AN ASSEMBLY PROCESS IN LAS GALERAS OR

THE SPRING THAT EXPANDS

CONCEPTUAL BOUNDARIES

Artistic action conceived, organized and executed by Jorge Restrepo in 2004, with the key collaboration of a civil group of women from the community of Las Galeras in the municipality of Güinope, El Paraíso, Honduras, Central America

By Donaldo Altamirano

“There are no facts; there are only interpretations.”

(Thus spoke Friedrich Nietzsche)

“It’s a matter of inventing ways to exist based on discretionary rules, capable of standing up to those in power and of plagiarizing knowledge although knowledge attempts to penetrate them and those in power attempt to appropriate them.”

(Gilles Deleuze, “Pourparlers,” Chap. 9, p. 150)

1. Expanded field of the visual arts, an open definition

The dynamics of expansion, diversification, proliferation, hybridization and evolution of the categories, the genre and the artistic concepts that were already characteristic of modernity, has been favored and accelerated at the beginning of this new millennium, particularly with the advent of globalization, above all in those aspects that refer to the field of communications from where the emergence of a new urban culture stems, which in the scene of the visual arts promotes the preeminence of a supposed “planetary artistic vocabulary.” Vocabulary that evolves, is made precise and is then refined in the large international artistic events (that is, metropolitan). Neological, proficient, aleatory vocabulary, which because of some attribute transcends the territorial limitations of the out-of-date concepts of nationality and even of internationality because this planetary vocabulary is more inclusive, corresponding to a greater range of meaning, particularly due to two interrelated phenomena: One is the globalization of artistic values; the other is the incorporation of “the diverse,” which is the inclusion of the artistic expressions typical of the marginal territories in the macro-metabolism of the so-called mainstreams.

The fact that the dynamics of expanded and accelerated diversification of forms, processes and alternative practices can respond partially to banal motivations, to snobbism, to an uncontrolled desire for prominence and for being accepted can, on the other hand, constitute a valid resource that seeks to defend individual or group identities. This in itself implies an act of resistance in the face of homogenization, an act of liberation with respect to the forms, materials, spaces and traditional relationships among the creators, producers and the public, thereby affecting, altering and reformulating the very notions of art and artist, as well as the very concept of public.

We should highlight the elasticity of these new forms, the richness of their relational substrate, the broad spectrum of their possibilities of hybridization. Performance and installation, for example, are split and multiplied as they relate to theater, stage design, movies, video, urban design, land-art, ecological art, community art, behavioral art, the art of disillusion, etc.

However, in its theoretical expressions this “planetary artistic vocabulary” appears more like a majestic eco of the tower of Babel, the nightmare of the Confutione Linguarum, than the harmonic discourse of an ordered and univocal language. Producing clear and different ideas, as René Descartes sought, is still a pending challenge. Theorists struggle to reduce highly novel experimentations, strange inventions and proliferous bizarre hybridizations in order to express them in univocal concepts. However, the new axial categories have been barely defined, indecisive among the multitude of new proposals for conceptual determination.

Moreover, the field appears to be mined by interests that range from mercantile to political or ideological, also suffering the blows of all the slede hammers of localisms, subtle forms of racism, chauvinism, xenophobia and other reductionist attitudes. To the point where Nicolás Bouriaud thought it his duty to warn us:  “The so-called globalism of art could, in reality, be the latest form of colonization.” (Nicolás Bouriaud, “Global art or artistic tourism?” Talk presented at the 8th Biennial Meeting in Havana, op. cit., p. 347)

On the other hand, the fashion of otherness, the hunger for the diverse have engendered a proliferation of esthetics that demand autonomy: The esthetics of emergence, relational esthetics, the esthetics of the happening, behavioral esthetics, the same as anomalous or, at the least, unusual forms of organizing the production process, as occurs in the art of social action, in the so-called behavioral art, in the art of social insertion or in public art and the collaborative community art of contemporary London.

The definition of the so-called “expanded field of the visual arts” is therefore a complex dynamic process that is still in an intense phase of expansion and whose unpredictable consequences are linked to creativity, to ingenious innovations, to the resources of invention of a broad gamut of artists from different countries, pertaining to different media and diverse cultural systems.  

Within this process the re-reading, reinterpretation, rejuvenation and metamorphosis of the traditional artistic categories are also coherent, including their hybridization, either by intermixing them or recurring to the search for and experimenting with alliances or amalgamations with elements taken from other fields of research activity and knowledge.

