Third Text ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ctte20 A Partial History of South–South Art Criticism Juan Dávila’s Collaborations with Art & Text and Chilean Art Workers during the Pinochet Dictatorship, 1981–1990 Verónica Tello & Sebastián Valenzuela-Valdivia To cite this article: Verónica Tello & Sebastián Valenzuela-Valdivia (2022): A Partial History of South–South Art Criticism, Third Text, DOI: 10.1080/09528822.2021.2019954 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/09528822.2021.2019954 Published online: 04 Feb 2022. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 32 View related articles View Crossmark data Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=ctte20 Third Text, 2022 https://doi.org/10.1080/09528822.2021.2019954 A Partial History of South–South Art Criticism Juan Dávila’s Collaborations with Art & Text and Chilean Art Workers during the Pinochet Dictatorship, 1981–1990 Verónica Tello and Sebastián Valenzuela-Valdivia We – Verónica and Sebastián – met in late 2018 at the Museo de la Soli- daridad Salvador Allende (MSSA), Santiago, where Sebastián works and where Verónica was conducting research. We hit it off instantly, and quickly learned that we shared a mutual love for the eminent Chilean Australian artist Juan Dávila, especially his art from the 1980s. Dávila left Santiago de Chile in 1974, the year after Augusto Pinochet’s coup, settling in Melbourne, Australia. For decades, he maintained regular contact with art workers in Santiago, especially with Nelly Richard, his closest confidante, their exchanges of airmail, faxes and emails (1976– 1996) reflecting the shifts in technology.1 For decades, Dávila also visited Santiago on a regular basis, staying in touch with the art scene there and having occasional shows while trying to forge connections 1 Papers of Juan Davila, and exhibitions in Australia.2 As a result, his practice, and archives, National Library of became scattered across two locations in the Antipodes.3 Australia, 1972–2007, MS 9578 et al Verónica was born in Santiago but left for Melbourne as a kid in 1987 on a family reunification visa during the Pinochet dictatorship; Sebastián, 2 Ibid born in 1990, has lived in Santiago his entire life as part of the post-dic- 3 The National Library of tadura (post-dictatorship) generation. For over thirty years we have been Australia, in Canberra, and the Centro Nacional de Arte separated at the two extremes of the south, separated not just by the Contemporáneo, Centro de depths and enormity of the Pacific, but also by imperial forces that Documentación de las Artes have also fragmented our archives. Visuales and the private archives of Nelly Richard, When Verónica was visiting Santiago, she was in search of infor- Santiago, Chile mation on Dávila and his work with Chilean art workers during the dic- © 2022 Third Text 2 Art & Text, issue 4, 1981 (cover: Juan Dávila, Spider Woman in “Playing with Fire!” 1981). © Juan Davila, courtesy Kalli Rolfe Contemporary Art 3 tatorship; meanwhile, for years Sebastián had been cold-emailing various Australian art institutions seeking images, essays and information on Dávila, with varying degrees of success. We immediately realised that we could share our knowledge, ideas, experiences, histories, archives, cloud storage space and love for Dávila to support each other’s research, and we began a regular correspondence via emails, WhatsApp messages, Skype and, more recently, Zoom. Our correspondence led to us to collaborating on this essay on one aspect of Dávila’s cultural work, which explores his collaborations with the iconic Australian journal of art criticism Art & Text, its two his- torical editors, Paul Taylor and Paul Foss, and a small group of Chilean art workers between the years 1981 and 1990, during the military dicta- torship of President Augusto Pinochet, one of the most brutal regimes in Latin America. Dávila began collaborating with Art & Text in 1981, after he befriended its founding editor, Paul Taylor (he first appears in issue 4). Together, Dávila and Taylor – and later Art & Text’s second editor Paul Foss – pro- duced over a dozen projects with Chilean art workers. They especially worked with the French-born, Santiago-based essayist and cultural critic Nelly Richard. The extent of Dávila’s work with Art & Text in support of Chilean art workers is given some attention in the two key histories of the journal – Paul Foss and Rob McKenzie’s The &-Files: Art & Text 1981–2002 (2009) and Helen Hughes and Nicholas Croggon’s Impresario: Paul Taylor, The Melbourne Years, 1981–1984 (2013)4 – but this is limited to the production of only one output: Margins & Institutions: Art in Chile since 1973, a special (bilingual) issue of Art & Text (issue 21) authored by Richard. While Margins & Institutions is no doubt of great significance to 4 Paul Foss, Rob McKenzie the history of Art & Text – a matter we reflect on below – we want to shed with Ross Chambers, Rex light on the numerous, varied and sustained ways in which Dávila worked Butler and Simon Rees, The &-Files: Art & Text 1981– with Taylor and Foss via the journal and the associated Art & Criticism 2002, IMA/Whale & Star, Monograph Series (edited by Dávila and Foss) to disseminate discourses Brisbane and Culver City, in and beyond Santiago during Pinochet’s dictatorship. This history of California, 2009; Helen Hughes and Nicholas south–south collaboration across the Pacific has not yet found its way Croggon, eds, Impresario: into Australian or Chilean art historiography. Paul Taylor, The Melbourne Perhaps the absence of the history we want to forge here is partly a Years, 1981–1984, Surpllus/ MUMA, Melbourne, 2013 result of the almost instant anachronism of art criticism, especially that on the margins. Or perhaps some of the protagonists of this history 5 Regarding ‘weak histories’ see Verónica Tello, ‘Futures: have forgotten, or erased, parts of the archive. Or perhaps the connec- Or Weak Histories’, Future tions across the Pacific, between two poles of the south, have been too his- South: 8 Dialogues on Art and History, Third Text torically faint to allow this history to have emerged.5 Perhaps such ́ Publications and ECFRASIS, historical elusiveness is a consequence of the Pinochet dictatorship London and Santiago, in itself, which fractured and rendered precarious the archive of Chilean press, 2021. art production. Then again, perhaps it is the result of Australian art his- 6 Terry Smith, ‘The tory’s Euro-/North American centrism, which is blind to the peripheries. Provincialism Problem’, Artforum, vol 13, no 1, Further, at the international level, developmentalist discourse under- September 1974, pp 54–59; pinned by the centre–periphery model has mandated that locations Nelly Richard, ‘Latin such as Melbourne and Santiago are always arriving belatedly, relegated American Cultures: Mimicry or Difference?’, in Leon to being reproducers rather than producers of knowledge, and are there- Paroissien, ed, The Fifth fore ignored in many histories.6 Whatever the reasons, and there are Biennale of Sydney: Private many, the history of south–south art criticism and collaboration we Symbol: Social Metaphor, The Biennale, Sydney, 1984, focus on here is wanting, awaiting the attention and care of a younger np generation of art workers. 