The experimental, work-in-progress nature of the show reflects its limitations, excesses and overabundance of models. It is not an exhibition of "Latin American art", or a project about art and politics of the kind that could be seen continuously during the 90s and 2000s, and much less a utilitarian reading of materials too-fragile for theme-based exhibitions. Rather, it is presented as a first "seismic"(5) experiment that provides certain fragmentary clues of a history that is being revised and, to everyone’s benefit, recovered as a means of activating the present.

Nevertheless, the exhibition’s questioning of the limits of what can be considered "art" in limiting conditions does not really work given the neglect shown to certain art practices during the period in question. Without meaning to resort to the logic of representation or quotas, it is annoying to witness the absence of some artists of strong political and poetic intensity, among them Eugenio Dittborn (and the Chilean problem of Escena de Avanzada), Victor Grippo, Beatriz González, Luis Camnitzer, Cildo Meireles, Eduardo Tokeshi, Tunga or Juan Downey, and other artists from the countries featured in the show. This becomes supremely evident on seeing the excessive emphasis on other experiences, a paradigmatical example being the Yeguas del Apocalipsis.

That is probably due to the "in process" result of a fundamental alliance between the Red and the Museo Reina Sofía, which, following its policy of being a museum of the south, promotes the research, deployment and experiencing of modern and contemporary practices that narrate other histories of art –and histories in general— as pasts that revitalize the present. Part of that program bears the mark of projects such as Desvíos de la deriva, curated by Lisette Lagnado and María Berrios in 2010, or the show curated by Ana Longoni, Roberto Jacoby. El deseo nace del derrumbe, which is being projected into the future in the most extensive presentation in Europe of the Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros in 2013 or the Cildo Meireles exhibition at the Palacio de Velázquez, also slated for 2013. Against that background Perder la forma humana is the most politically committed initiative I’ve ever witnessed, in this museum or any other Spanish museum, in the past twenty years, and one of the few that is addressed using a collective south-south approach.

The presentation of Perder la forma humana in Buenos Aires, Lima and perhaps Santiago will no doubt allow the curatorial team to retrieve the corpses that are coming back to life to be recontextualized from their graves. Let us hope that they will address the flaws we mentioned, although they are minor considerations in light of the project’s undisputed importance.

Going back to the beginning of the exhibition –because one leaves only by returning to the starting point - Lemebel reappears with a phrase that continues to be relevant: utopia is for future generations, so many kids are going to be born with a broken wing and I want them to fly my friend, I want their revolution to give them a piece of red sky in which to fly. And let us say: so that other corpses can be revived as well.

Notes:

(1) "Declaración instituyente Red Conceptualismos del Sur", March 2009. http://conceptual.inexistente.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=56:declaracion

(2) http://www.museoreinasofia.es/exposiciones/actuales/perder-forma-humana.html

(3) The poem Cadáveres was written by Perlongher on a bus trip from Buenos Aires to Sao Paulo and published for the first time in: Perlongher, Nestor, Alambres, Buenos Aires, Último Reino, 1987.

(4) The exhibition’s time frame reaches up to 1994, taking the new round of Zapatismo protests as a "temporary closing".

(5) Indeed, the notion of earthquake refers us to the tellurism in Latin American philosophy and literature promoted by Guillermo Francovich and Pablo Neruda among others, which refers to a position of discursive autonomy in relation to tectonic movements. The use of the word "seismic" in this exhibition is meant as a parody of this militant nomenclature.