Postcrisis. Biopolitics of Art in Argentine after 2001”,

ANDREA GIUNTA

Cambridge

Conferencia; Leventritt Lecture - Conferencia magistral; 2009

Harvard University

Following Wall Street’s collapse in September, 2008, a Buenos Aires stock market analyst maintained that there are lessons to be learned from every crisis, but that none had taught more lessons more effectively than those produced by the crisis in Argentina in December, 2001. That crisis (referred to as “la crisis” by Argentineans) effectively marked a before and after in the country’s social and cultural imagery. It put solidarity and imagination to the test as the only possible resources for implementing forms of immediate subsistence, without mediation of any kind. In the face of defection by both the economic system and political forces, solidarity in action was a survival tactic that allowed for a re-articulation of the social system in response to everyday demands. Argentina’s case has been evaluated as a foretaste of the crisis to come in the system worldwide. Recent events and the enigma that the imminent future presents all over the world make this case a significant one, as a laboratory where the effects of a global debacle --that seems not to have touched bottom yet--- might be observed in advance. One of the most outstanding aspects of this phenomenon and the topic of this presentation is the impact generated in the art system by this mutation of historical time, particularly in the city of Buenos Aires. An intense, cosmopolitan and contradictory city, its culture is permeated by cycles of effervescence and disillusionment; at times creativity expands, resources multiply and it becomes excessive and dazzling; at others, artists, the market and art institutions fall into decline and become profoundly insipid. Much to our surprise, during the darkest of times unexpected resources can also be generated, where creativity is reactivated and even accelerates.