Catálogo Cantos Cívicos
este PDF es una versión ampliada del catálogo original
de la exposición Cantos Cívicos de 2008
marzo 30, 2014
noviembre 15, 2013
Los límites del consenso por Irmgard Emmelhainz
La Tempestad
Edición
91, julio-agosto
Sección: Dossier Central
Subsección: Artes visuales
Ubicación de la
nota: tercero
[Título]
Los
límites del consenso
[Autor]
Irmgard Emmelhainz
[Secundaria]
En las
sociedades “democráticas”, donde la libertad de expresión se presenta como
valor inviolable, existen límites estéticos y políticos claros. El “mal gusto”
de la instalación Cantos cívicos, de
Miguel Ventura, los puso a prueba.
[Cuerpo de texto]
La
vocación radical del arte fue heredada del modernismo. De Lenin a Godard, pasando
por Breton, la vanguardia se planteó como la utopía que anunciaba un futuro
liberador y autónomo, en el que se cumplirán las promesas del presente. Las
tareas del artista y del intelectual vanguardistas eran anunciar el futuro
utópico negando el arte del pasado y transgrediendo el statu quo. En ese
sentido, los futuristas valoraron la ciudad, las máquinas y la velocidad; los
dadaístas, el sinsentido y la disolución del arte en la vida cotidiana; los
surrealistas crearon una realidad paralela, que liberaba de las constricciones
de la burguesía europea del período de entreguerras. Etcétera. En los sesenta,
el arte progresivo fue experimental y su radicalidad residió en disolver las
fronteras entre forma y contenido, símbolo y referente, objeto y acción, arte
“culto” y gusto popular. En esa década también se luchó por la emancipación de
los pueblos colonizados u oprimidos y de los trabajadores explotados (crítica
social). Igualmente se combatieron la estandarización y la masificación, que el
capitalismo identificó con la libertad de definirse como sujeto por medio de la
autenticidad y la autorrealización (crítica artística).
Una vez consumado el ideal vanguardista de transgredir el medio
para fusionar arte y vida, los artistas partieron de la condición
desmaterializada del arte. Así, una investigación científica, una terapia
colectiva, una coreografía de penetraciones e incluso una cosecha de alimentos
en zonas urbanas pudieron considerarse medios artísticos. Al no cumplirse las
promesas del modernismo desapareció la noción del progreso; la utopía se
convirtió en distopía. La percepción de la realidad es inseparable de la
temporalidad; en el presente perpetuo, la catástrofe es al mismo tiempo inminencia
y posibilidad de mejora. La crítica artística ha sido parcialmente cumplida,
subordinada al mercado y al ideal neoliberal de autorrealización, situándose al
centro de la cultura como un consenso disidente. Las luchas sociales han sido
sustituidas por reclamos de restitución y reconocimiento enmarcados por los
derechos humanos y desmanteladas por la incipiente y generalizada precarización
de las condiciones laborales.
Es evidente que las lógicas vanguardista y revolucionaria no funcionan
en el contexto actual, ya que implican cambiar el estado de cosas tomando el
poder (o la palabra, o la institución museográfica): el neoautoritarismo no se
funda exclusivamente en el poder político. El actual control social implica la
autorregulación, se basa en un proceso interno de modelaje sensible,
lingüístico y lógico, conformado por automatismos cognitivos íntimamente
relacionados con intereses y valores corporativos. Se basa en la tolerancia
represiva y fomenta la libre expresión: aparentemente no hay límites en el arte,
pues es un campo abierto a la transgresión y el sitio privilegiado para la puesta
en escena del antagonismo. Pero el arte contemporáneo es también una
corporación global anclada en sutiles rituales sociales y complejos lenguajes
que delimitan la transgresión con un protocolo preestablecido de disidencia al
que todos sus miembros deben suscribirse. En general, más que como principios,
la rebeldía y la transgresión se ejercen como estrategias; los artistas ya no
buscan la ruptura sino un camino que lleve al equilibrio entre la ironía y el
cinismo.
Puesto que todo vale en forma y contenido, el principal medio
del arte contemporáneo es, en realidad, la promoción; su rigurosa etiqueta
social establece que la controversia es de hecho deseada para llamar la
atención del público. Las controversias deben ser cuidadosamente diseñadas y
excluir lo que el contrato social considera de “mal gusto”. En su Manual de estilo del arte contemporáneo
(2006), Pablo Helguera lo plantea pedagógicamente: «Si bien se puede criticar
al gobierno y a los procesos abstractos de guerra y deshumanización, no es
aceptable hacer comentarios o referencias directas a políticos, corporaciones o
gente de negocios». En este sentido, el arte polémico debe seguir la lógica
liberal de la autocrítica, que implica confrontar individualmente al poder
público y tomar en cuenta las diferencias como formas vitales de comportamiento
en las sociedades democráticas. La crítica institucional es deseable, ya que,
según Helguera, «fundaciones, organizaciones y museos apoyan con entusiasmo que
se les critique, pues esto los hace ver como unas organizaciones sumamente
avanzadas». Dentro del panorama de la crítica liberal, hablar con convicción,
hacer declaraciones de principios o expresar una opinión ajena o contra el contrato
social del mundo del arte son rechazados y denigrados como gestos de mal gusto
o falta de cortesía, se perciben como actitudes “dogmáticas” cerradas al
diálogo, o de plano se califican de erróneas. El protocolo de disidencia del
mundo del arte es vocero y eco de la producción de consenso en nuestras
sociedades: un discurso liberal en realidad afirmativo, que destruye o hace
invisible a la verdadera crítica.
La instalación Cantos
cívicos de Miguel Ventura, expuesta en el muac
de la ciudad de México entre 2008 y 2009, dibujó –y al mismo tiempo hizo
explotar– los límites críticos del mundo del arte. La instalación fue albergada
en un contenedor de plástico de burbuja en forma de una rata panza arriba que
parodiaba los megamuseos de Frank Gehry. El interior hospedó un bioterio con 85
ratas macho condicionadas con chocolate para atravesar un laberinto multicolor.
