CAROLINA CAYCEDO MAKES IN PUERTO RICO A 'PUERTO RICO/COSTA RICA' FLAG FOR FEDERICO HERRERO'S HOUSE IN COSTA RICA

HENRY KLUMB'S HOUSE IN SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO

photos from the archive of the University of Puerto Rico

'CABORCA' NUMERO CERO MAGAZINE ISSUE 5 EDITED BY RITA GONZALEZ

Numero Cero CABORCA
edited by Rita Gonzalez

Numero Cero CABORCA barrows its name from the elusive journal in Roberto Bolaño's 'The Savage Detectives' restlessly sough after by the novel's quasi-fictional protagonists. In Bolaño's thinly-veiled fictional universe, two bohemian writers, Ulises Lima and Arturo Belano, search for a lost Mexican modernist poet named Cesarea Tinajero, once an associate of several poets (fictionalized, but actual historical figures) associated with the Estridentista movement. Bolaño's fractured fiction is fueled by characters in search of lost texts, grasping on to decrepit copies of obscure writings. As i delved into the books, its shadowy themes loomed large in the editorial process for CABORCA, and I decided that I, too, wanted a mercurial compendium of lost and found printed matter.

I asked Latino and Latin American artists, curators, and art historians to summon from memory an important but no longer extant journal that had informed their own scholarship or practice. Like the characters in 'The Savage Detectives', the possession and preservation of the object surfaced as a common thread. There is an investigative spirit summoned at the site of the splayed journals. The contributors to CABORCA perform an autopsy to reconstruct scenarios and settings so far lost to art history. There are accounts of little magazines with short histories as sites for exchange; strident proclamations followed by rebuttals or renouncements; and the germinations of movements and sites for interdisciplinary fomentation.

CABORCA challenged its contributors to come up with models and counter-models from historical examples of Latin American and Latino art publications. A number of contributors chose to critique the very model that Numero Cero CABORCA has proposed as one limited by and relegated to the art world. I tend to think that art and literary publications have a limited audience, but I also know that these same publications can maneuver and circulate in unexpected and refreshing ways, sometimes reaching the "unannointed" (non-art) crowd. these accidental encounters - and for this issue, the accidental" exchanges between Latin American and U.S. Latinos - is fundamental to sustenance of art discourse.

Publications selected by the following contirbutors:
Latin American Art Magazine by Bill Kelley Jr.
Quebrantahuesos by Cristian Silva
Revista Cero by Elvis Fuentes
Rayado sobre el Techo by Gabriela Rangel
Las Moradas by Jose Falconi
Casper by Mario Garcia Torres
Detroit Artists Monthly by C. Ondine Chavoya
Metamorfosis by Tere Romo
Arquitecto by Tobias Ostrander
LaLinea Quebrada by Victor Zamudio Taylor
Filth Saints/Manifestos/Ballons by Arturo Ernesto Romo-Santillano
Artes Visuales by Tomas Ybarra-Frausto

Rita Gonzalez is Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA).

Numero Cero is the magazine of the 2nd Trienal Poli/Grafica de San Juan: America Latina y el Caribe which was curated by Adriano Pedrosa, Julieta Gonzalez and Jens Hoffman. Each issue is organized by an artist, curator or critic.

'SOMEWHERE OVER THE RAINBOW', CIRCA LABS CURATED BY PABLO LEON DE LA BARRA IN SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO

Tropical garden desigend by Radames 'Juni' Figueroa


gran ciudad tropical!





Jose Garcia from Proyectos Monclova, Mexico City
http://www.proyectosmonclova.com/



work by Jose Leon Cerrillo at Proyectos Monclova


Gian Carlo and Renzo from Galeria Revolver, Peru
http://www.revolvergaleria.com




Yoshua Okon's 'Coyoterias' retake on Beuys 'America loves me, and I love America' at Galeria Revolver


Rodrigo Fernandez from Proyectos Ultravioleta, Guatemala
http://www.proyectosultravioleta.com/


view of Proyectos Ultravioleta's container


paper CDs and cases sculpture at Ultravioleta


Stefan Benchoam from Proyectos Ultravioleta selling pirate copies of artist videos


Gerardo Contreras from Preteen Gallery, Hermosillo, Mexico
http://preteengallery.net


teenagers at Preteen gallery


Rafael Rozendahl's webwork at Preteen


Johann, Ana Lidia and Micky from Diablo Rosso, Panama
http://www.diablorosso.com/


view of Diablo Rosso's container


Johnathan Harker's video of mirrored architecture in Panama City



Abstract Caribbean Painting Exhibition


Chemi Rosado's painting '56 days in a rainy tropical forest'


Josue Pellot's sunset painting


Radames 'Juni' Figueroa's coconut fountain


Javier Bosque's 'Peleando la Pampana' (boxing the banana) at the outside mini cinema. Other videos in the video programme included Michael Linares, Monica Rodriguez, and Beatriz Santiago.


Beta-Local's information point
http://www.betalocal.org/


e-flux journal reading table
http://www.e-flux.com/journal


Puerto Rican art magazine Conboca's reading cart
http://www.conboca.org/



reading area, cheap plastic chairs and tables covered with silver tape, designed by Esteban Gabriel


reading table containing the printed material from the past Puerto Rico Triennal curated by Adriano Pedrosa, Julieta Gonzalez and Jens Hoffman...