Sociology, ethno-anthropology, biology, nuclear physics, communications, graphic design or commercial advertising theories, to which we should add the incorporation of photography, video, mass computerization and the use of the digital networks in their multiple possibilities. There have been novel conjunctions among traditional forms of painting and extravagant modalities of soft sculpture, or between the so-called body painting and theatrical forms such as the performance or the happening. All the resources, all the languages, all the heterodoxies acquire validity and expand their possibilities when they are mixed and hybridized under these wholly free criteria.

2. Jorge Restrepo. That spring that stretches the boundaries of the concept

The heretic vein that beats in Jorge Restrepo’s temples is substantial although it is calm and stealthy. An innate transgressor, his previous roads have been defined by linking together gradual, but persistent negations. Jorge Restrepo’s path is interlinked, starting with a chain of ingenious actions going beyond the limits and traditional definitions, without necessarily being linked to the peremptory periods or the considerable ephemerous enthusiasm that the biennial meetings, the anthologies, the galleries, the fairs, the art auctions and other regional competitions tend to engender. His eagerness for innovation proceeds by autonomous metabolism, being of prolonged and persistent action. Such have been the elements of creative links among his diverse professional activities that Restrepo’s gifts as an organizer of complex human groups, his capacity for administering undertakings of large proportions are recognized characteristics.

Unpredictable trials with techniques of collage, photography, concepts of graphic design, sociological theories, mass communication strategies, principles of physics or of chemistry, electro-digital music, novel concepts of philosophy, daring experiments of interdisciplinary collaboration are some of the elements that feed and rejuvenate the ever-growing arsenal of creative possibilities with which Restrepo has enriched and furthered his original formation as a painter and a draftman. 

In short, Jorge Restrepo gets his passion from that spirit of adventure, to which Nicolas Bouriaud alludes, which drives him to “…be dissatisfied with existing tradition, formulas and categories, and rather venture along new roads…,” “…to question the solidity of the forms, practice a generalized relativism, a rigorous critical comparison; perceive the institutional or ideological structures that are part of us… and then reform them at will.”   (Nicolas Bouriaud, op. cit.)

3. The assembly process in Galeras

“…it is a matter of producing situations and moments of specific communication that permit a reciprocal clearance of the intensities, a transversal flow among capillary units, capable of tactically opening up practices and directions of flight, moments and tensions of exodus, of ambush and getting away….” (José Luís Brea, “Produce to be produced: Politics of the happening.” Biennial Meeting for Reading, Havana, 2009, p. 340).

This is a project of community participation, of collective realization?not only with respect to its conception and execution but also its conceptual comprehension and its theoretical terms of reference. Due to some of its idiosyncrasies, we can relate it to the art of action; in others, it is linked to the esthetics of emergence, the esthetics of the happening, public and community art. Our intention is not to reduce or assimilate Restrepo’s work passively with the premises of these trends, but rather use the conceptual and categorical structure engendered and developed by the critics to analyze one of Jorge Restrepo’s works in particular in the light of its basic underlying premises and conditions.

Las Galeras is a small community in the municipality of Güinope, which means “water for the doves” in the local language.  It is located in the southeastern part of El Paraíso Province and can be reached by leaving the Pan-American Highway at the level of the Zamorano Agricultural School and taking Highway 85, which later turns into Highway 87 at the San Lucas-Güinope junction.

Galeras has a scattering of adobe houses with clay tile roofs, sitting along some stony knolls at the foot of the surrounding higher hills, populated by forests of pine, oak and liquidambar. After Güinope, the head of the municipality, Galeras is the most densely populated community (83.6 inhabitants/km2, Green Book, p. 81).  Overall, the municipality has an extension of 20,385 km2 with 11 villages and 48 hamlets. The principal population nuclei are Galeras, Lavanderos, Mansaragua, Silisgualagua and Santa Rosa.

According to the 2001 census, the population of Güinope was 6396 people; at present it should be around 8000, of which 63% is rural versus 37% urban. There is basically little movement in the municipality; the greatest social displacement observed is that of the young people, who have to go to Tegucigalpa or Danlí to complete their secondary education. There are also a few people who emigrate to Spain or the US. In general we can conclude that, contrary to the current trends of world migration, Güinope is a territory with a low migratory profile, where the traditions and the customs tend to be conserved invariably.

Another interesting feature: The region has a good hydrological potential. There are six permanent rivers, of which Leutona is the principal one; there are

also 27 permanent streams plus 32 that flow intermittently. However, there are problems with drinking water in all the communities due to contamination from feces, garbage and agrochemicals, as well as logging and deforestation of the watersheds.  Nevertheless, there are fluvial recreational bathing facilities, and the municipal development plans consider alternatives for ecotourism, both current and future.

