Seminari Gramsci
Luis Guerra (Santiago de Chile, 1974) is a visual artist, writer and theorist. His work explores the notions of aesthetics and politics which lie in the unstable terrain of nominality. By way of a piece characterised by a performance, ephemeral and nomadic nature, he endeavours to challenge the conditions of socio-cultural production, particularly by creating spaces of institutional critique and anomie. Within this framework of visibility, he explores the potential of removal and loss procedures upheld by incidences of interstitiality and re-enactment. In 2012, Guerra has been an artist in residence at Errant Bodies (Berlin). He has collaborated with the Journal of Aesthetics and Protest (Los Angeles). At present, he is preparing the publication of his book Whispered Matter (2013).
Seminari Gramsci (Gramsci’s Seminar) is a processual work, an installation-performance-research project based on the oral narration of an event which occurred previously: the delivery of a seminar on Gramsci (La anestética del ready-made) by the Chilean philosopher Pablo Oyarzún in the 1980s, during Chile’s military dictatorship (1973-1989). On the basis thereof, the project works as a re-enactment of an event, perhaps trivial in factual terms, yet charged with symbolic and political meaning in this historical context.
In the work presented at La Capella, what is merely an oral piece of information, bearing testimony to an apparently ahistorical event – that is to say, which occurred without a trace of an event in history –, becomes a space for reconstructing a scene for a present-day reality that is ours and is not far from the political, economic and social circumstances in which the seminar took place. In this regard, Seminario de Gramsci also meets the urgent need to reconnect culture, analysis, debate and reflection in a period characterised by instability and crisis.
As claimed by the artist Carlos Altamirano1, just like in Chile’s dictatorship period, today and in the throes of the economic-political crisis in Europe, it seems necessary and urgent for the art space to “lend” its space to the political realm to invent a means of political expression without talking about politics. Hence creating a space of allegory in the words of Benjamin, and a space of oral and folkloric production in the words of Gramsci. A space in which the political split is formed in the very making of the cultural and on the very fabric of common sense. The work is the actual re-production of the seminar and, in turn, the exhibition of its historical context. It is a conceptual event which is a tangible manifestation of Gramsci’s very discourse.
On this occasion, the seminar is reinstalled in the public space, with a reinstitutional operating mode, facilitating its reflective and critical deployment. In this manner, the exhibition space, without losing its aesthetic condition, changes from a space of/for intellectual production to a “factory of ideas”. What is presented at La Capella, or once it is used, is a social machinery of the production of orality, craftsmanship and dissidence.
The following people have participated in Seminari Gramsci: Pablo Oyarzún, Andrea Soto, Antonio Gómez, Pamela Desjardins, Verónica Lahitte, Valentín Roma, Lucía Egaña Rojas, Valentina Montero, Marcelo Expósito, Adriana Peláez, Juan Martín Solesio, Christelle Faucoulanche, Brandon LaBelle and Arturo Cariceo.
1Filtraciones 1. Conversaciones sobre arte en Chile (de los 60’s a los 80’s). Editorial ARCIS / Editorial Cuarto Propio, pp. 269-270.
Activity program
Friday, 9 November, at 18 h
Presentation Seminari Gramsci
Luis Guerra
Tuesday, 13 November, 17 h and 18 h
Screening and speech: Mi sexualidad es una creación artística
Lucia Egaña
Thursday, 15 November, at 18 h
Speech: Estéticas y Estrategias del Disenso en la relación Arte y Tecnología en Latinoamérica
Valentina Montero
Friday, 16 November, at 17 h
Screening Film: Marcelo Expósito, Primero de Mayo (La Ciudad Fábrica)
Presentación Luis Guerra
Friday, 16 November, at 18 h
Speech: Mayday mayday l@s precari@s se rebelan - cual es la actualidad de la cultura de movimiento?
Francesco Salvini
Tuesday, 20 November, at 18 h
Speech: Pensar la actualidad del intelectual orgánico
Andrea Soto Calderón and Antonio Gómez Villar
Wednesday, 21 November, at 18 h
Speech: Cultura Popular, El Arte de no ser gobernados
Luis Guerra
Thursday, 22 November, at 18 h
Debate: Last Words
Luis Guerra and Andrea Soto
Friday, 23 November, at 18 h
Speech: Las Cenizas de Gramsci, Pier Paolo Passolini y Antonio Gramsci
Valentin Roma
Tuesday, 27 November, at 16 h
Performance: Sudamerican
Pamela Desjardins and Verónica Lahitte
Wednesday, 28 November, at 16 h
Performance: Sudamerican
Pamela Desjardins and Verónica Lahitte
Free admission. limited seating
Links
Seminari Gramsci - http://www.seminariogramsci.org/
Colaborators
