The Argentine International: A Dialogue (Part I)
We thought this conversation as a sort of exploration around the idea of the “international”, in a close dialogue with the name of this exhibition. The idea is to share different approaches to this that we can understand as the "international" from an open broad spectrum of references, disciplines and voices.
One of the first associations I made with "The Argentine International" was the "Feminist International," likely due to the name echoing the English translation of the title of a book by Argentine theorist and activist Verónica Gago. So, I went to review the book in Spanish, searching for a definition of the international. In the book, the authors present several layers regarding the international character adopted by the feminist movement in the recent years and its implications. One that I found particularly insightful is that the transnational, I quote: "...could be said to be a mode of existence of feminism”, something that the author identifies as specific to the movement of the 21st century. I would like to emphasize this dimension of the international as a means, or perhaps even a condition, for existence – in this case, for the existence of the demands associated with the feminist movement, and the movement itself. To certain extent, this overturns some established logics associated with the international: while the text suggests that this transnational dimension unfolded from one point to another, that is, from South America to other territories, following the idea of “becoming” international, it then became a strategy for survival. I believe there’s a very valuable point here to think how the dimension of the transnational, or the international, could serve as a general strategy for existence, which I would like for us to see in terms of alliance, or alliance-building. An alliance that, from a feminist view, confronts neoliberal violence and its tendency to abstract times and places, but that can also function in the arts through alliances between artworks, forms of expression, and political and social demands.
In a very different light, this idea of the international understood so far in part as a platform, functions in this way in “el arte correo”, the mail art, or how it was also called the "distant communication via postal service." This art form, well-known within Argentine history, implies movement and circulation as fundamental frameworks of the artwork. It, also, makes the exchange itself very specific by reducing it to the dimensions of a postcard, a piece of paper, or an envelope. So, one way to consider this exchange is from a connection between individuals, as sending a mail generally requires the involvement of both parties. However, in many of these postal exchanges, the level of personal familiarity between individuals can be limited, or minimal. This might be an interesting point to momentarily shift our attention away from the international exchange between people towards an exchange between images, which can also be textual images, or images in a very broad sense. In this line, from a different perspective, a not that classical historian, Carl Einstein, provides some ways of thinking about the history of arts from a history without proper names, where the horizon is one of a long duration, on a planetary scale of time. The intention, in part, is to move the institution of art away from the center and to think about art in the long history of technology and of the relationships between people and technology. That is to say, or to recognize, that there is also a history of forms, of structures, even of writings, that have their own times and rhythms, like ritmos. Einstein's perspective, far from traditional formalist visions, posits a history of visualities from conflict, or a struggle of forms, which is not linear and which always entails decomposition. One of the author’s propositions in this sense, in line with bringing images and the relationships between images to the center, is, I quote: "Every precise form is a murder of other versions." This different lens can be an interesting angle from which to approach exchanges that take place on an international scale, which sometimes hold on to what is national and what is not, or something in between, but which from this perspective we can also think of as relationships that happen despite people, reconfiguring the meaning of "exchange" and its possibilities beyond the human figure.
I would like to mention two more possibilities of thinking. One is that at the beginning it occurred to me to look for this word of the “international” in "the dictionary" of the sociologist Raymond Williams, which is not a traditional dictionary in the sense of giving a single definition, but traces the first times a word was used, or became popular, and also shows the complications or contradictions in the use of words. To my surprise, I found that "international" was not there. There were other words like national, or native, but not "international". Then, following this previous idea that the international also suggests, as a form of existence, alliances, in other words, forms of social organization, I looked for the word "community”. On this word, the book mentions that, in occasions, it is used to name "existing social groups", other times to designate immediate or close relationships, or also to refer to the "quality" of the relationships between people. Towards the end of the entry, it concludes with the following sentence: "Community can be the warmly persuasive word to describe an existing set of relationships, or the warmly persuasive word to describe an alternative set of relationships. What is most important, perhaps, is that unlike all other terms of social organization (state, nation, society, etc.) it seems never to be used unfavorably, and never to be given any positive opposing or distinguishing term." This last point, this question of the term community not usually having a specific positive opposite, is, I believe, one of the aspects that the author leaves open both as the greatest strength of the community, and at the same time its complication. On the one hand, the fact that it is rarely seen unfavorably lies precisely in the absence of a specific opposite, however, at the same time, it is sometimes through opposition that meanings are created. Therefore, it’s possible ambiguity. An ambiguity that at least I believe to be especially powerful in a present context in which binary, and oppositional thinking, in all aspects of life, seeks to crystallize meanings, and in which, community, through its capacity to signify an "alternative set of relationships" exposes its greatest strength as it carries with it the form of the desire, or of the imagination, for those relationships.