The main productive activities are crops such as basic grains, maize and dry beans; horticultural crops such as hot chili peppers, onions, potatoes and carrots.  Coffee is an important export product. In addition, oranges, bananas, plantains, strawberries and peaches are grown. Sand and gravel are extracted in Galeras (Green Book, p. 84). There is also cottage-scale production of marmalades and wines from various fruits including oranges, around which there is the Orange Festival, organized every year during the month of March.

As can be seen, the job opportunities for women in the main areas of productive activity are restricted to providing services: cooking, feeding, cleaning, sweeping and mopping, washing, ironing, mending and putting away clothes, taking care of children and/or the elderly, accompanying and attending those who work in agriculture, build houses or who extract and cart gravel and sand. They may also sell products during the short period of the farmer markets. 

It is in and for this context where Jorge Restrepo’s artistic action was planned and carried out. The artist-producer’s work consisted in convening and bringing together a group of 14 women of working age. He proposed to hire them for temporary work to paint a canvas (9 m long x 1.8 m high). The task was to be done by the group of women in accordance with the instructions and under the continual supervision of the artist, assisted by a pair of collaborating artists.

The decision to recur to feminine labor was not by chance, given that this sector constitutes the resistant nucleus of the poor families, within a tradition where the masculine presence is irregular and unstable. Apart from that, the in-bond assembly plants usually prefer to employ and exploit feminine labor. Restrepo’s action reflects a social situation on a small scale that is common for Central American women:  The almost total lack of job opportunities for women. It is a matter of denouncing these plants as the fatal destination for thousands of citizens for whom the social system does not offer a better alternative. Consequently, the placing of this artistic action on scene consists in adopting the normal behavior of the real assembly plants on a small scale, while adding a significant ingredient of contact, congeniality and humane communication, in line with international labor legislation and not the malleable local laws.

According to recent data, there are 5592 people of working age in the municipality of Güinope, only 39% of whom are employed. However, only 11.7% of that 39% are women. Women are generally employed, as we have already indicated, in communal, social and personal services; some are dedicated to trade on a minimal scale, taverns or street vending.

To complete this panorama, we make a case that educational coverage is inadequate given that there is 21% illiteracy (data are not broken down by gender). The health system is known to be inoperable, inadequate. The only possibility for women to reach a certain professional status and improve their quality of life is INFOP (National Institute of Development and Public Works), which offers courses or sewing workshops. This is, to a certain extent, ahead of its time, preparing unskilled labor to work in in-bond assembly plants, which are not yet found in this part of the country.

4. Getting down to work. Organization of the assembly process

(It’s a matter of:) “…inducing new forms of community.” (José Luís Brea. Produce to be produced….”: op. cit.)

The group of women met early at the school in Galeras. The town women are timid and expectant, mostly mature, heads of family; but there are also young women, dressed up with certain finishing touches from an urban store. Some have come together?the mothers, daughters and granddaughters, even the young grandsons, who watch this rare exercise from a prudent distance. Together, they form a sort of expanded sculptural group by Francisco Zúñiga? women with strong hands and large feet, like the women that David Alfaro Siqueiros, Diego Rivera or Cándido Portinari painted.

In the space of the local school, empty on a day off, on the floor of a long corridor, the canvas is extended. And the women’s attitude could be summed up in a certain happy discipline, like someone who submits to an extravagant game, seated or squatting on the floor, painting for hours with the enthusiasm of someone who receives payment for participating in a game, the meaning of which they do not fathom, but that doesn’t worry them. The instructions were basic, the order of dispersion was either a simple moving forward in wavy, convergent or divergent lines; or it was limited to grouping brush strokes in successive areas. There was always room for minor improvisations, for timid expressions of tonal preference.  In all cases the enjoyment of the activities prevailed because one’s effort is shared and multiplied with the input of many others’ efforts.

At the end of the day, the women received payment in accordance with a payroll list for the hours worked, based on a previously agreed upon price per hour. They signed a receipt. And they appeared to be content, satisfied and even proud when they helped spread out the immense cloth that they had painted, to contemplate it from afar, against the background of waving greens and blues of the neighboring pine groves and oakwoods.

[The artist-producer also foresaw the possibility that the cloth painted collectively could be sold, in which case he would proceed to make an equitable distribution of the profits from the sale among the women who had painted it. Thus far, there has been no sale; neither has the cloth been exhibited before any public.]

