and Yonemoto’s filmic practice as an investigation into subjectivity, the avant-garde and cultural memory today.

Film Shoot, The End of the World at the Edge of the Earth, Buenos Aires, 2009.

About Juli Carson

Juli Carson received her PhD from M.I.T. in the History, Theory and Criticism of Art Program in the Department of Architecture. Currently, she is Associate Professor in the Studio Art Department at UC Irvine where she directs the Critical and Curatorial MFA Program and the University Art Galleries. She is author of Exile of the Imaginary: Politics, Aesthetics, Love (Vienna: Generali Foundation, 2007) and curator of the archival exhibition accompanying Mary Kelly’s Post-Partum Document (Vienna: Generali Foundation, 1998). Her essays on conceptual art and psychoanalysis have been published in Art Journal, Documents, October, Texte Zur Kunst and X-TRA, as well as in numerous international anthologies and exhibition catalogues, including those produced for the MAK in Vienna, the Arnolfini Gallery in London, the Whitworth Museum in Manchester, the steirischer herbst festival in Graz and the 54th Venice Biennale (Polish Pavilion). The Limits of Representation: Psychoanalysis and Critical Aesthetics (Buenos Aires: Letra Viva Press, 2011) is her most recent book.

About Bruce Yonemoto

Bruce Yonemoto’s work explores the intimate relationship between cinema and politics, illuminating the key role that visual culture plays in both defining and executing the colonization of non-Western cultures. Yonemoto’s work has been exhibited internationally at the St. Louis Art Museum, MO (2010); Santa Barbara Contemporary Art Forum, CA (2008); the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, MO; the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia; the Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH; and the Santa Monica Museum of Art, CA.His work has also been included in numerous biennials, including the Gwangju Biennale (2008), Corcoran Biennial (2002), Fukui International Video Biennale (1993), and the Whitney Biennial (1993, 1987). In 1999, the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles presented a retrospective exhibition of Bruce and Norman Yonemoto’s work. Other exhibitions include California Video: Artists and Histories at the Getty Center, Los Angeles (2008); Los Angeles 1955-1986, Pompidou Center, Paris (2007); Exile of the Imaginary, Generali Foundation, Vienna, Austria (2007).

www.unitedstatesartists.org/project/home_made

Every year thousands of refugees flee violent conflict, persecution, and natural disaster and seek a safe haven in the U.S. In response to this world crisis, the International Rescue Committee (I.R.C.), a leading humanitarian organization, helps refugees rebuild their lives and become self-reliant and productive members of their new communities.

Working in direct collaboration with the IRC, my project entitled Home-Made, will provide refugees who have recently arrived in America, an opportunity to reconstruct their new possessions within a creative workshop environment. Your donation is crucial– it will enable us to purchase sustainable building materials, obtain tools and equipment, lease a workshop space, and purchase audio and video documentation equipment.

Together, I will work with participating refugees to design and build the sustainable furniture they need to start a new home such as: lamps, desks, tables, chairs, dressers, bookshelves, bed frames, etc. I will provide detailed instruction in the methods and techniques needed for furniture fabrication. This will give participants a chance to learn tangible skills for future employment, while promoting the self-sufficiency necessary for their future challenges in our society. In addition, the creative design for each piece of furniture will come from the inspiration and imagination of the refugees themselves; thus generating a sense of ownership and personal empowerment.

Having to leave everything behind means abandoning the possessions we cherish most; the memories and meanings accumulated and embodied within these objects are lost. This can be a devastating blow to the way we envision our lives. Therefore, this project will also function as a cultural commons, a positive environment where the camaraderie that comes with building things acts as a catalyst for participants to exchange their personal stories, histories, ideas, and hopes for the future. Through our conversations and interactions an archive of photographs, videos, and artifacts will be collected, to serve both as a memory bank of our time spent working together and as a way of passing on our group experience to others.

This project draws strength from the collective vision of our country– a nation built upon the struggles and successes of people arriving from throughout the world. However, we are currently in the grips of converging economic, environmental, and social crises. New thinking, new ideas, and new sustainable approaches to how we build our future world are imperative in creating a better place for all of us. For me, this project is a way I can employ my skills as a builder and an artist to improve the lives of others. Through this compassion for the plight of others I ask for your donation.

Thank-you
Seth

PROJECT UPDATE

Home-Made is underway!
In December I began leasing a really great space in the Wholesale District in Downtown LA. After a few weeks of fixing it up, installing various pieces of equipment, and purchasing tools and material we kicked off the project. Yasamin, Arega, Makeda, and Edison are the first four participants. They are from Iran, Ethiopia, and Uganda. We have been having a fun time building a dresser for Yasamin, a trunk for Arega, and fixing up and painting two cabinets which will be used to hold our tools and equipment. Some friends have been stopping by to hang out, and this past Saturday we had a small acoustic concert for everyone. Click on this link of pictures of the project:

https://plus.google.com/photos

Thanks again for all your support! More to come…

Seth

If you would like to learn more about this project and donate, please visit; www.unitedstatesartists.org/project/home_made

About Seth Augustine

Seth Augustine’s artwork begins by engaging with people, either through social experimentation, group participation, or public performance. Parameters help define the limits of these interactions, and in doing so generate an open space where unexpected outcomes develop. Informed by the newfound discoveries and insights learned from these engagements he creates artwork that traverses a wide range of formats including: artifact, sculpture, photography, installation, video, and drawing.