Las paredes de la construcción estaban cubiertas con estructuras de unicel en
tres dimensiones, que evocaban formas constructivistas y minimalistas y al Merzbau de Kurt Schwitters. Había
también fotos de soldados norteamericanos caídos en la invasión a Iraq,
imágenes homoeróticas procedentes de páginas de chats gays, recortes de páginas
de sociales locales y de periódicos y revistas en las que desfilan políticos y
miembros de la élite, al igual que celebridades del mundo del arte de la A-list. El ideólogo de la doctrina
económica del neoliberalismo, Milton Friedman, encabezaba este aquelarre
comiendo mierda con una cuchara de plata. Todos estos elementos constituyeron
un collage gigantesco intervenido con falos, caca, vaginas, anos, logotipos y
eslóganes del nilc (New Interterritorial Language Committee, la
corporación ficticia que sirve de matriz y seudónimo a Ventura). Aparecían también logos de
organismos internacionales como el Fondo Monetario Internacional o la Organización
Mundial de Comercio, así como de fundaciones y museos corporativos y
colecciones privadas. Había suásticas entrelazadas con signos de dólar en foami
y encajes geométricos concéntricos, la marca registrada de Gottfried Ohms (go), el artista oficial del nilc. Lo más comentado en la recepción
de Cantos cívicos fue la parafernalia
nazi: una extraordinaria colección de vestigios cotidianos del nacionalsocialismo
y las imágenes del artista en guisa de dictador fascista. También causó revuelo
la sección en la que se recordaba el filonazismo de José Vasconcelos, donde
evocaba su misión de redimir y modernizar a la nación y a la raza, inseparable
de la ideología de la existencia del mexicano como avatar cultural. No por azar,
algunos de los elementos de Cantos
cívicos que pasaron desapercibidos fueron las muñecas étnicas colocadas en
biombos colgados de acuerdo a una jerarquía racial europeizante, las fotos de
los “indígenas-narcos” y las imágenes del artista disfrazado de chéroqui. La
miríada de signos y símbolos que constituyeron Cantos cívicos no puede ser leída de manera aislada, sino que exige
yuxtaponerlos y recodificarlos, a la manera de una constelación1.
Sin embargo, Ventura (San Antonio, eeuu, 1954) fue acusado por varios críticos de hacer un «carnaval
de símbolos» amalgamando nazismo y neoliberalismo, Carlos Salinas de Gortari y
Adolf Hitler. Fue condenado por cometer un «error ético-político grave» al no
hacer una crítica de los totalitarismos de izquierda ni del Holocausto, «enmascarando
el dolor de sus seis millones de víctimas»2. Además de sufrir
amenazas de censura por parte de la dirección del museo3, Ventura
fue demandado por una persona que aparecía (sin nombre) en uno de los collages
hechos con las imágenes que el artista se apropió de las páginas de sociales
del periódico Reforma (perdió la
demanda por «abuso de libertad de expresión»). La reducción tendenciosa tanto
del veredicto del tribunal como de las críticas a Cantos cívicos tuvo la función de neutralizar la complejidad de la
pieza, así como la imagen del presente que ofrece la instalación. Al hacer
visibles los rostros, las corporaciones, las fundaciones y los organismos
internacionales, al yuxtaponerlos con la suástica y el signo del dólar
ligándolos al sistema político-económico neoliberal, Ventura transgredió –por
mucho– la etiqueta de controversial
en el mundo del arte. Confrontó a la sociedad mexicana con la raíz de la violencia
endémica: el racismo. Presentó además un cuadro del mundo actual distinto del
que disemina la sociedad.
Al crear una arqueología paródica de la cultura visual del
nacionalsocialismo, Ventura lo presentó en Cantos
cívicos como un conjunto de valores, prácticas políticas, sensibilidad
estética y formas sociales inherentes a la psicología colectiva, el producto de
una visión de la realidad que contiene virtualmente el “derecho” de aniquilar
al otro para constituirse y preservarse. En México la realidad se percibe actualmente
como “insegura” o “peligrosa”, y ello ha servido de excusa para militarizar al
país y criminalizar la resistencia por medio de desapariciones extrajudiciales
y otros aparatos legales y discursivos. En ese sentido, tanto la “seguridad”
como el “desarrollo” justifican las nuevas olas de aniquilación, despojo y
relocalización forzada en México. En Cantos
cívicos la democracia liberal es parodiada por las ratas que eligen las
canciones del coro. El actual sistema económico-político aparece como un «totalitarismo
invertido» (Sheldon S. Wolin), caracterizado por una
alianza en el poder de la clase política, la plutocracia y la economía ilegal,
con la privatización del bien común, la precariedad laboral y la conversión del
ciudadano en consumidor como estrategias.
Después de Cantos cívicos,
Ventura continuó haciendo cosas de “mal gusto” que fueron censuradas o poco
difundidas: nilcstac (2010), muac-nilc.blogspot.com
(2009-11), Mexican Warfare (2010) y
el Oratorio liberal de arte contemporáneo
(2011) son piezas en varios medios en las que, por medio de la apropiación y
parodia, delinea explícitamente el sistema de relaciones de poder del mundo del
arte y su vínculo con las corporaciones, los patronos, los coleccionistas y la
academia. En estos trabajos el mundo del arte aparece como el campo de
entretenimiento de la élite global con la complicidad de los artistas y otros
productores culturales, simulando responsabilidad social, instrumentalizando un
discurso cultural como instrumento paliativo y de mejora, usando lenguajes
homogéneos y fórmulas estéticas de los sesenta. En una de las entradas del blog,
Ventura parodia “Scene and Herd”, la columna de Artforum que reseña inauguraciones, simposios y otros eventos
artístico-sociales, pintando a la violencia del país como inmanente al arte
contemporáneo, no abstraída por él ni existiendo en una realidad distinta. La
conclusión que podemos extraer es que el aparato discursivo del mundo del arte
ignora la oposición directa, al tiempo que hace invisibles las formas de poder
que operan en su discurso. Por eso, seguiremos operando desde la trinchera.
Notas
1. Para Walter Benjamin, en una constelación las estrellas no
tienen relación entre ellas, ya que es nuestra observación la que establece
líneas de unión. ¶ 2. Ver mi
texto sobre la normatividad de la representación del Holocausto, su privilegio
sobre otros genocidios en la cultura audiovisual de principios del siglo xxi y la saturación de la ética y la
política del testimonio: “Imagen prohibida, montaje prohibido y testimonio
prohibido”, Drˆk (abril de 2013). Disponible
en drik.mx. ¶ 3. La dirección cedió
tras una negociación, después de que Ventura firmó una carta en la que deslindó
al museo de responsabilidad en el contenido de la pieza. Puede inferirse que la
institución prefirió lidiar con las reacciones a la instalación de los
espectadores de la élite, los ámbitos locales de la cultura, la universidad y la
política, que con un escándalo de censura internacional.
A Delirium Narrative by Lourdes Morales
A Delirium Narrative
I. The trajectory of a critique
For at
least ten years, the Puerto Rican-Mexican-American artist Miguel Ventura has
been interested in creating a fictitious oppressive institution that ironizes the
political and economical neoliberal domination in an international context.
