Gabriela Golder and Mariela Yeregui. Escrituras, 2014-2016; neon installation; variable dimensions. Photo: Alejandro Lipszyc

Tania Puente: How did you become interested in developing Escrituras?

Gabriela Golder: This project was selected from an open call for site-specific artistic projects that the city government organized. Part of the rules were to think of a neighborhood we’d like to intervene, and one of the given options was La Boca. We chose it because there’s a rising tension right now in this area, between the real estate development and the longstanding inhabitants of the neighborhood. Apart from economic issues, there’s also an identity struggle between its residents. Every group in the neighborhood tries to constantly reaffirm its own identity, instead of recognizing themselves as part of a wider community. In historical terms, La Boca is a neighborhood born from Italian immigration. Nowadays, there is a different kind of immigration, mostly from the bordering countries—a more marginalized population.

In looking at this overall picture, we thought La Boca would be a very interesting place to find interstices to get into and to start working with those who inhabit this place. A public space installation necessarily has to consider and be developed with others. If it is not done this way, it becomes an imposition.

TP: What was your approach towards this context?

GG: To begin with, we had to start understanding this particular urban tissue. One of our main questions was how to look at La Boca. This neighborhood carries a big cliché regarding its touristic activity while, at the same time, being considered one of Buenos Aires’ most dangerous neighborhoods. How could we escape those preconceived ideas? In order to understand it, we discovered we needed a new map—one that could be traced through a series of workshops.

Gabriela Golder. Photo: Gelen Márquez

TP: What did those workshops consist of?

GG: We designed four workshops in which artists from different disciplines developed activities around a renewed understanding of this space. Everyone could join these workshops, whether or not they lived in La Boca. One of these sessions was dedicated to the sounds of the neighborhood. With small recorders, the assistants would register the sound landscape, such as the water running in the sewers, the noise from the soccer field, and the sirens. Because of the loud noises that came from the stadium, many houses have gigantic cracks in their walls. The second workshop consisted in thinking about how to become invisible in this given space. This idea had to do with how these inhabitants are ignored most of the time to privilege a touristic approach of the zone.[1] A third workshop focused on the writings on the walls, and how passers-by “read” this area. The last workshop aimed for a visual intervention. Each participant was given some sort of cartographer’s kit, with pencils, a notebook, and colors. They recreated the space, noting cracks, holes, and small details that were never repaired, in order to write down and trace a broader image of these streets.

After each workshop, all the participants would gather and write their impressions on Post-its, which would be later posted on a map. We made a first selection of the strongest phrases with all the neighbors, and afterwards, we cut it down to restrain the number of characters.

Gabriela Golder and Mariela Yeregui. Escrituras, 2014-2016; neon installation; dimensions variable. Photo: Alejandro Lipszyc

TP: Do the signs follow a specific order?

GG: We wanted to interweave a narrative. The main sentence is El terreno se vuelve a mover [The ground is moving again], located on the highway, and from there, the other messages radiate. Nevertheless, one can read just a single phrase and still try to decipher a random narrative. Despite our poetic interest, we faced many problems regarding the places where the signs were going to be installed. We had to talk to the neighbors and explain to them that these signs weren’t selling anything—they were just pointing at some thoughts. There’s a huge responsibility in fostering a thought. The residents questioned the signs’ functionality. Some of them really wanted the signs on their facades, so they would light up that part of the street. Because of the electricity, this is a very fragile project. Anyone can cut the power source. We are thinking of ways to make it less vulnerable.

Gabriela Golder and Mariela Yeregui. Escrituras, 2014-2016; neon installation; dimensions variable. Photo: Alejandro Lipszyc

TP: The locations of the pieces are relevant, as this is a project with a clear cartographical intention. Despite not being about identifying specific places, the project indicates the community’s intersubjectivity.

GG: That is correct. We cannot deny the implicit power discourse this territory possesses in terms of the official history, where, from the clichéd perspective, locals aren’t considered in what is indicated. How can we think of this place beyond the official discourse? Museums and tourist spots are indicated, but what about the drugstore or the mechanical workshop? Do these places still count? With this counter-signage project, we are tracing a different map—one that distances away from the official discourse. 

TP: In going through all the files uploaded onto the project’s website, I was thinking that this piece has become an intersubjective neighborhood archive—one that implies an individual stare that simultaneously turns into a collective in front of the public eye.

GG: There are many pictures where you see different hands writing: each one of them is a hand from a body that is rewriting its own place. At the same time, this process is collective because those appraisals were gathered in collective drifts. It’s all about discovering the same place together from an individual point of view.

Gabriela Golder and Mariela Yeregui. Escrituras, 2014-2016; neon installation; variable dimensions. Photo: Alejandro Lipszyc

TP: As well as remembering…

GG: Yes, just like the cracks on the walls, the peculiarities of each street, the plants that start growing in the interstices, these are the signs that provide evidence on how time passes by. The way we look at things and spaces can turn repetitive—we stop noticing small changes. But our main aim is to look at this place intensely, to shake the context, and to be able to forge an individual stare—one that has the ability to be interwoven with other stares and that constantly reflects the past, in private history and life.