5. Critical scrutiny and theoretical comparison

How can one interpret works that are done through a process of intersocial action or that are inserted in the social fabric and evolve in accordance with the demands of that fabric…?  (Dr. Magaly Espinoza, “Documenting Art: Images of the Difference,” paper presented at the X Biennial Meeting in Havana. In: “Integration and Resistance in the Global Era,” proceedings edited by the National Council of Plastic Arts, Havana, 2009, p. 260).

This action produced by Jorge Restrepo fills one of the basic requisites proposed by the esthetics of emergence given that here the artist has fulfilled roles as producer, administrator and technical director of the action that was carried out.

In this case the artist has assumed the responsibility of “producer whose fate rests on the incentives for an action” (as Magaly Espinoza tells us, op. cit., p. 262). Magaly also points out that Walter Benjamin had already noted this insurgent administrative activity when he spoke of the artist as a producer; for example in that which refers to the practices of the happening and the performance.

But we also perceive here an ironic allusion to some basic productive categories of neoliberalism in its relationships with underdevelopment. Here the assembly is alluded to as an institution, together with the false mirage of “just payments.” Restrepo does not reproduce the assembly plant mechanically: rather he refers to, alludes to, parodies, imitates the regular procedures ironically, but alters the meaning by converting the women who are the usual victims of factory exploitation into co-agents of a work of art, destined for a public indifferent to their everyday context. Later on we will throw light on where this public awaits us (during the process of the artistic action, they would have appeared not to exist).

This ironic inclusion of the relationships and the mercantile conditions of production is neither gratuitous nor fortuitous; rather they are used as an instrument for demythologizing the same process of producing the artistic work. In this respect Nicolás Bouriaud foresees that for a time, which is also the present, “The postproduction practices generate works that will question the use of the forms of work…”  (Bouriaud, N. “Postproduction,” edited by Adriana Hidalgo, Buenos Aires, 2004, p. 98).

Moreover, we have seen that for the esthetics of the emergence, the work is the capacity for modification, generated from a local state of things. “The center of art is transferred then to the form of organizing the creation process.” From where a double game is derived: De-materialization of the work, on the one hand, and making the real “esthetic,” on the other hand. Even to the point that Boris Groys makes that art is the attitude in itself; neither the object nor even the situation in itself or the resulting relationships are what define the work.  It is the artist’s deliberate attitude.

The esthetics of the happening, on the other hand, refers basically to “that which happens during the process of the work, letting the internal fabric of the real emerge.”  The internal social fabric that underlies and sustains the context where the assembly process occurs in Galeras has been analyzed in detail previously; moreover, we have proven the precise coherence achieved between the socio-environmental conditions where this work happens and the aforementioned extra- or meta-artistic sense, sparked off and achieved by the author-producer.

Martí Perán proposes that within the work there should be encounters that surpass the world of art. In the assembly process in Las Galeras, both encounters and failures to meet up surpass the conditions that prevail for the regular communication between public and artists. In this action Jorge Restrepo sidesteps and eludes the regular terms of incidence on the social fabric (gallery, exhibition, museum, official event, select public) in the interests of another broad alternative strategy that lets us impact on other diverse levels or strata of the complex interweaving of relationships that makes up our societies.

Apart from that, we can note various points of contact, affinity and analogy between Restrepo’s actions and the community actions promoted by Humberto Vélez, who also explains the differences existing between the art community as he conceives it and the public art promoted by the town councils or the central governments (Paper presented at the IV Biennial Meeting of the Central American Isthmus, Panama 2004.  “The spectator in public art. Notes on collaborative projects in Latin America and Europe.”  Also in: The Biennial Meeting for Reading in Havana, pp. 473-479).

For the collaborative projects in general, Vélez asks some basic questions as a starting point: Art for whom? What is its purpose? ¿What is the relationship that arises between the artist and the participants?  What is the work good for?

In the case of public art, the central governments and town councils use public art as a tool for sociocultural policies. They may involve a community, but the people can be and/or feel used.  Collaborative public art, on the other hand, assumes a horizontal dialog, collaboration in terms of equality. The participants should have full voting rights. 

Examples; Humberto Vélez organizes the Home Band, the Vocational School Band of the Home in Panama. Formed by 400 musicians, African Americans, mestizos, people of the working class. In November they participated in the celebration of the independence of the Republic. For a few hours they took the Bridge of the Americas. Parallelly and circumstantially they became involved abstrusely within the framework of High Art.

