Five years earlier, in 1973, a call for contributions to a Latin American edition of the magazine Schmuck was distributed by the UK-based independent Beau Geste Press, which was headed up by David Mayor, Felipe Ehrenberg, and Marta Hellion. The invitation stated: “Our basic politics is not to make even one concession to the speculative pressures that exalt the ego and deform thought and creativity. We hope to serve as a point of information between Latin America and Europe.” By early 1974, a wealth of contributions had been delivered to its headquarters in Southwest England. That same spring, however, Felipe Ehrenberg moved back to Mexico, taking this material with him with the intention of publishing a Latin American issue under the splintered imprint of Beau Geste Press/Libro Acción Libre.

In 1978, Ehrenberg returned to the abandoned material: “Thanks in part to a Guggenheim award, it finally became possible to convert the Latin American material I had filed away into an impressive show . . . at the Museo Carrillo Gil in Mexico City.” The National Institute of Fine Arts (INBA) printed 260,000 copies of a two-part cultural supplement, finally publishing the material originally intended for Schmuck. Testimonios de Latinoamérica boasted contributions from some of the region’s most celebrated artists and writers, including Antonio Caro, Cildo Meireles, Clemente Padín, Victor Muñoz, Tunga, Regina Silveira, Harry Gamboa, and Horacio Zabala.

The first installment of Testimonios was released on September 20, 1978, and featured the work of seventeen artists from the region accompanied by articles by critic Néstor García Canclini and by Ehrenberg himself, who weigh up conceptualism’s expediency for the specific conditions of the Latin American context.

Source contents

Testimonios de Latinoamérica

By Felipe Ehrenberg

Publisher: Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes (INBA), Mexico City
Language: Spanish

This exhibition includes alternative, visual communications produced by artists of Latin America and is presented at the Alvar y Carmen T. de Carrillo Gil Museum (INBA) in México City from September 19, 1978.

In 1973, the Beau Geste Press/Libro Acción Libre (Free Action Book), founded by the undersigned during his stay in Great Britain, launched a call to all Latin American artists, inviting them to send works to the magazine Schmuck, which would dedicate an issue to Latin America.

The response was enthusiastic and almost two hundred responses were gathered for publication.

Unfortunately, due to circumstances beyond the control of our small editorial staff, the ambitious project was suspended indefinitely, and all the works were carefully archived and transferred to Mexico.

Five years and many events later, the recently founded Cooperativa Chucho el Roto (Chucho was Mexico’s Robin Hood at the turn of the twentieth century), formed in Mexico by artists of various disciplines, took up the editorial intention of Libro Acción Libre’s editorial project to design a program of activities committed to the socioeconomic and cultural reality of the countries of Latin America.

As is to be expected at the beginning of any project with such an agenda, financial problems interfered with our overly ambitious plans: this meant that certain projects, impossible to delay much longer, had to be restructured.

The publication of the anthology planned for Schmuck, which, given the importance of its content, was the most pressing project, would earn new breath thanks the interest of the National Institute of Fine Arts, and especially of the Alvar y Carmen T. de Carrillo Gil Museum, an affiliate of INBA’s Visual Arts Department.

Work of the kind comprised by the collection presented here has no expiration date, and so the time that transpired between now and the original call for works has not been in vain. This is noticeable in the formal and conceptual developments of cultural workers throughout the continent. More importantly, though, new voices have emerged.

This is why, to enrich the exhibition sponsored by the INBA, it was decided to extend the time frame of the invitation, which, besides specifying certain technical limitations, declared:

“Latin American Schmuck will be a collection of the most recent, unclassifiable, and committed work by Latin Americans . . . All material received will be published without alteration . . . Send texts, photos, documentation, instructions, notes, and news . . . ”

With the additional submissions received thanks to the extended time frame, the public will be able to study some five hundred testimonials produced by more than sixty artists from all parts of the Latin American continent, including Chicanos.

It is worth emphasizing the fact that the common denominator in all these works is a radical separation from the canons of orthodoxy that until now have dominated formal literary and visual production: that is, these are not “beautiful” works. In many cases the artists’ rejection of beauty has allowed them to formulate propositions—in form as much as in content—that stand in opposition to cultural dependence. Thus, all the works embody most fortunate alternative forms of visual communication.

Possibly the only Latin American organizations to have recognized this type of production thus far are the Center of Art and Communication (C.A.Y.C.) of Buenos Aires and the Museum of Contemporary Art of the University of São Paulo, thanks to the visions of their directors, Jorge Glusberg and Walter Zanini, respectively.

