Basing its work on a political approach and a concise energy that had gradually lost its thrust due to the passing of time, Between Utopia and Disillusionment sought to gather momentum through the questions and quests stemming from contemporary art forms. As artwork, such forms did not question the practices of the 60s and 70s, but were used to encourage a current discussion of the field of contemporary art.

The group formed by Olascoaga comprised various fields of art and education practices alike. It was made up of Eunice Adorno, Beta-Local / La Práctica (Puerto Rico), Maru Calva, Alejandro Chao, Colectivo AM, Cráter Invertido / Revista Cartucho, Abraham Cruzvillegas, Finella Halligan, Pablo Helguera, Sol Henaro, Magali Lara, Mauricio Marcin, Marcela Marcos, Sylvia Marcos, Jorge Margolis, Sarah Minter, Nuria Montiel, Taniel Morales, Roberto Ochoa, Ignacio Plá, Vicente Razo, Naomi Rincón-Gallardo, and the UniTierra (Oaxaca), all of whom were ultimately friends. This interdisciplinary group devoted more than a year to learning about the CIDOC experiences, sharing with its agents and getting to know its work methodologies through intensive and private workshops, along with some public talks. Each member then engaged in an art-based reflection on their memory of the CIDOC experience from the standpoint of their own approaches. Each artist/collective made proposals from an affective genealogy.

In line with Olascoaga’s proposal, that genealogy does not tackle the memory of CIDOC following a strictly historiographic methodology, which would involve a broad cartography of the direct and indirect influences of the actions and thoughts of the group of intellectuals from Morelos in fields such as pedagogy, liberation theology, multicultural education, social movements, the political agendas of indigenous groups, social work, experimental ethnography and gender studies; an extensive, urgent means of understanding the Latin American left, using art as a means of shaping the project: art was used as a building block, an approach suggested by those in charge of the initiative. It was a field that was used to address the sensitivity of the CIDOC memory, but without making its political agenda explicit. The genealogy of questions posed by art and by artists takes the place of a History (with a capital in that it refers to macropolitical narratives) that networks of social agendas and activists would expect, but instead surprises the kind of history (without a capital in that it corresponds/refers to micropolitical narratives) that prompts one to address the corporalities, gestures and mechanisms that encourage experiencing life in keeping with the coordinates of Illich’s thought. It was proposed that artists concerned with the political forms of representation in the field of contemporary art, two social organizations, La Práctica (Puerto Rico) and UniTierra (Oaxaca) and curators focusing on dissident experiences, should be affected –in the Deleuzean-Guattarian sense—by the mobilizations and instigations of CIDOC and its work network. Based on their experience as creators and by interconnecting their own projects with this memory, they undertook to activate and produce artworks that would point to the current relevance of CIDOC’s political views using a personal focus. The CIDOC memory permeated the artists’ body of work, they digested it or rather became bloated with it due to the intensity of the exercise, and depending on the expectations of their personal approaches, they then regurgitated it in artworks of different formats to be displayed in a Public Exhibition.

That affective –intestinal if you will—genealogy activated the poetic and sensitive processes that still run through the memory of the archive and the body of Cuernavaca’s community agendas of the 60s and 80s. This process of digestion gave rise to an inquisitive process. Olascoaga prompted us to ask ourselves: "What does it mean to think and do collectively? What experiences, potentialities, frustrations, teachings and conflicts can it lead to?" Following this line of questioning, these issues were all explored at the Public Exhibition. The event was directed at CIDOC’s peers and friends, Cuernavaca’s cultural community, and the public re-engagements in Mexico City’s field of contemporary art. Although the great majority of the art initiatives focused on the modern contemplation of artworks for public viewing (except for Taniel Morales’s work –radio talks in the public space featuring collective discussions on topics of interest--; Magali Lara and Nuria Montiel –an etching workshop open to the public--; and Colectivo AM, who threw a party challenging people to dance non-stop for 3 hours), their creative processes reflected the play of the personal and testimonial inter-relationships of the artists invited. All the artwork processes stemmed from the artists’ experiences of being together, following the concerns sparked by the memories of CIDOC. Pablo Helguera performed a monologue on Lemercier’s conversations with God (Lemercier was a priest who combined psychoanalysis with Christian meditation to the point of listening to God, although it was later discovered that he had an eye tumor that made him hallucinate). Naomi Rincón-Gallardo gave a concert in which, futuristically, the lyrics questioned the future of schooling (schoolchildren sang and played toy instruments during the show; many of those attending the concert were their parents and relatives). Sara Minter gave one of her well-known videotaped lunches, in which some of the artists and agents involved sat down and talked about gender issues and personal life as they drank mezcal and sampled traditional Mexican appetizers. As spectators, we had the opportunity of communing with an exclusive group of artists and players, of friends, through the representation of pieces on display, performances and shows. We were able to witness their community experimentation. We got to know the current lives of some artists, using the past life of some dissident intellectuals as an excuse for doing so. For three days we were able to see how other people came together to experiment.

I believe any activation of the political memory of the past leads to unexpected ways of mobilizing the present, albeit through author-based and monological rather than dialogical (as Grant Kester uses the term) approaches. In that sense, Between Utopia and Disillusionment can be viewed as an energizing virus.