To conclude, I would like to read a few fragments from the book by the Argentinian writer María Negroni, El corazón del daño, (The Heart of Damage). I didn’t know at all that this author lived in New York for many years. The fragments that I am going to read are related to her experience as a foreigner in New York and I believe that in certain senses speak about issues that I have not mentioned at all, such as the experience of uprooting.
It’s a first-person narration. I am going to read a few isolated fragments:
“La ensayista polaca Eva Hoffman tiene razón:
La pérdida es una varita mágica.
Las cosas se borran, se anulan, se suprimen, y a continuación se reinventan, se fetichizan, se escriben.
Después se hacía de noche y la noche se lo tragaba todo: los puentes sobre el río, los rascacielos, los seres sin fe, la música del corazón y el corazón del tiempo.
No quedaban sino pequeños instantes festivos, breves supervivencias, algún amuleto imprevisto.
Era esto el centro del Imperio.
Un sensorium.
Un mirador para absorber el mundo y, sobre todo, las infinitas representaciones del mundo.”
(…)
No sabía quién fuese, y no importaba.
Una sensatez a las oscuras me sostuvo, un deseo de hacer pie en lo incomprensible.
Inolvidablemente repetía:
Qué bueno no es tener antigüedad.”
(María Negroni, El corazón del daño, 2021)
References
Verónica Gago, Marta Malo y Luci Cavallero (eds.) La Internacional Feminista. Luchas en los territorios y contra el neoliberalismo. Traficantes de sueños, 2020.
Georges Didi-Huberman. Ante el tiempo. Historia del arte y anacronismos de las imágenes, 2011.
Raymond Williams. Keywords: a vocabulary of culture and society. Oxford University Press, 1985.
La Internacional Argentina
Featuring Artists: Cecilia Biagini, Ivana Brenner, Rafael Bueno, Bibi Calderaro, Beto De Volder, Dolores Furtado, Julio Grinblatt, Nicolás Guagnini, Claudia Kaatziza Cortínez, Syd Krochmalny, Fabián Marcaccio, Sabrina Merayo Núñez, Luciana Pinchiero, Liliana Porter, Sofía Quirno, Analia Segal, and Pedro Wainer.
Curated by The Office of The Unknown Curator with text of Syd Krochmalny
February 5th, 2025 -March 29th, 2025
Agustina Battezzati is an Argentine scholar devoted to contemporary culture from Latin America. Currently a PhD candidate at LAIC, her dissertation explores the interplay between art, neoliberalism, and notions of time in Argentina at the turn of the millennium. Drawing on an interdisciplinary approach that intersects cultural theory, art history, sociology, and feminist theories, Agustina investigates the transformations that occurred in Argentina’s cultural sphere within the context of neoliberal globalization and rapid technological advancements that impact societies worldwide.
Throughout her doctoral studies, Agustina has been awarded scholarships from Columbia University’s Institute of Latin American Studies (ILAS), the Institute for Studies on Latin American Art (ISLAA) in New York City, and the Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL).
Agustina holds an M.A. in Art History of Argentina and Latin America from the Instituto de Altos Estudios Sociales (IDAES, UNSAM), and an M.A. in Latin American Contemporary Aesthetics from the Universidad Nacional de Avellaneda (UNDAV), both located in Argentina. In addition to her academic pursuits, Agustina has written critical texts for several art magazines based in the United States, such as Hyperallergic and Artnexus.
As a Teaching Fellow at Columbia, Agustina has taught a range of courses, including Hispanic Cultures II, Art Actions and Interventions in Latin America, Art Practices in Public Space, Elementary Spanish I & II, and Intermediate Spanish I.
Publications:
“Time in Motion: An Approach to Gustavo Bruzzone’s more than four hundred hours of filming toward the end of the century” Institute for Studies on Latin American Art, 2024.
Comments