Escrituras: un proyecto de contraseñalética urbana will be on view through May 2017.

[1] Apart from being famous for its soccer team, La Boca shelters Caminito, a pintoresque street with colorful houses and local souvenirs. It is one of the main tourist attractions in Buenos Aires.

León Ferrari and Ricardo Pons. Casa Blanca (White House), 2005; recording of performance; 6’32”. Courtesy of Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires. Photo: Tania Puente.

While Ferrari’s piece might reinforce a strong position toward international politics, specifically those of the U.S., the overall attitude of the artists in Excéntricos y Superilustrados is not one that claims or strives for a new center; inside and outside of the art world, these artists’ professional and personal paths have always been marginal, and it is from the borders that they have been able to find creative and performative freedom. This methodology is confirmed using four sections that are the exhibition’s organizing principles: political thought, experimental language, style and the representation of identity, and the figure of the artist.

Present at all times are the small gestures of the artists and an undeniable care for self-representation and awareness. Luis Pazos and Liliana Maresca criticize Argentinian political discourse through parody and personification. In Súperman Contra la Pálida (Superman v. the Bad News, 1982), Pazos embodies a weak Superman who is looking for a job in Buenos Aires, while Maresca dresses up as a posh lady and poses in front of the Government House for Marcos López’s lens in the series Liliana Maresca Frente a la Casa de Gobierno (Liliana Maresca Outside the Government House, 1984). In Blister Cognitivo (Cognitive Blister, 2002-2016), artist Lux Lindner places a series of books on scales. The book titles vary, from Argentinian classics such as La Escuela Ultrapampeana by Domingo F. Sarmiento, to sociopolitical manuals like Bases para una Argentina Moderna 1976–80, to L’Empire des Signes by Roland Barthes. With the elements stacked and weighed together, the piece poses questions regarding the way ideologies are measured, learned, and valued.

Lux Lindner. Blister Cognitivo (Cognitive Blister), 2002-2016; scales and books; variable dimensions. Courtesy of Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires. Photo: Tania Puente.

Language is a major subject for these artists, and the way each relates to verbal communication is portrayed with a wide range of outcomes. Xul Solar’s invented language Neocriollo (1920s)—which mixes Spanish and Portuguese—serves as a historical starting point, and is shown concordant to Lux Lindner’s reprisal of the language, now distorted in the fashion of the early cybernetic era in an untitled work (ND). Ricardo Carreira reflects on calligraphy, syllables, morphemes, and nouns, in Untitled (ca. 1990) and Palabra y Error (Word and Error, ca. 1990), and Fabio Kacero rewrites historical passages to offer alternative versions to this reality in the artist’s book Estamos a Principios de 1969… (We Are at the Start of 1969…, 2016). What the spelling mistakes, marks, and annotations on Lindner’s, Carreira’s and Kacero’s documents and typewritten texts unveil is what remains hidden most of the time; the visibility of the writing process and its structures are revealed and shown to be essential to the texts’ experimentation.

Fernanda Laguna. Carta (Letter), 2008; text and photographs. Courtesy of Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires. Photo: Tania Puente.

Fashion has a privileged place in this show. Delia Cancela and Pablo Mesejean’s creations not only speak to the development of Argentina’s clothing industry, but also regard fashion as a rebellion and a vehicle to reaffirm one’s identity. With this action, the artists end up erasing the barrier between art and fashion.

Delia Cancela and Pablo Mesejean. Chica Pelo Negro con Camisa de Estrellas (Girl with Black Hair and Star Shirt), 1967; mixed media on paper. Courtesy of Henrique Faría Buenos Aires.

If there’s an evident withdrawal from artists operating within a singular discipline—as this exhibition exemplifies—what, if anything, confines what an artist’s job is supposed to be? Can artists be poets, or wanderers, or TV stars? Federico Manuel Peralta Ramos, one of Argentina’s most outrageous contemporary artists, appears in a few episodes of Tato Bores’ TV show. In appearances by the artist on several programs presented by Tato Bores, he confesses to Tato his desire to cope with present times by going with the flow, as well as his efforts to be a modern figure recognized by the youth. While saying so, his gaze wanders through the TV set. He looks something like a prophet, and clearly like an outlaw—an awkward presence who does not belong there. But still his persona lingers, and makes people laugh.

Exhibition view with dresses by Delia Cancela and Pablo Mesejean. Courtesy of Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires. Photo: Tania Puente.

Mariano Blatt and Isaac Díaz’s poem Ahora (Now, 2014), and Fernanda Laguna’s Carta (Letter, 2008) are equally tender and raw. Maybe the core lies in these brutal impulses toward the truth. These artists do not hesitate in showing themselves as funny characters. They rejoice in their oddness, in their outrageous occurrences and abundant wisdom. Throwing worms into a dollhouse, writing a letter, babbling a new language, taking pictures, dictating a conference, walking a dog, or reading a poem, Eccentrics and Ultra-Enlightened is a show that outlines simple gestures that are made with a high dose of vulnerability. These gestures are the means of resistance, capable of reshaping not only the preconceptions we might have of art, but also of life.

Excéntricos y Superilustrados will be on view through October 23, 2016, at the Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires.