The Radical Art of Poverty

CECILIA PALMEIRO

Berkeley, CA

Conferencia; Amateurism in the Arts Conference; 2018

Berkeley Arts Research Center, UC Berkeley

The professionalization of artists, which guarantees the so-called ?artistic freedom?, was a key element for the modern concept of autonomy. The commodification of art was its counterpart: art could say it all at the expense of becoming a very particular luxury commodity, one that lacks a social function, and whose value is ultimately determined by its market value. So the artistic freedom, like any other freedom in capitalism, relies on the freedom of the market. Moments of deep economic and political crises destabilize this paradox of freedom that depends on the total submission to the norms of capital. When markets collapse, like they do in South America, the artistic production is emancipated from the duties of money-making. This is the moment when original artistic practices emerge: practices that are irrelevant to the market but find another social function, as an act of desire, a radical act that cannot just adscribe to the rules of business. In contemporary Latin America, trespassing the limits of artistic autonomy is not a decision of the artist but rather a material condition of production. Certain artists become amateur because they are expelled from the market and the industry. My presentation will analyze three moments in which this new form of post-autonomy emerges: ?poesia marginal? in Brazil during the last military dictatorship, ?Belleza y felicidad? and Eloisa Cartonera projects in Argentina during the 2001 crisis, and some of most contemporary forms of queer-feminist artistic-political interventions in the context of the conservative restoration (the feminist tide).