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frank elbaz: Etc�tera... Curated by Claire Fontaine - 12 Apr 2008 to 17 May 2008 Current Exhibition |
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Etcetera...is something that doesn't have to be defined Something that comes next and it's not determined, it's the other name of the future. Etcetera...from the Latin word "et , that means "and"; and "cetera/ceterum", "else". The word used to interrupt the discourse suggesting the omission of what should be told. It's represented by abbreviation etc. Etcetera...is the word that breaks the linguistic system. Etcetera...ends and starts the speech. Etcetera...exists in all languages, that's why it is an ally all over the world. Etcetera...is this present moment and its members cannot be counted. Etcetera...is singular and plural, female and male. Etcetera...may be added, subtracted, divided and multiplied. In late 1997, some artists in their twenties started to experience a collective desire to form a group and to be part of a movement that could interact with different social contexts. The action of bringing art into the public space of protest, was as important for them as the one of displacing the same social conflict into other contexts whose political content was obliterated by the heavy industries of culture and their massive event machines. Etc�tera... was born as a response to a specific political moment. It raised from an unconscious need to forge a generational identity as a reaction against the colonization of culture by the rules of neo-liberal market all along the 90's. Two experiences deeply marked its identity: in the winter of 1998 an abandoned house was occupied by the collective. This building happened to be the old printing workshop of the surrealist artist Juan Andralis (1924-1994) who during the '50 had been part of Andre Breton's group in Paris and once back in Buenos Aires created this workshop along with a publishing house. This building situated in the neighborhood of Abasto was transformed into an art laboratory, an auditorium and a library, in order to make experiences of des-education and autonomy possible and shared. After the encounter with the surrealist archives, the group made the practice of self-teaching, and the investigation of the connections between art and life, the core of its research and experimentation. The other experience that marked Etc�tera... was the participation with the group H.I.J.O.S (Children for Identity and Justice against Forgetting and Silence) to the organization of the Escraches. These practices consist in visiting regularly the habitation of the unpunished torturers of the dictatorship and attracting the attention of the neighbors and the passers-by through performances and symbolic actions. In this theatrical and political space the struggle for justice and memory opened up an occasion for hybridization and elaboration of social changes. Neighbors, students, artists and political organizations could exchange about their different strategies and their respective imaginary on a communal ground of action. This experience turned into a precious laboratory revolving around the new forms of militancy. After ten years of work and struggle Etc�tera... keeps acknowledging the same inequalities masked by a growing political confusion. The work and its uncomfortable position appear to be more necessary than ever. Blurring the borders between sculpture and performance, between art and political action, between poetry and realism, Etc�tera liberates a space to question our habits, our categories of judgment and their consequences on the social level. The construction of their psycho-geopolical map of the present will touch Paris forty years after Mai '68, for no commemoration or nostalgic gesture, but to claim that any space of freedom has to be activated and questioned, today as much as yesterday, in Paris as much as in Buenos Aires. text by Claire Fontaine |
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