Art and Activism in Latin America is a Despina project, with the support from the Dutch organization Prince Claus Fund. The project extends for three years (2016, 2017 and 2018). Each year, a theme guides a series of actions, including occupations, workshops, film screenings, exhibitions, public talks and a residency programme. For this third edition, the theme was DISSENT AND DESTRUCTION.

Theme’s presentation
by Consuelo Bassanesi and Guilherme Altmayer

Like an earthquake, artistic and activist practices, through avant-garde and revolutionary actions, are capable of causing cracks in structures regarded as unshakeable. Discordant forms of life organization have long coexisted – equidistant, clandestine, or even in conflict – within normative and dominant models.

Given the incontestable failing of current social and political systems, which are still founded on inequality, indifference and injustice, what other forms of survival will be possible from this dystopian scenario?

Based on this question, we propose to articulate connected strategies of action in order to make the overthrow, the collapse and the implosion of the hegemonies possible: to think of new futures.

In this third year of Despina’s Art and Activism in Latin America project, we will look at those who turn discontent into incendiary ideas and everyday conspiracies, having as tools of struggle collaborative spaces for insurrection and configurations of networks of counter-conduct.

Among topics as relevant and urgent as racism, mass displacement, cuir, indigenous extermination, gender violence, fake news, political persecution, normative processes and moralization of bodies, discourses and practices; we will welcome proposals permeating fields such as artificial intelligence, crypto-coins, hacktivism, algorithms, network regulation, afro-futurism, deconstruction of whiteness, legal activism, active education methodologies, community health, alternative spaces and systems of art and culture, alternative agricultural practices, speculative fiction, among many others.

We look for dissonant existences, ongoing tensions, radical positions; not as mere allegories but as the opening of loopholes in the economic, political and social operating systems. Transgressions that offer alternatives to cohabit the present, in full acceleration of the process of the ruins, which we can no longer stand to contradict without counter attacking.

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The artists selected to participate in the residency this year were: Ana Lira (Brasil), Danitza Luna (Bolivia) and Felipe Rivas (Chile). During the months of May and June, they held workshops at Despina and developed their researches and projects in response to the new environment and network. They also participated in a series of activities, such as talks, seminars and visits to public universities. At the end of the residency, the whole process was gathered in the exhibition “Dissent and Destruction”.

Two highlights of this year’s editon: the act-intervention “Strange Night: care, coexistence, agency”, conceived by Gabe Passareli, Marta Supernova, Clarissa Ribeiro and Lorran Dias, in dialogue with the life, work and poetics of Matheusa Passareli + the workshop-process: “Active cartography of Networks of Care and Creation”, coordinated by artist and researcher Cristina Ribas.

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PROGRAMME

APRIL AND MAY

Apr 21st, 28th & May 5th 1 pm
Workshop-process: Active cartography of networks of care and creation. With artist and researcher Cristina Ribas.

MAY AND JUNE

May 1st
Beggining of the residency with selected artists for this edition: Ana Lira (Recife, Brazil), Danitza Luna (Bolivia) and Felipe Rivas San Martin (Chile).

May 17th 7 pm
Public talk with Ana Lira, Danitza Luna and Felipe Rivas San Martin.

May 19th, 22nd, 24th, 26th & 29th; Jun 5th & 7th – various times
Feminist graphic workshop “Nuestra venganza es ser felices” (Our vengeance is to be happy) with Danitza Luna.

May 28th; Jun 4th, 11th, 18th & 25th 6 pm
Collective workshop “About an insurgent feeling” with Ana Lira.

May 30th 7 pm
Strange Night: Care, Coexistence, Agency. Intervention-act conceived by Gabe Passareli, Marta Supernova, Clarissa Ribeiro and Lorran Dias – in conversation with the life, works and poetics of Matheusa Passareli.

June 7th 11 am
Public seminar with Ana Lira, Danitza Luna and Felipe Rivas San Martín at UERJ (University of the state of Rio de Janeiro).

Jun 14th 7 pm
Opening of the exhibition “Dissent and Destruction”, bringing together the researches and processes developed by Ana Lira, Danitza Luna and Felipe Rivas San Martín during their residency in Rio de Janeiro.

Jun 21st 6:30 pm
Workshop “Queer Retrofuturism” with Felipe Rivas San Martín.

Jun 22nd 6:30 pm
Despina Cine Club presents: “13th” (Ava DuVernay, USA, 100’, 2016) + talk with Luciane Ramos (Magazine O Menelick 2° Ato) & Renata Codagan (Universidade das Quebradas, UFRJ) + special guided visit to the exhibition “Dissent and Destruction” with Danitza Luna.

Jun 23rd 3 pm
Launch of the book “Multitud Marica” by Felipe Rivas San Martín + screening of sex-dissident videos.