In this regard, a highly significant fact must be noted: the production of alternative forms of communication has spread over the last five or six years not only among visual artists; it has also been evident in experimental literature, such as imagist and concrete poetry, which has enriched visual communications and made them interdisciplinary.

Moreover, this type of production manages almost entirely to escape the commercial structures that condition the visual and literary arts in Latin America. This is explained by the nature of the work itself—its modesty in its use of materials, its extreme mobility (almost always by airmail), and its intimate relation with the media of mass production.

Thanks to the patronage of the INBA, this publication is produced on newsprint in so large an edition as to have no precedents in its category on this continent (and without a doubt, anywhere else in the world). It is a catalogue far removed from the prestigious and “aestheticizing” appearance typical of today’s art publications.

In other words, this catalogue corresponds effectively to the proposals offered by the artists participating in the exhibition.

Finally, a grievous difficulty emerged during the review of the collection for its publication and exhibition: as mentioned, most of the materials in the show were submitted in 1973, and many of the artists continue to live in countries whose governments have grown, since then, increasingly intolerant of any art that questions repressive regimes. Others have managed to go into exile, but at least two outstanding artists whose work is presented here have fallen victim to the brutish fury of dictators: in Uruguay, Clemente Padín, arrested along with Jorge Caraballo, has been imprisoned since September 1977. Though Caraballo, Amnesty International informs us, has just regained his freedom, after almost a year of detention by the dictatorship.

To protect the precarious freedom and lives of other artists, we have had to omit mention of their names.

We deeply lament not being able to exhibit the entire collection: this absence, this silence, is also part of our show, which attempts to be representative of Latin America.

Mexico, August 12, 1978

[Spanish version follows]

Testimonios de Latinoamérica

Este muestra, que incluye comunicados visuales alternativos producidos por artistas de América Latina, se presenta en el Museo Alvar y Carmen T. Carrillo Gil (INBA) en la Ciudad de México, desde el día 19 de septiembre de 1978.

En 1973, la Editorial Beau Geste Pres/Libro Acción Libre, fundada por quien esto escribe durante su estancia en la Gran Bretaña, lanzó una convocatoria a los creadores latinoamericanos, invitándolos a enviar su participación al número que la revista Schmuck dedicaría a la América Latina.

La repuesta fue entusiasta y se reunieron casi 200 obras para su publicación.

Desafortunadamente y por causas fuera del control de la pequeña editorial colectiva, el ambicioso proyecto tuvo que ser suspendido indefinidamente; así que toda la obra recibida fue cuidadosamente archivada y trasladada a México.

Cinco años y muchos acontecimientos después, la recién fundada Cooperativa Chucho el Roto, formada en México por creadores de diversas disciplinas, retomó la intención editorial de Libro Acción Libre para vertebrar un programa de actividades—aún en gestación—que apunta hacia una labor comprometida con la realidad socio-económica y cultural de los países latinoamericanos.

Problemas de índole económico, lógicos al inicio de toda actividad con las pretensiones de la Cooperativa Chucho el Roto, han impedido que se realizaran de inmediato planes demasiado ambiciosos, esto significó que ciertos proyectos, imposibles de aplazar por más tiempo, tuvieran que ser reestructurados.

La publicación de la antología planeada por la revista Schmuck, el proyecto más impostergable dado la importancia de su contenido, pudo cobrar nueva vida gracias al interés mostrado por el Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes, específicamente por el Museo Alvar y Carmen T. de Carrillo Gil, que depende del Departamento de Artes Plásticas.

Obra como la que configura la colección aquí presentada no tiene fecha de caducidad, pero el tiempo transcurrido desde la convocatoria hasta ahora no ha pasado en balde, y esto lo acusan los nuevos desarrollos formales y conceptuales en la producción de los trabajadores de la cultura del continente. Más importante, han surgido nuevas voces.

Por esto, y para enriquecer la exhibición patrocinada por el INBA, se decidió abrir nuevamente el plazo de la convocatoria, la cual aparte de especificar ciertas limitaciones técnicas, declaraba:

“Schmuck América Latina será una colección de la obra más reciente, inclasificable y comprometida producida por latinoamericanos…será publicado todo el material recibido sin alteración alguna…manden textos, fotos, documentación, instrucciones, notas, y noticias…”

Con los envíos recibidos gracias a esta extensión y aunados a los trabajos recibidos con anterioridad, el público podrá estudiar unos 500 testimonios producidos por más de sesenta artistas de casi todo el continente latino, incluyendo chicanos.

Vale aquí recalcar que el denominador común de toda esta creatividad estiba en que la obra se separa radicalmente de los cánones ortodoxos que hasta la fecha pretenden determinar la producción plástica y literaria formal; es decir, no son producciones “bellas”. En muchos casos este mismo rechazo de lo “bello” por parte de los artistas les ha permitido formular proposiciones—tanto en forma como en contenido—en contra de la dependencia cultural. Así, todos los trabajos vienen a estructurar una suerte de comunicación visual alternativa.

Posiblemente los únicos organismos latinoamericanos que han reconocido este tipo de producción han sido el Centro de Arte y Comunicación (C.A.Y.C.) de Buenos Aires, y el Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de la Universidad de Sao Paulo, gracias a la visión de sus respectivos titulares, a saber, Jorge Gluzberg en Argentina y Walter Zanini, en Brasil.

Al respeto cabe añadir un dato altamente significativo: que esta producción de comunicados alternativos no sólo se ha extendido ampliamente en los últimos cinco o seis años entre los creadores mismos, sino que abarca aspectos de la literatura experimental, tales como la poesía visual y la poesía concreta, con lo que se ha enriquecido e interdisciplinado la comunicación visual.

Por otro lado, este tipo de producción logra escaparse casi íntegramente de la estructura mercantil que condiciona la producción plástica y literaria en la América Latina precisamente por la naturaleza de la obra misma, a saber, su modestia en el uso de materiales, su extrema movilidad (casi siempre a través de la vía postal aérea) y su íntima relación con los medios de reproducción masiva.

Gracias justamente al patrocinio del INBA, esta publicación producida en papel periódico y en un tiraje tan grande, se convierte en una edición sin precedentes en el continente (y sin lugar a dudas, en el mundo) de un catálogo alejado de las apariencias prestigiosas “estetizantes” que han caracterizado las publicaciones de arte hasta la fecha.

En otras palabras, este catálogo responde efectivamente a los proposiciones hechas por los creadores que participan en la muestra.

Finalmente, ha surgido un trágico bemol al revisar la colección para su publicación y exhibición: como se menciona arriba, la muestra contiene materiales enviados casi todos en el año de 1973 y muchos de los autores continúan residiendo en sus países, donde la situación ha cambiado desde aquella fecha al grado de no tolerar manifestaciones creativas que cuestionen el orden represivo imperante. Muchos lograron exiliarse pero por lo menos dos sobresalientes artistas que aquí presentan obra ya han caído víctimas de la bestial furia de los dictadores: en el Uruguay, Clemente Padín apresado junto con Jorge Caraballo, sobrevive en las mazmorras de la oligarquía desde septiembre de 1977. Y Caraballo, nos informa Amnistía Internacional, acaba de recuperar su libertad tras casi un año de ser retenido por la voluntad de la dictadura.

Para proteger la precaria libertad, la vida, de otros creadores hemos tenido que omitir hasta la mención de sus nombres.

Lamentamos profundamente no poder exhibir la totalidad de los materiales reunidos: esta ausencia, este silencio, también forma parte de una muestra que quiere ser representativa de América Latina.

México, a 12 de agosto de 1978

Art That’s Not for Sale

By Néstor García Canclini

Publisher: Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes
Language: Spanish

1.

It is all the time harder to go to simply see an exhibition. One enters a museum or gallery and soon, one has to ask oneself if what is being shown is art, why so many innovations, what is art? Is it possible to call people “artists” if they don’t use oils or pencil, or make prints or sculptures? To what do we owe the fact that objects have been replaced by signs, and works by performances.

The aesthetic of the fine arts that all of us have been taught is certainly a moth-eaten one. It is not a matter of learning a new aesthetic, either, because no single aesthetic has replaced the old one. The use of nontraditional materials, methods that until recently have been ignored, and changing ideas about art’s role in society require a new type of spectator for contemporary art. No longer even a spectator, but rather a participant. Someone who intervenes in the creation of a work, completes the artist’s proposition, discusses it, and finds more pleasure in assuming a questioning, critical attitude than in mere contemplation,

