25.10.2021 - 24.01.2022
Co-edited with Maya Juracán
This issue of the magazine has been a challenge. The exhaustion of two years of the pandemic was evident throughout the writing and editing processes about a land that is crumbling as a result of the capitalist monoculture that produces and normalizes violence, toxicity, deterioration, fear, and selfishness. Given this, we want to thank the writers for joining this issue that we imagine as a song of many voices that insists on the possibility of the future. Because we have all internalized the idea that new futures are not possible, we know that it is not an easy task to dare to be visionaries. However, it is vitally important that we continue to collectively weave together new dreams of autonomy out of stories that recognize the ability to (re)invent life. What does it mean to twist the sign of abuse of power to imagine life and justice in the present-future? What images accompany us—or do we need to create—to trust it?
When the Euro-white anthropologist Kirchhoff decisively named a certain geographic area of the continent “Mesoamerica,” he imposed a specific universal order, a cartographic logic of the world that has systematically allowed genocides, dispossession, and socio-environmental racism for the benefit of the West. The memory of the bodies-territories-land— those that the structure of the nation-state, with the support of imperialism, continually tries to erase—is then a seed that (re)invents from its germination: it scratches away at the imposed mediocrity as it traces writings of disobedience that demand other languages of recognition and justice. The bodies-territories- land resist in movement. They shift, they migrate, they change, they go into exile, they organize and resist. In the future, the fire has not ceased; the mountain that rises up in the throats of those who do not allow themselves to be dominated by power still burns. What helps these writings on disobedience to be preserved in the future? How does memory persevere? What forms does the sovereignty of the imagination take?
In this issue of Terremoto, we want to combine reflections on memory and imagination, questioning how the symbolic and political order of contemporary art instrumentalizes both for the convenience of socio-political elites. We want to share our thoughts about the possibility of misconfiguring being in the world by summoning those in resistance, who through collective aesthetic practices imagine the futures yet to germinate.
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2021
21 2021
25.10.2021
Issue 21: A Burning Song
Aldones Nino, Marcela Cantuária, Herbert de Paz
How can we weave together a memory that allows us to glimpse new horizons of justice at the periphery of hegemonic narrative? Recognizing the counterfactual character of history, the curator Aldones Nino speaks with the painters Herbert de Paz and Marcela Cantuária, who share their impressions of what the role of the imagination is in the face of a constantly regenerating colonial project.
21 2021
01.11.2021
Issue 21: A Burning Song
Patricio Majano
Curator Patricio Majano looks at the work of Mario López Vega and highlights the importance of generating a Nahua aesthetic as a form of resistance to the historical annihilation of the Indigenous peoples in El Salvador.
21 2021
08.11.2021
Issue 21: A Burning Song
Alex Santana, Lorena Cruz Santiago
Where does the sovereignty of images lie? Wandering critically through the fields of memory, the artists Lorena Cruz Santiago and Alex Santana share impressions of visual productions that, as an exercise of autonomy, move away from statism flowing in a stream of what original populations are and have been.
21 2021
15.11.2021
Issue 21: A Burning Song
Arte a 360 grados
The collective Arte 360 Grados reflects on contemporary art as an apparatus of hegemonic ideologization, which in the context of Mexico reproduces a cultural policy of mestizaje, reinforcing cognitive ties with colonial power.
21 2021
22.11.2021
Issue 21: A Burning Song
Rosa Chávez, Marilyn Boror Bor, Jimena Galán Dary
In a conversation with Jimena Galán Dary, artists Rosa Chávez and Marilyn Boror share their perspectives on the importance of weaving and molding their own genealogy as Maya-Kaqchikel women living in a hostile context that perpetuates patriarchal and racist violence.
21 2021
29.11.2021
Issue 21: A Burning Song
Risseth Yangüez Singh, José Braithwaite, Milko Delgado
In an exercise in which criticism and imagination are inextricably linked, Panamanian artists Milko Delgado, Risseth Yangüez Singh, and José Braithwaite exchange opinions, expectations, and memories about the conflicted and problematic mestizo identity in Panama to consider the possibility of a world where Afro-descendant and Black memory of the land is not ignored.
21 2021
06.12.2021
Issue 21: A Burning Song
Elyla, Juan José Guillén (Purificación, Puri)
The artists Elyla and Purificación exchange dreams and critical notions regarding mestizo identities subjected to the colonial apparatus in Nicaragua and Guatemala, which, in tension with their mariconería, outline artistic practices that make imagining other worlds possible.
21 2021
13.12.2021
Issue 21: A Burning Song
Alejandro Ortiz, Numa Dávila, Esvin Alarcón Lam
From Guatemala, communicator and journalist Alejandro Ortiz interviews artists Numa Dávila and Esvin Alarcón Lam about the forms of enunciation and artistic resistance they carry out in Cuirpoétikas and Imaginary Pagoda respectively.
21 2021
20.12.2021
Issue 21: A Burning Song
Karon Corrales, Adán Vallecillo
On the occasion of “Reunión” Performance Festival, which takes place in Honduras every two years in areas protected for their environmental importance, curator Karon Corrales and artist Adán Vallecillo reflect on the possibility of artistic practices as tools for resistance and transformation in the face of the capitalist threat that infringes the territory.
21 2021
10.01.2022
Issue 21: A Burning Song
Diego Ventura Puac-Coyoy
Curator Diego Ventura Pac-Coyoy shares reflections on the bicentennial celebration of independence in Central America to raise questions about the relationship of cultural work with that narrative, inviting a reimagination of the idea of “nation” that the Central American community forms through the arts.
21 2021
17.01.2022
Issue 21: A Burning Song
Maya Juracán
On a path that begins to outline a more diverse presence in Central American art, curator Maya Juracán talks with a few of the region’s collectives about the possibility of visualizing futures where creative processes endowed with life expand and contract; healing and weaving genealogies to write another history of art.
21 2021
24.01.2022
Issue 21: A Burning Song
FRONTERISTXS
Through visionary fiction, the fronteristxs collective imagines a future that narrates a radical transformation of existence on planet Earth, which as an elementary part, includes the abolition of the prison industrial complex.