4 Art & Text, issue 1, 1981 5 7 Peter Botsman, Chris It is not paradoxical that such a history is being reconstructed, some Burns, Peter Hutchings, forty years later, through our south–south dialogue and collaboration. eds, The Foreign Bodies On the one hand, art history in Chile requires archives based in Australia Papers, Local Consumption to animate its pasts and forge its futures, and in turn, Chilean archives are Publications, Sydney required in Australia to bring to the fore its southern art histories. The 1981; Heather Barker and flows and movements of archives have allowed us to rearticulate a Charles Green, ‘No More Provincialism: Art & missing history for both locations, and to exceed the limits of existing Text’, emaj, vol 1, no 5, national art histories. 2010, pp 1–30, p 4, https:// tinyurl.com/73y7njzp, In this article we adhere to a theory of simultaneity: in different lati- accessed 18 February 2021 tudes across the planet, similes of critical thought and conceptual prop- 8 eg Paul Foss and Meaghan ositions for the future of art, culture and life were/are being developed Morris, eds, Language, in parallel via rigorous and experimental forms of art criticism across Sexuality & Subversion, two distinct sociohistorical contexts. We are motivated to reactivate Feral, Sydney, 1978; Meaghan Morris and Paul past currents of southern art criticism at a time which, once again, Patton, eds, Michel demands embodying a critical relationship to marginal epistemologies Foucault: Power, Truth, and bodies. Strategy, Feral, Sydney 1979; Paul Foss, ed, Fassbinder in Review: An Appreciation of the Cinema of Rainer Werner A Brief History of Art & Text Fassbinder, Australian Film Institute, Sydney and In Australia, Art & Text is a fabled publication, initiated in 1981 by the Melbourne, 1983 enigmatic queer writer, curator and editor Paul Taylor at the age of 9 Barker and Green, ‘No twenty-three. The story goes like this. It is February 1981. Taylor More Provincialism’, op attends the ‘Foreign Bodies: Semiotics in/and Australia’ conference at cit the University of Sydney, featuring Meaghan Morris and Paul Foss, 10 Smith, ‘The Provincialism Problem’, op cit among others, as speakers.7 Taylor is in the middle of developing the first issue of Art & Text and is deeply impressed by the conference, invit- 11 Paul Taylor, ‘Editorial: On Criticism’, Art & Text 1, ing Foss and Morris to be among its first contributors. Following the 1981, pp 5–11; Paul example set by Morris and Foss in earlier publications,8 Art & Text Taylor, ‘Special Section: went on to introduce several English-language translations of Jean Bau- Antipodality’, Art & Text 6, 1981, pp 49–50. See also drillard, Michel Serres and Roland Barthes to Australian readers in its essays published by Taylor: first years (and many more when Foss took over as editor). After Juan Dávila, ‘Spider Taylor leaves for New York in 1984, he transfers the magazine’s editor- Woman in Playing with Fire!’, Art & Text 4, 1981, ship to Foss, who has just finished translating Baudrillard’s The Preces- pp 15–16; Imants Tillers, sion of Simulacra (1983) for Semiotext(e). As this story suggests, Art & ‘Locality Fails’, Art & Text Text is well known for introducing French post-structuralism to the Aus- 6, 1982, pp 51–60; Paul Foss, ‘Meridian of Apathy’, tralian artworld and mobilising a dialogue between Australian art and Art & Text 6, 1982, pp 74– ‘international’ – read European/North American – art discourses more 88. By ‘Australian art’, Taylor was implicitly broadly.9 referring to the art of Art historians have often repeated that this aspect of the journal’s settler-colonialists legacy was fuelled by Taylor’s obsession with what Terry Smith, in a following the arrival of the First Fleet (1770). For 1974 issue of Artforum, termed the ‘provincialism problem’.10 The related debates on ‘problem’ here was that peripheries such as Melbourne (and implicitly ‘Australian’ art see Helen Santiago) were co-dependent on centres such as New York, the result Hughes, ‘Upside Down/ Right Way Up: of colonialist and imperialist logics that constructed a particular locale Historiography of for the avant-garde, on the one hand, and another one for the derivative Contemporary and the belated, on the other. Drawing on Baudrillard’s notion of the “Australian” art’, in The National: New Australian simulacra as well as on Barthes’s concept of the ‘second order’, Taylor Art 2017, Art Gallery of argued that there is nothing original, unique or authentic about Austra- New South Wales, Sydney, lian art.11 The art of Australia, as a colonial outpost of the British 2017 https://tinyurl.com/ 48h2u74m, accessed 21 Empire, is by definition always a copy, and in this sense is emancipated May 2020. from both the centre–periphery bind and the fiction of the originality of 6 Art & Text’s collaborations with Chilean art workers, atlas developed by authors, 2021, composite image courtesy of the authors 7 12 Taylor, ‘Special Section: the avant-garde.12 With this in mind, Australian art history always con- Antipodality’, op cit, p 49 siders Art & Text’s circumvention of the provincialism problem to be 13 As Rob McKenzie says, (paradoxically) contingent on dialoguing with particular ‘foreign ‘Taylor’s Provincialism bodies’, namely, French post-structuralism (via Barthes and Baudrillard, theory needed Juan Dávila’, which is to say, their or via Taylor’s beloved New York–based October and Artforum). In interactions allowed Taylor other words, the archive of Australian (and Chilean) art history fails to to ‘internationalise’ discourse through means register that Art & Text was in dialogue with ‘other’ foreign bodies, other than French post- and that such bodies buttressed the journal’s understanding of critical structuralism and US marginality in a geographically expansive setting, one aligned with postmodernism. Rob McKenzie, email southern epistemologies.13 correspondence with Verónica Tello, 29 July 2020. A Partial List of Art & Text 14 It is important to note that while Taylor and Foss supported Dávila, With the support of Art & Text’s editors, first Taylor and then Foss, especially in 1981–1986, Dávila initiated a collaboration with Chilean arts workers for almost a Dávila was driving the decade (1981–1990) during the Pinochet dictatorship (1973–1990).14 collaborations with Chilean art workers, Dávila, or as he is better known in Chile, Juan Domingo Dávila, made especially in the period friends with Taylor in 1981, at the early stages of the magazine,15 and 1987–1990; by this latter befriended the journal’s subsequent editor, Paul Foss, as Taylor was pre- stage he was publishing the work of Chilean art paring to leave for New York in 1984.16 In an act of solidarity, Dávila workers (namely Richard) worked with Taylor and Foss to disseminate the work of Richard in par- via the Art & Criticism ticular, but he also helped to solicit the input of other Chilean cultural Monograph Series without the knowledge of Foss, as workers, including the philosopher Patricio Marchant and the designer/ we will detail. publisher Francisco Zegers, in order to exceed the limits of the dictator- 15 Juan Dávila in conversation ship’s frontiers. Essays, interviews and artist pages by Dávila, Richard with Verónica Tello, 10 and, to a lesser extent, Marchant appeared in issues 4, 8, 9, 12/13, 15, September 2019 16, 21 and 23/24 of Art & Text. Issue 21 was wholly dedicated to 16 As Paul Foss recounts, Paul Richard’s writing, culminating in the special issue-cum-monograph Taylor ‘set up’ the Margins and Institutions: Art in Chile since 1973 (1986). Margins and friendship between Dávila Institutions was published as a bilingual special issue translated by and Foss: Taylor ‘told Juan that I was going to be at a St Dávila and Foss, designed by Foss with the support of Zegers,17 