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InteractivA 05


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Untitled by proyecto colaborativo/       collabortive work





Chow Mein Pibil by Agustí­n        Chong Amaya



Chow Mein Pibil by Agustí­n        Chong Amaya
Centro Cultural Olimpo,
Jul 16, 2005 - Jul 25, 2005
Mérida, Yucatan, Mexico

The biennale InteractivA 05
by Eduardo Navas

Common themes that were brought forward over and over again during the conferencecrossing over spaces, creating alternative spaces, and questioning the establishment. In a way, these concepts are explicit in the curatorial statement in the catalog of the exhibition (available online) but the notions were even more present during the actual events. Many of the discussions that took place during and after the presentations and performances entertained the possibilities of alternatives for producing outside of a mainstream, as it can be noted in the above descriptions. And it is truly great that these activities took place in a town like Merida, a place with a rich history, which includes an unfortunate colonial period. Merida was the perfect place to have discussions on the possibilities for art in the twenty-first century; it is a place where plurality can be celebrated and embraced. After all, Mexico has experienced or is still experiencing an important period of reflection. This is true when we consider books like Guillermo Bonfil Batalla's Mexico Profundo, in which he argues that there is a denial of a major part of Mexican History; that is, the history of the Indians that lived in the Americas before the colonizers arrived, and who are still living as part of contemporary communities. He explains that by denying the History of indigenous people, Mexico is missing the opportunity to become a truly unique nation. He argues that the country is founded on an imaginary Mexico created to push it to become a "Western nation."[1] His book spurred a new way of thinking about Mexican culture. [2] Admittedly, this happened or is happening mainly in intellectual circles. In the second edition Batalla explains that the book was written in a time when "there [was] an intellectual space favorable to pluralism,"[3] and dogmatism was at a low. The book was written in the mid 1980s a time that was known as a postmodern period; a time when little narratives took the center of discourse and metanarratives became the thing to fight against. [4]Western thought is a particular metanarrative that has been heavily criticized by postcolonialism. Technology is considered by many an extension of Western thought and something that must be resisted or at least be critical of. This is the case with Balanquet. He considered InteractivA 05 a space where people could move towards a "post-technological" period, when the fetish for the machine would no longer exist, and the current models would be no more.[5] In his curatorial statement he contextualizes all of the participants as struggling with the inequalities that emerging technologies bring about in particular localities.[6] Balanquet's position actually resonated in every presentation, given that he would introduce everyone. Like most curators, Balanquet has a vision, an agenda that came into conflict with some of the works that he selected.

One of the questions that arise when reading the curatorial statement is, why is technology bad? According to Balanquet it is because of its connection with Western thought. This he makes very explicit in his catalogue essay where he explains that new technologies are the extension of the colonizer. He writes:

It is not important how attractive emerging technologies and media arts are, the variables of our hybrid culture lead to an interactive system that existed long before the industrial revolution, that was supported with slaves in the Atlantic and the Eurocentric invasion of the whole planet. These variables open a system of knowledge "Data knowledge" which cannot be captured by the digital networks of information that drive colonial power.[7]

This premise imposes on everyone participating in the exhibition a specific struggle against colonialism. In fact, the colonial struggle that is extended to the participants is related to Mexico, given that Balanquet repeatedly cites the history of Mesoamerica specific to that region as well as Cuba, his country of birth. However the summary of conferences and performances provided above show that while it might be true that many participants share a notion of resistance, it is not true that they can be easily contextualized within the post-colonial struggle as understood in Mexico and other parts of Latin America. At the end of the essay he allows other types of struggles to take place. Unfortunately, there is no room for convergence or integration in his argument; instead he promotes a separation from that which is "Western." This ambiguously excludes those participants with a Western Heritage, even when they identify with the colonial struggle that Balanquet so fervently promotes.

Further Balanquet extends the "post-technological" position to everyone on the exhibition, assuming that they all resist the ideology of technology as an extension of Western thought. This also is not shared by many of the participants. Many of them presented technology as a tool that can be used to create new critical dialogues within the current power structure and thereby problematize it by turning it into something else: a plurality full of conflicts that cannot be easily defined as this or that. Much of the work showed that the world is changing and that while globalization is prevalent, there are multiple ways of appropriating the very devices used to extend such a movement to actually change it, thus calling something particularly Western or non-Western with strict binary opposition, as the post-technological proposition demands is becoming more difficult to do.



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