Ventura developed a psychotic half-person, half-corporation called NILC
(New Interterritorial Language Committee).[1]
NILC is a colonialist entity that controls and brainwashes subjects. The
NILC’s purpose is to create a parody of a New World Order, analyze the individual’s
processes of introjection and question the ideological norms of institutions–such
as language, education, social values, aesthetic models, the dominant political
agenda, etc. This is done in order to challenge the dominant stereotypes in a
globalized world; for example gender, race, sexual behavior, or political
representation, to name but a few. This critique is also constructed on an
aesthetic that is a reaction to the minimalistic mainstream in contemporary
art, represented by artists such as Sol LeWitt, Dorothea Rockburn, Robert
Morris, or Joseph Albers. “These artists would become canonical figures of the
reductive, Protestant art in the US during the 1970s,” says Ventura.[2]
The NILC organization exposes the use of children as a strategy
for integration, education and marketing in society. This tactic is purely
ideological and tries to recruit imaginary new young devotees. The educational
pledge of the Committee has been fundamental to its colonialist ambitions. In
order to achieve these high objectives, the appearance of the NILC has
been produced carefully and in detail through a seductive apparatus that uses
images, music, promotional articles, children’s textbooks, videos, etc. The NILC
creates a world based on highly specialized marketing tools – such as colors,
songs, and materials for children, playful structures and objects made from
foam – to seduce followers. Using one of its video installations the NILC
succeeded in producing its own creatures.[3]
Through a gender transformation, one
of its male patients became a pregnant mother and ends up as a fertile alien
creature. In the art historian Olivier Debroise’s words, the
artist “…takes possession of President Daniel Schreber’s transsexual delirium
and transfigures himself into Mademoiselle Heide Schreber, an incarnation of
the Cold War clichés and of German otherness including all its cultural background
(Santa Claus, Halloween and Heidi) incorporated into the ghost of ‘white’
democracy and into the inversion of the Puerto Rican diaspora’s Afro-Caribbean,
Hispanic, and Catholic roots inscribed in Ventura’s own body.”[4]
Here, it should be added that Ventura was born into a military family, and during
his childhood he moved around the US, Puerto Rico and Europe, notably Germany. In
this context, the NILC evokes the stereotypes and clichés found in The Sound of Music (1965, Robert Wise),
which were taken from the works of Hitler’s famous filmmaker, Leni Rienfenstahl.
With the use of Nazi paraphernalia, Ventura questions the characteristics of an
idyllic state. Also, in NILC’s work, language is taken as a crucial tool
of power, the primary medium of control and repression. Ventura developed the system
of language notation used by NILC on the basis of the hair-dos and
braids of a homosexual Heidi.[5]
Over the years, the NILC has developed a
formula that puts into play the codes of a “legitimate” organization that uses
“sinister and contradictory philosophies that sabotage any interaction with
reality.” “It’s amusing, being a gay man, to parody these male figures –posing
as a role model or as the president of NILC– through transvestite
transformations and the use of an absurd rhetoric. That’s also why I find it even
more amusing to think of myself as Nazi, being a Puerto-Rican gay man.”[6]
In short, Ventura’s work is based
on the amalgamation of large-scale visual essays originating in insights into the
deployment of a politics of representation through different social
apparatuses. Moreover, it serves to analyze how these combine to form a
repressive economic system.
II. A work in bad taste
In
November of 2008, the University Museum of Contemporary Art (MUAC) opened in
the Cultural Center of Mexico’s leading public university, the National
Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). The MUAC was presented as the
largest public institution in Mexico to host a collection of national and
international contemporary art. The museum’s architecture and size met the
expectations of a specific political context in Mexico City. The leftist party
won the governance of the city in 1997 with Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas as the first mayor
of the Federal District.[7]
Since then, the left-wing party has held power continuously, introducing numerous
changes, mainly in terms of security, private and public transportation, and
the passing of progressive laws.[8]
In this scenario, the leftist political inclinations of the UNAM have never
been disguised. Consequently, for some political and cultural intellectuals in
the city, the MUAC was seen as one of the biggest achievements of these series
of successes in the city’s cultural milieu. The museum’s opening was supposed
to confirm the city’s progressive, socio-political, avant-garde status.
Teodoro González de León, one of Mexico’s most
prominent architects was commissioned to design the building. In the
institution’s own words: “…González de León developed a project created with
the intention of enhancing the visitor’s experience. The museum’s interplay
with nature, the use of light, the open spaces and all kinds of features, make
this a unique museum that uses the most avant-garde technology, and provides
optimum conditions for the artworks.”[9]
Sharing the space with three other exhibitions
presented during the opening, Ventura was selected to make an
installation in the museum’s main gallery. For the MUAC
the artist designed a gigantic rats’ labyrinth of almost 9,600 square feet. Cantos Cívicos [“Civic Songs”] was based
on a previous work produced in Castellón, Spain in 2007, at the Espai d'Art
Contemporani de Castelló (EACC). A general overview of the work might describe
it as an uprooted underworld of the museum’s aesthetic expectations. Thus, Cantos Cívicos invaded all the concepts of
orientation, conservation and Mexican values of light and unity described above.
Contrary to the institution’s expectations, Cantos Cívicos reflected Ventura’s interests. Over the past years,
he had drawn attention to the similarities between the neoliberal global economic
models (those of Milton Friedman and the Chicago University school) and the
languages and practices of contemporary art in terms of the connections between
critics, artists, museums, and galleries. In an interview describing his ethical
posture within the global artistic scene since 2001, he said: “On the one hand there was
the destruction of two countries, Iraq and Afghanistan, and on the other, the value
of art was increasing; the growing importance of the world of art and culture
was plain to see. So, I saw a contradiction there.”[10]
Meanwhile, in a talk held at the Americas
Society he
argued: “The legitimacy of our governments and the notion of democracy feel
somewhat hollowed out by the ongoing military economy and financial machinery,
and art seems more like the superfluous icing decorating a rotten and foul-smelling
cake.”[11]
As such, Cantos Civicos consists of a huge chrysalis
with a tunnel–shaped entrance situated outside of the main gallery.[12]
The tour begins in the rat’s tail that could be seen from the lobby. The
little entrance forced people to walk on all fours in order to see what was
inside the animal’s belly. In the middle of the tail, a video of the artist
shows him on hands and knees, dressed as a Nazi soldier transforming into a
rat. By then, the piece is making an important point: the fact that, in a manner
of speaking, we are all subjugated to his oneiric playful narrative.
After this, the piece can be explored at will. The main arrangement
of the space consists of narrow corridors that connect small amorphous galleries,
which the visitors encounter in their journey through the labyrinth. In a sense,
each gallery represents the artist’s reflections on the themes he is referring to.