Another characteristic of current art practices is the search for alternative channels for the diffusion of the works. In some cases, the intention is to reach a public that has been excluded from the commercial circuit for economic or cultural reasons; in others, it is to evade censorship. Increasingly, artists conceive their work to be shown in labor unions, in universities, or in the street. This type of distribution generally keeps the price of the works low and opens new possibilities in the structure of their language, in their social engagement (absent in commercial art), and in the artist-to-public exchange. The development of this new, alternative current during the last decade has modified the cultural panorama of Latin America. The critic or historian who takes into account only what is happening in galleries and museums, and/or what is covered by mainstream news media will only have a partial image. A large part of what is most creative today is to be found in popular venues and political movements. Art of this type has been assembled into an exhibition by the Beau Geste Press/Libro Acción Libre (Free Action Book) so that the Mexican public can encounter endeavors that lack broad diffusion and are not found on the elite circuits. The fact that the National Institute of Fine Arts is supporting the exhibition and that the Carrillo Gil Museum has agreed to display it will tell us something that museums of all continents are already recognizing: that art of today includes, along with painting and sculpture, other kinds of visual messages and experiences that also represent the symbolic activity of contemporary societies.

2.

Nevertheless, almost all of these works that have evaded the galleries have been made without concern for the market and, one could say, in opposition to museums—at least against those invented by the bourgeoisie to conserve works that have been consecrated by them. If a museum is receptive to this new art, it is because it is in the process of transforming, because the dissident power of these new endeavors has disturbed its serenity. And it will have to change much more to accommodate art whose substance is increasingly less physical and more social, that emerges not from what is sculpted or painted in the intimacy of a studio, but instead from the transformation of the structures of communication itself.

3.

The terms “media art” and “Conceptual art” have been used in relation to similar exhibitions. Other denominations are circulating as well, but we are concerned with these two because greater attention has been given to them, and they are perhaps the most pertinent.

Media Art

The power of the mass media has provoked various kinds of responses from artists. The Pop movement, which has echoes in this exhibition, began in the previous decade when artists, first in the United States and later in Latin America, appropriated images and techniques from commercial advertising and comic strips to make works that bridged the gulf between an elite audience and the mass public. The subsequent absorption of these works into the very system of circulation and distribution that they were partly meant to critique, the fact that their audacities ended up making the symbols of “mass culture” elite, made other artists decide to experiment instead with the media’s potential for multiple reproduction (for example, prints made by a photocopier) or to intervene directly in the media. Mail art and video art began with the publication of blank spaces in newspapers, which disturbed readers’ passive relationships to an established system of information. It needs to be pointed out that Pop continues to be used in these experiments, and that no one tactic can be taken as the recipe for making alternative and popular art. In the end, most of the new works possess an identifiable, individual facture and, despite their authors’ best efforts, rarely break free of the art world. As to their effectiveness, we note that they can all be expropriated (or neutralized) by the dominant powers as long as the differences between social classes persist. The somewhat hermetic character of many alternative experiments makes familiarity with the codes now current among the European and North American vanguards all but indispensable, and signals the distances that still have to be overcome to surmount the divisions of taste that mirror cultural divisions between countries and classes.

Conceptual art

If these works incite the spectator to ask what art is, it is because, to the extent that they encourage questioning, they result in a self-reflexive investigation through which the artist attempts to find out what an aesthetic act is and how to communicate it. Of the two tendencies in Conceptual art—one presents works as ideas, the other attempts to rethink the idea of art through the work—the second seems to be more pertinent to the revision that Latin American aesthetics needs: a critique of language in tandem with a critique of society. We can’t conceive of a different kind of society if we continue to perceive and represent the present day with the blueprint that engendered it.

It is interesting that the questions of what a work of art is and what it can communicate overlap each other. The tired polemics about form and content that concluded with the acknowledgment that the two are inseparable have been displaced by concerns about the connections between the work and communication. Today, artists have also come to understand that what is being said is necessarily linked to how it is said, to whom it is said, and surely where it is said, which is why the themes of censorship, the veiled, the virtual, the fragmented, and the ironic are the protagonists of this exhibition. Therefore, it isn’t only a matter of concepts, but also the place that artistic practice occupies in history.

4.

Finally, it should be underscored that a global reassessment of the artistic process—art’s production, distribution, and consumption—leads us to rethink the relation between art and politics and between art and popular culture. The demonstrated application of the media and conceptualism in Latin American art should allow us to understand that experimentation is not counter to sociopolitical interests. This show is resounding evidence that certain polemics (realism vs. abstraction, commitment vs. play) have lost their relevance and that social liberties could/should march together with liberties of the imagination.

