State of the art (of art)

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{{em_rgencia} editorial board

(revista@emergenciaemergenciaemergencia.com)

 

When it comes to politics and its practice we refer, in sections, to a series of phenomena concerning the issue of being-in-community, beyond the understanding of this extraordinary fact as a possible way of manifesting, we are talking about a wide, yet oblique, process of artistic, academic and political reflection, but it’s not only about mentioning how little has the order changed, or better yet, the governance of things, the important fact would be the possibility to recognize the “why” of this “how”, with the aim of making possible the transformation of this order in the crossing points where the academy and the art practice link to the everyday events.        

Now, the reflection on the current art scene, framed by the institutions that support it, throws the question about the way in which the term is understood, in relation to the practice itself; in these regard the debate about the contemporary speech arises from a historical and political redefinition, which takes into account the daily happenings as a changing attitude, appropriate to our time and space.

It’s time to raise our voice, to heat up and establish a starting counterpoint that activates a new attitude, a differing, opposing temper, that could propose and at the same time allows political awareness to spread through space; it’s in that instance where to take advantage of the cunning part of art, not reducing spectators to the dimensions of projected word, but mobilizing them to re-evaluate the image of themselves, projected as they were convalescing.

{{em_01: state of the art (of art) is not just a mere review of today, but a critical view  about the place that is given to the practice and the social function of the art within our society, from problematic issues such as:

PHENOMENA. The particular dynamics currently affecting and shaping our context. For instance, drug trafficking and its consequences on art markets, was a very popular subject for some years. Which other phenomenon is worth noting?

EVENT. Facts that allow us to reflect on the particular response of the different cultural agents, how they participate and shape the artistic field as this events develop. Whether the field is conceptually built locally, and thus it develops from contextual junctures or, on the contrary the great subjects of local context are subject to international developments (magazines, events, people). For example, what has happened locally in terms of discourse and reflection regarding the case of Nicolas Castro Plested?

RECEPTION/TRANSLATION. What kind of local-international exchange dynamics are significant in contemporary art? For instance, the “Creole sons and daughters” of the international artists star system. Why does this happen? What is the function of art history in the construction of the local field and vice versa? Which translation problems could emerge from local dynamics? 

ACADEMY. The perspective from a specific “school” of art in the city and the country affects deeply the construction of different imaginaries about the discipline. Different gazes on art education, by different undergraduate and graduate programs, in Bogota, Colombia and internationally.

For thinking the phenomenon as a complex structure sustained by the articulation of related but distinctive moments.

For considering it more than urgency, an emergence is non-reducible to its parts, or its processes to their local interactions,

And because it is possible to affect the path of our time-space, through analytical and/or conceptual processes.

Before you, this incitement to take part in the continuous transforming dialogue, an associated mutation that emerges without further ado, to the “radical” innovation of the being-in-common.