Most recently, Augustine has been living and traveling in China. In 2009 he collaborated with Shanghai-based artist Shi Yong on an extensive project working with migrant Chinese laborers. This project and other China-related projects have been exhibited in several venues both in China and the U.S.

He has earned his B.F.A. from Cornell University and his M.F.A. from the University of California, San Diego. Currently, Augustine instructs 3-D Design courses at California State University Northridge.

www.sethaugustine.com

Organization: Lucía Sanromán, Marcos Ramírez ERRE (Estación Tijuana), Taller 7 (Carlos Carmona, Mauricio Carmona Rivera, Paola Gaviria, Adriana María Pineda y Julián Urrego),  the haudenschildGarage.

THE PROJECT

…teaching does not occur without learning, and by that I mean that the act of teaching requires someone who tutors and someone who learns. To teach and to learn function in such a way that, on the one hand, the person who teaches also learns because he or she recognizes knowledge acquired before and, on the other, because by observing the curiosity with which the student works towards learning, the educator discovers questions, accomplishments and errors about what they are teaching.
- Paulo Freire cited in the curatorial statement for MDE11

Encuentro Internacional de Medellín MDE11: Enseñar y aprender. Lugares del conocimiento en el arte (MDE11: Teaching and Learning. Sites of Knowledge Through Art www.mde11.org) positions pedagogy as an active space of aesthetic and cultural production and curatorial axis. The independent art venue Estación Tijuana (Baja California, Mexico), together with the artistic residency Taller 7 ( Medellín, Colombia)—in collaboration with the cultural search engine and art salon haundeschildGARAGE (La Jolla, California)—take this as point of departure in their proposed collaboration for the Espacios Anfitriones (Host Spaces) program of MDE11.

Proyecto Coyote (Coyote Project), as the proposal is entitled, transforms Taller 7 into the studio of Estación Tijuana in order to “learn from Medellín”—to paraphrase the Venturi’s celebrated title Learning from Las Vegas—and from its processes of civic regeneration through art and cultural activism in response to the social and physical decomposition caused by “narco” violence in Medellín especially during the decades of the 1980s and 1990s.

More than a physical space, Estación Tijuana is a collective of artists, poets, writers, social workers and citizens from Tijuana that share a vital interest in generating dialogue and forms of being in community outside the limits circumscribed by violence, state politics, and the brutal Capitalism imposed on the border between Mexico and the United States since the 1970s.

Like other cities of the North of Mexico, since 2006 Tijuana has been severely affected by drug trafficking and the war against the drug cartels, as well as by decades of economic policies that have generated important vacuums in the social contract. Proyecto Coyote departs from the perception of a historic parallelism between Tijuana and Medellín, and proposes that during the last 6 years Tijuana finds a mirror in another place and moment: Medellín during the 1980s and 1990s when drug traffic, repressive politics, and civic crisis eroded the social and governmental structures that weave the fabric of a place together.

Nevertheless, during the last decade Medellín has generated other forms of civility and urbanism that today are an example of progressive politics through the world. Proyecto Coyote proposes that it is imperative to learn from their example, and analyse these advancements from a critical position, understanding that within Medellín critical questions are arising about the forms and means of addressing and encouraging real change beyond a sophisticated, media-savvy image of gentrified urban development. Although Medellín’s urban renewal programs and architectural projects have dominated the image of the city abroad, responsibilities and obligations between the government and its citizens in education, work creation, health and quality of life remain central questions in that city.

Proyecto Coyote exchanges the idea of an alternative art space as site of presentation of works of art, and focuses instead in a community that, as Freire notes, by learning also teaches and by teaching learns. Between the 6th and 27th of October 2011, Estación Tijuana will collaborate with Taller 7 and offer an intense program of workshops, conversations and investigation given by professionals that have been working in Medellín in social regeneration through art, architecture and activism. These workshops will be directed towards 12 creators from Tijuana that work towards ways of rethinking the urban and social space through art, video, poetry, architecture, urbanism and cultural activism, in this way opening up to a two-way, reciprocal dialogue.

Estación Tijuana is a “coyote” that leads Tijuanenses to Medellín generating a dynamic of dissemination of knowledge that is cellular and rhizomatic, reversing the flow of information usually expected from North to South, now from South to North. Estación Tijuana travels to Medellín to learn from its urban regeneration processes; to learn from the position and agency granted its citizens and their possibilities of participating in the creation of the city; from its ways of thinking art, architecture and urbanism as part of a project of endogenous citizenship; it also travels to Medellín looking towards alternative opinions and critical practices from both official and unofficial sectors.

SOCIAL IMPACT

Proyecto Coyote is conceived around the potential of individuals to transform their environment. It is for this reason that we have invited to participate cultural producers whose creative practice have developed along three main areas:

1) Pedagogy: Seven of the participants work in universities and colleges in Tijuana and San Diego, California.
2) Cultural production: All of the participants in Proyecto Coyote have long and proven trajectories as cultural produces of diverse, often socially involved, programs, artworks, organizations and projects.
3) Urban improvement: Several of the participants actively work generating new proposals for the use of public space through processes of design, urbanism, architecture and urbanism.