and Kilda nightclub on a certain ostensibly commissioned by Taylor.18 night & Juan went there & sought me out’. Paul Foss, In 1985, Dávila and Foss initiated the Art & Criticism Monograph email correspondence with Series, which published as its first book The Mutilated Pietà (1985), a Verónica Tello, 11 July monograph on Dávila’s appropriations of Michelangelo’s Pietà (1499), 2020. featuring a long essay by Foss. While it is well known that Dávila and 17 The roles played by Zegers, Foss went on to produce another three English-language books in the Foss and Dávila are recounted in the series, including Danielle Duval’s Pages from Maria Kozic’s Book ‘Acknowledgement’ section (1987) 19 (Duval being a pseudonym of Dávila and Foss),20 it is barely of Margins and known that in collaboration with the Santiago-based designer/publisher Institutions, pp 5–6. There it states: ‘The present book Zegers they also published two Spanish-language books in the series, owes a considerable debt to for circulation in Santiago: La estratificación de los márgenes (1989), Francisco Zegers for his by Richard, and El fulgor de lo obsceno (1989), which focused on the work in editing, designing and assisting with the paintings of Dávila and contained essays by Richard, the Peruvian art photography in Santiago.’ critic Gustavo Buntix and the Chilean art historian Carlos Pérez Villalo- Louise Dauth, p 5. Dauth bos. It is worth noting that while these two Spanish-language books were was director of the Experimental Art published as part of the series, they were commissioned by Dávila alone; Foundation, which hosted Foss was, in fact, unaware of their existence until we sent him a draft of the exhibition ‘Art in Chile: this article.21 Since Dávila funded the Art & Criticism Monograph Margins and Institutions’ (1986), co-curated by Juan Series,22 he clearly took some liberties when it came to which publications Dávila and Nelly Richard were commissioned. 8 Art & Criticism Monograph Series, collaborations with Chilean art workers, atlas developed by authors, 2021, composite image courtesy of the authors 9 Art & Criticism Monograph Series, collaborations with Revista de Crítica Cultural, atlas developed by authors, 2021, composite image courtesy of the authors 10 to coincide with the launch In 1990, when the dictatorship ended and the media, along with other of the Art & Text special issue. In personal institutions, was democratised, the Art & Criticism Monograph Series correspondence to Dauth (and more precisely Dávila) supported and funded Richard to publish dated 28 October 1985, the first seven editions of the influential Santiago-based magazine Dávila stated: ‘We are working with Zegers in the Revista de Crítica Cultural. Further, while not officially part of the Art design and in collecting the & Text imprint, in 1984 Taylor edited Hysterical Tears, the first mono- photographic documents graph on Dávila’s art, which included an introduction by Taylor, an that will go with it [Margins and Institutions], essay by Richard and an interview between Dávila and Foss. This list really an archaeological of publications reveals the extent and duration of Dávila’s collaborations task! I hope to return with the design ready and all the with Chilean art workers both during and immediately after the dictator- photos ready to print and ship, and the extent to which they were sustained by both the structures of also with the Spanish Art & Text and the Art & Criticism Monograph Series and by the (inter- appendix in a floppy disc’ (Archives of the mittent) support of Taylor and Foss. Experimental Art Foundation). Recently, Foss has clarified that Zegers’ role was to provide the imagery and the French Post-structuralism across the Pacific Spanish-language copy for the special issue, which supported his design of the While trickles of Chilean art criticism found their way into international bilingual issue overall. Foss art journals – for example, Domus in 1981, Art Press in 1982, Third Text states: ‘there were in 1987 – no journal supported the writing of Chilean theorists and production problems and the issue almost never saw writers as much as Art & Text, under the guidance of Dávila. the light of day’. Paul Foss, It’s worth noting that Art & Text and the Art & Criticism Monograph email correspondence with Series especially supported the work of Richard, publishing her writing Verónica Tello, 29 July 2021. across four issues of the journal, including Margins and Institutions as well as two books and the journal Revista de Crítica Cultural (the 18 There are multiple, latter via the series). In this sense, Art & Text and the Art & conflicting accounts to wade through regarding the ‘how’ Criticism Monograph Series became especially associated not just with and ‘why’ Margins and Richard but more specifically with the group she dubbed the escena de Institutions became a special avanzada. issue of Art & Text entirely dedicated to Richard. In As Chilean sociologist of art Tomás Peters Nuñez argues, Richard Impresario, Dávila recounts: first used the term escena de avanzada in her 1981 texts Postulación ‘In typical Paul Taylor de un margen de escritura crítica and Una mirada sobre el arte en fashion, we were in a sports car at high speed with Nelly. Chile. There she posits that such artists as Eugenio Dittborn, Carlos He [Taylor] decided that he’d Leppe, Lotty Rosenfeld, Diamela Eltit and the art collective CADA give the whole issue to an were, like her, working with cryptic and endogamous language as essay by Nelly Richard on an “avant-garde” movement at an aesthetic and political strategy. As Richard would later properly end of the world.’ Juan articulate in the pages of Art & Text (issue 21, 1986), such language Dávila and Janine Burke, ‘Reacting with Enthusiasm’, was used because, under the duress of surveillance, artists and writers Impresario: Paul Taylor, The wished to mount a critique of the dictatorship through often highly Melbourne Years, 1981– distorted and/or illegible visual and textual codes, evading censorship 1984, op cit, p 246. Taylor met Richard while she was in and the consequences of being detected.23 At the same time, they Australia for the 1984 refused to engage with the populist pictorial and linguistic rhetoric Biennale of Sydney, for which deployed by leftist muralists and artists, which they felt leaned into she was the Chilean Commissioner. In personal propaganda. They shaped highly agile yet dense aesthetics that correspondence, Dávila has required viewers and readers to furiously decode meanings and further stated: ‘Paul Taylor parse heterogeneous references using the tools of French post-structur- accepted the idea to publish Margins and Institutions… A alism and semiology, and to a lesser extent the Frankfurt School. With bit reluctant, but after all he this in mind, we want to note that the (French) theoretical foun- did it. [By 1986] Paul Foss dations of the escena de avanzada were clearly deeply aligned with had come into the magazine, and he was very committed those of Art & Text, even if on many levels the sociopolitical contexts [to the special issue]. We of the two ‘scenes’ had little in common. 