Radames 'Juni' Figueroa and Esteban Gabriel


legendary Central American gallerist Jacob 'Baby Condor' Karpio


Miami collector Rosa de la Cruz



'Somewhere Over the Rainbow', Pablo Leon de la Barra’s proposal for CIRCA LABS proposes a laboratory to explore possible cultural scenarios in Puerto Rico, it functions as a kind of Village Fair/Market/Open Museum, where invited galleries, some of the most interesting young contemporary galleries from the American continent, take over containers which become ‘rooms’ of an open air museum which doesn’t exist in Puerto Rico yet. In the space between the containers, a social space is created where different local artists and organizations will create an oasis-activation zone. There will also be a bulletin board for cultural proposals for Puerto Rico, a reading area, a hanging painting exhibition and an outdoor cinema. With this, within the art fair CIRCA LABS provides an opportunity to envision future possibilities for cultural life in Puerto Rico and creates a different scenario for market and culture to coexist.

NATALIA VALENCIA 'BAMBI' SINGS AT JUNI AND PABLO'S PARTY IN SAN JUAN

Natalia Valencia 'Bambi' presents her 'Cabaret Mistico Tropical'


Bambi sings 'Todos me Quieren'


Bambi sings 'America', dedicated to Beatriz Lopez and Katy Hernandez, who were not in Puerto Rico because they were discriminated by the USA immigration authorities.


spanish punk female dj


Bubu Negron, Juni Figueroa, Carolina Caycedo


Chaveli Sifre and Mundito de Marchena


Alana and Katalina Iturralde, Johann Wolfschoon in the background


young guatemalan hairline


The Love Boat arriving to San Juan bay at 5am

You can listen to more of Bambi's songs at http://www.myspace.com/nataliaceleste

END THE CULTURAL EMBARGO TO PUERTO RICO NOW! KATY AND BEATRIZ FROM LA CENTRAL DENIED USA VISA TO ENTER PUERTO RICO BECAUSE OF BEING COLOMBIANS

CIRCA LABS, CURATED BY PABLO LEON DE LA BARRA IN SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO

sketches for proposal


Pablo Leon de la Barra’s proposal for CIRCA LABS proposes a laboratory to explore possible cultural scenarios in Puerto Rico, it functions as a kind of Village Fair/Market/Open Museum, where invited galleries, some of the most interesting young contemporary galleries from the American continent, take over containers which become ‘rooms’ of an open air museum which doesn’t exist in Puerto Rico yet. In the space between the containers, a social space is created where different local artists and organizations will create an oasis-activation zone. There will also be a space with hammocks, a bulletin board for cultural proposals for Puerto Rico, a reading area, a hanging painting exhibition and an outdoor cinema. With this, within the art fair CIRCA LABS provides an opportunity to envision future possibilities for cultural life in Puerto Rico and creates a different scenario for market and culture to coexist.

Invited Galleries:
La Central, Colombia
http://lacentral.com.co/

Proyectos Monclova, Mexico City
http://www.proyectosmonclova.com/

Diablo Rosso, Panama
http://www.diablorosso.com/

Proyectos Ultravioleta, Guatemala
http://www.proyectosultravioleta.com/

Revolver, Peru
http://www.revolvergaleria.com

PRETEEN, Hermosillo, Mexico
http://preteengallery.net

In the Outdoor Cinema there will be videos of the following Puerto Rican artists:
Beatriz Santiago, Monica Rodriguez, Michael Linares, Javier Bosque...

In the Outdoor Painting exhibition works by:
Radames Juni Figueroa, Bobby Cruz, Melvin Martinez, Chemir Rosado, Fernando Pintado, Josue Pellot...

Radames Juni Figueroa will create a tropical garden with plants, a coconut fountain and a rainbow...

Esteban Gabriel will create the furniture for the reading room...

Jesus Bubu Negron will create the hamock zone...

Natalia 'Bambi' Valencia http://www.nataliavalencia.com/ will sing her songs...

There will be a reading table containing the printed material from the past puerto rican triennal curated by Adriano Pedrosa, Julieta Gonzalez and Jens Hoffman...

There will also be a reading cart with Puerto Rican art magazine Conboca http://www.conboca.org/ as well as another reading table containing e-flux journal http://www.e-flux.com/journal.

Finally, Beta Local http://www.betalocal.org/, an independent art-school-project residency in San Juan, headed by Michy Marxuach, Bea Santiago and Tony Cruz will create a bulletin board for cultural proposals in Puerto Rico.

'(S)OBRAS' AN EXHIBITION OF WORKS BY CHEMI ROSADO AT CHEMI PLACE, PUERTO RICO

entrance to Chemir Room, curtain made of beer caps




exhibition views


homage to Pollock, plywood, paint and skate marks


History on Wheels



Diary, newspaper cutouts


skater on ramp

Chemi Room y Cooperativa Internacional Tropical invitan a una muestra de (S)obras!
Una exhibición de trabajos de Chemi Rosado y amigos

Jueves 28 de Enero 2010, 7:30-11:00 PM
direccion: Calle Latimer 1407, parte posterior, Santurce, Puerto Rico, cerca de la Placita o Plaza del Mercado
(para llegar: es el 2do edificio del lado derecho en la calle que baja despues de haber pasado el Parkin de Minillas, Casa Amarilla pa dentro.
Alternativamente: salir de la Plaza hacia la Canals, ahi doblar a la derecha, en la proxima a la izq ,calle Latimer, subir entre edificio de apartamentos y casa bonita hasta casa amarilla al lado del parkin, por el porton azul pa bajo. o, al lado de la Asociacion de Empleados Gerenciales y Supervisores de la Autoridad de Carreteras, frente a la Mansion Marron y junto al Parkin Privado de la calle, Latimer 1407 parte posterior...)