The immediate impact of Proyecto Coyote is immediately apparent in the impact it makes on the 12 key participants or collaborators from Tijuana who will be invited to think of strategies and methodologies to capture the transference of what they learn in Medellín to Tijuana. The secondary social impact of the project integrates an additional 20 participants in workshops, conversations, interviews, conferences, and field visits in Medellín. Finally, the indirect impact has a wider, and more unmeasurable, circle of influence since all the participants are part of diverse and far-reaching social networks—universities, cultural groups and activists. This extends the project well beyond its physical and temporal dimensions. Aside from existing programs within MDE11, Proyecto Coyote will include communities other than those in Tijuana and Medellín through its blog, printed catalogue, and exhibition.

OBJECTIVES

Proyecto Coyote’s objective is to encourage active exchange of knowledge between 12 outstanding individuals in Tijuana’s cultural community who are recognized for the work in pedagogy, mass-media, architecture and literature and more than 20 cultural agents active in Medellín who will give conferences, site-visits, and offer workshops and dialogue directed specifically towards this group. In every case, the program of investigation and study will be focused and elaborated towards the investigation of each participant from Tijuana, and will respond to his or her individual interests, as well as to the need to appropriate knowledge and systems of citizen agency generated in Medellín.

Although the contexts for these two cities coincide in the experience of violence generated by drug trafficking and illicit activities that are associated with it, Tijuana and Medellín clearly have significantly different historical and contextual differences. It is for this reason that the project is founded on the transference of knowledge that implies the transformation of information when it is adapted to the specific conditions of Tijuana—which, in some cases may be made extensive to other cities in the North of Mexico. At the core of Proyecto Coyote lies the idea of knowledge itself as cultural value; therefore, this project also investigates new models of curatorial work and aesthetic production that are related to education and pedagogy. Proyecto Coyote has as primary objective the development of discursive processes of active learning; as secondary objective, it will develop a blog, a catalogue, and a time-based exhibition in the spaces provided by Taller 7 which will be under constant installation and presentation throughout the month of October.

PARTICIPANTS FROM TIJUANA

Giacomo Castagnola—Architect and designer
Iván Díaz-Robledo—Video director and producer
Luis Juan Garzón Masabó—Artist, Professor of Drawing at Universidad Autonoma de Baja California, founder of Reacciona Tijuana
Socorro Gonzalez—Chef and cultural producer
Ingrid Hernández—Artist and sociologist
Fiamma Montezemolo—Artist and cultural anthropologist
Omar Pimenta—Artist and writer
Gabriela Posada—Publicist, editor, founder of Reacciona Tijuana
Rafa Saavedra—Writer, and professor in communication sciences
Gabriela Torres Olivares—Writer
Adriana Trujillo—Director, producer
Felipe Zúñiga—Artist and education curator

ORGANIZERS

Lucía Sanromán—Lucía Sanromán is an independent curator and writer. She formerly served as Associate Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, where she most recently curated Jennifer Steinkamp: Madame Curie (2011), Viva la Revolución: A Dialogue with the Urban Landscape (co-curated with Pedro Alonzo in 2010), and Here Not There: San Diego Art Now (2010). She also curated a large-scale site-specific installation by Los Angeles-based artist Ruben Ochoa (2010) as well as monographic exhibitions by Yvonne Venegas, Brian Ulrich, Hector Zamora, Peter Simensky, Joshua Mosley, and Nina Katchadourian among others. In 2008, Sanroman co-curated, with Ruth Estevez, the group exhibition Proyecto Cívico/Civic Project, the inaugural exhibition for El Cubo, at Centro Cultural Tijuana. She is currently also working on an exhibition for University of California San Diego on the intersection of science and art.

Marcos Ramirez ERRE—Artist, founder and director of Estación Tijuana. He obtained a law degree from the Universidad Autónoma de Baja California in 1982. In 1989 Ramírez began developing his work as a visual artist, since then he has participated in numerous national and international exhibitions. These include renowned projects for inSite94, inSite97, The Sixth and Seventh Havana Biennials, the 2000 Whitney Biennial, the Polygraphic Triennial in San Juan Puerto Rico, and the Sao Paolo Biennial. He has participated in the many exhibitions, including México Iluminado, From Baja to Vancouver, Política de la Diferencia / Arte Ibero Americano de fin de siglo, y ECO. Arte Contemporáneo Mexicano at the Centro de Arte Museo Reina Sofía. His retrospective, Marcos Ramírez ERRE: La reconstrucción de los hechos, is on view until September 2011 at the Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil, México, DF.

In 2003 the haudenschildGarage was founded as a 21st century cultural search engine, pursuant of interesting work wherever it occurs and in whatever form it takes. Today, the haudenschildGarage hopes to transcend the 19th century salon and the 20th century alternative art space by providing a home away from home to all seeking to engage in cultural experimentation, play and conversation. It routinely presents symposia, lectures and film screenings. Whether international projects, dialogs or commissions, the haudenschildGarage wishes to collaborate with like-minded institutions and artists. The goal is that by providing a permissive context for opinion and production, new

Taller 7 is an independent project generated by new forms of exchange through the exploration of alternative platforms. These permit the self-generation of collective work and new points of connection. It is sited in an traditional home in Medellín’s downtown core, and is established as a site meeting point for the realization of open activities that stimulate and strengthen dialogue that offers multiple points of view that encourage existing processes and new means of interaction. Taller 7 currently has the following members: Carlos Carmona, Mauricio Carmona Rivera, Paola Gaviria, Adriana María Pineda and Julián Urrego.