11 Art & Text, Margins and Institutions: Art in Chile Since 1973, issue 21, 1986 12 spent 6 to 8 months translating Nelly Richard’s Art Criticism as Solidarity essay without pay. Both Taylor and Foss supported Art & Text’s and the Art & Criticism Monograph Series’ support of and printed articles that were not mainstream, or Western’. Richard and the escena de avanzada, via Dávila, can be read as being Juan Dávila, email part of a global wave of support for Chilean cultural workers during correspondence with the dictatorship, most commonly manifesting in protests, films and art Veronica Tello, 27 June 2020. Denise Robinson (a exhibitions. The Venice Biennale’s 1974 ‘Libertà per il Cile’ (‘Freedom contemporary of Paul for Chile’) programme, for example, was wholly dedicated to the Taylor) recounts: ‘The Chilean struggle, while the same year in London, Cecilia Vicuña, Guy publication, written by the Chilean theorist and critic Brett and David Medalla co-founded the collective Artists for Democracy Nelly Richard, was and staged ‘Art Festival for Democracy in Chile’ at the Royal College of commissioned by Paul Art, showing the work of Chilean artists in exile such as Roberto Matta Taylor and edited and translated by Paul Foss and and Vicuña herself. In 1987 the exhibition ‘Chile Vive’ (Madrid), curated Juan Davila. It may have been by Rafael Blázquez Godoy at Círculo de Bellas Artes, was organised to published in 1986, however, offer a broad, arguably apolitical, overview of the range of practices the impetus for, and the work to realise it, accrued over a after the 1973 coup.24 Viewed in this light, Dávila’s collaborations period of several years in both with Chilean art workers, via Art & Text and the Art & Criticism Mono- Australia and Chile.’ Denise Robinson, ‘Everyone gets graph Series, are part of a broader genealogy of solidarity after 1973, lights’, Impresario: Paul emerging as it did out of transnational solidarity with the Chilean Taylor, The Melbourne struggle. Yet importantly, such a collaboration did not produce exhibi- Years, 1981–1984, op cit, p 272. Despite Dávila and tions, films or protests, but art criticism, which is quite unique for the dic- Robinson’s accounts, Paul tatorship period. There is no other instance where the writing of Chilean Foss has said that ‘Paul art workers was foregrounded. This is important not only for its gener- Taylor was not involved in any aspect of the planning ation of substantial critiques of life under the dictatorship but also for and publication of Margins the European/North American artworld. Dávila’s support for Richard and Institutions, though he culminated in one text we want to single out: Margins and Institutions, did insist his name be included as one of the issue 21 of Art & Text. editors.’ Paul Foss, correspondence with Verónica Tello, 29 July 2021. 19 The other two books were Margin/Institution Eric Michael, For a Cultural Future: Francis Jupurrurla Makes TV at Today, several dissertations, essays and books by a new generation of Yuendumu (1987) and Chilean art historians have been written on the influence of Margins Allen S Weiss, Iconology and Institutions. We are thinking of Peters Nuñez’s unpublished doctoral and Perversion (1988). thesis, ‘Nelly Richard’s critíca cultural: Theoretical Debates and Politico- 20 ‘The Danielle Duval Aesthetic Explorations in Chile, 1970–2015’ (2016), Lucia Vodanovic’s pseudonym was an invention of Paul Foss’. essay ‘The Art of Writing: Disguise and Recognition in Nelly Richard’s Paul Foss, correspondence Avanzada’ (2015) and Carla Macchiavello’s ‘Vanguardia de exportación: with Verónica Tello, 29 La originalidad de la “Escena de Avanzada” y otros mitos chilenos’ July 2021. (2011).25 Indeed, while we list just three texts here, they represent what 21 Ibid is prevalent in the discourse of contemporary Chilean art: it is impossible 22 According to Foss, Eric to write about Chilean art ‘after 1973’ without referring to Richard’s Michaels also funded parts text, even when one is attempting to distance oneself from its influence.26 of the Art & Criticism Monograph Series. Ibid. Yet while Margins and Institutions has become an institution in Chile, it is not only forgotten in Australia but is also never really registered. In a Images on the following two pages: recent conversation, Ross Harley, managing editor of Art & Text during the mid 1980s, relayed that Margins and Institutions was a total Cover of Third Text 2, volume 1, issue 2, winter 1987 ‘commercial flop’.27 Meanwhile, back in Santiago, Margins and Institutions was mostly Nelly Richard, ‘Art in Chile since 1973’, Third Text 2, Xeroxed.28 Four hundred copies of the special issue were reportedly volume 1, issue 2, winter 1987 sent to Zegers,29 who had contributed to its design and publication,30 13 14 15 Artspace Forum on Margins and Institutions, hosted in collaboration with East Sydney Technical College, 23 May 1986. Left to right: Paul Foss, Nelly Richard, Juan Dávila and George Alexander (Chair of Forum), photographer unknown, image courtesy of Artspace archive, Sydney 23 Nelly Richard, ‘Margins and Institutions: Art in but the publication’s failure to arrive is still the stuff of local legend.31 Chile since 1973’, Art & Nonetheless, with the support of cheap mechanical reproduction, and Text 21, Juan Dávila and Paul Foss, trans, 1986 with just a handful of physical copies in university libraries, Margins and Institutions found its way deep into Chilean art discourse. Let us 24 Francisco Godoy Vega, ‘conelchilenoresistentearte, look at how it became canonised in Chile and then beyond. Solidaridad: Chile Vive, No doubt, the position of this text within Chilean art discourse has una Exposición en España something to do with an event that occurred just a few months after its contra el Chile Dictatorial’, AISTHESIS 48 (2010), pp publication. The highly respected research institute, FLACSO, the Facul- 186−204, http://dx.doi. tad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales (Latin American Faculty of org/10.4067/S0718- Social Sciences) invited Richard to co-ordinate the seminar ‘Art in Chile 71812010000200012 after 1973’ in Santiago, the proceedings of which were published soon 25 Tomas Peters Nuñez, Nelly after. The seminar was divided into three sections, with the first of Richard’s crítica cultural: theoretical debates and them comprising a paper presented by Richard, ‘The Advanced Scene politico-aesthetic and Society’, summarising the hypothesis she developed in Margins and explorations in Chile (1970 Institutions. The second part entailed presentations by renowned −2015). doctoral thesis, Birkbeck, University of writers, critics and philosophers such as Norbert Lechner, Rodrigo London, http://vufind.lib. Cánovas, Bernardo Subercaseaux, Diamela Eltit, Pablo Oyarzún, bbk.ac.uk/vufind/Record/ Gonzalo Muñoz, José Joaquín Brunner, Francisco Brugnoli and 544624, accessed 13 May 2021; Carla Macchiavello, Adriana Valdés. The third part offered responses to the seminar by ‘Vanguardia de Martín Hopenhayn and Eugenio Dittborn. With this seminar, exportación: La FLACSO, one of the most renowned critical spaces in Chile, legitimated originalidad de la “Escena de Avanzada” y otros mitos Richard’s hypothesis within the academy, with the support of the coun- chilenos’, in Ensayos sobre try’s most renowned artists and intellectuals. Soon after, Margins and 16 Nelly Richard (Co-ordinadora), Arte en Chile desde 1973: Escena De Avanzada y Sociedad, FLACSO, 22–23 August 1986, proceedings published 1987 17 Nelly Richard, Margins and Institutions, 2007, Third Edition, 2014, Metales Pesados 18 artes visuales: Prácticas y Institutions would go on to be reviewed by the Canadian journal Parasite discursos de los años ’70 y ’80 en Chile, LOM (Greenberg, 1986) and the UK-based art historian Guy Brett (for Art Ediciones – Centro de Monthly, 1987). The latter presumably led to Richard publishing the Documentación de Artes essay, ‘Art in Chile