iniva® Introduction - Beyond the Fantastic 1995 Gerardo Mosquera, Introduction’ In: Beyond the Fantastic: Contemporary At Criticism from Latin America, Edited by Gerardo Mosquera, London: Institute of international Visual Ars, 1995, pp. 10-17. This book is a selection of new theoretical discourses on the visual arts in Latin America, dealing withthe critical thought characteristic ofthe 1980s, which is stil current today. They constitute a distinctive corpus of writing, @ revision of the prevailing paradigms from the early 1960's when Marta Traba published the frst book to approach Latin American artin a global manner, attempting to give the subject some conceptual unity. [1 This established a Latin Americanist social theory of art that, although diverse and often polemical, discussed the particulars of Latin American arin relation to culture and society, and which lasted for two decades. The authors included in his book are products of this process, butthey reposition itn accordance with the demands of a new period and within the framework ofa critique of modernity, and of the end of a tragic utopia. In some cases the paradigms are adapted, in others they are rejected, but even when completely new wewpoints and strategies are introduced, the discourses are stl centred in the notion of Latin America 28 a distinctive cultural feld. While it may be simplistic to label this new moment as postmodem, there can be no doubt thatitis conditioned by poststructuralism, cultural studies, and what we tend to call a postmodern awareness. ‘Throughout the 1960s and 1970s Latin American artcrtcism experienced a boom that involved such great names as dan Acha, Aracy Amaral, Damian BaySn, Fermin Foe, Néstor GarcAa Candin, Mrko Lauer, Frederico Morais, Mario. Pedrosa, Marta Traba and others who responded to Acha's plea forthe production of theories. (2) This was a reaction to the dominance of impressionism and of metaphorical interpretations with the Latin American traiton of poetic cxitcism, the greatest exponent of which is perhaps Octavio Paz. Most ofthese crites were not creative writers, as was (and stills) common, and theyattempted io constructa socialybased modem Latin American theory, similar to that which hag already been established witinIierar theory. Broad paradigms were explored (baroque, constructive vocation, imestizaj, ete) in te search fora continental identi, while atthe same ime the issue ofidentty- so characteristic of Latin American thought- began tobe called into doubt along with the paradigms that had created it (3] With some, especially Frederico Morais, the crue ofan identity neurosis'reached its most radical exreme, linking it with colonial manipulation and forwarding @ ‘plural, diverse and multifaceted’ notion ofthe continent thatwas to influence subsequent developments.) ‘The backbone ofthese theories was a social and politcal view, with an emphasis on Ideology, which was ant-colonial ‘and ant-mperialist. is most productive result was the affirmation ofa Latin-American cultural perspective opposed to Eure-North American dominance, along withthe construction of strategies for art to become socially relevant. There were some extraordinary experiments that were left undeveloped, such as Morais's ‘New Criticism’, which involved the eriic’s intervention in the work of ar being discussed - especially appropriate forthe installations and performances of socially aware Brazilian conceptual ar, Sometimes these theories bordered on ‘sociolagism' or proposed the socialization of art as the utopia of a general concern for an increased role of artin society. this respect there were strong influences from Marsism and dependency theory, both fundamental ideas for Latin American consciousness atthe time, Fortunately, this Narsism was undogmatic, Independent, contextual, free of inks with the Communist Party or even Cuban orthodoxy, Latin America has always produced Mandsts who could incorporate modemism, with the precedent ofthe brillant Peruvian intellectual and politician José Carlos Mériategui, who in the 1920s supported the artistic avant-garde from a militant Manist perspective, a unique combination anywhere in the world atthat ime, ‘These radical discourses coincided almost exactly withthe politcal and social situation in Latin America during the 1960s and 1970s. These decades were strongly marked by the ‘Sixes Spirit in its most political sense, influenced to a great degree by tne Cuban Revolution and the activity that generated across the continent. In fact, much ofthis spirit was actively created within Latin America, to the extent that one could speak of Latin Americanization’ of US culture, This was, a time when Latin America was given a mystical aura, produced by the rise of urban and rural guerrilla movements,student uprisings, Third World-ism [5] ..which in turn unleashed unprecedented levels of repression and resulted in military dictatorships. This had been a time of greathopes inspired by an economic boom (which proved illusory) and by loans that ultimately led to chronic debt and failed to produce any'miracle' in the productive infrastructure, This delirium ‘was given physical fo7m in uncontolled urban expansion, creating some of the largest megalopolises in the world These megalopolises atracted the rural population as part ofa structural deformation, a metaphor for which is the midure of shanty towns, skyscrapers and mountains