–

Proyecto Coyote is organized by Estación Tijuana and Taller 7 for Espacios Anfitriones of MDE11: Encuentro Internacional de Medellín in association with the haudenschildGarage. Additional support is made possible thanks to the generous support of El Consejo Nacional Para La Cultura y Las Artes, El Instituto Nacional De Bellas Artes, Instituto de Cultura de Baja California, and Patronato de Arte Contemporáneo A.C. (PAC).

The Urban Laboratories program is the second formal educational project at The Periscope Project, and the first working directly with students.

In the summer of 2010, a design / build studio was conducted through the Newschool of Architecture and Design as a formalization of the methods by which The Periscope Project was constructed in the first place: much of the project’s embodied labor is attributable to the tireless and enthusiastic contributions of students. Recognizing the appeal of The Periscope Projects to students as such, it has become a supplemental micro-institution. In such a space, the hierarchies of traditional educational systems can be bracketed, allowing students to develop for themselves a greater sense of ownership, connection, and tangible engagement.

During July 2011, resident artists and educators at The Periscope Project worked with small groups of high school students in focused workshops that engaged the urban territory surrounding The Periscope Project’s facilities. Opening up this space as a classroom, the programs introduced students to intensive visual / analytical / collaborative practice, and fostered a deeper understanding of the symbols, structures and ecologies that form San Diego’s urban public realm.

Session 1, Representing Urban Issues & Drawings from the “City,” was led by James Enos and Andrea Ngan. This group of four students focused on mediating ground-level experience of the urban environment (begun with day long walks) via photography, drawing, and collaborative collage. Click here for more information: http://theperiscopeproject.org/sessions.html

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How much vacant space is there in East Village, and most importantly, why is it vacant?
These questions motivated a weeklong exploration of the prevailing economic, social, and cultural factors driving land-use in the East Village. Utilizing photography and videography, students had the opportunity to interview local planners, policy-makers, organizations, and gained valuable insights into artistic production with Periscope Teaching Agent Andrea Ngan. This session produced a mixed-media installation representing a multifaceted understanding of the economic and bureaucratic mechanisms inherent in urban development. Technically, the session exposed students to fundamental photography and video-making skills, but more poetically students learned to make work in the form of installations, narratives, and documentaries.

Can we record the city, and most importantly, can we read its symbols?
These questions served as a point of departure for introducing students to varying drawing practices ranging from visual note taking to individual expression.  Drawing exercises, such as field sketching were used as a means for critically relating, communicating, and archiving each student’s personally subjective relationship to the city.  Students were prompted with anecdotal typologies by Periscope Teaching Agent James Enos, and presented the task of recording, understanding, and responding towards the built / un-built world. Technically, the track practiced the underlying principles of drawing and techniques of rapid visualization, concept design, and architectural ideation. However, perhaps more sensitively, students gained exposure to visual strategies and  formal preferences of form generation, record, and personal spatial analysis…

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Session 2, Introduction to Public Login & Urban Green Technologies, was led by Keith Muller and David Kim. This group of seven students were introduced to the varied meanings of urban space, as they explored the signs that designate public and private realms, and DIY techniques for responding to these situations: from street furniture to water-bottle hydroponics. Click here for more information: http://theperiscopeproject.org/sessions.html

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Working with students from the Preuss School UCSD, Monarch School, Francis Parker School and San Diego High School, the labs functioned as a temporary respite from the pressures of evaluation allowing students to creatively explore: fostering a sense of connection and opening up new conduits for learning. Student exercises, as well as culminating representations and artifacts were on display from August 5 – 19, 2011. Click here for more information: http://theperiscopeproject.org/exhibition.html

Are skateboarders the only ones having fun in the city, and most importantly, whose stuff is this exactly?
Students examined the structure of these questions and the spatial conditions alluded to by the public domain i.e. sidewalk culture, business amenities, and public parks.  Working with Periscope Teaching Agent Keith Muller, students gained awareness to idiosyncrasies in public amenities e.g. street furniture, utilities, curbs, green spaces, and borders. The track consisted of guided tours where students learned by examining, documenting, and interpreting the urban landscape, more specifically the intentions of public use, in mixed media. The design/build and small construction of a public sculpture project took place and served as a trigger for site-specific participation.  Technically, a hands-on approach to form-generation, material properties, and construction protocol was explored. More poetically, students engaged with the tenants of sustainability.

What are urban green technologies, and most importantly, how does environment play into the city?
Framed by questions such as these, students learned how to construct small-scale, hydroponic home-garden systems built from easily sourced, recycled and low-cost materials. Periscope Teaching Agent David Kim leaded a collaborative, open laboratory where students  learned real-world application of high school Biology, Chemistry, and Environmental Studies curriculum. This included exposure to the rapidly growing field of urban green technologies and the movement towards accessible DIY implementation. Ultimately, this workshop seeked to foster student awareness and agency in taking personal responsibility for environmental sustainability.

