Although a year has elapsed since Publico Transitorio, the message it points to, the plea it makes, translates into a wide range of ideas, paths, questions that highlight the aesthetic underpinnings and symbolic creation of many of those of us who took part in it. This is true because over and beyond the theoretical connotations and the sweet self-satisfaction that these encounters sparked, both individually and collectively, the issues they addressed are clear constants in contemporary art the past few years.

The conforming of social space in conjunction with urban issues have become a constant for both theoreticians and cultural creators. This happens in a global context in which those changes have turned into visible elements-tools that symbolize social configuration. The changes that have taken place in economic processes during the past 30 years have led to a physical transformation of living spaces. The known forms of space and time have changed substantially with the shift from a Fordist economic paradigm to a "service" form of capitalism, so the old structures are no longer appropriate for the "transit" of goods. (1)

In keeping with those transformations and the processes that "contemporary art" itself has undergone during the past 30 or 40 years, in which the spheres of aesthetic development have broadened to an extraordinary degree, concern over spatial reconfiguration has become a central topic of discussion. It therefore comes as no surprise that the latest versions of Documenta and other important biennials (Sao Paolo, Venice, Tokyo) have placed special emphasis on that subject. In fact, if one browses through the programming of the main centers of contemporary art in the world, one recurrently finds projects, exhibitions, shows of all kinds on Urban Public Space, Space and Urban Intervention, City, Urbanism and Art, etc. Indeed, this year heralds the "2008 European Prize for Urban Public Space", jointly organized in Barcelona, Paris, London, Rotterdam, Vienna and Helsinki, (2) where the question Why Public Space? is sparking debate.

But let us return to Publico Transitorio and the whys and wherefores of its significance. As I indicated above, projects along that same line have been generated for some time and are foolishly repeated in the world of contemporary art. Even academic spaces, government projects and the cultural policies of governments of different political tints have found this subject to be a good niche for disguising discriminatory policies, gentrification processes and social exclusion.

Let us think, however, who the main organizers of this project were in addition to the formal institutions that made it possible. It is significant that the majority of those in charge of conceiving, creating and producing Publico Transitorio (a numerous team) are engaged in different disciplines: artists, art critics, art historians and curators, and most have a natural bond with Latin America or cultures other than that of the United States, either through their family background or through ongoing work on Latin America's cultural constructions and artistic forms of expression.

The artists, activists and thinkers invited to the encounter were also significant, not just because their practices focus directly on public space, but due to their specific relationship with the struggle for that space and the permanent state of "margin", "transit" and "movement". Another commonality was also their clear collaborative and network-building practices, in their ceaseless criticism and deconstruction of the formalism that prevails in artistic languages, in their direct relationship with the field of politics and in their determination to make a political difference.

Those practices have been carried out for more than three decades and have not lost their validity: on the contrary, in a way they have been strengthened by these new spaces for action. Such is the case with the Mexican artist Mónica Mayer and the U.S. artist Suzanne Lacy, formerly dynamic representatives of performance art and the feminist movement in the 1970s. As Mayer states, although the difference is that three decades ago one felt, was convinced, that one formed part of an inevitable process, that of engaging in revolution. Now, despite the uncertainty, one continues to believe and do. With greater difficulty in the sense of feeling one is part of something beyond oneself. A resituating in the new context, in which the conditions have evidently changed, but the struggles mostly remain the same".

And that dimension, which updates these practices, thus forming a generational continuity, feeds the transversal nature of the practices convened and creates the necessary bridges to build that much needed parallel chronology of history.