En caso de perderse o no encontrar la dirección, llamar:
Chemi 7874843543
Pablo 9392456415

Medallas Light a precio economico y especialidades del chef Daniel

'IT IS IT' CURATED BY MARIA INES RODRIGUEZ AT ESPACIO 1414 IN PUERTO RICO

exhibition view, Carlos Garaicoa tables, David Shrigley 'It is It' painting, 2004


exhibition view


Claire Fontaine 'Passe-partout (Paris 10eme), 2006


Jenny Holzer, 1998




Martha Roesler, 'If it's too bad to be true, it could be DISINFORMATION', 1985



Carlos Garaicoa, 'To Transform Political Speech into Acts, Finally', 2005


Liam Gillick, 'An Experimental Factory in the North of Europe', 2004 (wish it was an experimental factory in the Caribbean!)


Lawrence Wiener, 1989


Gabriel Kuri, 'Quick Standards', 2006


Kendell Geers, 'Batons (circle)', 1994


exhibition view


Claire Fontaine, 'Foreigners Everywhere', 2007


Stan Douglas, 'Set for Inconsolable Memories, Vancouver), 2005


Allora & Calzadilla, 'Citizen-Ship', 2005


Stanley Brouwn, '1KM', 1976


Adrian Paci, 'Centro di Permanenza Temporanea', 2007


Jesus 'Bubu' Negron, 'Igualdad' 2004

Tania Bruguera 'Tatlin's Whisper no. 6', 2009


Carolina Caycedo, 'Herstory', 2009


Lutz Bacher, Carolina Caycedo


Lutz Bacher, 'Jokes (Barry Goldwater)', 1987


Exhibition reading room with lamps by Jorge Pardo (another way of being cuban different to Tania Bruguera's!)


David Lamelas, 'The Dictator'. 1978


Christoph Buchel, 'Parade', 2005




On Kawara 'I am Still Alive', 1984



in the Project Room: Carolina Caycedo, 'Swarm', 2009


pregnant Agustina Ferreyra from Espacio 1414


Carolina Caycedo in front of her work


two cheverista women! curator Maria Ines Rodriguez and Carolina Caycedo


It is it and something else...

This season, Espacio 1414 presents three exhibitions that propose reflections
on the position of the artist towards the real, a confrontation of what the world
is and what it could be. Both It is It, Swarm and the works selected for the
Painting Room prove the complexity of the contemporary world and the geopolitical,
social and economic implications it entails. The new cartographies of
power that have arisen in the wake of contemporary conflicts, have redefined
new kinds of hierarchies and interests affecting civil society. Whether at a local
or a global level artists generate, through their work, another kind of cultural
construction that questions the universality of notions relating to territory,
totalitarianisms, displacement, belonging or exclusion and, therefore, the limits
of contemporaneity. Based upon the exhibited works, we state that art
continues to be one of the few remaining possibilities we have to create
interstices between terror and escape, room for reflection and discussion that
allows both artists and public to build a critical position towards the context in
which they live.

If, as writer Édouard Glissant pointed out, “the role of artists is to make certain
things visible in the mind and the imaginary so that change can come about”,
we might add that the role of the spectator, in turn, is to assume itself as an
active and emancipated player towards what the artist proposes, so that the
possible change suggested by Glissant can take place.

María Inés Rodríguez.
Curator.

http://www.espacio1414.org/

RADAMES 'JUNI' FIGUEROA, HOUSE-STUDIO VISIT IN SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO

Radames 'Juni' Figueroa's plant-shoe painting


Esteban Gabriel, Juni's friend and collaborator, covering plastic chairs in silver tape


sketch for a rainbow


sketch for rainbow and beer cooler


Juni's garden


Juni's rooftop with view to San Juan's bay and cruises


autoportrait of Radames 'Juni' Figueroa as Dracula, showing tatoo in chest and holding a bottle of 'Juni' Daniels


Radames 'Juni' Figueroa's tropical mural at computer shop


Radames 'Juni' Figueroa's zebra bar at El Local

see some of Juni's previous work here:
tropical bus stop, rooftops in La Perla, and whisky-coconut fountain!

CHEMI ROSADO, 'CHEMI PLACE' HOME-STUDIO VISIT IN SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO

Chemi welcoming to his place


Skate board ramp, future skate painting


tree house


Bubu's hammock


entrance walkway


Chemi Room


canceled newspapers


skateboards and newspapers


laser printed skateboard with skate map of Manhattan


'Art Through the Wheels', book-skateboard


time doesn't exist in the caribbean tropics...

TANIA BRUGUERA TALK AT 'BETA-LOCAL' IN SAN JUAN PUERTO RICO

Beta-Local is a study and production program, an experimental education project and a platform for critical discussion and production immersed in our local reality (San Juan, the tropics, the Caribbean, the unplanned city) and our present moment (the economic crisis, the infinite potential, the skills and ideas of people who live here, now).
http://www.betalocal.org/

FRANCESCO MANACORDA NEW ARTISTIC DIRECTOR OF ARTISSIMA

exterior/interior: Francesco Manacorda last Friday in his London Office at Rochelle School, photographed by Pablo Leon de la Barra

Francesco Manacorda Named New Artistic Director of Artissima
Wednesday, 20 January 2010

During today’s press conference, Giovanna Cattaneo Incisa, the president of Fondazione Torino Musei, together with the cultural commissioners of Regione Piemonte, Gianni Oliva, and of the City of Turin, Fiorenzo Alfieri, presented the new artistic director of the ARTISSIMA Fair, Francesco Manacorda, to the Press.