Inside the rooms different images present a severe critique of neoliberalism
and the art system. Walls and floor are crammed with multicolored foam magnets
of NILC’s logos and NILC’s letter shapes, bucolic paintings, newspaper photographs of socialites,
stag horns, stuffed animals, and painted portraits of German civilians from the
World War II era. Right next to these components there are huge
corporeal penises, photomontages of Mexican maids, a spread photographic
archive documenting the artist’s daily bowel movements, photos of leading
Mexican art patrons, swastika symbols, photos parodying eugenics, notably a
photographic series about Carl Sofus
Lumholtz’ research on the Tarahumara
population in Mexico at the beginning of the 20th century, scenes
of dead U.S.-nationalized immigrants in the Iraq war, icons of money, and
complicated drawings of excrement. One of the sides of the labyrinth contains little
folk-art dolls enclosed in a vertical chain of transparent plastic baubles, arranged
according to the classification of a caste system, where white dolls occupy the
highest positions and black and indigenous ones are at the bottom. At one of
the entrances, the name of a fictitious character, the artist that represents the
NILC’s aesthetic project, Gottfried Ohms, appears surrounded by logos of
museums from all around the world.[13]
At the core of the
space, there is a highly specialized animal facility with eighty live rats.[14],Ventura’s
discourse draws attention to the way some populations are treated by societies
and governments; that is, with racism and prejudice, despite their specific
role in maintaining the system.[15]
The rats are trained to find chocolates in their plastic labyrinth of tubes.[16]
Their activities are synchronized with musical performances, so that every time
the rats find the candy, a specific song is played, in an action that inverts
the human-rat relationship.[17]
Thus, a parody of democracy is created.
III. The institution’s reaction
In a lecture, the Spanish curator of the piece, Juan de Nieves,[18]
said: “More than any work of Miguel’s before it, Cantos Cívicos is conceived as a battle, rather than a dialogue,
with the space.”[19] Ventura created
this exhibition after more than thirty years of living in Mexico. For him, this
was a final response to the dominance of the cultural elite expressed through colonial
practices. According to him, the MUAC had been facing “politics of ideological
purification”; but as he has said: “…this is also a form of a society that can
not afford to face its problems of colonialism, racism, tradition and hypocrisy.
There is an apartheid state in this country.”[20]
That was the way he illustrated his critique in Cantos Cívicos.
The following paragraphs will analyze the problems that this piece presented
in the context of the institution’s main concerns. The first thing that the MUAC
was confronted with in a studio visit at the beginning of 2008, was a photo by
Annie Leibovitz that Ventura took from a Vanity Fair magazine, showing Gabriel
Orozco, Chuck Close, Cindy Sherman, Patricia Phelps Cisneros, among others. The
picture was modified, making a parody of Orozco’s Atomist (1996), and was also juxtaposed with Nazi and dollar
symbols. The curators of the institution did not like this, and it caused a falling
out with the artist during the following months.[21]
In addition, during the museum’s opening, a woman who was a potential candidate
for becoming a patron saw her picture in the piece, and left the museum feeling
very angry. Thus, Cantos Civicos
posed a real threat. In an interview, Vanessa Bohórquez, the Education
Communication Coordinator of the museum at the time, said that after the incident
with the woman, the people in charge of giving information to the public were placed
at the entrance to some of the labyrinth’s galleries in order to introduce a
detour that would bypass the personal photographs.[22]
The sensitive content for some visitors was the one that criticized museums, as
well as the migrants dressed as marines and photographs of socialites. But while
the museum was trying to conceal part of the content, it sentenced it to
silence. According to Bohórquez: “They weren’t protecting the artist but the
patrons.”[23]
The second thing that was problematic about the artwork was that it
actually questioned the financial network behind the investment in the museum.[24]
There were photos of the politicians and businessmen that had ruled and controlled the country for almost a
century. For example, in one visual, the personal relationship between
the ex-president Miguel Alemán and the Nazi agent Hilde Kruger was exposed. In
this respect, Ventura was told by the director’s museum that the use of the
image of Miguel Alemán in relation with the Nazi was uncomfortable.[25]
Here it is worth mentioning that Alemán’s son led the first fundraising
campaign for MUAC.[26] There were
also some other leading patrons who were shown with NILC, dollar and
swastika signs juxtaposed – like the rest of the exhibition’s components. Accompanying these, Milton
Friedman appeared wrapped in spaghetti–shaped excrement emerging from a spoon. Finally, it was apparent that
the photos of socialites taken from magazines posed the biggest threat
for the museum’s authorities, exposing the personal nature of the conflict.
Due to these incidents, several
months before the opening, the staff of the museum and university asked the artist to change
some parts of the installation. The museum’s director, Graciela de la
Torre, and other significant figures, such as the director of the UNAM’s
Department of Cultural Activities, started making arguments and thinking of
ways to rid the institution of Ventura’s project. From that time onwards, the
museum made several attempts to alter, postpone or cancel the exhibition. At
the beginning there were a number of fruitless phone calls and meetings. Later,
several academics, theorists, and curators visited Ventura’s studio, which was
supposed to generate debate in favor or against the piece.[27]
But whatever came of these discussions, it was never passed on to the artist or
the curator. At one point Ventura offered to disguise the identity of the public
figures, but De la Torre declined the proposal.[28]
Then the artist wrote a letter to her saying: “In recent years, it has been one
of my goals to make projects that cannot be packed or labeled for tiny market
niches, but that are developed by their own energy according to the place where
they are produced. This is a theoretical, political, ethical, and aesthetic decision.”[29]
For Ventura, culture has become a kind of delirium, where censorship reflects the
numbness of a society that passively accepts the reality created by the
powerful elite. In the institution’s point of view, this wasn’t censorship but
an attempt to communicate to the artist that his work was insulting people.[30]
Nonetheless, the artist and the curator threatened to present the case at an
international level, a move which ended the institution’s attempt at censorship.[31]
“We would never consider opening a contemporary art museum with a censorship scandal”,
said the Director of Programming and International Affairs, Julieta Giménez
Cacho, in an interview.
Furthermore, contrary to the MUAC’s intention, described by the director as a museum that could “…move away
from grandiloquent and nationalist artist discourses”[32],
the NILC used the UNAM’s motto “Por mi raza hablará el espíritu” (Through my race, the spirit will speak) in
some of the exhibition corridors, and drew attention to the Nazi inclinations
of one of Mexico’s most influential figures in education, José Vasconcelos. In
the installation, Ventura quoted phrases from the Timón magazine –a publication that Vasconcelos directed in the
forties. “Just like the Germans, the French, English, Belgians, Scandinavians,
Americans and so forth will recognize the greatness of Hitler…”[33]
was one such phrase.
