The Bern Books - 4th Installment
José Miguel Del Pozo Lopez
As a child I was led to believe that discrimination was only a matter of color, when in fact it is also a matter of movement. Discrimination Is as well about people moving into places that they are not supposed to be at, whether those places are countries, clubs, galleries, (off)spaces, museums: cultures. Oh western culture, that beautiful beast where contemporary art turns itself inside out to compensate its inability to feel the -long gone- sacred aspect of what surrounds us.
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As it has already been told conceptualism intends to be the way in which art discards itself of its materiality[1] to, maybe one day and once and for all, un-puzzle that which will forever separate us, and everything around it: money. That is of course a beautiful fantasy. An illusion that conceptual art has been depending on and disposing off of as long as it's been around. How could art be independent of its materiality when humans are its most important material, for art to dispose itself of its material, the first and final frontier to do so would be, without any shadow of doubt, gaining independence from those who perform it[2]. Lately it seems that we might not be so far away from doing so[3]. If an instructed drone devoid of any human help can destroy a country, then the code that runs it can as well certainly paint one, as soon as the time comes up to pick up the pieces and glue them together into a culturally digestible product.
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Being the never-ending foreigner that I am, i’ve always been looked in awe by others when they notice that I know[4]. Western Culture supports itself on knowledge and knowledge belongs to those who have historically handled it, the men who have made history dependent on what they’ve taken from it in the form of a profitable and cohesive cultural war machine. I’m not expected to know what I know, and it would be better if I wasn’t so damn good at expressing it[5]. I’m not just saying this because I want to praise my hardly worked and earned western culture,I’m saying this because it is a fact that my entire life I have been (mis)placed to fit in, and “knowing” has been the best way I’ve found to do so, while of course, failing beautifully doing so. I’m also saying this because I always get the feeling that no one -here nor there- wants me to know, and its ok, I’m working on that never ending feeling of not being enough[6], in between that struggle, and inside those black and whites, hides a grey zone.
I am that grey zone, the piece of a puzzle that should not exist.
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The thing is that -as a person with cultural aspirations- I want to show what I do to a broader and more diverse audience. That means I have to be able to communicate what I do and what I know. This always tends to be complicated when maybe unconsciously, but maybe consciously,my friends or partners, the people I share my life with[7] (who in part are around me because of my fore mentioned abilities) would still think and look at me like I shouldn't know what i know. How is it that me, the cook(ing) foreigner, can tell the differences between Marcel Broodthaers and Marcel Duchamp; Simone de Beauvoir and Judith Buttler; Antonin Artaud and the Wu-Tang Clan; German philosophy and continental thought etc etc…so on and so forth. After a lifelong (still going) experience of surprised-awe-that-I-know faces, I came to realise that it is impossible that the person that runs the cultural building where “my work” could be shown would trust me to know what I'm doing, beyond its “exotic” and “alien” characteristics. This has led me to ask myself three very dangerous questions: what would be asked in a non inter- racial/class culture oriented friend/partnership? When talking about art with someone we share our cultural background with, would mansplaining simple art common tropes be an integral part of the discussion or would it be forever assumed that the person in front of us, and with which we share socialisation with, knows what we are talking about? Do i have to continuously prove my worth as a writer/artist or should I better stay a culturally visible and mute inter-cultural artefact to my surroundings?
It makes me wonder ;(;
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I started this instalment thinking that i would write about some art shows that I have seen in the past few months, and doing so, I discovered something bigger than any expected art prize: not the comfortable and never-endlessly asked “who gets to see or understand art?”, but the semi fresh “Who gets to have an opinion about it? From what angle and why?”
Thats a question they never start asking:“Can the subaltern speak?”[8]
I came to peace with the subaltern, it is of course me[9].
The subaltern will keep speaking and writing and making art[10].
“No tenía nada que hacer salvo marcharse a su casa, algo que no quería hacer pues su casa era un cuarto desangelado(…)en donde sólo lo esperaban sus libros y manuscritos, o quedarse en un rincón y sonreir a diestra y siniestra fingiendo estar concentrado en problemas de índole filosófica, que es lo que finalmente hizo”.
2666, Roberto Bolaño.
(La parte de los críticos)
[1] that was at least where it all started, its conceptual prerogative.
[2] do it, practice it, write it, sculpt it etc etc…
[3] paying attention to what happens at the military industrial complex is recommended in this case since what ever goes in that area defines the well termed avant-garde, wich would be the staring point of conceptual art. Tracing the history and inter-twinning between art and war is not something I’m capable of, but there are certainly books that travel fluently in this area, i will try my best to upload a bibliography soon enough.
[4] although i did have a bit of an internal cultural diaspora back home in Venezuela. Since I come from what can be catalogued as the Venezuelan inner schweiz, knowing in Caracas -not being a caraqueño- wasn't well seen nor well received.
[5] that snakeish feature that builds up what, for the lack of a better term, some people and myself would call a close to dangerous narcissism, a personality treat that my therapist and I have been working on for quite sometime now.
[6] also tackling that shining impostor syndrome with my therapist.
[7] i am not referring in anyway to my actual partner or any friend nor -to be fair- to anyone specific from my past, just to make it clear this is a text that explores something else and given that my intimacy and personal life has always been the place from where I speak, write and art from, then this text also speaks from a collection of bygone personal experiences.
[9] the subaltern in this case is anyone owning its fringe location in regards to the western canon: women, p.o.c’s, browns, latinXs, migrants, lgbtq+, outsiders and marginales a like.
[10] owning its privilege to do so.e