For more information on The Periscope Project visit their website: http://theperiscopeproject.org

You have not lived until you have done something for someone who can never repay you.
– Anonymous

Last year while on a business trip to San Francisco I stopped by an event organized by the amazing people at GO (Groundwork Opportunities / www.groundworkopportunities.org). The mission of GO is to invest funds and resources into the most vulnerable communities, promoting a cycle of self-sufficiency and sustainable micro-development that will enable the improvement of the human condition. It’s a mission that I want to fully help fulfill!

With my sincerest gratitude,
Ben Strauss-Malcolm
www.groundworkopportunities.org/champions/ben

GO MISSION STATEMENT
Groundwork Opportunities (GO) operates off a simple maxim: The Power of Their Ideas and Our Support. GO aims to provide an alternative solution to failing international aid policies by empowering communities through sustainable and community-owned micro-development projects that alleviate poverty. Like micro-finance, “micro-development” is a demonstrably effective means for helping build the local human infrastructure necessary to support positive, long-term economic growth.

IMPACT STATEMENT
GO’s purpose is to identify and partner with developing world communities that envision and manage sustainable programs aimed at addressing these fundamental communal issues. Once partnerships are established, GO provides the community with start-up capital to bring their ideas to fruition and creates a global support network to scale the impact of their work. In this manner, each partner can focus on their core competencies making development work efficient; the GO staff leverages volunteers, resources, and partnerships that are abundant in the developed world and our local partners can focus on implementing successful programs that enable their communities to build a sustainable livelihood. Our ability to provide compassion and love is what makes humans unique in our world. We all have the inner strength to not only care for ourselves but also to help others less fortunate than us. This is the essence of of GO’s work and the essence of Ubuntu, a word from South Africa that means you can’t exist as a human being in isolation. It speaks about our interconnectedness and our generosity. More than 1 billion people struggle on less than $1 a day to build a life of hope and dignity for themselves and for their families. One of the most important things people in the developed world can do to help fight global poverty is devote sufficient resources and support to those groups working on long term, viable, and community run solutions.

THE PROJECT
This project is aimed at dually improving health and education standards in Ghana by sponsoring a surgeon through medical school in Kumasi and by building and staffing a primary school and foster care facility for over 80 street children in Adoteiman. There are currently thousands of people living in the slums of Accra, many without adequate opportunities to receive health care or even a proper education. Out of this group, those particularly at risk are children. Having lost one or both parents to HIV/AIDS, and often left to fend for themselves, these slum children often end up in gangs or even worse. By providing quality primary schooling, coupled with the residency layout of a foster care home, these children will be able to learn the skills and forge the relationships necessary to improve their lives and leave the slums. www.groundworkopportunities.org/projects/ghana

GHANA – PRIMARY SCHOOL PROJECT
In 2009, GO built a primary school with Sovereign Global Mission, a local Ghanaian organization run by Eric Annan. The school was GO’s very first project and GO directors Kyle and Bart helped build the school with shovels, hammers, and other rudimentary equipment alongside the Ghanaian community. The school opened for 35 students in 2009 and with the addition of further classrooms, now educates 85 children every day.

GO BY THE NUMBERS
We started with 3 dedicated volunteers and an initial $2,000 investment. In 2.5 years, we have raised nearly $400,000 off the initial $2,000. GO currently has 5 dedicated staff members – currently unpaid – and 25 volunteers around the world. GO serves nearly 1,000 people EVERY DAY with 10 projects in 7 countries. GO partners with over 100+ corporations and nonprofits around the world $2 gives a child in Rwanda health insurance for 1 year; $50 buys a self-sustaining cook-stove in Nicaragua; $100 gives a child an education for 1 year in Ghana; $500 buys a cow in Uganda; $1,300 builds a home in Rwanda; $2,000 build a well in Cambodia

About Ben Strauss-Malcom

Ben Strauss-Malcolm was born and raised in Portland, Maine. He began pursuing a passion for the arts towards the end of high school, graduating in 2000. He attended Union College where he received a BA in Fine Art and a minor in Psychology. During his time in college he worked for several artists in New York City as well as pursued studies in Greece and Jamaica. He graduated in 2004 with honors and received the Charles Alexander Richmond Prize (excellence in the arts).

Upon graduating college he headed West to explore. Having worked at the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego he accepted a position at Quint Contemporary Art where he currently serves as the Director, working with such artist as Robert Irwin, Ryan McGinness, Roy McMakin, Roman de Salvo, Kelsey Brookes, Kim MacConnel and many more. He is a board member of Christopher Michael Sullivan and has been on the art selection panel for the USO Park & Gateway for the San Diego International Airport as well as the Advisory Board for the Art San Diego Contemporary Art Fair.

Passionate to live life to it’s fullest he enjoys new experiences, culture, his friendships and family, travel, exercise, and above all giving back.