During the conference, the newly appointed director said:
“By combining public and private, Artissima is not just an art fair but also an annual festival of contemporary art. This hybrid condition is precisely what differentiates it from similar events. This is why I intend to continue the excellent work started up by Andrea Bellini, pushing forward the innovative curatorial format that complements the commercial event. This dual identity should not be seen as a source of conflict but, on the contrary, as an opportunity to create a unique new configuration of great mutual advantage to gallerists, collectors, professionals and the public at large. The national and international visibility acquired by Artissima in recent years needs to be increased and developed in order to make it a cultural event of great appeal, as a result of its experimental nature.”

Born in Turin in 1974, Francesco Manacorda is a critic and an independent curator based in London. He is Visiting Lecturer in Exhibition History and Critical Theory at the Curating Contemporary Art Department of the Royal College of Art, London.

He graduated from the University of Turin and earned an MA degree in Curating Contemporary Art at the Royal College of Art, London. He worked in London as a freelance curator for four years and was later appointed Curator at the Barbican Art Gallery where he has organized two large-scale group exhibitions – “Martian Museum of Terrestrial Art” (co-curated with Lydia Yee, 2008) and “Radical Nature – Art and Architecture for a Changing Planet 1969-2009” (2009) – and several solo exhibitions with emerging artists.

His curatorial practice has also included collaborations with many art institutions amongst which the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Serpentine Gallery, Lyon Biennial, T1 – Turin Triennial, and the Slovenian and New Zealand Pavilions at the Venice Biennale. Since November 2009 he has been working as curator-at-large for the ICA – Institute of Contemporary Arts, London.

He has also contributed to magazines such as Domus, Flash Art, Frieze, Metropolis M, Piktogram, Kaleidoscope, Untitled, Art Review and Mousse.

He has been living and working in London since 2001, and he will move to Turin to take up his new position.

http://www.artissima.it

JOSE ROJAS AND BLESS IN COLLABORATION

Jose Rojas and Bless in collaboration:
In questioning how to integrate nature within an interior environement, different aproaches have beend found. The aim was to vanish the classic flowerpot and transforming it for example into a wall, hosting a diagonal palmtree with a watering hole and an internal plastic tube. An other flowerpot substitution is the organic foam teamed-up with fragile glass legs that hold on to the plant directly. An interior is created in spanning fragile string walls from the tips of palm leaves and attaching them to the felted floor. The rubber swingchair is disconnected at the front, growing in the air, like a leaf. When sitting on it, it bends down, when getting up again, the chair springs back in the air.

A VISIT TO A GEOFFREY BAWA GARDEN IN SRI LANKA BY DANNY CALVI AND JOP VAN BENNEKOM

My dear friends Danny and Jop were in Sri Lanka recently, while there they stumbled into this amazing Geoffrey Bawa garden. The garden is so beautiful, that we are more than happy to share it with our readers.

"Although they don't always take you to exactly where you are hoping to go, one of the best ways to get around Sri Lanka is to hire a car and driver. On an excursion from Colombo to Galle, we planned to stop at Geoffrey Bawa's Lunuganga estate for lunch and tour his tropical version of an Italian renaissance garden. Instead, we found ourselves at the gates of Bawa's brother Bevis's estate, Brief. While the former rubber plantation is certainly not on the scale of Lunuganga, its gardens were the site for Geoffrey's early experiments, a series of intricate and lush terraces punctuated the occasional homoerotic sculpture."

Text by Danny Calvi, Photos by Danny Calvi and Jop van Bennekom

Danny Calvi is a graphic designer, art director and musician and has just co-edited Butt's 2010 calendar. Jop van Bennekom is the publisher and editor of Fantastic Man and Butt Magazine. They live between London and Amsterdam.

http://www.geoffreybawa.com/

'TROPICAL INTELLIGENCE' A TEXT ON CAPACETE PROJECTS, RIO DE JANEIRO, BY PABLO LEON DE LA BARRA IN THE NEW ISSUE OF SPIKE MAGAZINE

Tropical Intelligence: Capacete Entretenimientos, Rio de Janeiro
By Pablo Leon de la Barra

“Tropical countries, as it seemed to me, must be the exact opposite of our own…”
Claude Levi Strauss, ‘Tristes Tropiques’, Criterion Books, New York; first American Edition 1961, French Edition 1955.

It’s 36 degree’s in Rio de Janeiro, it’s hot, very hot, and I’m sweating to the point of feeling I will melt and disappear. The sweat and the temperature make me aware of the presence of my body, and abolishes the distinction between inside and outside, making me be in contact with what Gaston Bachelard called the “intimate immensity”[1]. My mind has stopped thinking. I’ve been walking through the centre, finding shade every 10 minutes or entering air-conditioned spaces to drink a beer and refresh. It’s Saturday and the centre is quite empty. I can’t stand the idea of the half hour walk up the steep hill to Santa Teresa, where I’m staying. Thankfully an informal motorcycle service has been implemented that takes you up hill for 2 reales. This is Tropical Intelligence! The drivers wait outside the Gloria Metro station, where you approach the controller and he assigns you a driver. The driver puts his helmet on, but doesn’t offer you one. You get on the motorbike, and try to decide if you should hold him from the waist or from his shoulders. He drives fast uphill, while smoking a cigarette and speaking on his mobile through a mike and earphones. He glides the curves while the motorcycle inclines and our knees almost touch the stoned pavement. I clutch to the drivers waist holding him hard with my knees. It’s all a very erotic experience. My driver leaves me in Largo de Guimaraes, in the centre of Santa Teresa neighbourhood. I enter the Portuguese shop, covered with blue tiles, and ask the old Portuguese couple that runs the shop for a very cold coconut. The coconut also costs 2 reales (it seems the best things in Rio cost 2 reales!). Cold coconuts are also a ‘Tropical Intelligence’ strategy, a way of surviving the heat! The husband opens the coconut with a round knife that looks more like a prisoner’s invention. Meanwhile the wife shouts aggressively to some French tourists who are attempting to take some photos of the shop. She then tells me, ‘You wouldn’t like them taking photos in the interior of your house, would you?’