in Rio de Janeiro or Caracas. Arecord ofthis chaotic imageryis the book Para verte mejor, América Latina with a text by Edmundo Desnoes and photographs by Paolo Gasparini. [6] The lf dreamed ofa free continent in which social justice would reign, while the rightimagined progress towards a developed economy. At this point Latin America’s precarious and petulant semi-modernity reached its most feverish pitch of excitement. Latin America has been the forum for every hope and every failure. Liberation led to dictatorship, torture, ‘disappearances’, criminal violence .. The only sector to develop fully was drug trafficking, while the economic'miracles* moved to South-East Asia, The 1980s saw the end of one cycle and the start of another based on failure. The critics in this anthology all represent to some extent a reaction to this reversal ofa project and its imaginary, strengthening themselves in the stimulated postdiciatorial democratic process. Their ant-utopia is not only he result ofa critique of modernity and its totalisms, but also comes from the collapse of the high ideals of modemization during a specific period ofthis region. Itis partof a new post-utopian thought that is currently one forthe few dynamic spaces fo the Latin ‘American left wing. Contrary to appearances, this new mental panorama is very positive. Itshaws alliting of the burden of great schemes and a greater concentration on small horizontal changes. itimplies not pessimism but pragmatism. Contemporary criticism is in ine with @ new situation that marks a clear break with the processes of he late 1960s and their repressive consequences, accompanies the end of the armed struggle, democratization processes, new- liberalism, globalization, migration and the displacement of culture, the collapse of real socialism, expansion of mass culture and communication, North American multculturalism, so-called new social movements and the calamity ofthe Cuban Revolution. This feeling was summarized by some grafit| saw in Caracas several years ago that said: The dream has bean Castro-ated: {7} There has been a shift from the key concepts of resistance, ‘socialization, ‘ant- colonialism’, and ‘revolution’, which marked earlier retoric, towards ‘articulation’, negotiation’, hybridization’ ‘Se centring’, margins’ and ‘appropriation’ terms that are frequently discussed in this book. The ‘grand policy of vertical transformation has been replaced by specific horizontal micropolicies. ‘Thore is a critique of modemnity- which is very complexin Latin America given its fragmentary characteristics and the weight of non-madern components in our societies - not fa mention a sort of premadern posimademity- or modernity after postmadernity, to use Canclin's term, [8] which is the result ofa diversity of interacting economic, political and cultural structures. This critique involves a questioning of the concepts of nation and national culture that has done a great deal to soften Latin American nationalist fundamentalism. The tendency of contemporary discourse to emphasize the fragment has led to a more pluralist vew of Latin America. This is notto say that previously there was no awareness ofthe diversity of the geographicalhistoricalicultural area (or of each ofits counties), but nonetheless there was an attemptto apply, or manipulate, integrationalist narratives that obscured or minimized social and ethnic ditferences. Recent migratory loods, with their massive uprooting of peoples and cultures, have done a lot fo weaken the paradigm ofnation-state.Atthe same time, the debate on ‘otherness’ has drawn attention to the amount of others! who coexist in countries that have not accepted their multinational character, and the many implications this has. The benefits have been pluralism and a sharper focus, which allow one to particularize specific problems. The risks trat pluralism, used 25 the ideology of contemporary neo-liberalism, can accept difference without threatening the status quo, or even neutvalize conflic's behind a mask of equally, as Yudice, Franco and Flores have pointed out. [9] Beyond anyintellectual vrication, the ‘others’ themselves - in as much as they are ‘others’, and using their own resources - have started to expose the false communion of our nation-states. An example of his is the Frente Zapatista de Chiapas against the ‘perfect dictatorship’ of neoiberal Mexico and NAFTA. These ‘postmodern’ guerrilas have nothing to do withthe ideological and strategic schemes of Che Guevara's foquismo [10] of previous decades; instead their struggle is bom from a specific social and ethnic base, the particular demands of which are fought over without aiming for an all-encompassing revolution. They are closer to the so-called new social movements, albeit using ‘old’ guerrilla tactics. On the other hang, the most effective battles have been fought within language and through a sort of, political performance thraugh the mass media; it has also bean a guerrilla war of the symbolic. New criticism puts forward particular strategies, working on the margins, deconstructing power mechanisms and‘etoric, appropriating and resignifying. This agenda is related to the development ofa socially, politically and culturally aware conceptualism thathas sophisticated the symbolic resources of this type of art in order to discuss the complenity of Latin American societies. iis also related to artistic tendencies that