since 1973’ (a summary of Margins and Institutions) Visuales, Santiago, 2011, pp 85–112; Lucia for the second issue of Third Text (1987), a journal for which Brett was Vodanovic, ‘The Art of on the editorial committee. As a direct result of Margins and Institutions, Writing: Disguise and Richard was invited to curate several shows, including ‘Women, Art and Recognition in Nelly Richard’s Avanzada’, the Periphery’ (1987) in Vancouver focusing on feminist theories and the Journal of Romance work of Eltit and Rosenfeld, and ‘La Cita Transcultural’, co-curated with Studies, vol 15, no 2, 2015, pp 94–108. See also Carla Bernice Murphy in Sydney at the Museum of Contemporary Art (1993, at Macchiavello the invitation of Leon Paroissien, director of the 1984 Biennale of ‘Territorialidad y Sydney). The sum of these parts, the local and international support, construcción de una escea en el arte chileno, 1973– led to positioning Margins and Institutions as something singular 1983’, Fundación Cultural within Chilean art historical discourse. CEdA, Miércoles, 17 June In 2007, Metales Pesados, a highly respected publisher and bookshop 2020, 19:00, https://www. youtube.com/watch?v= of Chilean art history, philosophy and theory based in Santiago, repub- hrt4LJJxMCM, accessed lished Margins and Institutions using the same design as the Art & 20 September 2020 Text special issue (the Metales Pesados reprint is now in its third 26 Helen Hughes, David edition). It was not until the Metales Pesados reprint that Margins and Homewood, Carla Institutions became widely available in Chile, and thus why it is being Macchiavello and Camila Marambio, ‘Más allá del consumed and grappled with by a new generation of cultural workers. fin’, Discipline 5, 2019 The Metales Pesados version, however, only contains Richard’s original 27 Ross Harley, email to Spanish-language text, and thus while appearing to be a facsimile of the Verónica Tello, 16 June Art & Text version, even reproducing its cover, it excludes not only the 2020. As Paul Foss has also reflected: ‘Despite all its English translation by Dávila and Foss, as a critique of the hegemony setbacks and production of English in a globalised artworld,32 but also their preface, which under- woes, it is ironic that the scored their long-term support for Richard’s writing practice.33 In Chile issue ended up sealing the fate of Art & Text, Richard’s preface to the new edition, mention of their commitment to because after it appeared her work – by way of translation, commissioning and securing funding the magazine seemed to for Margins and Institutions, but also their collaborations with Richard acquire more gravitas in the eyes of state and federal via Art & Text and the Art & Criticism Monograph Series for almost a funding bodies in decade – is only partially acknowledged, and even then buried in a foot- Australia.’ Foss, email note.34 Further, as we note elsewhere,35 Margins and Institutions was correspondence with Tello, 29 July 2021. supported by an exhibition that toured across Australia, co-curated by Dávila, Richard and Louise Dauth, then director of the Experimental 28 Lucia Vodanovic, ‘Reception and Art Foundation. Notably, Dauth wrote a short text (oddly titled Contingency in Recent Art ‘Acknowledgement’) for the Art & Text edition of Margins and Insti- from Chile’, Journal of tutions, which, like Dávila and Foss’s preface, does not appear in the Latin American Cultural Studies, vol 23, no 3, 2014, Metales Pesados version. In other words, the circulation of Margins DOI:10.1080/13569325. and Institutions has been extremely partial, limited and fragmented, 2014.922937, accessed 11 September 2021 and the narrative of its history edited and controlled. We posit that even if Richard has in more recent years forgotten her history of Antipo- 29 Kate Briggs, personal correspondence with dean collaborations, her art criticism and essays were deeply supported Louise Dauth, 11 June by Dávila, Taylor and Foss, spawning an international network of allies. 1986, Experimental Art Foundation archives. Briggs was managing editor of Art & Text at the time. The International Gaze 30 Beyond what we state in note 17, Zegers’s Not only did local and international support for Richard culminate in contribution to Margins Margins and Institutions, it consolidated the publication’s status and pos- and Institutions (collating all the imagery and the ition, and more specifically, turned the international gaze upon it. After Spanish-language copy for all, the subtitle of Margins and Institutions was Art in Chile since 19 Art & Text) amounted to 1973, and, as noted above, after 1973 there was a global wave of support approximately USD 2,000 in value. As a way of for the Chilean people, including in the arts. repaying Zegers, 400 However, Margins and Institutions was less an act of solidarity with copies were to be sent to Chilean cultural workers – although it was that too – than an attempt him. Francisco Zegers, correspondence with Juan to offer a definitive, and unapologetically exclusionary, account of the Dávila, 4 March 1985, art that had emerged after 1973 for an international audience. We can Experimental Art make this point clearer by comparing Margins and Institutions with the Foundation archives. significant exhibition ‘Chile Vive’ (Madrid, 1987), which attempted to 31 Vodanovic, ‘Reception and capture and export the art scene under the dictatorship in its entirety Contingency in Recent Art from Chile’, op cit, p 269 for a European audience. ‘Chile Vive’ was unapologetically pluralistic. In contrast, Margins and Institutions had a singular position: it excluded 32 This is not to say that the original edition of Margins everything but the escena de avanzada. Since 1986, Margins and Insti- and Institutions, which was tutions has propagated a particular vision of what constitutes ‘art in bilingual, necessarily Chile after 1973’, universalising it. advanced the hegemony of English in contemporary art It is, for example, artists from the escena de avanzada that appear and discourse, but Metales reappear in exhibitions on Chilean and/or Latin America art, such as Pesados excluded the English- ‘Radical Women: Latin American Art 1960–1985’ of 2017 at the language translation as they did not seek to participate in a Hammer Museum (Los Angeles); ‘Unfinished Timelines: Chile, First Lab- ‘global’ artworld where oratory of Neoliberalism’, (2019), at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte English is always prioritised. Reina Sofía (Madrid); and ‘Poéticas de la disidencia | Poetics of Dissent’, Richard makes this clear in her preface to the Metales the 2015 Chilean Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, featuring the work of Pesados edition: ‘La versión Lotty Rosenfeld and Paz Errázuriz (the latter two exhibitions are primera de Márgenes e curated by Richard). Instituciones fue internacional. El cuerpo The incomparable impact of Margins and Institutions on contemporary principal del texto iba en conceptions of art after 1973 is bound, on the one hand, to the international inglés y su traducción al español ocupaba una gaze placed on Chilean cultural work after the coup, giving it unprece- disminuida sección en letras dented attention, and Chilean cultural workers’ overvaluation of inter- chicas al final del libro. Casi a national attention, on the other. In Chile, there is a saying, ‘Nadie es modo de tardía compensación local, profeta en su tierra’ – ‘nobody profits in their own land’ – suggesting that resolvimos que esta reedición it is the external, international artworld and its recognition of Chilean cul- se publicara hoy enteramente tural work that gives it its value within the boundaries of the nation. In Aus- en español diseñado así un pequeño gesta al revés que tralia, our friends call this the ‘international knee wobble’: when someone consiste en lo siguiente: un works or exhibits overseas, especially in the US or Europe, upon their return idioma internacional en los employers, grant funding bodies, gallerists and curators experience the clausurado tiempos de la dictadura y, en la actualidad, ‘knee wobble’, giving into and reiterating the centre–periphery binary solo el texto en español and enacting it as a form of social, geopolitical, relations. cuando los mercados de la globalización cultural promueven unilateralmente el registro estandarizado de Uneven Simultaneity las traducciones al inglés.’ Nelly Richard, Márgenes e instituciones: Arte en Chile While on one level Australia and Chile can be thought of as part of a south– desde 1973, Metales Pesados, south nexus, on the other, Australia can be seen as an operational centre of Santiago, 2014, p 10. Western cultural production in Chile.36 Australia’s use of the English 33 It is worth adding that language, which advances the hegemony of the British Empire and main- Richard was, reportedly, not at all content with the tains its privilege and position within the global north, creates a distance English-language translation between the two poles. Australia and Chile, situated across the southern of her text. Foss relays that hemisphere, are simultaneously parallel and different: a situation which the translation was, in effect, more of an ‘interpretation’ has meant that when Australian arts institutions (Art & Text and the Bien- of Richard’s text: Foss nale of Sydney, for example) connect with and include other peripheries, worked off the Spanglish they also inadvertently validate peripheries from the global south. Austra- translation that Dávila had given him and Dávila lia’s support for art critics and essayists such as Richard have played a sig- advised Foss. Foss states that nificant role in assuring their place in the academy in Chile. 20 any failure in the translation Time and again, Chilean cultural workers have experienced ‘el pago of Richard’s text ‘falls squarely in my lap… I de Chile’ (which loosely translates as ‘Chile’s gratitude’). Historically, proposed English solutions this phenomenon was most clearly manifested in the case of the poet Gab- to Nelly’s dense prose and he riela Mistral (Lucila Godoy Alcayaga), who was not recognised in Chile [Juan] corrected them where necessary’. Foss, email until after she received the Nobel Prize in literature in 1945. This was also correspondence with Tello, the case for musician and folklorist Violeta Parra, whose work gained far 2 August 2021. greater acknowledgement after her solo exhibition at the Louvre (1964), 34 Richard, Márgenes e and even for more recent contemporary artists such as Alfredo Jaar instituciones, op cit, p 10 (1956), who after not quite getting along with the escena de avanzada 35 Verónica Tello and flew to the US – particularly to New York – and has now become one Sebastián Valenzuela- of the most recognised Chilean artists. This phenomenon, no doubt Valdivia, ‘Southern Atlas: Art Criticism across the fuelled by what Australians call the ‘cultural cringe’, is the subject of Pacific during the Pinochet Leppe’s site-specific performance Siete acuarelas (1987) staged during Regime (1975–1990)’, ‘Chile Vive’ in Madrid, the emblematic international exhibition of Third Text online, 2021 Chilean art after 1973. Through a performative dialogue between 36 One of the anonymous peer himself and a friend (both played by Leppe), Leppe proposes that his reviewers suggested that we might want to lessen the inclusion within an exhibition in Spain, and more precisely the ‘old’ con- extent to which we tinent, merely functions to validate his work within Chile: even if his prac- differentiate Chile and tice remained largely opaque or illegible in Spain, his inclusion in the Australia, since both are settler colonial societies, and exhibition somehow brought his work to life in Chile (Leppe’s perform- this commonality might ance plays on Chile Vive, which means ‘Chile lives’). mean that there are strong affinities between the two Chile’s relationship with the European/North American gaze has a locations. While we agree macabre relationship with the global north’s fetishisation of the Chilean with this to some extent, as image. In the years that Chile was visible within Australian cultural insti- we detail, ultimately relations between Australia and Chile tutions (1981–1990) as well as other locations across the globe, the are both interesting and exported image of ‘Chilean art’ was always bound to the Pinochet dictator- problematic. Indeed, both ship. Marginalised, mutilated and abject bodies were crucial parts of the Chile and Australia are Antipodean settler colonies. repertoire that Chilean cultural workers exported, and which overseas cul- Yet unlike Australia, Chile tural institutions imported.37 Chilean cultural production was, in turn, has been relegated to the widely disseminated abroad, but its editorial and ideological impulses ranks of the ‘Third World’, regarded as a ‘developing were delimited: its images and texts accounted for a highly particular situ- country’, described as part of ation and interpretation of that situation, yet they were generalised.38 As the ‘global south’, etc. noted above, Margins and Institutions does not claim to show only a frag- Furthermore, the ways in which its First Nations ment but rather the totality of art production post Allende. But the artists people, descendants of presented in this publication, and who were exhibited in such subsequent slavery, mestizos, migrants exhibitions as ‘Chile Vive’, were residents of Santiago, the country’s and the elite/white settler- colonial class (this last group capital, and mostly belonged to the stagnant idea of the ‘arts professional’ minimal in population size that had established itself in Chile even before 1973 – a status characterised compared to Australia), have been subjected to, or profited by one’s university studies and accredited by a neoliberal system that from, colonial and imperial required enrolling at particular institutions (the University of Chile and violence is distinct. The peer the Catholic University) in order to belong to a particular class of art reviewer suggested that we should not see the Pinochet workers. Therefore, Margins and Institutions and other parallel texts dictatorship as the totalising emerged out of a particular sociopolitical context, which responded to historical lens through which an internal ideological programme that wanted to be consumed within to view Chilean art. But our focus is explicitly on art made and beyond Pinochet’s frontiers in those years. These critics and artists after 1973 – a watershed produced and reproduced an image of ‘Chile’ that was traded in different moment that has marked our artistic, economic and symbolic markets around the world ‘after 1973’. lives in indelible if not often elusive ways. Further, given Such an image erased other minor experiences and readings of art during that the peer reviewer was the dictatorship, including those by artists such as Marcela Serrano or suggesting that we look to even Dávila, who now, in the second decade of the twenty-first century, ‘before 73’ to locate affinities between Australia and Chile, have been marginalised within histories