Santa Teresa is an old neighbourhood in the hills above Rio’s centre. It looks like a European village from the end of the XIX century, many of the houses are semi-run down, but most of them have survived total destruction. A bit of a hippie hang out, more recently it has become the neighbourhood favoured by Rio’s artists and intellectuals, as well as foreigners who have slowly been buying and refurbishing the houses. There’s even now a small design-boutique hotel in the neighbourhood. The old tram, called bonde, comes up from the centre, crossing over the Lapa Aqueduct and charges 65 cents for the ride. The tram usually has mechanical failures during the ride and sometimes doesn’t complete the journey (the local inhabitants have protested against a plan for the privatisation of the bonde, which would improve the service but also the price of the ride). Everyone gets off the tram when it stops working, and the tourists, both Brazilian and international use this as a photo opportunity. Maybe, as Levi Strauss said “The tropics are not so much exotic as out of date. It’s not the vegetation which confirms that you are ‘really there’, but certain trifling architectural details and the hint of a way of life which would suggest that you had gone backwards in time rather than forwards across a great part of the earth surface”[2]. But if this could be true, Rio de Janeiro’s reality quickly plays fast forward to insert you into the city’s present. Like in most of Rio, the houses in Santa Teresa coexist with the favelas which are located within the neighbourhood. Every time I’ve visited there seems to be in Santa Teresa a crime or death related to drug violence. This time there was no difference, immediately somebody told me a dancer had just been murdered. I asked if it had been because of drug violence, ironically I soon found out that he had been killed by his brother and the brother’s boyfriend with a sledgehammer. Brazilian Soap Opera.

Santa Teresa is also the headquarter of Capacete Entretenimientos, the art project run by Helmut Batista in Rio de Janeiro. The name is full of humour, capacete in Portuguese means helmet, a joke on the name of Helmut, the captain of Microstate Capacete Village[3]. It’s also interesting to note that the project has the surname Entreteniminetos: not gallery, not projects, but entertainments. “Capacete’s activities is part of a long term interdisciplinary presence in Rio de Janeiro, which aims to research and document aesthetic, social and political processes in Brazil. The historic, urban, topographic, environmental and social context of Rio de Janeiro is an important laboratory that (re)actualises Brazilian complexities. Rio de Janeiro is a strategic tool to identify, articulate and give visibility to these processes, reaching very heterogeneous audiences.”[4] My first contact with Capacete was in 2001. At the time Capacete shared an exhibition space with Agora (run by Ricardo Bausbaum and other artists) in a building in Cinelandia which had artists studios above. Since then, Capacete has continuously reinvented itself and adapted to the times while contributing to Rio’s cultural life and being a mediator between foreign art people arriving to Rio and the city. As such Capacete has had different incarnations. For example ‘Cinema Capacete’ existed in the Darcy Ribeiro Cinema School and organized artists’ film programmes from 2001 to 2006; or the journal ‘Capacete Planet’ which existed from 2001 to 2004 (before the www made information so accessible for all) where artists were invited to conceptualise the idea of a budget printed publication, while providing information for and from the local art scene. Capacete has also participated in different editions of the Sao Paulo Bienal, where it has presented artists’ projects that expand Capacete’s work to the public of the biennale. Other projects have taken Capacete out of the borders of its microstate, while exploring Latin American contexts: ‘Road’ which has been happening on and off during the last 5 years, takes the form of a road trip, which began in 2004 as a trip from Rio to Santiago de Chile with artist Ducha, continued to Valparaiso, Chile with Carla Zaccagnini’s ‘Museo das Vistas’, drove up to La Paz, Bolivia with Olivier Poujade, continued to Lima, Peru with Joao Mode, from there to Quito, Ecuador where Gabriel Lester performed a pantomime where he pulled a rabbit out of a hat against the background of the Andes Cordillera, then on to Medellin, Colombia with Julia Rometti and Victor Costales where the artists exchanged landscape posters during the trip. The next trip will be from Medellin to Caracas, Venezuela with Sebastian Ramirez and Jose Tomas Giraldo and still has to take place. On it’s 10th anniversary Capacete also published ‘Livro para Ler’ with contributions by 11 artists or curators that have been involved with Capacete. The book follows a methodology developed by artist Carla Zaccagnini, where she has published mini catalogues (the first one was produced in 2003 by Capacete in Portuguese) in which she invites artists or writers to write not about her work, but about ideas which are present or relate to the works presented[5]. Capacete also hosts an international artists and curators residence. Some of the artist in the residence are sponsored by cultural institutions in their European countries of origin, as part of agreements with Capacete. Others arrive out of free will in their desire to experience tropicalization. There’s always a resident from Brasil and one from Latin America, important components of Capacete’s conception. Some of the residents stay at ‘Casa da Denise’, others at the bungalows located between the two houses, while others stay in the apartment located downhill in Gloria, where Capacete’s documentation centre and offices are located. Recently Capacete has expanded to Sao Paulo, where it has given continuity to a labour first initiated by Ligia Nobre and Cecile Zoonens with Exo Sao Paulo by providing a place to stay within Edificio Copan the curvy modernist building designed by Niemeyer in the centre of the city. Guest artists are invited to give a talk to the local art community, and these talks are always given in an open dialogue together with a local artist who also presents his/her work.

