Dislocation, a project that includes exposition dynamics, the meeting and exchange between contemporary Swiss and Chilean artists in an international path, will take place in the framework of the celebration of the Bicentennial in Chile from September 2nd to November 15th in Santiago de Chile in 2010 and in Bern in 2011.
Curated by a Chilean artists who lives in Switzerland, Ingrid Wildi Merino, and by Kathleen Bühler the exhibition is presented as a staging that addresses dislocation as a result of migration problems, and a permanent cultural, social, and sexual identity and its relationship with language, nationality and history. In the same way, it will address areas of thought- multilingualism/territories/locational identity/ belonging/ dislocation- shared by the immigration of Europeans to Latin America and Latin Americans to Europe. Artists and theorists, between Europe and Chile to conduct investigations in the process, about geopolitical realities related to contemporary Chilean history with the idea of developing a cartographic type that refers to the problems that articulate and disarticulate between industrialized countries and developing countries using contemporary art as a tool. An example of this curatorial style would be “poetics and Politics” curated by Catherine David, Documenta X in Kassel (1997), related to problems between industrialized countries and developing countries. Between September 2nd and November 15th a group of Chilean and international artists will simultaneously take nine places in Santiago de Chile, included the main museums- the National Museum of Fine Arts, the Metropolitan Gallery, the Gabriela Mistral Gallery and Biographical Film, the Museum of Solidarity Salvador Allende, the MAC-, alternative spaces, and the street itself. With the exposition Dislocation, the dislocating movement will also be produced by the investigation trip that the different artists and theorists are taking with destination to Chile, just like Chilean artists will travel to Switzerland, where they will create artistic residences through the Kunstmuseum in the city of Bern. At the same time this dislocating act will also be metaphorized by the exposition trip, which will be exhibited in Chile in 2010 and will then travel to be exhibited by the Kunstmuseum in Bern, Switzerland in 2011. The participating artists and groups are: Claudia Aravena, Alfredo Jaar, Mario Navarro · Bernardo Oyarzun, Juan Castillo, Camili Yáñez, Ingrid Wildi, Ursula Biemann, Lotty Rosenfeld, Sylvie Boisseau & Frank Westermeyer, OOO Estudio Cultural Research Center, Thomas Hirschhorn, Voluspa Jarpa, Josep-Maria Martin, Relax: Marie-Antoinette Chiarenza & Daniel Hauser, with works that will face sociopolitical realities. Aravena will intervene the intervendrá Paseo Phillips building, at the Plaza de Armas, commenting on the situation of exlusion of Peruvian immigrants in Chile. The outstanding Swiss artists, theorists and curator Ursula Biemann will show in the Museum of Fine Arts a series of videos- an essay on the migratory movements from Sahara to Europe. In the Museo de la Solidaridad Salvador Allende, the pair conformed by Sylvie Boisseau & Frank Westermeyer will show the result of an investigation on relations between German and Mapuches in southern Chile. In this same place, Ingrid Wildi Merino will project a video installation that is the result of an investigation that she conducted in Arica and Iquique, where she interviewed inhabitants, anthropologists, sociologists, and economists registering local and national problems. In a more relational line, the Chilean Juan Castillo will realize a television program in La Victoria in which the residents of the sector will participate. He will also show a video of an emigrant that narrates his feelings of exclusion, projecting him in a truck that will travel through different sectors in Santiago. The collective OOO ESTUDIO will mount the interior of a house, suggesting a fiction of everyday life and the possibility of other forms of living. In the Museum of Memory, Camilo Yáñez will show a video installation that will register the symbolic demolition of the National Stadium of Santiago, before its remodeling. Mario Navarro, for its part, will install a new version of “Ideal Radio” in different parts of the city. It is a mobile radio that will pick up the concerns of citizens. In the Museum of Contemporary Art of the Forestal Park, Alfredo Jaar will expose some portraits of the legendary union leader Clotario Blest, before his death. Finally, the Swiss artist Hirschhorn will cut in two halves a ranger truck and will glue it back together with tape as a way of questioning a savage capitalism invaded by four by four vehicles and, at the same time, it rises as a privileged of the concept of break. Something like an icon of Dislocation. More than Works and expositions, Dislocación is a great campaign of the critical thought. The artists want, more than anything, to start reflexive processes about cultural and social phenomenon. “My interest is not to show works of art, but rather aesthetic processes, recurring to artistic investigations about punctual problems, where the piece is not reduced to the moment of its exhibition, but is exposed in all its processed complexity”, explains the curator. His interest is to “give importance to the inarticulate subject and the motives for their disarticulation. This projects the exposition farther than the art world”. Many works are videos with a documental essay format that register migratory movements and personal feelings to this experience. Other works are shown as direct interventions in the social dynamic, demanding the participation of the community in its realization. During the inaugural week there will be a discussion workshop and diverse conferences with guest speakers such as Ute Meta Bauer, director of the visual art programs of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and ex co-curator of the Documenta of Kassel. In the Film Art Alameda, under the title: who tells history? Who fabricated images? Will be exposed films by contemporary artists and filmmakers. It is composed of works with little difussion, and they are conceived as artistic reflections that refuse to enter the marker. Notable documents that no one should miss. Dislocación will edit a bilingual catalog (Spanish/English) in Switzerland that documents the process of the project, with texts from the curators and art critics. The calendar for the film cycle es in www.dislocacion.cl/ciclodecine-es.php. www.dislocacion.cl