of the escena de avanzada, even we feel obliged to say that the if they were crucial to it and/or its internationalisation.39 21 dictatorship was a continuation of European– Australia after Art & Text North American imperial violence, supported by the US In Australia, the history of Art & Text is at once tentatively and comforta- government, and which benefited a number of US and bly canonised. While this may be a paradox, it is the situation that it finds Australian corporations itself in. Art & Text is increasingly difficult to find in Australia. The library (including mining companies of UNSW Art & Design (the art school where Verónica works, and which such as BHP). The dictatorship also intensified housed Art & Text’s office from 1986 to 1991),40 for example, deacces- the expropriation of land by sioned its collection of the journal in 2018, partly on the basis that the the ‘First World’. While we journal is available at other libraries in Australia. While this may be true, acknowledge the potentiality of South–South relations travelling to another university library, to which one may not be granted between Australia and Chile access, is enough to deter some students and researchers from engaging (this is the point of the article), with the journal. Unlike other critical publications, such as Third Text we insist on the incommensurability of the (1987–present) or New Left Review (1960–present), it has not been fully two locations.One last note or even mostly digitised (EBSCO hosts the journal’s 1992–1999 issues, on the peer reviewer’s but is missing the first eleven years). As Foss argued in 2009, comments: they suggested that we delete what they described as irrelevant autobiographical [digitisation] is equivalent to the death of these publications… they can no information at the start of the longer be in remission what they once were in poor health. Survival is not article. In response, we have necessarily the best outcome in professional life, since ultimate disappear- elaborated on our ance may be preferable to living forever in the shadow of eternity… art cri- autobiographies to make clearer our embodied ticism now seems like a former mistress whose sudden appearance at the relations to the subject matter wedding banquet is a huge embarrassment.41 – we are, after all, accountable to the communities, archives and Foss’s dry wit and hardcore scepticism point to a crucial politic of art histories about which we write. criticism: that it is of its time, and that its survival is contingent on its 37 Carla Macchiavello, radical potentiality in the here-and-now rather than through the digitis- ‘Marking the Territory: Performance, Video, and ation or strategic commodification of scholarship by way of paywalls. Conceptual Graphics in How has Art & Text survived, then? In part, through a method key to Chilean Art, 1975–1985’, this article: intergenerational care. In 2005 the Melbourne-based artist unpublished doctoral thesis, Stony Brook Rob McKenzie cold-emailed Paul Foss and, through dogged persistence, University, 2010; Sebastián convinced him to give an interview-based history on Art & Text, culminat- Valenzuela-Valdivia, ing in the book The &-Files: Art & Text 1981–2002 (2009). In 2012, ‘Escenificaciones del cuerpo por medio del soporte Adrian Martin and Janine Burke, friends and collaborators of Taylor, audiovisual, fotográfico y organised the symposium ‘Impresario: Paul Taylor: Art & Text: del libro a través de POPISM’, offering an alternative history of Art & Text than that which Francisco Copello, Marcela Serrano y Carlos Leppe’, was given by The &-Files. If the latter emphasised Foss’s voice, the unpublished MA thesis, former invited Taylor’s close collaborators and friends, including Dávila, Universidad de Chile, to offer an intimate account of this enigmatic character, including his edi- 2017; Sebastián Valenzuela-Valdivia, ed, torship of Art & Text and his influence on Australian contemporary art Archivo, cuerpo y during those years (1981–1984). The symposium presentations eventuated performance en Marcela in the book, Impresario: Paul Taylor: The Melbourne Years (2013), edited Serrano, ÉCFRASIS, Santiago de Chile, 2021 by our contemporaries, Helen Hughes and Nicholas Croggon, who are 38 Sebastián Valenzuela- founding editors of the Melbourne-based art criticism and history Valdivia, ‘El recorte en la journal, Discipline (2011–present).42 These collective efforts offer a escena del arte chileno’, El means to reintroduce Taylor and Foss, and more broadly Art & Text, to Desconcierto 4, November 2016, https://www. younger art workers, especially in Australia, who might not be familiar eldesconcierto.cl/opinion/ with their work. Yet in such discourse, the voices of those who participated 2016/04/11/el-recorte-en-la- in Art & Text unapologetically dominate, since, on a basic level, it is they escena-del-arte-chileno.html who can transmit knowledge in the present via memory. The fact of 39 Paco Barragán, ‘Interview ‘having been there’ matters because so much has not been archived. Yet, with Juan Dávila’, Art Pulse, 2016, http:// what has inevitably happened is that, by commemorating Taylor (as per 22 artpulsemagazine.com/ Impresario) or invoking Foss’s memories of the journal (as per The interview-with-juan-davila, accessed 10 February 2020; &-Files), a reliable set of mythologies of Art & Text have been propagated, Sebastián Valenzuela- as were already raised above: that it introduced French post-structuralism Valdivia, ‘Un cuerpo to Australian art discourse; that it circumvented the ‘provincialism escenificado: foto, video y libro-performance de problem’ by connecting to the US and/or Europe; that it critiqued the Marcela Serrano’, Galería value of ‘originality’ and embraced the politics of the copy instead (via Departamento 21, August– postmodern theory). What would it mean to relocate Art & Text and September 2019. See also Sebastián Valenzuela- rethink Australian art discourse from the 1980s through Spanish-language Valdivia, ed, Plástica and French/English-language post-structuralism (issues 12/13)? Or to Neovanguardista. Antecedentes y contextos, think of Art & Text as a catalyst of trans-Pacific discourse across two, ÉCFRASIS, Santiago, 2018 highly distinct, Antipodean locations? Or to embrace the affinities and power of the ‘margins’ rather than the hegemony of the European/North 40 UNSW Art and Design is part of the University of American ‘international’?43 New South Wales, Sydney, located on the lands of the Bidjigal and Gadigal people of the Eora Nation. History in Fragments 41 Paul Foss, ‘Woes of the Pharisees’ (Foss As we co-author this article asynchronously on Google Docs across differ- interviewed by Simon ent time zones, we continuously try to locate our positions, to reveal to each Rees), in Foss et al, The other, and to you, the histories in which we are embedded, the histories we &-Files, op cit, p 77 know have left a mark on us even if they are sometimes elusive or distant, 42 In 2019 Discipline edited a their relevant archives missing or scattered. Writing this history has been a special issue with Chilean art historian Carla means to try and draw affective connections between disparate archival Macchiavello and Chilean fragments, oral histories and artworld gossip, to present them as evidence curator Camila Marambio, to each other and to you. We are not trying to settle into art history the col- entitled ‘Mas allá del fin’. The special issue intended to laborations between Dávila and the escena de avanzada (via Art & Text focus on the historical and