Helmut also takes panoramic photos of Rio de Janeiro, which are printed in postcards and on coffee table books, the sale of books and postcards contributing to Capacete’s expenses. Denise, Helmut’s amazing partner and mother of their son Otto, is an ex soap opera actress. She also runs ‘Casa da Denise’ a bed and breakfast in Santa Teresa which also supports Capacete’s work. Denise and Helmut live in the house next door to ‘Casa da Denise’, a house they share with friend, artist Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster. Gonzalez-Foerster calls the place ‘SET- Sitio de Experimentacion Tropical’. The house has a black and white floor stone mosaic floor inspired on Burle Marx’s pattern for Copacabana. A pink balustrade meets the green grass, echoing the colours of the Mangueira school of samba. The view looks to Guanabara bay, the Pao de Azucar, the city below, favelas and vegetation. In Dominique’s words, “a place to observe, enjoy and describe the effects of ‘tropicalization’... the panorama in front of the terrace is a permanent unwritten novel about urban tropical life and sugarloaf, birds, airplanes…”[6] Residents and artists commute between the residence in Gloria, ‘Casa da Denise’ and ‘Sitio de Eperimentacion Tropical’: working in the office, having breakfast at ‘Casa da Denise’, having intellectual conversations and drinking caipirinhas at the swimming pool at SET. In the same way that in the streets and beaches in Rio, the borders between the public and the private dissolve, to make space for Capacete’s changing community.

In his trip to Brazil in 1982, invited by psychoanalyst Suely Rolnik, philosopher Felix Guattari identified and advocated for self organized - bottom up, hands on strategies as a way in which Brazilian society, then under a military dictatorship (1964-1985), was strengthening itself: “just as I think it is illusory to aim at a step-by-step transformation of society, so I think that microscopic attempts, of the community… play an absolutely crucial role.”[7] This is what during the late 1990s curator Carlos Basualdo and art critic Reinaldo Ladaga have called within art practices ‘experimental communities’: “temporary but durable associations composed of artists and non-artists united in their mutual endeavor… The concern is to facilitate the creation of exchange networks between groups of people in order to produce new representational forms and community identities. In turn, these circuits come to intervene in traditional art spaces, thereby effecting a ‘globalization from below.’[8]

Capacete’s formation of a mobile international community is very close to artist Helio Oiticica’s idea of the Suprasensorial commune “I feel that the idea grows into a necessity of a new community, based on creative affinities, despite cultural or intellectual differences, or social and individual ones. Not a community to ‘make works of art’, but something as the experience in real life – all sorts of experiences that could grow out in a new sense of life and society – kind of constructing an environment for life itself based on the premise that creative energy inherent in everyone… where this group of mine would come to do things, to talk, to meet people – of course many disagreeable things would have to be controlled, for the destructive opinions and people not interested in it would come - but this always happens in everything one wants to do – in its whole this idea would be that of a kind of open space, environment, for experience, for creative experience of every imaginable sort...”[9]

Capacete’s way of operating, the possibility of producing or not, and with this resisting art market economy, also approximates Oiticica’s concept of ‘creleisure’ a word made up by Oiticica by the union of the words create and leisure: “Not to occupy a specific place, in space and in time, as well as to live pleasure or not to know the time of laziness, is and can be the activity to which a ‘creator’ may dedicate himself.” In this, ‘creleisure’ is close to the idea of ‘Tropical Intelligence’ that guides Capacete’s work. I borrowed the term that titles this text, ‘Tropical Intelligence’ from a conversation held between Helmut Batista and Paulo Vivacqua regarding their experience in the Puerto Rico 04 Art Community Experience Marathon in which they participated, and where they decided not to produce anything, and of which Paulo Vivacqua expressed: “I think that we were super sincere in not doing anything. We assumed the situation with the skill in which it was presented. Not doing anything is many times, doing a lot. We found a balance in the whole thing, if not I would have turned schizophrenic. "Tropical Intelligence.”[10] This at the end is ‘Tropical Intelligence’, adaptation and resistance, resisting the urge to do things just because of doing and doing only what is needed, while reacting to a context, and being flexible enough as to produce what is demanded while creating new possibilities of action, but also to disconnect from the machines of production, and becoming conscious again of one’s body and of the body of the other, and allowing oneself to be within the ‘intimate immensity’ without the pressures of the ‘normal’ world…

Notes:
[1] Bachelard in ‘Poetica del Espacio’, Fondo de Cultura Economica, 1965 pp 245. Although Bachelard refers to experiences in the desert and to underwater explorations, the same could be applied to the phenomena of tropicalization: "To descend in water or to wander in the desert is to change of space. And through changing location in space, abandoning the space of the usual sensibilities, one enters in contact with a space that is psychically innovative… One doesn’t only change of place, one also changes ones own nature” .
[2] Claude Levi Strauss, ‘Tristes Tropiques’, Criterion Books, New York; first American Edition 1961, French Edition 1955.
[3] ‘Microstate Capacete Village’ is the title of the text that appears in the pamphlet produced for Capacete’s exhibition in Friedrich Petzel Gallery, February 9th to March 8th, 2008. The text also appears in Capacete’s ‘Livro para Ler’.
[4] From Capacete’s website http://www.capacete.net/
[5] Following editions of Zaccagnini’s ‘Catalogo Traducido’ have appeared in English, Spanish and French, each edition with new contributors of the native tongue in which it’s printed.
[6] Dominique Gonzalez Foerster. ‘Sitio de Experimentacion Tropical’, in ‘Case Study Houses’ a special edition of Pablo Internacional Magazine, 2008.
[7] Guattari, Felix (1984). Molecular Revolution, Penguin, London quoted in Bourriaud, Nicolas (1998). Relational Aesthetics. Les Presses De Réel, Paris.
[8] Basualdo, Carlos and Laddaga, Reinaldo (2004). ‘Rules of Engagement: From Toilets in Caracas to New Media in New Delhi’, in ArtForum, New York, March 2004.
[9] Helio Oiticica, ‘Letter to Guy Brett, April 2, 1968’, in Brett, Guy; David, Catherine and Dercon, Chris (Curators) (1992), Hélio Oiticica, Centro De Arte Hélio Oiticica/Witte De With, Rio De Janeiro/Rotterdam.
[10] Capacete Journal no.12, July-September 2004