Here is what she says about it:

if i was to open my chest, with a swift surgical move, lots of things from the inside would come out. a heart and bones and blood –all of the things that allow me to breath and walk this earth– but also the spirit of all the things i’ve done. all of my creatures and all my creations in a giant contorting wave would pop out for everyone to see.

my eyes would also float back and forth, letting themselves be carried by the flow, picking up wherever they go bits and pieces of the sea. i would lose my head as well, of course, and my legs and my arms to the sea of colors. and the huge grey walls of the city would suddenly become the beach where all of this will drift ashore.

day one means white walls, a scary and exciting feeling. knowing what I have to do and being afraid of screwing up. then i begin drawing and i realize everything is going to be ok. from then on it is pure joy. the main character of the project is born, my alter ego of course, because everything i do seems to start with myself. and in this particular case, i’m taking a look at my insides.

day three lucía joins for the first part of her intervention. it’s always exciting to work with somebody else because of the challenge. it slightly changes the course of things and you need to rethink things to keep going. but most of all – it’s fun!

day five is one of the most frustrating days. having a very certain idea of what you want to do, but not being able to do it…well, i guess we all have bad days at work…

day six starts with the major destruction of what had been done the previous day. and from the ashes out comes the phoenix, reminding me that there is nothing that cannot be fixed. and this is how the máquina de hacer (the making machine) is born. a máquina de hacer, we all have one inside ourselves, there’s always a part of us creating – good and bad – but creating after all.

aside from a lot of smoke (which would be the bad part) my máquina de hacer is producing explorer astronauts which become visible around days ten and eleven. and this is where my inner self connects to the outside world: – the city is born.

this city is vast and complicated and sometimes it doesn’t even make sense, like real cities. fast and furious, with the shape and the force of water, swallowing everything as it passes by.

day fourteen lucía comes back for her second and last intervention. and the city keeps growing like a monster from day twelve to the very end of the project, when it takes the shape of a giant wave about to hit me.

and so the circle is closed.

and so everything begins again.

About Cecile Perret

I was born in Rio Negro, Argentina in February 1977 and I expressed an interest in painting and drawing from an early age. I was encouraged by my parents to take lessons since I was 4 years old and did so on and off until the age of 21.
After graduating from college, I moved to Buenos Aires with my family and studied Visual Arts at the Escuela Panamericana de Diseño y Publicidad and an introductory year of Graphic Design at the University of Buenos Aires. It is at that time that I started showing my work and participating in competitions.
I lived in Paris, France for three years from 2002 to 2005. This was an extremely enriching and introspective period where I spent much of my time in my studio, seldom showing my work.
I moved to Milan in 2005, encouraged by close friend and trompe l‘oeil master Guesso. I spent one year working as his assistant and continuing my studio work.
Through the years I developed a great interest towards graffiti and street art, as well as comics and illustration. Elements from which started to gain space in my canvases.
I returned to Buenos Aires, where I currently live, in 2006 and immediately started to connect with artists, organizing group shows and contacting galleries. We created a series of massive group shows called Supermuestras and recently smaller versions called Veo-veos.
My work can be seen in galleries such as GP espacio de arte (Palermo), La Guanaca Azul (San Telmo) and VYP (Retiro).

The haudenschildGarage commissioned visual artist Felipe Zuñiga González to create a program for the students of Guillermo Prieto Elementary School. The program, Laboratorio Experimental de Óptica (LEO), in collaboration with the Fundación Migdalia Rubio, supports the population of high risk children in Tijuana and is led by a group of art students at Universidad Autonoma de Baja California (UABC).  Zuñiga, also a professor at UABC’s Escuela de Artes, invited fellow visual artist and professor Mayra Huerta to collaborate with him to create a team of facilitators to teach the LEO classes.

The eleven UABC art students were selected to participate based on their academic history and interest in the program. Huerta’s and Zuñiga’s objectives for LEO are to create a horizontal organization that designs curricula and produces a pilot program for the Fundación Migdalia Rubio that can be adapted and repeated and to create an educational blog that will function as an archive of the activities and log the results produced by the students and facilitators.

The program will take place in both the classroom and the school’s library from February to June 2011. Every Friday the library will be transformed in to THE OBSERVATORY, a place where the students will experiment with the intersection of optics and art.

The first unit is based on the notions of light, its reflective phenomena and its relationship to vision and the artifacts that enhance it. In this unit students will work with Newton color wheels, periscopes and kaleidoscopes.

The second unit will focus on the basic notions of the camera as an object and the illusion of movement in a zoetrope. Students will construct a stenopeic pinhole camera to create portraits and self-portraits and each student will create a zoetrope strip.

The third unit will focus on the basic notions of shadow theater to create short narratives which will be used to produce short animations. Students will learn about hand shadows and create wire sculptures to be used for the short film.

Program Coordinators are Profs. Mayra Huerta and Felipe Zúñiga. LEO Facilitators are Araceli Diaz Karol Alcazar, Cecilia Ramos Yeira Araiza, Mireya Solache Mendiola, Diana Andrea Fuentes Salinas, Sofia Vidal Lizárraga, Maria Eugenia Acosta Rubio, Adrian Mejia Figueroa, Chantal Peña Navarro, Cheraman Miguel Morales Valdez, Alicia Rubio Esmeralda Villegas, and Maria Luisa Chavez Vega.  Blog Master is Adrian Mejia.  Photo Documentation by Alicia Esmeralda Rubio and Maria Luisa Chavez.