In August 2004 there was a reopening of the Victoria Baths in South Manchester, which had been built in 1934, closed in 1993 and then named a “patrimonial site” in 2002. The Baths were destined for an exclusive minority public, Anglo-Saxons with a high income and culture although the residents of the surrounding zone are immigrants from Pakistan, India, the Caribbean and Africa?all people of low resources.

”The Mancunian Way (A57, a roadway in Manchester, England) began with the route of a typical British two-story bus full of young people and children from the area, who sang, played and danced hip-hop, rap and UK garage (electronic dance music). The neighbors, at their own pace, greeted the passengers all along the way, which ended at the doors of the Victoria Baths. Immediately afterwards, the young children entered the Baths carrying a standard made by a group of Bengalese women and accompanied by a large number of friends and family.  Once inside they gathered around the centr Ial pool, and the young people gave a concert that included choreographed dances …

It should be noted that in this type of works, the feelings of enjoyment are decisive, both as expressions of human communication and existential enjoyment.  Among their accomplishments, Vélez notes:  “The result was an electrifying meeting, charged with emotions and energy.” (p. 477)

6. Jorge Restrepo’s joint work: The assembly process in Las Galeras

Within Jorge Restrepo’s formal and conceptual evolution, the assembly process in Galeras constitutes a notable point of inflection. We note that in this action an object is produced, a cloth painted. In other later works such as “Planetary I,” “Moon-bathing,” “Negentropy,” “Breath,” the emphasis is more on the action itself, on the abstract happening, and lastly on the documentary record.  The focus is much less on the commercial or collectable object.

We observe moreover that the privilege of documentary records is a characteristic that Restrepo’s work shares with the esthetics of emergence, with behavioral art, with community art and in general with all these new modalities of organization and art production. This is noted by Boris Groys (I, Public art), where public art also has the privilege of documentary records: “…Documentation is presented as the only result of art, which is understood as a way of life, as something that lasts, as the production of history….”

Apart from that, it is unquestionable that the assembly process in Galeras responds to the definition of those types of “works that are executed during a process of intersocial action or that are inserted in the social fabric and occur in response to the demands of that society….”

The assembly process in Galeras?more than its final product, a painted cloth?consists basically in an artistic action that, as Magaly Espinoza proposes, was inserted in the concrete social fabric of the community of Galeras, despite the fact that it was conceived and executed in response to the unresolved social demands of the women of this community.

But this is not a project for redemption and salvation of oppressed women; it is not about promoting or carrying out a program of social revindications. Nor is it about a popular educational project, of suddenly transforming humble village women into career artists. Restrepo’s intentions respond to valid conceptual concerns, which he has been expressing in accordance with the general issues of expanding categories, which we pointed out at the onset of our essay. Attitudes that acquire full meaning upon confronting them from a broad perspective of experimentation, of searching for forms and of uncommon terms for artistic communication.

Given the end result, the assembly process in Galeras still constitutes a decisive change of direction in the sense that, to a great extent, it responds formally and stylistically to the forms and definitions of the artist’s earlier work: An abstract composition executed on canvas, which cam be analyzed as a dynamic ensemble of lines, shapes and figures insinuated from a sequence of brief rectangular strokes of a brush. In this sense he should occupy a coherent place within the lengthy path of evolution and maturity that the structural ideas of tonality and color have undergone throughout the extensive works painted by Jorge Restrepo.

Given the characteristic of its collective execution, the assembly process in Galeras constitutes a critical link, a key starting point towards other modalities of participative art that the artist will adopt in the extensive deployment maneuvers that his complex conceptions have undergone. An example of this are other samples, other subsequent artistic actions: Among them we can mention: “Divestitures,” “The Farmers’ Market” (exhibition in the marketplace), “Beyond the Tangible” (sample for the visually impaired), “Orchestra” (concert of cell phones), “Christmas” (mail art), “Carpet” plus the collective performances “Planetary I,” “Negentropy,” “Moon-bathing,” and “Breath” (at Benalcazar Secondary School in Cali, Colombia).

7. Insertion in the social fabric

All artistic creations have as their objective and function to penetrate the texture of society. But this inevitable and necessary contact can happen, to a greater or lesser extent, a greater or lesser depth, with greater or lesser breadth, with permanent consequences and effects, or with ephemeral and intranscendent results.

