First let us define our terms. What, in our context, is the novel? What, in our context, is history? What is our context? Sylvia Wynter1 A few months ago I was leaning towards the earth to sow as a sign of mourning, recognition, and transformation. My brother, a few steps away, told me that this […]

We threaten to unleash the furious gale of love —Grupo Eros (1975) I am simply Kino —Kino no Tabi (2000) Television screens flickered all over the continent, in towns, villages, shanty towns, middle-class homes, favelas, communities, and perhaps in the kitchens and bedrooms of the palatial mansions of gated communities. Children and young people of […]

Disenchanted perpetually dazzled Illimani —Óscar Cerruto The metaphysics inherited from the different nations and Indigenous peoples of Abya Yala—still current today—account for the fact that animal species and other species are conceived as many types of persons, peoples, societies; that is, as political entities. In this sense, a lizard that wonders how the perfume exuded […]

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 […]

“How are you?” A simple question that we usually answer with: “Good, and you?”, an automatic response that cuts short the possibility of stopping and recognizing the vulnerability of the body before our interlocutors. “Good”: a hesitation that swings between pessimism and optimism, prompting answers in the form of short phrases, emojis, stickers, or GIFs […]

Edited in collaboration with Jo Ying Peng We inhabit geographies that are the result of the incessant flows and rhythms of those dialogues that the oceans, storms, volcanoes, and earthquakes have sustained for millions of years. Our existence is immersed in cycles of endless symbiotic exchanges; geopoetics: vital languages ​​that contain a palimpsest that records […]

Over the last few weeks, a fear of uncertainty has been weaved with endless reflections that try to explain what we are experiencing as societies. Globality in crisis: we again perceive the acceleration of anthropocentric history from the narrative tension that arise between the confusion resulting from confinement, and the speed of the media opposing […]

We have arrived at the end of the second decade of the millennium, over the course of which the system of contemporary art continued its global boom and expansion parallel to that of neoliberalism. Out of the proliferation of art fairs, biennials, museums, galleries as well as self-directed spaces aspiring to gain autonomy from such […]

Co-edited with María Elena Ortiz We live in a present of eyes irritated by tear gas, by smog in the cities, by the ash of forests consumed by flames, by the excessive brightness of screens. When the neoliberal capitalist system, that oppressive abstract construction, appeals to the gaze, it is to wear it out, disorient […]

Co-edited with Lorena Tabares Salamanca In light of the complexities of the body in action, nothing can be taken for granted. In the vastness of the field of art related to the live body—performance, action art, live arts—presence is embodied through the artistic exploration of the gesture, whose existence is unfolded in the momentary simultaneity […]

Co-edited with Florencia Portocarrero Imagine the painter who accompanied the colonizing missions that were heading towards the Andes Mountains, who, along with the chronicler, would be responsible for creating the images that would define America in the collective imagination. For him, the physical and symbolic violence of the colonial project made perfect sense, so he […]

Co-edited with Ruth Estévez Since the colonial era up until the present day, urban centres in Latin America have been developed under a homogenizing vision of civilization, which was later updated by ideals of modernity and progress joint to a developmentalist logic. Complementing the violence of Colony’s urban layout and its territorial spoliation, architectural design, based on Modernism, updates […]

For a certain Western, white, and bourgeois elite, the year 1968 is often recalled in relation to the month of May, following the famous Californian Summer of Love of 1967: an emblem of the social, moral, and consumer emancipation of a certain youth. However, in 1968 this side of the Atlantic was also the site of a […]

Crisis and anxiety characterize our relationship with the reality we share: inhabiting it causes a ‘nervous breakdown’ that is the result of a succession of events that alter our daily routine and lead to increased stress. Corruption, global warming, feminicide, drug trafficking, precariousness, insecurity, racism, abuse, exploitation, repression… although we have managed to turn a critical eye upon the realities that […]

Art Los Angeles Reader is a biannual newspaper published by Fair Grounds Associates, the production firm of the art fair Art Los Angeles Contemporary, which features Los Angeles writers writing about Los Angeles. In the frameworks of Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA they invited us as co-editors of their 4th issue in order to conceive together […]

Co-edited by Pilar Tompkins Rivas Smuggling is a counter-hegemonic practice of dissent and subversion often used in the artistic, social or economic fields to move information, objects, and bodies through oppressive boundaries. Indeed, the systems that direct us all seem stiff but hide cracks, which offer the possibility of subverting their structures by disguising subjectivities, […]

Co-edited with Fernanda Brenner In 1985, British movie director Terry Gilliam releases Brazil, a free adaptation of George Orwell’s novel 1984 (currently hitting again best-seller list in the USA). Borrowing its title from Ary Barroso’s song Brazil, after Gilliam allegedly heard it while scouting in a horrible small industrial town in the north of England, […]

How could a political incentive for change such as the Colombian peace treaty signed with FARC after 50+ years of war—and its philosophical connotation within a traumatic history of violence—be rejected by the democratic majority in the October 2016 referendum? How could the economic and cultural collaboration at the scale of a geopolitical zone such […]

A move towards secularization–the minimization of the presence of religion in public life, has been driven by many modernizing governments and regimes during the 20th century. For many, religion remains the main explanation of worldly phenomena and institutional and familial logic, and its influence is usually persistent in the most intimate behaviors. However, lately religion […]

The glare that a shadow can emit is evident in recent Latin American history, a history notoriously scored by oppression, violence, disappearances, and other painful secrets tossed into the gray areas of memory and to the margins of hegemonic historical accounts. In the shadow, you’re protected by the invisibility of marginalization—at the same time you’re […]

The hangover is an altered state, as absorbing and mind-bending as drunkenness. Ambivalent and unpredictable, it may depress you or, on the contrary, infuse you with irrational optimism. It can free you from fear, prolonging the euphoria of a celebration, or it might just increase the paranoia of this impending doom. As the world becomes […]

Growing societal regimentation on the global level has normalized cultural practices that were once informal and vernacular, yet paradoxically, this goes hand-in-hand with increasingly acute economic de-regularization. That said, recent technological evolution has lent unprecedented visibility to alternative methodologies and ways of thinking, opening up new spaces for knowledge exchange. Today’s art world is situated […]

In 2008, Naomi Klein explained in The Shock Doctrine the manner by which the aftermath of catastrophes which she described as “states of shock” — whether they be ecological, political, or economic in nature —are crucial moments for the redistribution of social structures, ideologies, institutions, and individuals that then seek to impose new orders more […]

As we pace around them in exhibitions, shape them in studios and evoke them in conversations, art objects also look back at us, and we probably pervade their minds as much as they do ours. How can we access their impressions of us? Are they collecting us in their museums? The changing nature of the […]

Though amply discussed lately in the global art world, the idea of the margin remains a useful concept to analyze various geopolitical contexts. It guides us to understand where we speak from, and to articulate thoughts on distance or proximity, may they be physical or cultural, in a large span of situations such as art production. […]