The pending questions resemble the babblings of a new language; they will become part of social praxis and—like artists forced into ambiguous complicity by having to choose between free experiment and participation in the market for their subsistence, between what there is to say and what can be said—will be resolved in coherent practices with the changes and regressions in the capitalist system of Latin America. For this it is necessary that a reconsideration of art be nourished in the social sciences and in political discussions. Art of alternative communications should be more than a whisper among artists; it should find a place within popular movements and should be able to represent those who fight to abolish structures that marginalize not only artists, but all workers.

[Spanish version follows]

Un Arte Que No Se Vende

1.

Cada vez es más difícil ir simplemente a ver una exposición. Uno entra a un museo o una galería y en seguida tiene que preguntarse si lo que se muestra puede considerarse artístico. ¿Por qué tantas innovaciones? ¿Qué es el arte? ¿Es posible llamar artistas a quienes no usan el óleo, ni el lápiz, ni hacen grabado o escultura? ¿A qué se debe que los objetos sean reemplazados por signos y las obras por gestos?

La estética de las bellas artes, en la que todos hemos sido formados, está definitivamente apolillada. No se trata tampoco de aprender una nueva, porque no hay una sola que haya venido a reemplazarla. El arte contemporáneo, que es resultado del uso de materiales no tradicionales, procedimientos hasta hace poco ignorados, concepciones diferentes sobre la inserción del arte en la sociedad, requiere también un nuevo tipo de espectador. Mejor dicho: ya no un espectador, sino un participante. Alguien que intervenga en la realización de la obra, que complete la propuesta del artista, la discuta, encuentre el goce—más que en la contemplación—en la actitud interrogativa y crítica.

Otra característica de la práctica artística actual es la búsqueda de canales alternativos para la difusión de las obras. En algunos casos para alcanzar a públicos excluidos por razones económicas o culturales del circuito comercial, en otros para burlar la censura, cada vez más artistas conciben sus trabajos para exhibirlos en sindicatos, universidades o en la calle. Esta distribución, que limita generalmente el costo de las obras a la vez que su espectacularidad, abre por otro lado posibilidades inéditas en la estructura de su lenguaje, en la comunicación artista-público, en la acción sobre problemas sociales que el arte comercial desconoce. El desarrollo de esta corriente alternativa en la última década ha modificado el panorama cultural de América Latina. El critico o el historiador que tome sólo en cuenta lo que sucede en las galerías y los museos, o lo que los grandes periódicos y revistas informan, tendrá una imagen mutilada. Gran parte de lo más creativo que hoy se hace hay que ir a buscarlo en centros populares, gremios y movimientos políticos. Este tipo de trabajos son los recogidos por la Editorial Beau Geste Libro Acción Libre para que el público mexicano reconozca por primera vez búsquedas que intentan trascender los circuitos de élite pero aún carecen de amplia difusión. El hecho de que el Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes auspicie la presentación y el Museo Carrillo Gil haya cedido sus salas para mostrarla reitera algo que museos de todos los continentes están reconociendo: que el arte de hoy incluye, junto a los cuadros y esculturas, otros mensajes y experiencias visuales que también contribuyen a formar la sensibilidad, a representar la actividad simbólica de las sociedades contemporáneas.

2.

No obstante, casi todos estos trabajos huyen de las galerías, se desinteresan del circuito comercial y podríamos decir que han sido hechos contra los museos. Al menos contra lo que ellos representan como lugares inventados por la burguesía para conservar obras que ella misma consagró. Si un museo recibe estas experiencias es porque el poder disidente de las nuevas búsquedas trastorna hasta la serenidad de estos rincones. Y tendrán que cambiar mucho más para recibir un arte cuya materia es cada vez menos física y más social, que surge no del modelado o la pintura en la intimidad del taller sino de la transformación de las estructuras comunicacionales.

3.

Se ha hablado, a propósito de exposiciones semejantes, de arte de los medios y arte conceptual. Circulan también otras denominaciones, pero vamos a ocuparnos de éstas porque son las más escuchadas y quizá las más pertinentes.

Arte de los medios

La competencia de las comunicaciones masivas suscitó varios tipos de respuestas por parte de los artistas. El movimiento pop, del cual aparecen ecos en esta muestra, nació en la década anterior cuando plásticos de Estados Unidos primero, de América Latina después, se apropiaron de imágenes y técnicas iconográficas de la publicidad y las historietas para construir obras deseosas de superar la dicotomía entre el público de élite y la expansión masiva de mensajes transmitidos por los medios.