THE OBSERVATORY

An artistic mediation program for the development of cognitive skills

By Felipe Zúñiga González

Today more than ever visual illiteracy can lead to a society lacking its own criteria against the stereotypical images we are bombarded with daily.

These images openly restrict our ability to imagine other scenarios and ways of living. With no chance of understanding our visual ecology, little can be done to create other representations or visions of our future and ourselves.

THE OBSERVATORY proposes a platform for experimentation and play to encourage and develop the skills of vision, observation and image production in elementary school children. This visual arts program departs radically from the concept of craft classes or art education taught in traditional public elementary schools in Mexico.

This platform is supported by a team of eleven young visual artists and educators from the Laboratorio Experimentación de Óptica (LEO) of the Escuela de Artes, Universidad Autónoma de Baja California. The purpose of this group is the development of experiences, visual interfaces and products.

The students at Guillermo Prieto Elementary School will produce three projects that will address the themes of identity, community and justice.

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EL OBSERVATORIO

Proyecto de mediación artística para el desarrollo de habilidades cognitivas

Por Felipe Zúñiga González

Hoy más que nunca el analfabetismo visual puede conducirnos a una sociedad carente de un criterio propio frente a las imágenes estereotípicas con las que somos bombardeados constantemente y que coartan abiertamente nuestra posibilidades para imaginar otros escenarios, otras vidas posibles en nuestro mundo . Sin posibilidades para entender nuestra ecología visual, poco podremos hacer para crear otras representaciones, otras visiones de nosotros mismos y por lo tanto, otras visones sobre nuestro futuro.

EL OBSERVATORIO se propone como una plataforma de experimentación y juego para estimular y desarrollar las capacidades de visión, el desarrollo de la observación y la producción de imágenes en niños de primer grado de educación primaria. Este proyecto de educación a través de las artes visuales, se aleja radicalmente de la concepción de las clases de manualidades o de la “educación artística” impartida tradicionalmente en las escuelas primarias públicas en México.

Esta plataforma está soportada por un equipo de colaboradores, principalmente jóvenes artistas visuales y educadores agrupados en el Laboratorio de Experimentación Optica de la Escuela de Artes de la Universidad de Tijuana. El cometido de este grupo es el desarrollo de las experiencias, interfaces y productos visuales a partir de los cuales los niños producirán tres proyectos que retomarán los siguientes ejes temáticos: identidad, comunidad y justicia.

About Felipe Zúñiga González

The work of Felipe Zúñiga González (b. Mexico City, 1978) focuses on the interconnection between body, communication and space in the intersection between performance, language, and video. This broad equation contracts and expands depending on the nature of the work’s location – intimate and private, or public space. A key aspect of Zúñiga’s art practice concerns the fluctuating relationship between the individual/personal and the collective/social. While the ways in which language informs identity and shapes – contracts, expands, displaces – private and public space, is a primary interest. In pursuit of these concerns Zúñiga implements a range of strategies, from the position of performer to that of curator/producer and educator. In each case, his primary intention is to generate a platform of communication that can modify (even for a minimal time) the perception of a person, a situation, or a place.

Felipe Zúñiga’s installations and videos have been shown in Mexico and internationally, including at Alexandria Contemporary Arts Forum (ACAF), Egypt; Kran Film, Bruxelles; Zacheta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw, Poland; El Centro Cultural Español (CCE), Miami, Florida; the Consulate General of Mexico, Los Angeles, California; and Casa del Lago, Mexico City.

Wu - Workshop Unit table/storage/display

Wu — Workshop Unit

The program includes the collaboration of Tijuana-based architect Giacomo Castagnola who designed a mobile, flexible workshop unit (Wu). Wu works as a storage space, exhibition totem, and table with display panels for the students. Generating multiple activities and workshops around it, Wu exists as a micro-infrastructure for small workshops, facilitating the interaction between users.

The tables can be folded and unfolded with side wings; the front top table opens to reveal multiple container boxes for small, medium and large format materials. The unit has storage on top, in the front and back and the interior has cork panels to post information or display exhibitions.

About Giacomo Castagnola

Giacomo Castagnola holds a BA in Architecture from Ricardo Palma University (URP) in Lima, Peru. He lives and works in Tijuana/San Diego. Castagnola works in architecture, design, furniture and material explorations. He established Germen Studio of Architecture and Design with a focus in exploring and learning from the informal city. His interests are grounded in the idea of urban growth without design that results in organizational structures through processes of urban sedimentation in time – settlement, coagulation, and consolidation. He has produced numerous architectural projects and designs, including the Info Lounge and Lab Space for Human/ Nature: Artist Respond to a Changing Planet, Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, a reading lounge and workshop tables for the Centro Cultural Tijuana, Tunnel Project for the Instan Herlev Institute in Copenhagen, Denmark for which he received a DIVA Residency, a table display for art research and exhibition installed at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Castilla y Leon (MUSAC), Spain, Slow Trans Anyang: Bicycle Station and Mobile Devices for Anyang Public Art Project, Korea, and a flexible platform for the presentation of archival material for inSite: Wandering Position, University Museum Of Contemporary Art (MUAC), Mexico City.

From October 25 – 31, 2010 two artists from very different countries entered a blurry zone between intimacy and aesthetic compromise at the haudenschildGarage.

