Crossroads for Activist Art in Argentina

ANA LONGONI

Third Text

ROUTLEDGE

Lugar: London; Año: 2008 vol. 22 p. 575 - 587

1475-5297

There have been two critical junctures affecting the appearance, proliferation and vitality of street art groups connected to new social movements in Argentina over the last decade. The first, occurring in the mid-nineties, was the creation of HIJOS, a group drawing together the children of the disappeared, and the invention of ‘escraches’, a type of direct action they used to highlight the impunity of those who had been responsible for repression under the last dictatorship and to provoke public condemnation. The second moment, around the time of the popular uprising of December 2001, saw creative demonstrations of protest, often involving artists. The subversive use of mass communication networks and the generation of tools for alternative communication are assets held in common by the new forms of protest. Within this framework, the text weighs up these experiences and their impact on the redefinition of artistic and political practice. It explores recent tendencies and the dilemmas that collective groups are currently undergoing and that have arisen in the face of two main problems: firstly, the visibility achieved by certain groups on the international art circuit; secondly, the  unknow and new situation these groups face as the result of the recent turnaround in the present regime’s human rights policy.