In this sense, a privileged Jewish Mexican group asked for the exhibition
to be censored after it opened. Alongside their claims, the Mexican historian,
Enrique Krauze –purportedly one of the leading authorities on Vasconcelos in
Mexico–[34]
was one of the fiercest critics of Cantos
Cívicos. Because Krauze’s argument was similar to that of many of the
writers who displayed opposition to the work, it would be helpful to make an
evaluation of his claims.
The historian maintained that there were three missing elements in
the piece. The first of these referred to the absence of elements from the
totalitarian communist outcomes, and their victims. However, as will be argued,
this concern arose from the implicit assumption that the work was a leftist
piece of ideology. As stated at the beginning of this essay, the arrival of the
left-wing party in government characterized the political milieu of the city. On
the opposite side of the political spectrum, Krauze has been known for being a sympathizer
of liberal democracy and the federal government. Krauze’s reading was based on
the assumption that there was a leftist partisan attitude, trying to minimize
the errors made by communism. In recent years, he has pointed out that a new
type of anti-Semitism has started to appear, mainly in the academic sphere and
some organs of the press: “the leftist anti-Semitism.”[35]
His perspective was focused on the fact that Nazism and anti-Americanism in
Mexico –seen as a leftist tendency– were culturally related.[36]
But regardless of political affiliations, the purpose of the piece was to unmask the perverse
relationships between images and the dominant ideology in the country; unveiling what in Lacanian
terms could be named the return of the repressed. According to the Lacanian
analyst Manuel Hernández, Cantos Cívicos was
not referring to Nazism in its historical manifestation, but rather constructing
a parody of it. He has stated that: “Nazism will not happen ever again under
the historical form in which it occurred because it emerged from a multitude of
historical, political, ideological, and economical conditions, which are very
specific, and non-repeatable. But an analogue phenomenon could still emerge.
And that is why it is important to question Nazism in its operational form.”[37]
The second absent element was the lack of differentiation between
Hitler and Milton Friedman or the Nazi horror and the “injustices attributable to
the market economy or American troops in Iraq”. In this point, Krauze was
criticizing the juxtaposition between dollar and swastika sings. Other
political analysts described this analogy as superficial, simplistic, and
Manichean.[38]
But as the art historian Irmgard Emmelhainz has pointed out, the Mexican Muralists
had made this association before. For example, José Clemente Orozco,[39]
Leopoldo Méndez,[40] or Chávez
Morado,[41]
at the Taller de Gráfica Popular. As she has explained, this juxtaposition
appeared in Diego Rivera’s mural at the National Palace. In the section of
class struggle Marx is the central figure in the dramatization. In Cantos Cívicos Milton Friedman is
represented in a similar way.[42]
But the difference between this association and that of Rivera comes from the
components of Ventura’s installation. It refers to the combination of those
elements and their relation with pornographic images. This alludes to what the
philosopher Beatriz Preciado stated in her book Testo Yonqui (2008): “The true raw material of contemporary productive
processes are excitement, the erection, ejaculation, pleasure, and the feeling of
self-indulgence and omnipotent control. The true motor of contemporary capitalism
is the pharmacopornographic control of subjectivity.”[43]
In that context, even money can be turned into a psychotropic abstract signifier.
In this sense, according to Preciado, the addict and sexual body, sex and all
its semiotic-technical derivatives, are the main sources of post-Fordist
capitalism. According to the words of Manuel Hernandéz, in Cantos Cívicos: “When
the swastikas are set out in continuity with the dollar sign, it is not just
about prestige, but the solution that the hyper-technological postmodern world
gives to the crisis produced by the fall of the metanarratives: money. Through
money shares of power are obtained, and power establishes truth and legitimacy
criteria, that at the same time generate money.”[44]
Finally, Krauze mentions the total absence of the Holocaust’s
“images, numbers, texts”.[45]
In his point of view, a critic of Nazism has the obligation to refer to the
Holocaust. In synthesis, according to Krauze, what was ignored was the pain:
“The pain is not in the exhibition. That pain is concealed in the exhibition.”[46]
However, in his critique Krauze fails to notice the dead bodies of U.S.-nationalized
migrant soldiers in Iraq. Moreover, Emmelhainz has analyzed
Krauze’s argument, responding that: “…creating a ‘parodic archeology’ of the visual
culture of National-Socialism, and juxtaposing it with neoliberal and
neo-colonialist motives (among others), Cantos
Cívicos unveils the virtual actualization of radical evil: that postulates
(in a discursive inversion), not the Holocaust as the unthinkable, but National-Socialism
as a group of values, political practices, aesthetics and social forms inherent
to a collective unconscious, the product of a certain vision that contains
radical evil.” In Emmelhainz’s opinion the missing element in Krauze’s argument
is the omission of the colonial elements in the piece. According to Bohórquez,
the response of the institution was to hold a lot of parallel events, such as a
film program about the Holocaust. This gesture showed that there was a feeling
of guilt within the institution.
IV. The mixture
As has been stated, the NILC was interested in breaking
several moral and aesthetic rules. Thus the mixing of the innocents and the perpetrators
featured heavily in the arguments against the work. The piece was tagged as an
“unfortunate association”[47]
by Soledad Loaeza (Political Sciences professor and researcher); as a
“confusing carnival of signs in which everything is equal and all is the same”[48]
by Krauze; or as “a jumble […] of mixed and confusing, useless things”[49]
by Leo Zuckermann (political expert). Actually, Ventura himself described Cantos Cívicos as cheap, “in bad taste”[50]
and poorly manufactured.
Like a blender, the NILC liquefied the signs owned by the
ruling power, with the social remainders of that same power’s operations. The misery
expended in the realm of production is usually in a state of exclusion, however,
this time it was represented in the installation. In this way, in Cantos Cívicos the expenditure, in a Bataillean
sense, was present. War victims or images of excrement were contrasted with the
symbols and expressions of an extremely luxurious society, or the art world.[51]
The exclusion of misery is problematized by the French thinker, Georges
Bataille, who wrote: “As dreadful as it is, human misery has never had a strong
enough hold on societies to cause the concern for conservation… misery was
excluded from all social activity. And the miserable have no other way of
re-entering the circle of power than through the revolutionary destruction of
the classes occupying that circle – in other words, through a bloody and in no
way limited social expenditure.”[52]
Thus, in Ventura’s work, the symbolic re-entry of misery in social activity
comes as a sumptuous expenditure. Luxury, as filth, is the accursed share that
flew out from a wound; it implies the sacrifice and the loss. It provides the
appearance of an end, a necessity of the production system. This, according to
Bataille, dominates the concern for unproductive expenditure.