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ABOUT THE ARTISTS IN RESIDENCY

Ana Lira is a Brazilian artist who lives and works in Recife (Pernambuco, Brazil). Her work seek to discuss political experiences and collective actions as processes of mediation. Power relations and implications in the dynamics of communication are among the main issues of her art projects, which articulate visual narratives, press material, printed media and independent publications. She is a specialist in Theory and Criticism of Culture and in recent years has  developed independent research and curatorial work, as well as educational projects articulated with visual arts. Lira has participated in more than seven collectives for two decades. She is the head of the educational projects Visual Cities, Entre-Frestas and Possible Circuits, the latter related to the elaboration of photo-books and photo-zines. She received the 2015 Funarte Arte Contemporânea Award for the Non-Dito exhibition, which was presented at MABEU / CCBEU in Belém do Pará (2017) and at Capibaribe Centro da Imagem, in Recife (2015). She is the author of the book Voto, published by Pingado Prés, in 2014 (1ª ed.) and 2015 (2ª ed.). The book is part now of the São Paulo Pinacoteca collection and also of the Museum of UFPA Photo-book Collection. She is also a researcher in audiovisual projects – currently Lira is doing a research for the Terrane project, a visual narrative about women working in construction in the Brazilian semi-arid region, an experience related to the Casa da Mulher do Nordeste  (“Northeast Women’s House”). During her residency at Despina, Ana investigated the relationships between invisibility and power, through the mapping of knowledge and the sharing of information-culture which does not pass through large communication circuits. She also coordinated the workshop “On an Insurgent Feel”.

Danitza Luna is a Bolivian cartoonist and graphic designer who lives and works in La Paz. Graduated in Visual Arts from the Universidad Mayor de San Andrés, specializing in sculpture. Since 2011, she has been part of the anarcho-feminist movement “Mujeres Creando”, one of the most important and influential political platforms in the country, which develops artistic intervention and performance projects in public spaces, as well as art and screen printing workshops and educational programs in universities and women’s unions. Amongst the recent exhibitions she participated as part of “Mujeres Creando”, we highlight:  “Muros Blandos”, held at the Salvador Allende Solidarity Museum in Santiago de Chile (2017), where she developed, alongside artists and activists Esther Angollo and Maria Galindo, a series of provocative and ironic murals that brought the attention to some political and religious controversies around the discussions on gender identity. In 2016, she developed (also with Esther and Maria) a commissioned work for the Bolivian International Biennial of Arts –  the public intervention projects “Altar Blasfemo” and “Escudo Anarco-Feminista Antichauvinista”, which took place on the external wall of the National Museum of Art City of La Paz. In 2015, she participated in the Medellin International Art Meeting – “Historias Locales / Prácticas Globales”, in Colombia, where she coordinated with other members of the collective the screen printing workshop  “Grafica Feminista, No acepto ser cosificada” in the Muesu of Antioquia. The results of this experiment were displayed on a public mural in the streets of Medellin. During her residency in Rio de Janeiro, Luna coordinated a “Feminist Graphic Workshop”, which took place at Despina on 7 different dates during the months of May and June. The results of these meetings were compiled into a publication distributed free of charge for the public.

Felipe Rivas San Martín is a Chilean artist living and working in Valencia, Spain, where he is a fellowship PhD student at the National Commission for Scientific and Technological Research (CONICYT) – Polytechnic University of Valencia (UPV). He holds a Master’s Degree in Visual Arts from the University of Chile. His practice includes painting, drawing, performance, video and it’s related to technological image (virtual interfaces, digital codecs). He is the co-founder of the Sexual Dissidence Student Collective (CUDS), and has been participating in this activism platform since 2002. He also directed the magazines “Torcida” (2005) – about culture and queer criticism, and Disidenciasexual.cl (2009). Rivas links activism and artistic production with research, text and curatorship in relation to arts, politics and technologies, queer theory, post-feminism and performativity. During his residence in Rio de Janeiro, Felipe will present questions that go through his research, such as the disciplinary and control technologies to which homosexual bodies are subjected. In order to do so, he intends to use as an initial focus the case of the homosexuals of Rio de Janeiro in the 30’s of last century, when they served as object of study for the book “Homosexuality and Endocrinology” (Leonidio Ribeiro, 1938). These techniques have been updated with the new data logic and computational algorithms, including projects that aim to identify the sexual orientation of people based on biometric and algorithmic analyzes. The notion of “data” has a double meaning: on the one hand, it refers to the data, that is, to the phenomenon of “computerization of sexuality”. On the other hand, “data” refers to time (“Date” means “Data” in Portuguese). According to Felipe, these technologies of power go beyond time, and force activism to think about the timing of struggles. Hence arises his proposal of a “QueerRetrofuturism” as a methodology to address these problems of current activism alongside the technologies of power. “QueerRetrofuturism” intends to project the future of power and of the “maricas” struggles, through a look on the past of confrontations and experiences of violence.

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PICTURES GALLERY 1 (horizontal scrolling)
Residency programme, meetings, talks, seminars, workhops, etc.
Photos by Frederico Pellachin

PICTURES GALLERY 2 (horizontal scrolling)
“Strange Night: Care, Coexistence, Agency”
Photos by Denise Adams

PICTURES GALLERY 3 (horizontal scrolling)
Exhibition “Dissent and destruction” 
Photos by Denise Adams and Frederico Pellachin

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ART AND ACTIVISM IN LATIN AMERICA – YEAR III (2018)