El sometimiento posterior de esas obras a la circulación y los criterios de prestigio dominantes, el hecho de que sus audacias hayan terminado en una elitización de los símbolos de la “cultura de masa”, decidió a otros artistas a no sacar los mensajes de los medios para trasladarlos a las galerías sino experimentar con las posibilidades de multiplicación de los medios (por ejemplo, reproducciones en fotocopiadora) o actuando directamente en el interior de ellos: así nacieron el arte postal, el video-arte, la publicación de espacios en blanco en periódicos para que los lectores rompan la relación pasiva con un sistema de información preestablecido. Hay que hacer notar que el pop sigue siendo utilizado en estas últimas experiencias, y que ninguno de los demás recursos puede ser tomado como la receta para constituir un arte efectivamente alternativo y popular. Al fin de cuentas, la mayoría de las obras marginales son de factura individual y, por más esfuerzos que hagan sus autores, rara vez desbordan el restringido círculo de los expertos. En cuanto a su eficacia, observamos que todas pueden tener cierto valor de cuestionamiento y todas pueden ser expropiadas (o neutralizadas) por el poder dominante mientras subsistan las diferencias entre las clases sociales. El carácter un tanto hermético de muchas experiencias alternativas, que su comprensión requiera estar informado de los códigos que rigen a las vanguardias europeas y norteamericanas, señala las distancias que aún deben ser vencidas para superar las divisiones de gustos que reproducen las divisiones entre países y clases.

Arte conceptual

Si estas obras incitan al espectador a preguntarse qué es el arte, es porque a menudo ellas incluyen la interrogación, son resultado de un examen autorreflexivo a través del cual el artista trata de averiguar lo que hoy debe ser un hecho estético y cómo comunicarlo. De las dos tendencias presentes en el arte conceptual—la que reduce las obras a ideas y la que busca, mediante la obra, repensar la idea del arte—la segunda nos parece más útil para el tipo de revisión que necesita la estética latinoamericana: una critica al lenguaje que acompañe la critica a la sociedad. Porque no podemos concebir una sociedad distinta si continuamos percibiendo y representando la actual con los esquemas que la gestaron.

Es interesante que la pregunta por lo que es una obra y la pregunta por lo que se puede comunicar, con frecuencia se superponen. La cansada polémica sobre la articulación de forma y contenido que concluyó con el reconocimiento de que no puede escindírselos, se ha desplazado a las conexiones entre obra y comunicación. Y hoy también los artistas llegan a comprender que lo qué se dice va necesariamente junto con el cómo se lo dice, a quién se le dice, y por cierto hasta dónde se dice, por eso los temas de la censura, lo velado, lo virtual, lo fragmentario y la ironía son protagonistas de esta exhibición. Por eso no se trata únicamente de conceptos, sino del lugar de la práctica artística en la historia.

4.

Finalmente, conviene destacar que el derrumbe del contenidismo en beneficio de una consideración global del proceso artístico—que incluya la producción, la distribución y el consumo—nos lleva a replantear las relaciones entre arte y política, entre arte y cultura popular. La utilidad demostrada por el arte de los medios y el conceptualismo para testimoniar la realidad latinoamericana basta para entender que la experimentación no tiene por qué enemistarse con los intereses sociopolíticos. Esta muestra es una rotunda evidencia de que ciertas polémicas (realismo vs. abstracción, compromiso vs. juego) han perdido consistencia, y que las libertades sociales pueden/deben marchar aliadas con las libertades de la imaginación.

Las preguntas pendientes son más bien cómo los balbuceos de un nuevo lenguaje; se insertarán en las praxis social, cómo las ambigüedades de artistas forzados a dividirse entre las experiencias alternativas y la participación en el mercado para subsistir, entre lo que hay que decir y lo que se puede decir, se resolverán en prácticas coherentes con los cambios y las regresiones del sistema capitalista en América Latina. Para esto es necesario que la reflexión sobre el arte se nutra en las ciencias sociales y en las discusiones políticas. Que el arte de comunicación alternativa sea más que un murmullo entre artistas, que encuentre un espacio en los movimientos populares y sepa representar a quienes luchan por abolir las estructuras que marginan no sólo a los artistas sino a todos los trabajadores.