http://www.capacete.net/
http://www.spikeart.at/

'DUET FOR CANNIBALS' A TROPICAL PROGRAMME CURATED BY INTI GUERRERO IN AMSTERDAM

Opening of Colonial Institute in Amsterdam, HM Queen Wilhelmina, 9 October 1926 © KIT, Amsterdam.


Duet for Cannibals
15 January, 18 February, 31 March, 28 April 2010
Films, videos & talks at the Theatre of the Royal Tropical Institute of Amsterdam

Duet for Cannibals is a monthly screening and discussion program on colonialism and cannibalism as forms of cultural appropriation. It brings together a selection of works by contemporary artists and filmmakers as well as footage from the Tropical Museum's archive. Comprising videos, films, slideshows and performative talks by Raimond Chaves, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Ossama Mohammed, Wendelien van Oldenborgh, Christodoulos Panayiotou, Jose Alejandro Restrepo, Andy Warhol and Ming Wong among others. Curated by Inti Guerrero

Anthropological and ethnographic institutions in European colonial power centers, like the former Colonial Institute of Amsterdam (nowadays the Royal Tropical Institute) were founded to study and exhibit the culture of 'overseas people'. Their role was to appropriate, classify, and display cultural artifacts and sometimes even human beings. Though they claimed to reveal the pre-supposed cultural essence of the non-European other, such displays further entrenched the stereotypes of a eurocentric scientific and cultural status quo. In other words, it was by means of inclusion of other cultures rather than their exclusion, that the colonial power constructed and affirmed itself within the enlightened modern institution, enhancing a privileged position from where it could unilaterally represent the rest of the world. The works in Duet for Cannibals present a wide range of approaches to this debate by departing from historical strata of colonial archives, post-war cultural imperialism and countercultural forms of approaching metropolitan creole-subcultures. The screenings are accompanied by Q&A sessions with guest artists, lectures and discussions.

The title Duet for Cannibals is borrowed from a 1969 film directed by American author and critic Susan Sontag.

Program

15 January 2010, 20.00 hrs
Encounters with Empires:

Jose Alejandro Restrepo (CO), Traveler's Diary, 1992, 15 min. video
Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster (FR), Gloria, 2008, 15 min. video
Wendelien van Oldenborgh (NL), Instruction, 2009, 30 min. video


18 February 2010, 20.00 hrs
Cannibalizing Popular Culture:

Christodoulos Panayiotou (CY), Wonderland, 2008, 10 min. slideshow
Ming Wong (SG), Life of Imitation, 2009, 20 min. video-triptych
Raimond Chaves (PE), El Toque Criollo, 2005, 45 min. performative talk

For more information on the works please visit: www.agentur.nl/DuetForCannibals.html

Duet for Cannibals
Theatre of the Royal Tropical Institute, Linnaeusstraat 2, Amsterdam
Time: 20.00 hrs
Entrance: 7,50 Eur inclusive one drink
Reservation for tickets at: theaterkassa@kit.nl

This project is produced by Agentur; a project space for international curators and artists to identify new artistic tendencies within and beyond Europe.
It is realized thanks to the generous support of the Tropentheatre, Mondriaan Foundation and Amsterdam Fund for the Arts.

For more information contact: pers@agentur.nl

'A MONUMENT TO TOILETS AND HACKNEY ROAD PROCESSION' AN EXHIBITION AT WHITE CUBICLE BY NIKOS PANTAZOPOULOS

Nikos Pantazopoulos White Cubicle installation


Menudo djs of the night, Liliana Sanguino and Cibelle


Cassia Tabatini


Philippos Nikiforakis


Murray Arthur and Andreas Cellerino


Fernando Arias (who first introduced me to Nikos 7 years ago) and Tate curator Gabriela Salgado


Rafael Jimenez and Menudo album


Mr. de la Barra and Ellen Cantor


Esther Planas, Alvaro Moreira and Ricardo Fumanal


Jemima Stehli, Gregorio Magnani, Ellen Cantor and Katherine Hamnett cutting the ribbon


Nikos Pantazopoulos


Mr de la Barra and his Menudo look


Cibelle in the cubicle


Richardette squatting at the toilet monument


getting ready for the procession


procession leaving George and Dragon


procession delivering the objects of the installation outside Joiners Arms


offering of objects


Matt Jakob playing with the offerings!


White Cubicle is honoured to present A Monument to Toilets an exhibition and procession by Nikos Pantazopoulos

Thursday January 14, 2010, from 9:00 PM to midnight.
Procession will leave from the George and Dragon to the Joiners Arms at midnight.