In his work, L’abjection et
les formes misérables Bataille points out how societies are constructed
necessarily on a social order, where the abject things constitute the foundation
of collective existence. He links abjection to “the inability to assume with
sufficient strength the imperative act of excluding”.[53]
Taken from its Latin root, the term abjectus
(abiicêre) derives from iacere: to throw. The abject brings
together a mixture of diverse concepts such as the low and despicable, the
ignoble and miserable, the extremely unpleasant and degrading, or the self-abasing.[54]
According to Bataille, the abject is the outside getting in or the inside
getting out. The abject is the negative, the mixed, the immoral, the contrary,
and a threat to one’s existence against the other’s. The abjection is an
opposition to ‘I’ (moi), because the
subject finds the impossible in itself. In conclusion the abject brings about
the dilution of identity.
The aesthetics of Cantos
Cívicos did not respect the established rules of representation imposed by
minimalism, abstraction, or other mainstream conventions. Here of course, we
should include the Museum as part of the mixture. Ventura’s architecture was
unacceptable because it was loaded with sexual and death desires at once. As
the French philosopher Julia Kristeva writes: “Defilement is what is jettisoned
from the ‘symbolic system’. It is what escapes that social rationality, that
logical order on which a social aggregate is based, which then becomes
differentiated from a temporary agglomeration of individuals and, in short,
constitutes a classification system or
a structure.”[55]
The NILC made an association between a system and the
production of its remainders. It articulated an excluded problem of a reality imposed
by the ruling class in Mexico. Thus, what the critics were asking of the piece
was order, structure, and over all, respect for their symbolic system.
The norms of
procedure in a society reflect social desires. In turn this process reflects a
desire for a totalizing form of reality. This reminds us of what Bataille said
about museums: “According
to the Grande Encyclopédie, the first museum in the modern sense of the
word (that is to say the first public collection) would seem to have been
founded on 27 July 1793, in France, by the Convention. The origin of the modern
museum would thus be linked to the development of the guillotine.”[56]
In the museum, the executioners are the critics who are trying to confirm a symbolic
order where a mixture could be considered obscene. In this sense, Ventura performs
an intensive overflowing of affectivity: “…which disrupts the functioning of
the law in order to demonstrate the aesthetic mechanism of the contemporary
desiring machine: capitalism” in the words of Mexican art historian José Luis
Barrios.[57]
V. Institution versus
the individual
When the exhibition opened its doors to the public, several requests
to cancel it were made by different groups, such as Emilio Azcárraga Jean, the
son of the founder of Televisa Group. The Jewish group mentioned above[58]
managed to have the exhibition blacklisted by all Mexican synagogues.[59]
But the strongest reaction was that the MUAC and Miguel Ventura were sued by
one of the women whose photograph appeared in the exhibition. Moral damages
against her person were claimed, with compensation sought of eight hundred
thousand dollars.
The museum never released a public statement in response to all the
media attention. In the only declaration the director made, she affirmed: “I accept
full responsibility.”[60]
This is ironic, if we consider that the way UNAM absolved itself from the legal
case was, precisely, with a letter signed by Ventura freeing the museum of any
responsibility regarding the content. When Ventura refused to alter the
exhibition, the institution asked him to sign a contract in which he would take
full responsibility in the event of any legal complaint. In this way, the
museum would be released of the content and from the artist’s opinions and
posture. The argument used by the institution in the legal document read: “…the
defendant Miguel Ventura, in the fourth clause… promised to release my client
[the MUAC] from any complaints that could be presented by any physical person
or legal entity that may be affected by the exhibition of the work… entitled Cantos Cívicos.”[61]
From that period there remains a sign at the main entrance of the
building that reads: “The Museum refuses
any liability for the content of the exhibitions. The works therein exclusively
reflect the point of view of the artists.”
VI. Other people
Nonetheless the piece was a huge success. Bohórquez remembers very
long lines of people waiting to get into the installation, while the rest of
the exhibitions attracted much less visitors. The public: children, indigenous
groups, Orthodox Jews, politicians and intellectuals, families that came back
to see the exhibition for the second or third time.[62]
In her own words: “It was a piece in permanent change. It was alive. People
were taking the magnets and touching them all the time. The majority of people
didn’t even notice the public figures, who were recognizable only to the ruling
class.”[63]
In this sense, the piece was speaking on different levels to diverse publics.
At a time, it attacked the bond with ‘powerful’ people and it played-out its
seduction to ‘powerless’ visitors.
To return to Hernández’s argument, Cantos Cívicos pointed out “…that for factual and legitimate
powers, the actual victims are the children.”[64]
According to Hernández, the piece put into question the notion of pedagogy
itself, that is, the perverse aspect of “leading children” according to which
even adults let themselves be treated as children in a society of the spectacle,
where the cultural industry is not the exception. Even though, from Bohórquez’s
perspective, people understood the main argument and remember Ventura as an
artist who took risks, and who was always there to face the visitors’
questions. According to her “Ventura was never attacked by the public but by
the museum. The aggression came inside the museum, not from the people.[65]
Therefore, several questions remain open. We should ask ourselves
what the implications are of working with institutions that set out to free
themselves of responsibilities. Does this really imply a pluralist or an inclusive
scenario?
In my personal view the experience with the piece asks questions
about whom art is directed towards and in what way its critical discourse can
be operated. But what comes into play is the construction of a narrative. Cantos Cívicos confronted the discourse
of an institution and its ideal of continuity. Because it is an act of
self-annihilation, Ventura –as many have let him know– cannot now find spaces
to show his work.[66] It is an
inside movement that takes as its enemy its own system; there is no way of
recreating it that does not entail a gesture of destruction that feeds on the
crisis in order to overcome the frontiers that account for its own existence.
Irreconcilable antagonism is the scenario for the revolt. Ventura’s work has
signaled more than once that to believe in freedom is only a belief; it would
be a mistake to think otherwise, while we are subjugated to dominant class
narratives. And here is where NILC’s question raises its voice: “which
language will be the new reductive asshole?”
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_________. “Museum,” in Encyclopedia
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Bohórquez, Vanessa. Personal Interview. March
26th, 2013. My translation.
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Cantos Cívicos Blogspot, November 5th, 2009. Web. April 5th,
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Cantos
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Cedillo, Juan Alberto. Los Nazis en México, Mexico City: Debate.