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To most people, a file is merely a collection of objects, mostly papers, stuck into folders and saved in cases, ordered and stored in such a manner that one may consult them at will. A file, of course, is that and then much more. Files have existed for a very long time and in many shapes, and if you stop to think about it, you’ll notice that we humans still use most of the devices for storing and remembering that we’ve invented through the ages: mnemonic rote and chant, carved wood and monoliths, clay tablets, knotted ropes, papyrus, parchment and paper, and now, with the advent of computers, electrical impulses.

Corporate files share a certain logic. They exist as an accumulated series of decisions and moves that, as they expand to meet specific needs of the group, eventually gain control over not only the original group’s behavior, but also that of other groups, not necessarily kindred ones. Microsoft Office, as it gradually cuts and pastes itself across the world, is a perfect example of this.

Archives and filing systems may be invaluable aids for conducting life, be it collective or individual. But we must beware: we cannot allow them to become a restrictive burden. Tools, if misused, can all too easily turn into weapons, as may be happening in the U.S., a society whose complexity is forcing it to lose sight of its parts. That country has gradually developed the art of filing into what is now, in all probability, the largest, most efficient information-gathering system ever conceived on earth. Therein lie the deepest, darkest dangers, to the U.S. and to all of humanity.

Corporate archives are very different from personal ones, but both are pristine reflections of the persons or the group of people that keep them. What a person or a group chooses to save or throw away depends on very specific conceptual frameworks that may or may not vary according to specific circumstances. Changing the system, for example, can become an almost impossible task to undertake. Indeed, corporate filing systems can adjust to meet the corporation’s ever-changing needs much more often and rapidly than personal systems.

The framework that shapes and sustains a personal archive can be quite mysterious. A personal file can, and most often does, acquire a life of its own. It can achieve such strength that its existence may actually determine how one leads one’s life. One of my great discoveries was realizing that my file was not merely an extension of my profession, but that it was in fact an extension of myself. For example, I’ve reached several “tripping points” along the way—moments when I felt either paralyzed by my mind’s inaction or caught up in the chaos of the file’s disorder. At such moments, the only solution was to stop, reclassify all my papers, and of course, buy more and more folders and file cases. Naturally, one of the folders, the one tagged “Ideas to Decipher,” has become a section of its own. It contains “Ideas ’84… ’92… ’99…” and so on. I’m still missing the folder called “Deciphering my own Codes.”

I’ve spent more money on my file, on my various files, paying several salaries to keep them in order, than on art materials. I delved so long into what was called Conceptual art that my files became my principal work tools. As I grew and developed, so did my tool file. In time it also became an information bank; then, by its sheer size, a burden (changing addresses always required a lot of thinking); then perhaps a legacy; and finally, a hiatus, a mark in life.

I never questioned the need to create a file and took it for granted that I would have to sustain it forever after. I don’t believe I ever thought about its value—the value it could then have or later acquire, beyond serving as a tool to help me in my day-to-day existence. My father, who never actively dissuaded me from being an artist, always insisted that we be, all eight siblings, absolutely formal, punctual, and orderly. In my teens especially, he repeatedly mentioned the need to order my papers. Though he never expressed any enthusiasm over my choice of profession, my father would sporadically send or hand me news clippings that mentioned my name, and these, like all his letters, I duly filed away.

It may well have been shortly after the Great Earthquake of September 1985, but at a given moment I began thinking that my files could, in fact, be considered a work of art very much akin to other works of mine of a conceptual nature: an installation, perhaps, or better yet, a performance, so that by logical extension it would require special care, the care one gives to an oeuvre d’art (as opposed to an objet d’art). So I proceeded to give it yet again a new order, not quite knowing how best to frame the idea, how to convince the powers that be to perceive it—that ordered mass of papers—as art. It wasn’t until a decade after the earthquake that I met Issa Maria Benitez Dueñas. Her dissertation was, precisely, on documents as works of art, and after we discussed her subject matter, she confirmed and honed the concept. I’ll always be thankful to her for this.¹

South of the Rio Grande we know Milton Friedman, who proposed a new world economic order at the IMF as one of the principal ring bosses of the so-called Chicago Boys, a gang that’s been stomping up and down the streets of this wide world blandishing a doctrine that goes by different names: free-market capitalism, neoconservatism, neocon, whatever, and which among us is known as neoliberalism. Well, when in 1994 the Mexican branch of the Chicago Boys set up NAFTA (which, as it benefited a sliver of the new rich, blew the strangest smelling gases into our perpetually ignorant art market), when these people’s doctrines began shining (?) on our horizon, I woke up one December morning and found myself totally broke. Me and who knows how many other Mexicans. With the brutal devaluation of our currency, we had all of a sudden lost properties, businesses, cars (I lost my newly purchased home), and faced unimaginable debts.