Any form of exchange implies risks. An undesired outcome can be almost imperceptible as when someone did not really like their birthday present. But some other gifts are a form of disaster. Think of the Trojan horse or President Obama’s DVD collection for Prime Minister Brown, which outraged the UK last year. The practice of the gift is a key element in a set of social coordinates that are deeply related to the process of art making, which many times is disastrous in itself.

The project began in June as a common interest in plastic toy factories in China and then it went on to the case of unlicensed Marvel super hero piñatas in Mexico. A few e-mails later it took the form of an exchange of photographs in what would be a sort of trans-cultural guessing game (I am still very fond of the idea of making an alternative free trade agreement between China and Mexico). Each artist would try to sing the other’s national anthem in its original language. The final touch that put it all together was Eloisa’s suggestion that the Chinese artist and his Mexican colleague should exchange a suitcase full of gifts, taking into account Marcel Mauss’ seminal essay The Gift and the traditions that these two cultures embrace.

Yang and I were confronted with a challenge. The vast differences between China and Mexico ensure some degree of unfairness and misunderstanding. A few hypotheses can be drawn up to this point:

- A gift exchange can become a ritualized form of combat, an amicable competition that in this case may be equal to deciding who has the most resourceful imagination. Yet there is something paradoxical to it, for the loser in this combat will get the better stuff.

- The feeling of power comes not only from a capacity to subdue the other, but also from the capacity to make someone else happy. These two forms may be separated or coexist in one and the same gift exchange. Altruism does exist, but only as expression of the giver’s own enjoyment with the other.

- Gift giving can be intensely aggressive, a form of control. In Mexico politicians give away caps, t-shirts, food, bags of cement or many other useful things to the people who are supposed to correspond with their vote. Voters favor the candidate who delivers the better gifts. It would be too innocent to believe that affection is never involved in this kind of exchange. I believe receiving gifts from the big man in the village would not be an equivalent of selling the vote for many of the people involved.

- A gift implies reciprocity, but this does not mean that the gift of each participant must be of the same kind. A person may even expect to be reciprocated in another life, by a specific spiritual entity or something similar. Reciprocity is relative. It is understood as an equivalent percentage of each participants´ energy or resources, not as objects or services having the same material value as in the case of barter exchange. While the unequal exchange is thus stabilized as fair, it also preserves the difference in hierarchy between the givers.

- Even if the exchange has strict rules, the end result is excessive and irrational from the point of view of material progress.

By Eduardo Abaroa

Click here to listen to the national anthem of Mexico as sung by Yang Zhenzhong.

Click here to listen to the national anthem of China as sung by Eduardo Abaroa.

About the artists

Eduardo Abaroa

Eduardo Abaroa is a mexican artist working in the fields of sculpture, installation and live action since 1991. He has shown his work in many major museums in Mexico, LA MoCA, PS1 and ICA Boston in the United States, Reina Sofía Museum in Spain, and Kunstwerke, Germany as well as in important venues in the UK, Canada, France, Korea and other countries.

As a writer, he was an art reviewer for the art section of Reforma newspaper, and has written for other important Mexican publications like Curare, Casper, Moho, D.F. and Codigo 06140. He has contributed texts for exhibition catalogues of artists like Francis Alÿs, Melanie Smith, Pablo Vargas Lugo, Tercerunquinto and Dr. Lakra, among others. He is currently course director at Soma, and was a co-founder of the influential Temistocles 44 artist run space in Mexico City(1993-1995).

Yang Zhenzhong

Born in Xiaoshan in 1968, Yang Zhenzhong now lives and works in Shanghai. He graduated from the oil painting department of the China Fine Arts Academy in Hangzhou in 1993 and began working with video and photography in 1995. Yang Zhenzhong’s work has showed at major biennales and triennials including Venice (2003), Shanghai (2002), Guangzhou (2002) and Gwangju (2002). Yang Zhenzhong became famous in 2000 with his half-hour video “(I Know) I Will Die” that features short sequences in which a series of people speak the phrase “I will die” to the camera. It is a disconcerting, soberly presented film that confronts the viewer with existential questions.

Yang Zhenzhong recognizes that individual participation is the starting point for the transformation of perception. The video “922 Grains of Rice” plays with the interaction of the image of a cock and a chicken pecking grains of rice and the sound of a male and a female voice counting the number of pecked grains. It is a humorous representation of the battle of sexes as well a comment on today’s competitive behavior.

The desire to challenge normative notions of social behavior informs the practices of Yang Zhenzhong’s work. He is pre-occupied with China’s intrinsic disharmony and extreme discrepancies and often touches upon taboos such as death and out-dated social norms. His approach is metaphorical rather than narrative. His videos often start from witty ideas, employing image repetition and rhythmic coordination of sound, language and image. “Let’s Puff” (4th Shanghai Biennale, Zone of Urgency, 50th Venice Biennial) similarly starts from the interplay of two images: a young woman puffing and a busy street. Every time the woman breathes, the image of the street moves away from the viewer. The rhythm of the traffic and the angle of perception are altered with the rhythm of the woman’s breath. (from ShanghART; Shanghai, China)

* The Garage would like to thank Yang Zhenzhong’s translators during the project: Alexia Dehaene in Shanghai and Alice Zhu and Ya Xiao in San Diego.