cynically prociaim their customary Latin American freedom to take from the centte and freely and often ‘incorrectly readapt. The complexof being derivative’ has been transformed into pride in the particular skill of appropriating and transforming things to one's own benefit, encouraged by «postmodern breaking-down of the hierarchies between the original and the copy. Paradoxically, new critics are questioning old notions of identityjust when the issue has become relevantto the West as 2 result of multiculturalism. From this debate they lake and develop a dynamic, relational, multiple and polymorphic view of identity, making a plausible break with more orless deep-rooted essential'sms that had affected previous discourses to. certain degree. The increase in migratory movement, along with the consolidation of Latin American communities in the United States and of Latin Americans from ane countryin another, have all contributed to this Uberation of identi. Latin America is a continent of internal and eternal displacement. This situation has sharpened multiple identities and emphasized frontier cultures. Many artists have centred their work on this. There is widespread enthusiasm for ‘hybridization’ a category that critics have underlined as one of the paradigms with which to interpret contemporary culture in the continentin several directions. The previous concept of mestizaje, which was based on ethnocultural identity and for some writers was tainted by an ontological aftertaste, has been replaced by a more dynamic, encompassing and polymorphic notion that nonetheless also runs the risk of becoming another all-encompassing term with which to blur diferences, power relationships and conflicts of interest. ‘There is a tendency on the part of let-wing postmodernist critics to use terms such as hybridization, ‘isplacement, ‘borders’, ‘decentralization’ or 're-articulation’ like mantras of peripheral sociocultural affirmation, with an optimism that prevents a critique of he intemal workings ofthese categories, There is a risk of making carpet slippers for the periphery, constructing a complacencyin subaltemity that prevents a questioning that might stimulats change and blunts the critical blade that should always be tuming upon itself. This contradictory risk arises from a post-colonial critique of the hegemony of the centres of economic and symbolic power, accompanied bya reaffirmation of the margins, one of the most useful achievements of the contributors to this book. ‘The postmodern tendency to break down the divisions between ‘cultured’ and popular has opened the doors to a re- evaluation of indigenous cultures, and to the vernacular in general. The mostimportant achievementis that tis is being done with aless paternalistic slant, Several artists and critics have expressed their astonishment atthe syncretism and spontaneity of urban popular culture, which has become an ican for the new paradigms of appropriation, cesignification and hybridization. Critics of the 1960s and 1970s were suspicious of mass culture, which theyassociated with imperialist penetration and ideological, consumerist and pseudocultural manipulation, Now, in contrast, there is a new appreciation and even a utopian view of tand of kitsch, which has eliminated the Grenbergian distance typical of previous criics. However, the pointis that increasing inteational contact between ‘high’ and Yow’ cultures - which has always been an important factor in Latin America - implies more of a mutual exchange of signifiers and resources between fields that nonetheless remain separate with regard to their signers and specific circuits. The supposed breaking down of distinctions is a postmodem utopia, Beyond the Fantastic presents a selection of new theoretical discourses on Latin American visual ars in one volume for the first ime, bringing together the mostimportant exponents of the new criticism. The tile, taken from one ofthe texts, alludes to the stereotype of the marvellous $0 common in the expectations of European and North American audiences with regard to Latin America, an assumption that is radically called into question by hese critics. Some of the writers included, like Canclini and Lauer, were also leading figures of a previous moment. Canclini moved rapidly from a sociology of a and Gramscian Marxism towards cultural studies, becoming a leading contemporary citc. Lauer is a good example of how rigid chronologies are, for while he is a bridge to the current phase, as is Aracy Amaral who is stil active and influential, they both continue to favour the sociological viewpoint characteristic ofthe earlier period. !have Included Lauer's texts for their importance to the structure of the anthology. Ths anthology alms to show the current issues under discussion, along with different positions, methodologies and discursive strategies. latempts to place a fair emphasis on traditional and popular aesthetic-symbolic production, although this sectoris not central to the book. There is a similar concern with Ao- and Indo-American presences in the visual ars. In Latin America, more than in other regions, vsual culture is decisively determined by vernacular production, Tals book aims to find a balance in this sense, despite being aimed at art critics and artists, leaving aside anthropologists or scholars of cultural studies.