the Art & Criticism Monograph Series) as much as to draw connec- relations between Chilean tions between the various fragments we have found pertaining to a and Australian art workers via Margins and Institutions, history we are trying to animate, revealing its various omissions, erasures but as the editorial by Helen and potentialities.44 What remains? What is lost? Hughes relates, the editors In 2016, some forty years after he first initiated his collaboration with found themselves attracted to lesser-known southern Taylor, Foss and Richard, Dávila reflected on the ways in which he had histories, their attention no been marginalised within Chilean art history by the escena de avanzada, doubt reorientated due to the monumental position of the members of which, to his mind, had become the bureaucrats that ran Margins and Institutions in art schools, cultural organisations, museums and so on.45 He said that for Chilean art discourse, and a all his support of the group, he had received ‘el pago de Chile’ (Chile’s grati- desire not to further cement its status. Helen Hughes, tude).46 That might be so, but from our standpoint the archive also reveals a ‘Editorial’, Discipline 5, vibrant period of collaboration, when, through Dávila, Art & Text and the 2019, p 3. Art & Criticism Monograph Series became a means through which to 43 Some of these questions are produce, and reproduce, discourse across the Pacific during the Pinochet taken up in Verónica Tello, dictatorship. In this sense, Dávila’s work with Taylor, Foss and la escena ‘How to Appear? Writing Art History in Australia after is not only an as yet unacknowledged part of a broader genealogy of artistic 1973’, in Samid Suliman, solidarity projects during the dictatorship, spanning the 1974 Venice Bien- Caroline Wake, Suzanne nale, Vicuña, Medalla and Brett’s 1974 ‘Art Festival for Democracy in Little, eds, Performance, Resistance, Refuge, Chile’ and the 1987 exhibition ‘Chile Vive’. It also, and more excitingly, Routledge, London, 2022 (in opens up a parallel and distinctly southern history of solidarity; one press); Verónica Tello, ‘I, which, in turn, opens up a way to think about how ‘national’ histories You, We, Together: For Juan, Paul and Paul’, in Thinking across Chile and Australia were being exceeded, and how the ‘global’ was Business: Barbara Cleveland, being created in ways particular to the Pacific. Goulburn Regional Gallery, What characterises this particularity? To our mind, it would mean Goulburn, 2020, pp 20–25, https://www.academia.edu/ thinking of the global as not emerging from a distinctly European/North 44951284/I_You_We_ American perspective. For example, contemporary art discourse almost 23 Together_For_Juan_Paul_ always marks the advent of the global, or global art, as being ‘post 1989’, and_Paul, accessed 20 July 2021. as if the fall of the Berlin Wall and the correlative intensification of globa- lisation is the only watershed historical moment through which to narrate 44 Valenzuela-Valdivia, ‘El the history of global forms of art.47 Globalisation was itself characterised recorte en la escena del arte by neoliberal economics (free trade, etc), and neoliberalism was first del arte chileno’, op cit made manifest as a material economic force in Chile after 1973 (via the 45 Barragán, ‘Interview with well-historicised collaboration between Pinochet and the Chicago Boys, Juan Dávila’, op cit backed by the CIA).48 As such, we propose that the history of the escena 46 Denisse Espinoza, ‘La de avanzada, as we have recounted it here, has the possibility to pluralise Escena de Avanzada y la exclusión de la pintura: our thinking of when art discourse became global: 1989 or 1973? It’s Apuntes de una pugna en el not an either/or, but rather the formula of the and-and:49 infinite, asyn- arte’, La Tercera, 21 chronous and/or simultaneous moments of realising the global. Such an December 2016, https:// tinyurl.com/yujrf5cr, approach may undo the peripheralisation of any articulation of the accessed 20 July 2021 ‘global’ incongruous with post-1989 narratives central to European/ 47 See eg Sarah Dornhof, North American-oriented discourses of contemporary art. Nanne Burrman, Birgit Through Art & Text and the Art & Criticism Monograph Series a Hopfener and Barbara Lutz, eds, Situating Global Art: diverse group of Antipodean art workers – Dávila, Foss, Taylor, Topologies, Temporalities, Richard, Marchant, Zegers – were, at least at first, united by a theoretical Trajectories, transcript- framework exported from Europe to the south, and then later, we like to Verlag, Bielfeld, 2018, and also the project Former think, spurred on by a common goal to try and navigate the various ways West, https://formerwest. in which the epistemological wars of European empires and US imperial- org, accessed 20 June 2020 ism could be contested.50 With this article we hope to continue to expand 48 David Harvey, A Brief the universe of relations between both ends of the south, reactivating the History of Neoliberalism, fragile, almost erased, affiliations between Dávila, Foss, Taylor, Richard Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2007; Naomi and the escena de avanzada, to see where this might take us in the making Klein, The Shock Doctrine: of contemporary global art historiography. The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, Penguin, London, 2008 49 Verónica Tello, ‘Counter- ORCID Memory and and-and: Aesthetics and Verónica Tello http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9462-695X Temporalities for Living Together’, Memory Sebastián Valenzuela-Valdivia http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1884-010X Studies, 14 October 2019, DOI: 10.1177/ 1750698019876002 This project has been funded by an Australia Council for the Arts Visual Arts grant. 50 As Richard, while in dialogue with separation from the primacy of the the existence of art forms that despite Dávila, articulated in the pages of Art American and European models of art, proceeding from foreign models of art & Text: ‘For countries like Chile that challenge consists of obtaining the already known are capable of exposed to diverse forms of isolation gaze of the international centres of modifying or correcting these foreign (geographic, historical or political) and culture, whose attention to countries models. This is possible because of the as such withdrawn from the circles of like Chile is given reluctantly because critical change that occurs with the cultural interchange that are they are dominant and colonialist. incorporation of those foreign models administered by the power centres, This gaze comprehends only what is into a new social space and with a new every instance of international generated by its own tradition, and identity’. Nelly Richard and Juan participation… acquires the status of a ignores the socio-political context that Dávila, ‘Nelly Richard Juan Davila’, challenge. For countries whose cultural specifies the emergence of other art Art & Text 8, Pool-Side/Interview topography is conditioned by their form in other cultures… Our problem issue, 1982, p 57. The question of how exclusion from the centralised then consists in demanding a gaze Dávila’s work allows us to contest establishments of international power, accustomed to disqualify all secondary epistemological wars is further for countries whose history is or minor forms of art under the “déjà elaborated on in Tello, ‘How to conditioned by the temporal vu” label. We are forced to validate Appear?, op cit.
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