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Contestación de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma
de México a los agravios presentados en el Juicio Ordinario Civil con
EXP.:275/2010 Dirigido al C. Juez Trigésimo Segundo de lo Civil del Distrito
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Cordero Reimann, Karen. Personal Interview.
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“Da Krauze su vision de Vasconcelos”, Reforma, November 15th 2011.
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De Nieves, Juan. Personal Interview. March 22th,
2013. My translation.
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_________.
Written email communication with Graciela de la Torre. August 20th,
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“El MUAC. Lo sumado hasta hoy”, MUAC, UNAM,
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“Estatuto de Gobierno del Distrito Federal” Consejería Jurídica y de Asuntos Legales. Gobierno
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Giménez Cacho, Julieta. Programmer and
International Affairs Secretary at the UNAM. Personal interview. March 22th,
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·
Hernández Manuel, “La trampa.” Non-published
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“Inicia actividades el patronato del MUAC”, El Universal, September 12th,
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“Judge Oks Hostess’s Twinkies, Ding Donss Sale.”
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Krauze, Enrique. “Cantos Nazis”, Reforma, February 8th, 2009.
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_________, “Contra un graffiti, Reforma, October, 9th, 2005.
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Loaeza Soledad, “Exhibición”, La Jornada, January 20th,
2009. Web. April 2nd, 2013.
·
León Medina, Mariana. “El MUAC: lo único que le
faltaba al Centro Cultural Universitario”, CANAL 22, Web. March 18th,
2013
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“Mejía Montes, Martha Matilde- ZIMAT
Consultores”, Consejo Mexicano de Asuntos
Internacionales, n.d., Web. March 18th, 2013
·
“MUAC: Teodoro González de León”, Arquitectura
Muy Mexicana, n.d. Web. March 15th, 2013
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NILC. New Interterritorial Language Committee. DATE Mexico City:
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[1] NILC is
crossed out in the same way as the Lacanian subject is divided, and also
crossed out; in Ventura’s discourse the great Other, and the symbolic order
itself is also crossed out, due to the absence at its heart.
[2] Albores,
Monserrat. “Are Gays Really Retarded? (And the Anaesthetics of Belonging).” NILC. New Interterritorial Language Committee.
DATE Mexico City: Trilce, 2003. 173. Print.
[4] Debroise, Olivier,
“Enigma-Ventura”, NILC…,
14.
[5] This language was based on a Swahili manual published
by a real Interterritorial Language Committee in 1929 – a British colonial
institution that aimed to establish Swahili as the lingua franca within the British colonies of southeastern Africa as
a tool of domination within this territory. Thus for the NILC the
creation of a lingua franca was the
necessary next step to attain its goals.
[6] Albores, 176.
[7] It was not until the late 90s that the residents of
the city could directly elect the mayor and the representatives of a single-chamber
Legislative Assembly by popular vote. In 1987 the Federal District received a degree of
autonomy, with the elaboration of the first Statute of Government (Estatuto
de Gobierno), and the creation of an Assembly of Representatives. The
statute of Government was declared by the Union Congress and approved by the
Mexican President, Carlos Salinas de Gortari, on July 26th, 1994. “Estatuto
de Gobierno del Distrito Federal” Consejería
Jurídica y de Asuntos Legales. Gobierno del Distrito Federal. July 26th,
1994. Web March 15th, 2013.
[8] Crime in Mexico
City has decreased considerably since the 90s with the implementation of security
cameras and other kinds of programs and laws. Parish Flannery, Nathaniel, “From Bullets to Bistros: the
Mexico City Miracle”, February 5th, 2013. Web. March 15th,
2013. Also, numerous initiatives have been adopted, such as the expansion of
subway lines, the Metrobus public
transport network, a second level for the city beltway, and diverse laws have
been approved; for example, abortion was legalized in 2007, and same-sex marriage in 2010.
[9] “El MUAC. Lo sumado hasta hoy”,
MUAC, UNAM, n.d., Web March 15th, 2013. In
an interview, Gustavo Avilés, the architect in charge of the lighting project
of the MUAC said: “We took a decision to use natural light as a message of
renewal and the hope that things will endure. […] Our interest is in recovering
the original values of light […] and the way this impacts our social
orientation […] Mexicans are linked to this, we are a culture of the sun, our
ancestors were extraordinary designers of illumination.” “MUAC: Teodoro
González de León”, Arquitectura Muy Mexicana, n.d. Web. March 15th, 2013.
[10] Ventura, Miguel. Personal
interview. March 20th 2013. My translation
[11] Ventura, Miguel. “Americas Society talk. Miguel Ventura / Juan
de Nieves.” Cantos Cívicos Blogspot, November 5th, 2009. Web.
April 5th, 2013.
[12] This contrasted
with the exhibition at the EACC where the entrance was situated outside of the
museum, as the artist requested. However when the request was made of MUAC it
proved impossible to construct.
[13] Here the artist constructs an imaginary globalized
world in which some critics, also imaginary, make the argument about the
relationship between economic and cultural dominance. “Semblanza Crítica e
Histórica de Gottfried Ohms.” Cantos Cívicos Blogspot, n.d., Web. April 4th, 2013.
[14] Animals were taken care of by students from the
University Veterinary School and demanded 3 to 4 hours of care a day. Ventura, Miguel. “Americas ...”
[15] Because of the
requirements for the rats to live in suitable conditions, it wasn’t possible to
install the animal facility in Castelló. However, this led the artist to begin a
close relationship with psychologists and animal surgeons at the UNAM. Idem
[16] Each tube
represents a pre-determined song. By a series of motion detectors and lights,
the human choruses would know which songs to sing, while standing on movable
tiered benches pushed by helpers. A total of 24 original arrangements were sung
by a chorus of 30 children in their original versions, arranged by the Mexican
composer Alejandra Hernandez, while 20 adults sang NILC versions of the
same songs, which consisted of arrangements made of inverted and missing notes
so that at times the compositions have nothing to do with their original
versions and resemble dodecaphonic compositions. Idem
[17] A repertoire of 12
songs such as Que será será, Edelweiss, Bless the Beasts and the Children, Live
is Life, Ding Dong the Witch is Dead, Ben, other popular hits like Omochano Cha
Cha Cha from Japan, No controles from Mexico, two Nazi songs: Die Fahne
Hoch-the Nazi Party hymn and Es zittern die morschen knochen (The rotten bones
are trembling)-a song of the Hitler Youth, and two Spanish Falangist
hymns-Falangista soy and Juventud. Idem.
[18] De Nieves was the director
of the EACC who invited Ventura to produce Cantos
Civicos in Spain.
[20] Ventura, Miguel. Personal...