White Cubicle Toilet Gallery at George and Dragon Public House, 2 Hackney Road, London E2
The Joiners Arms, 116-118 Hackney Road, London
Ribbon cutting by dame Ellen Cantor and Iqbal, the Joiners Arms minicab driver
The night will be enhanced by George and Dragon’s Menudo Night, a musical tribute to Puerto Rico’s eightie’s teenage boyband

A Monument to Toilets and Hackney Road Procession: a material and political investigation
For his show at White Cubicle Toilet Gallery, Pantazopoulos has been over the past months photographically and sculpturally documenting the surrounding area of East London and collecting objects of a formal nature, while building a monument to toilets. Using the monument as a starting point, he proposes a procession and mapping out a ritual that takes place between the George and Dragon and the Joiners Arms. The audience is invited to participate and walk with him from the White Cubicle Toilet Gallery to The Joiners Arms on Hackney Road with the material that he has collected.

A stake, a rock, a banner, a ball, netting, a laminate board, felt, rope, tape, and other objects investigated and found in the process of looking for materials will be used as part of the exhibition. They will be stored inside the White Cubicle gallery. These materials will be transformed into totem poles and objects that will be like those used in a Greek Easter processions, marking the rituals, and marches of historical or political nature. These objects used will be used to mark the procession that will take place to demarcate a specific space and ritual. With this, the exhibition and procession will explore the social, historical, and political nature of this area of London, an area with a history that crosses through different classes, genders, and ethnicities and that are sometimes distressed by conflicts of interest. This will be a peaceful walk to honour cohabitation within the different groups in the area.
http://amonumenttotoilets.blogspot.com/

Nikos Pantazopoulos is a hot Greek-Australian artist, born in 1973. He has been living in London since 2001 where he completed his MFA in Goldsmiths in 2007 and since then he has returned to his native Melbourne where he received an Australian Postgraduate Award to work as an artist, further his studies and teach Fine Art Theory and Practice. He works in different media and often works collaboratively with other artists or people of various skills or professions. Recently Pantazopoulos has been working with the Palaeconian Brotherhood to make a documentary about a bust of King Leonidas that was made in Sparta, Greece for Sparta Place, Melbourne. There he worked with the community group to make a video of the important and controversial monument that was unveiled to the Australian community about a history that is a motivational force to the Greek people.

THE WHITE CUBICLE TOILET GALLERY measures 1.40 by 1.40 metres, is located within the Ladies Toilet of the George and Dragon, and works with no budget, staff or boundaries. White Cubicle presents a discerning programme of local and international manifestations as an antidote to London’s sometimes extremely commercial art scene. Past exhibitions have included the work of Deborah Castillo, Gregorio Magnani, Butt Magazine, Federico Herrero, Terence Koh, i-Cabin, Steven Gontarski, Pixis Fanzine/Princess Julia and Hanah, General Idea and avaf, Basso Magazin, Carl Hopgood, Giles Round, Tim Noble and Sue Webster, Superm, (Brian Kenny and Slava Mogutin), Elkin Calderon, Wolfgang Tillmans, Calvin Holbrook/Hate Magazine, Husam el Odeh, Simon Popper, Fur, Dik Fagazine, Rick Castro/Abravanation, Jean Michel Wicker, Noki, Ellen Cantor, Karl Holmqvist, Julie Verhoeven, Aldo Chaparro, Esther Planas...
http://www.whitecubicle.org

'TOTAL ECLIPSE OF THE HEARTS AT JOINERS' AND 'PABLO DANCES FOR THE PEOPLE AT JOINERS ARMS'

as their old slogan used to say:
"Not straight, not gay, always friendly: Joiners Arms"

The Joiners Arms
16-118 Hackney Road
London E2 7QL

MATIJA FERLIN READS AND PERFORMS SRECKO KOSOVEL'S 'HEROES'

Srecko Kosovel
Heroes

21 years I was in prison. As for me, I can’t cry. I am as hard as the steal. There is a gun at my bedside. My young brother with no eyes. It is quiet. It is dead, grey. I love my sorrow. I work from sorrow. The horse is melancholy. At 8 o’clock there is a lecture on humanitarian ideals. Europe is dying. The hour of grief. Are you there? As if your eyes were from Italian paintings. My girl is still of tender age. She is indeed at this stage. Sir, am I to blame? What would you have if it were not for guns? Our tears are choking in smoke. I am not allowed to love a woman. It is a cruel voice. A soul does not give way. I am not with you. I do not cry with tears. I am always leaving. Bark, hearts! Bark! He is buried. A blind horse. Ljubljana is asleep. And our faces are dead with dreams. His face is bleeding. I have tremendous work on my hands, isn’t that joyful? Civilization lacks a heart. Evacuation of souls. Evening burns like fire. There is a man behind the door. What does he want? Sky blue sea, grey jail, we are all ill. I am a broken arc of a circle. The hour of sorrow is approaching. New mysticism. And the night has fallen again. Oh, dead is my sister. Dead, dead. Oh, my Balkan sister. Grey airplanes. You are not the King. White barricades. Dynamite explodes. To destroy, to destroy, to destroy. Millions are dying, but Europe is lying. Dynamism. Activism. The Balkans. B A B A B AA depression BB action Three lines. Real work. Fernando, the terror of Austria. Revolutions, kings, artists. Shoot, shoot. Operations, revolutions. A little more of the sun. A little more of the wind. Weary we fall.

Srečko Kosovel is known as the Slovenian Rimbaud, born in 1904, he died in 1926 at the age of 22, but his work is strong, deep and finished as if he had written and lived for a long, long time.

Matija is a young coreographer, dancer, performer and video artist who lives in Pula, Croatia

take a look at Matija's new blog
and his page in you tube