The economy of a country manages to affect art in so many complex ways that are difficult to imagine, especially by artists. Though I had until then lived almost exclusively from my art, I had never produced—nor do I expect to do so in any near future—what you call market art, and thus I found myself in the direst of straights. To date, not a single private art collection in Mexico has work of mine. Some friends of mine who knew about my file suggested that I try to sell the letters of my famous friends. So I proceeded to spread the word via e-mail. Several people wrote back, a couple of them from Europe and some from the U.S. Describing themselves as “collectors of trivia,” they asked if they could travel to Mexico and visit, which of course they did. I still have no real idea of what these people took (invites, mail art, homespun hand-printed things, handwritten notes, typed letters and handmade cloth envelopes, and what-not by friends and acquaintances). Many of them were from Fluxus people, such as Carolee Schneemann, Dick Higgins, Takako Saito, Wolf Vostell, but also others like Ulises Carrión, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Clemente Padín, Michael Nyman, etc. Nor do I have any idea of what, if anything, such trivia fetched for these collectors later in the market.

It pained me so to feel that the file was being dismembered. Disemboweled might be a better word! But the money afforded me a respite, and this breathing space allowed me, sometime in 1996, to come to terms with the idea of offering up my whole accumulated file, letting go of it as a whole. Now, relinquishing property and control of a personal file is neither simple nor easy. My first thought was that it would be best if it stayed in Mexico. So I started making the rounds, writing letters and visiting institutions. I first approached the Institute for Esthetic Research of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), then the faculty of art history of the Iberoamerican University (UIA). Then I sounded out the museums that belong to the National Institute of Fine Arts (INBA). I also visited the National Council for Culture and Art (CNCA). I even wrote to Ernesto Zedillo, then the country’s president (if I remember correctly, there’s a letter somewhere that curtly declines the offer). Two or three people in high places mentioned that file keeping in Mexico is still an unexplored concept, but no one—nobody—showed even a glimmer of interest in purchasing files, let alone those of a visual artist. I did find several interested institutions abroad, among them the Tate Gallery, which keeps a surprisingly complete record of my life in England and of the Beau Geste Press.

I might mention here that Mexico is not—or is no longer—an archival culture, an archive-oriented society. The country’s upper echelons, its governors and its business people, naturally, but also those who work in its learning institutions, depend more and more on filing systems created in the U.S., by mostly young but mostly uncultured North Americans, surely brilliant minds cyberwise but lacking knowledge of the world’s different cultures. This is to me very alarming because it means that Mexico, and for that matter, most of the rest of world, is ever more dependent on the thought patterns that determine the shapes, uses, and applications of filing systems.

The greater part of my file ended up in the U.S., at Stanford University. Perhaps one of the reasons why I decided to deal with Stanford, apart from the splendidly careful and respectful way it stores knowledge and its generosity in acquiring it, was the fact that the file would be in California, not far from Mexico, at hand in case any Mexican scholar or researcher might eventually show an interest in exploring it. Since then, in 2010, another portion of my archive was acquired by the MUAC (University Museum of Contemporary Art) at the National Autonomous University of Mexico as part of the museum’s archive-building project, Arkheia.

On a personal level, there are aspects of these exchanges which I haven’t learned to deal with. For example, the fact that a file could be considered a work of art and thus might one day appreciate in value differently from a collection of papers. I must remind you that in a case such as the MUAC, one cannot simply surrender everything. Of course, I kept a lot of material for my own use and reference: photographs, correspondence with my family, and such. But also all the notes, texts and scripts, photos, messages, business letters, contracts, receipts, and sundry records related to the administration of my past production and of my work in progress, which includes not just art but art theory and journalism, artists’ books and mural workshops and diplomacy.

Once in a while I ask myself whether my various archives’ contents, all of them, are truly public. Will I get anyone into trouble? Will I get myself into trouble? Apart from letters that record the life I led and shared, we all led and shared, in the troublesome 1960s, there’s also the matter of how much truth epistolary literature contains. As I mentioned at the beginning, I truly have no idea what value this collection of facts and personal opinions, carefully stored by a reasonably informed and pretty well-traveled citizen, could have, other than offering the opportunity of deciphering a part of Mexican history.

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