[21] This was one of the first times that curators were
confronted with the piece because in the exhibition done at the EACC, only a
technician was sent. De Nieves, Juan. Personal Interview. March 22th,
2013.
[23] Idem.
[24] In Mexico, the
majority of public institutions have found a way to get money from private
investors by forming Civil Associations in order to get the money faster, and
without having to pay taxes. Principal donors include the Televisa Foundation, the largest mass media company in Latin America and in the
Spanish-speaking world. Recently, Televisa has created a media duopoly in the
country (Televisa, n.d. Web. March 26th, 2013. // Toussaint Florence,
“Televisa y Azteca ¿Duopolio Televisivo?” Proceso,
January 30th, 2012. Web March 26th, 2013.// “Señal de
Paga Eleva Ganancias de Televisa”, El Economista,
February 25th, 2013. Web. March 26th 2013.); the Foundation owned by Alfredo Harp Helú, a Mexican
businessman of Lebanese origin, and as of 2013, on the Forbes list of the world’s
richest people with a net worth of $1.5 billion; and Martha Mejía Montes (who was an Advisor to the Board of
Mexican Business, and worked for Monsanto as a consultant. She was recently
part of the transition team for the current President Enrique Peña Nieto – the
election he won has been questioned due to his relationship with Televisa,
which is seen as complicit in the excessive management of his image and the
news they broadcast during the election period) (“Mejía Montes, Martha
Matilde- ZIMAT Consultores”, Consejo
Mexicano de Asuntos Internacionales, n.d., Web. March 18th, 2013). At the end of the last year, the MUAC announced the creation
of the “Fondo de Arte Contemporáneo, A.C.” (Contemporary Art Fund), whose founding
members include Aimée Labarrere De Servitje, wife of the owner of the biggest
baking company in the world, Bimbo (“Judge OKs Hostess’s Twinkies, Ding Dongs
Sale.” FOX Business, n.d. Web. April 5th 2013). On the other hand,
the museum’s program of acquisitions for 2012 was 60% made up of “the UNAM
strategic alliances”, and 40% by the Chamber of Deputies. (“Inicia actividades
el patronato del MUAC”, El Universal,
September 12th, 2012. Web. April 5th, 2013)
[26] Miguel Alemán Velasco (a former governor of the State of
Veracruz and the son of a former president of Mexico). It is worth mentioning that during the 60s a statue of Alemán’s father
was knocked down by a student uprising.
[27] Cordero Reiman was
part of the Academic Committee at the MUAC by then. Cordero Reiman, Karen.
Personal Interview. March 18th, 2013..
[28] Ventura, Miguel. Letter...
[29] He also said: “I
am not a young artist, I’m 54 years old, so I don’t have the same expectations
that a younger artist would have from a gallery, museum and the other
tantalizing galaxy of dealers and collectors lurking out there as well as the tempting
material profits we all know about. On the contrary, I am distrustful, in this
post 9/11 world we live in, of the excessive commercial activities of galleries
and the art world in general and the dubious liaisons between galleries,
critics, museums and artists. On the one hand, the art world mimics Milton
Friedman’s ideal scenario of the open market on a predatory scale, and on the
other, it shares the superficial trivialities and passing whims of the fashion
world.” Idem.
[30] Giménez Cacho was the Director of Programming and International
Affairs at the UNAM at the time. Giménez Cacho, Julieta. Personal interview.
March 22th, 2013.
[31] Once a final
warning threatening cancellation of the exhibition was sent by the director, De
Nieves answered her: “I request that you officially inform me of this decision
so I can communicate this to the international artistic community”. De Nieves, Juan.
Written email communication with Graciela de la Torre. August 20th,
2008.
[32] León Medina,
Mariana. “El MUAC: lo único que le
faltaba al Centro Cultural Universitario”, CANAL 22, Web. March 18th,
2013
[33] Timón. Revista continental, vol. 2 num.
15, July 1st, 1940, 29.
[34] “Da Krauze su
vision de Vasconcelos”, Reforma,
November 15th 2011. Web. March 18th, 2013
[35] “Since the
seventies, after several decades of agreement with regard to the Jewish subject
(sum of genuine compassion for the Holocaust and sympathy for the State of Israel,
or at least for its utopian and socialist roots)…” Krauze, Enrique, “Contra un
graffiti, Reforma, October, 9th,
2005. Web. March 18th, 2013.
[36] “That current had
to do more with an old feeling of anti-Americanism than with a particular
aversion towards the 40,000 Jews, who had peacefully and productively come to
the country.” Idem.
[37] Hernández Manuel,
“La trampa.” Non-published document. A smaller version can be found at Des-bordes.net.
[44] Hernández Manuel,
“La trampa…
[45] Krauze, Enrique.
“Cantos Nazis”, Reforma, February 8th,
2009. Web. March 18th, 2013.
[46] According to the author, because of
this, “Ventura produces not a denouncing, but a trivialization”. Idem.
[49] Zuckermann Leo, “Juegos de poder, Una mala decisión de la UNAM.”Excélsior, January 13th, 2009. Web. April 2nd, 2013
[51] Bataille, Georges.
The Accursed Share, 30-31.
[52] Bataille, Georges.
“The Notion
of Expenditure”, Visions of Excess: Selected Writings, 1927-1939, Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1985, 172.
[53] Kristeva, Julia, The Powers of Horror, New York: Columbia
University Press, 1982, 64.
[54] Oxford Dictionary.
Web. March 29th, 2013.
[55] Kristeva. Op. cit. 65.
[56] Georges Bataille, “Museum,” in Encyclopedia
Acephalica: Comprising the Critical Dictionary and Related Texts, eds.
Georges Bataille, Isabelle Waldberg, and Robert Lebel, trans. Iain White (London:
Atlas Press, 1995), 64.
[57] Barrios, José Luis
“De la fábrica transparente a la máquina defecadora del arte contemporáneo”, Cantos cívicos. Un proyecto de NILC en
colaboración con Miguel Ventura, Mexico City: MUAC-UNAM, 2008, 56.
[58] Ventura, Miguel. Personal...
[60] “Yo disiento de
Cantos Cívicos” El Universal,
Thursday, March 12th, 2009. Web. March 30th, 2013.
[61] Contestación de la
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México a los agravios presentados en el Juicio
Ordinario Civil con EXP.:275/2010 Dirigido al C. Juez Trigésimo Segundo de lo
Civil del Distrito Federal, March 30th, 2012. Cláusula 1z.
[63] Idem.
[66] To mention just one case,
he was later expelled from an exhibition curated by Karen Cordero held at the
Museo del Chopo, where Alma Rosa Jiménez was the director.
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