Arrhythmias of Counter-Production : UC SAN diego Art Gallery - Artillery Mag: Killer Text On Art

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Arrhythmias of Counter-Production
UC SAN diego Art Gallery The works in "Arrhythmias of Counter-Production: Engaged Art in Argentina, 1995-2011," curated by Jennifer Flores Sternad, were made in the national context of "recovery" from the economic crisis of 19992002 and the so-called Dirty War conducted by Argentina's military dictatorship between 1976-1983. But the works speak directly to the North American present, and suggest a significant role for artists in the increasingly precarious economic future. Focused on the period of neoliberalism and financial collapse that followed the "disappearance" of 30,000 Argentinian civilians, "Arrhythmias" presents activist strategies both familiar and surprising. Reviving the sloganized T-shirt, for example, Taller Popular de Serigrafa (The People's Screen Printing Workshop) develops graphics with popular assemblies. Julian d'Angiolillo's Hacerme Feriante (Become A Stallholder) (2010) documents Latin America's largest informal market, but avoids exegesis by refusing a voice-over. La Tribu is an independent radio station. The Iconoclasistas (Iconoclasts) conflate poster and comic forms to make visual representations of collective knowledge, which the group gathers via community mapping workshops.

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Grupo de Arte Callejero (GAC), documentation of escrache against Jorge Rafael Videla, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2006, photo courtesy grupo de arte callejero

In the context of Argentina's autonomous social movements, the projects engage the creation of collective meaning by separate but equal voices. Why then contain heterogeneity inside media and information distribution methods that appear mono-vocal and are frequently used for propaganda and sloganeering? The contradiction highlights the role of storytelling in post-junta Argentina, where a history of swift transition from state terrorism to free-market democracy served a neoliberal agenda. Striving to rupture that agenda, the "Arrhythmias" artists make "disappeared" information visible, and bring justice to otherwise silenced parts of a brutal history. Their most pointed works take their own bodies into the struggle. Grupo de Arte Callejero (Street Art Group) uses "escraches" made with the group H.I.J.O.S (Children for Identity and Justice Against Forgetting and Silence), hurling paint at the homes of un-punished torturers, identifying ex-detention centers, and outing organizations that hide murderers in plain view. Etctera...'s Mierdazo (Poop Attack) (2002) saw people lobbing turds in baggies at Congress on the day of its annual budget discussion. The Errorist International, an offshoot of Etctera..., enacts guerilla war performances with photocopied "weapons" and deflects actual Argentinian security force attention by inviting police participation/collusion in the "film shoot." By using the Situationist strategy of dtournement to address the culture of fear, scratching the cover of anonymity, and performing collective "justice and punishment" when the state produces none, the actions of the artists featured in "Arrhythmias" interrupt a national narrative that denies individual loss and collective trauma. Shown in the U.S., they also prompt reflection on the role of U.S. military aid to the junta ($63.5 million in 1977, for example). At the same time, they offer tools by which to expose North America's parallel narrative strategies, which whitewash a devastating but less acute "disappearance" of poor, mostly non-white and uninsured civilians. Two other works of note include Eduardo Molinari's Walking Archive (2001-2011), which "refigures" a national identity that, quoting Sternad, encompasses "fugitive events and experiences" by simply walking the city, documenting its underrepresented stories through places. Finally, Ala Plastica's Who Designs Territories? For Whom? (2011) approaches the dissolution of statehood caused by globalization. Both Molinari and Ala Plastica's works propose responsive dialogues that develop in a horizontal, socially equitable environment. Anyone care to escrache? - Janet Owen Driggs & Jules Rochielle Sievert

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Arrhythmias of Counter-Production : UC SAN diego Art Gallery - Artillery Mag: Killer Text On Art

5/2/12 9:07 AM

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