The strategy of broad social insertion developed by Jorge Restrepo has consisted, on the one hand, of a series of ruptures and alternative proposals as to media, forms and spaces for the creation; on the other hand he has insisted on questioning (and breaking with) the traditional idea of public by means of a policy of inclusions that influence and affect some artistically insignificant layers of the social fabric: the visually impaired, fishwives, students of technical careers, unemployed women, religious believers. In this sense the assembly process in Galeras will only define and potentiate their full significance when they are considered within this general strategy as a phrase that builds lines of meaning to take root in the preceding phrases and those that are consistent within the context of a process of conceptual expansion, of including uncommon elements that respond to an ample game of deconstructions, reformulations and redefinitions that are still open to infinite possibilities.

Now it would be opportune to accept and answer the basic questions that Vélez proposes as a starting point. Art for whom? What is its purpose? For what does the work serve?

The re-formulating effect of Restrepo’s work has been expanding its radiations constantly in response to a strategy of a broad geodesic territorial distribution. Broadly speaking, we can point out four complex territories towards where this strategy is oriented and where it has been operating (individual exhibitions):

1. Within Colombia: the French Alliances in Bogotá, Manizales and Bucaramanga; the COMFANDI Cultural Center in Cali; the Museum Home of Don Juan de Vargas, the town clerk of Tunja; and the University Museum in Medellín.

2. In Central America: Museum of the Honduran Man, National Gallery of Art, the Cultural Center of Spain, and the French Alliance of Tegucigalpa, the Cultural Center Sampedrano, Honduras, the French Alliances of Managua and León, Municipal Library of Estelí, Codex Gallery of Managua, the Art Gallery of San Salvador, Cultural Project “The Site” and the Metropolitan Cultural Center of Guatemala.

3. Other internationals: Franz Mayer Museum, México DF, Mexico; Museum of Modern Art, Santa Cruz, Bolivia; Latin Union, Montevideo, Uruguay; A Photo School-Photographic Library of Entre Ríos, Paraná, Entre Ríos and Zonadearte, Quilmes, BA, Argentina; Dhaka, Bangladesh; Fairgrounds, Columbus Junction, Iowa; Hoek Stedelijk Museum, Roermond, Netherlands; ExG Gallery, Pälkäne Finland; House of Italy, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic; MIDAC, Belforte del Chienti, Macerata, Italy.

Thus we form a map of vast global movements, on which we should superimpose another image of displays formed by the spectrum of distribution among the collections and the collectors (also disperse throughout our planet) who have acquired this artist’s works:

4. Collections: Argentina, Australia, Belize, Brazil, Canada, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Germany, Guatemala, Israel, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Malta, Mexico, Moldova, Netherlands, Panama, Rumania, Russia, Spain, Sweden, South Africa, Surinam, Taiwan, Turkey, United Kingdom, Uruguay and USA.

Nevertheless, to wrap up our exposition, we insist once more: Art for whom?

The systematic attack that Jorge has developed against the traditional definitions of artist, artistic work, art exhibitions and especially of the public has become proverbial. His multiple forms?indirect or virtual?of discovering, convoking, alluding to and affecting the uncommon publics make an impression. Restrepo was born with a generous gift in the form of a fine sixth sense that enables him to track, explore and develop new groups of public?uncommon and unknown. All within a vast strategy not only aimed at extracting art from its petrified traditions and its watertight compartments (museums, galleries, private collections), but also oriented towards confronting “the banal and diffuse esthetization of the world,” which is a mercantile consequence of globalization. On the other hand, it is also necessary to come up with new spaces, dare to circulate in front of publics alienated for centuries, somewhat like the attitude of someone who can get blood out of stone.

If a more precise definition is required of that broad public alluded to, convoked and roused by Jorge Restrepo, we could refer to that public formed by “the community that does not have community,” as Georges Bataille would say. Or argue like Bouriaud states, belonging to a community of “migrant identities” or to a “spored community,” of which José Luís Brea speaks.** But rather let us allude to a certain “expanded public,” with a permanently open definition, in a constant process of expansion, so that it corresponds to the levels of scope and penetration reached even now by the concepts, categories and rules that, at the rhythm of the new advances of electronic communication, determine and govern that vast and boiling scene defined by the critics and theorists as the “expanded field of the visual arts.”

**“Predisposed to a political nomadism detached from any firm settlement –committed to the diaspora of a spored community, disperse in small independent cells – seems to be the sign of any new strategy for fighting, for resistance.” (José Luís Brea, “Produce to be produced,” op. cit.)

Managua-Tegucigalpa

November-December 2009

Translated by Gertrude Brekelbaum, PhD

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