Ephemeral interventions in public space
Antonio Caro – Postcard book
2 December, 2019
No Copy Right
15 March, 2020
This curatorship was carried out as part of the CALCO – 2011 event, a project of ephemeral interventions was carried out in the public space in the city of Cali – Colombia. The proposal was for artists or groups to send a project via e-mail, to be carried out between November 25 and December 5, 2011. The works should not contaminate in any way, nor be permanent.
Five proposals were selected: Goals are Loves as well as their colors – Sonsonete Collective (Colombia), Game Weapon – Yvonne Navas, Fernando Arroyo Sauri (Colombia), Errar is Human – Hermann Yusty (Colombia), Stone Ghosts – Pía Vasquez (Chile), embroidering for peace – Fuentes Rojas Collective (México) , TLQNSDEP – Wendy León (México) and Tree kisses – Collective the Taza Lunar (España)
Artist: collective “Fuentes Rojas”
PROJECT “Embroidering for peace”
The collective “Fuentes Rojas” proposes an action that consists of embroidering with red thread or yarn in a set of individual white sheets, pillowcase and quilt (blanket) to reuse everything; the poem “Los Muertos” by María Rivera. The title of the poem and the author’s name will be embroidered on the pillowcase.
The first part of the poem will be embroidered on the blanket, then the continuation of the poem on the top sheet and on the bottom sheet (which is the one attached to the mattress) at the end, as well as the names of all the participants in this collective embroidery and in the lower right part the legend “for the more than 50,000 dead”.
The objective of this project is to propose a symbolic approach to all the tragic deaths that we have carried out in recent years, where the aim is to give a non-media presence to the victims of violence in recent years in our country.
The idea is to do it in public spaces such as squares and parks, where ordinary people can come and participate in embroidery, managing to create a space in which the encounter with the other is vital, where stories, silences, and tears are also shared. reflections on the political situation in our country, where we as citizens have a responsibility as a society to this situation.
It is a project where the action of embroidering itself enhances introspection, attention and calm that open the space necessary to share and reflect with “the other”. The relevance of this action is that as brother countries and you as Colombians, who already know what it means to live a situation of so much violence, it is up to us to make visible, generate conscience and memory in the face of this situation. In Mexico civil society is immersed in a state of national emergency and it is necessary to build diverse mechanisms through actions and projects to redress the social fabric. We know that not by having this type of actions the government or crime will change, however what interests us is sharing with the citizens and there generating a change, a gesture of building together with the other (s). Generating collectivity.
Artist: Herman Yusti Rayo
Title: To be wrong is human – Errar es de Humanos
After the death of his maternal grandmother, the artist creates Dr. Sanalotodo y Asociados, legally and notarially constituted, thus giving life to a one-person national and global company that has as its primary objective the investigation, dissemination, and sale of the popular and Miraculous parasitic plant Sanalotodo. Currently it has more than 300 accredited honorary members around the world and created in order to spread and rescue oral-ritual traditions, the supposed magical uses, miraculous properties, and the thousand wonders that mustard seed possesses. Among the activities of the Association is graphic dissemination, collection of testimonies, fictional and truthful discourse, as a romantic hope and vision of using the ideal world. The condition of happiness, recreated and artificially simulated, takes it back from the ideals that humanity has yearned for since immemorial times, the perfect and illusory worlds.
“To be wrong is human” consists of an intervention in the public space and in the space of the museum of “Sanalotodo y Asociados” which has roamed through various cities in Colombia, and which has also been presented at the Banco de la República de Cali y Pasto, Departmental Institute of Fine Arts. It is projected as a direct approach with the public, which spatially consists of a small wooden table of 60 cm x 60 dm x 90 cm arranged for the artist and an assistant will arrange in it an artist’s book of 32 cm x 5 cm that has inside hundreds of blank rectangular formats, 2 pens, some glass bottles with mustard seeds inside and a small ceramic tray with small white paper envelopes. 6 cm x 4.5 cm sealed in situ with two motifs and seeds inside, as well as a photocopied instructions booklet with indications for sowing.