‘The map of Latin American | had in mymind when selecting the text covers the whole American continent, including the Caribbean and the United States (one of the countries with the most active Latin American cultures, as well as being the fifth Spanish-speaking nation after Mexico, Spain, Colombia and Argentina, and projected to be the third or fourth within @ ‘ow years). However, this collection has aimed to be representative not of countries but of authors, while tying to include the broadest geographical and cultural base possible, as well as an even gender balance. Neither is ita survey of critics ities to structure its own discourse as a book through @ conjunction of issues, authors and discourses. ‘The anthology opens with an essay by Candini that incorporates the second chapter of, and part of the introduction to, his influential book Culturas HAbridas. l'serves as a ganeral framework for the anthology by crically presenting the sociocultural situation in Latin America and the issues to be discussed in terms of a rethinking of modemity and in relation to contemporary processes. The short texts by Giunta and Herkenhoff expand and specify some of te basic Issues. Lauer analyses the relationship between medernity and Indo-American cultures, the construction of indigenism* and the possibilty of an ‘other’ modemity. Escobar debates the issue of change - in response to the contemporary situation - in traditional and popular ar, within dynamic identity criteria. The construction of a Caribbean identtyis atthe centre of Bocquet’s article and is also present in my own, which presents a case of he appropriation of mademism in the search fora non-Western means of expression. Richard has offen discussed the issue ofresignification as a key strategy for Latin American culture, as well as remapping the new relationship between the cenires and the peripheries; her essays on these topics are here supplemented by her text of feminism and its application to the work of several Chilean artists. There is a very close relationship between Camnitzors concepiual art and his writngs on the wsual ars, which are often interpretations of te art of the centres seen from a Latin American perspective. twas important that this anthology should include the voices of artists who write, and Camnitzer has focused on their relationship with the mainstream and on the transcultural prablems of the esiled artist. The critic Yoarra-Frausto offers an analysis of Chicano artand culture that serves as an example of the condition of Latin American communities in the United States. Gomez: PeAta is another artist who connects his visual and textual discourses closely, developing the paradigm of the border as 2 privileged site for contemporary culture, together with the issue of multiple identites. Yidice erltcises the ‘exportation’ of North American multiculturalism, puting the case fora truly pluralist cultural valuaton. The intemational circulation of Latin American artis dealt with by RamAezand by Ponce de Leén, who analyse control from the cenives ang its cultural Implications. Monica Amor erticises the new emphasis on pluralityin Latin American art exhibitions that s replacing the ‘fantastic paradigm, going ‘beyond the fantastic’. Olalquiaga's essay/is one of the mostradical examples of valuation of vernacular urban culture, Peluffo Linari discusses the construction of a modem national identity in Uruguay through an analysis of urban monuments. Buntinxs essay explores the intertwined relationship between art, polities and social communication, through the analysis oftwo specific works that reflect a particularly complexmoment in Peruvian history, emphasizing the reconstruction of an aura in ‘cultured’ works through popular perception. The book ends with a text by Lauer that could almostactas a readjustment ofthe anthology itself, or at leastas a very apposite warning against certain posimodemist deliriums thatignore the dire social situation ofthe continent. Alongside globalization and decentralization, poverty remains the same, Atleast, [have not yet heard of postmodern poverty. [1] Marta Traba, La pintura nueva en Latinoamérica (Bogotd, 1961), [2] Juan Acha, Hacia una critica de arte como productora de teorAas’, Artes Visuales, 13 (Mexico Cily, 1977), [3] Mestizaje: refers to the racial and cuftural mixof European, indian and Aican descendants typical of Latin American society [translators note, [4] Frederico Moraise, Las artes plasticas en la América Latina: del trance a lo transitiio (Havana, 1990) pp.4-5. First published in 1979, Pages 5-17 summarize the development of Latin American art criticism prior to the new stage on which this anthology focuses, See also Juan Acha, La crica de arte en Latinoamerica’, Re-Vista, 13 (Medellin, 1979), pp.18-22. [5] From the Spanish term tercermundismo, a theory that defends the partcular characteristics of Third World culture [translator's note}. [6] Edmundo Desnoes and Paolo Gasparini, Para verte mejor, (Mexico City. América Latina, 1972), [7] in Spanish:'E? sueAso se Castré, a pun on Fidel Castro‘name and castration [tanslation note} [B] Néstor GarcAa Canciini, Culturas HAbridas (Mexico City: Grijalbo, 1989), p. 19. [9] George Yudice, Jean Franco and Juan Flores,’ Introduction’ to On Edge: The Crisis of Contemporary Latin AmericanCutture (Minneapolis and London, 1992) pp. 18-19. [10] Foquismo: the theory of stimulating focal points of revolution as a global strategy ranslator's note] Find out more