The content of this cumulative book is diverse from anonymous writings recorded by the participants and collected in various exhibitions of the project, which results in a kind of collective public and private cumulative confessional and in which participants are invited to Consign small writing about your deepest fears, afflictions, grief, anguish, drowning, desolation, dismay, anguish, helplessness, torment, despair, torture, misgivings, slips, passions, agonies, burdens, crosses, martyrdoms, torture, Hecatombs and various chases
Artist: Sonsonete Collective
Title: “Goals are loves as well as their colors”, – Goles son amores, igual que sus colores
The Project “Goals are loves as well as their colors”, is interested in overturning various symbolic frameworks already established in the city, in which the subject’s perception and the visual experience that it transmits, result in a fusion between the world of artistic representation and everyday events. the artists printed a wide series of serigraphic posters, with the shields of the Colombian soccer teams, but with the colors changed.
The artists returned to the shields of several Colombian soccer teams, in particular those that have presented problems of violence among their fans: the Blue commandos, La Guardia AlbiRoja, Los del Sur and El Barón Rojo, these currently conform as species of “clans “who have taken the shields as symbols that represent a philosophy of life, a specific way of acting and thinking.
What has started new geographical divisions within the same territory and in this way they begin to demographically classify the city, localities, neighborhoods and blocks, is a territorially absurd form of dominance, placing ideological barriers that only maintain eagerness for identity, the same as the other teams, ironically with the same principles and ideals, but only color separates them.
This way of thinking and acting at times reminds us of the bipartisan war that hit Colombia and generated events as traumatic and painful as the Thousand Days War or the so-called “Period of violence” in the middle of the 20th century and which gave as a result the creation of insurgent armed forces. In these events, he began to instill in the population, including children, that he should hate his neighbor, his neighbor, his compadre, if he had another political affiliation, but worst of all, such irrational violence began to be generated, that he attacked to the point of murdering only because of the color of a pair of pants or a shirt.
The appropriation of the emblems of the soccer teams that in our opinion are the most significant in the city of Bogotá (Independiente Santa Fe, Los Millonarios, Atlético Nacional and América de Cali), is not free, these groups have been presenting altercations for several years. Based on this problem, preventive campaigns have been created such as the one generated in 1999 called “Playing Clean We All Win”, where contingency plans were created for this scourge.
The problems between bars of different teams have been increasing gradually in different locations and have showed the level of intolerance of some fans. Urban spaces became new scenes of confrontations. Given this situation, government institutions have carried out campaigns and actions that try to raise awareness among fans that respect for life is the most important thing, and the way to this is tolerance.
Artist: Pía Vásquez Cepeda
Title: Fantasmas de Piedra – stone ghosts
The instruction was to build a small replica of the monument in plasticine and pose it just below the original piece, which is left to the passage of people and weather conditions.
The monument was originally born by erecting a structure in memory of a relevant character or event, with justified artistic, historical and social value. Because they are an element that historically responds, whether due to a political event, these are losing their relevance, reaching such a point that nobody remembers or knows who? and commemorating what? were built.
The problem arises today, with some elements that squander the idea for which they were built, the little planning that the government has to implement these monuments in public space. Many times building squares, parks and monuments with names of little relevant characters and mostly unknown to the people who inhabit these towns, making decisions to name a place, a street, many times overlapping political interests over needs, over the idea to educate or simply for the tastes of the people.
These characters portrayed in the kilos and kilos of bronze that shine, without registration, date, or reason for installation. We do not know what is the name of the monument that is in our closest square, is it a problem with the authorities that install these monuments? Is it a problem with us that we are not sufficiently informed? Is it a problem with the organization of the city?
“Most of the sculptures for public spaces that emerged after the Second World War seem lamentable and do not end up satisfying either the constituents or the citizens. They are expressionless ghosts, devoid of meaning and emotion, of visual presence and physical materiality, in good shape, occupying inappropriate spaces in an inappropriate manner ”
Title: Arma de Juego – game weapon
Artist: Ivone Navas y Fernando Arroyo.
A group of people stood in a straight line delimiting the Pedestrian Bridge, each one will activate his gun to make bubbles for 60 minutes, the bubbles will be directed towards the cars. The work is presented as an interactive, subtle, harmonious and ephemeral social game mechanism, a game with the presence of air, the movement of the wind, the flash of the sun’s rays, enjoying the short moment in which all the bubbles arise, until the moment when they explode and disappear in the air. This same transience is used to generate emotional stimuli within a specific social context, with a daily routine, to generate a chain of positive events with the bubbles.
