Sabotage: (Self-) Destructive Practices in Latin American Contemporary Art

To sabotage is to disrupt a dynamic, to purposefully or unconsciously ruin or fail a system. Once primarily a worker’s strategy, sabotage has become a recurring artistic practice in contemporary art and one partaking in the ‘reflexive turn’ of late modernity’s aesthetic practices. From the 1960s onwards, the aesthetic notion of sabotage has been notoriously present in Latin American art as a central mechanism of resistance against censorship and a cultural practice confronting state violence, heterosexual normativity, and neoliberalism.

This one-day symposium examines the uses - and limitations - of sabotage in Latin American contemporary art and attempts to place the notion within a larger reflection on the politics of the image, the aesthetics of violence, the tensions between art and spectacle and the position and responsibility of the artist in the face of political turmoil or systemic injustice.

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/art-history/events/sabotage-symposium

This event is free but registration is required. To register: http://sabotage.eventbrite.com/
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Programme

09.00 – 09.30
Registration
Gustave Tuck LT, UCL, Main Building

09.30 – 10.00
Opening Comments
Sophie Halart and Mara Polgovsky

10.00 – 11.00
Keynote

Robin Greeley (University of Connecticut)
‘The Space of Appearance’: Performativity, Materiality and the Ethics of Sabotage in the Politicization of Public Space

11.00 – 11.30
Coffee and Tea

11.30 – 13.30

Morning Panel

Stubborn Objects, Burning Acts, Twisted Tongues

* Natasha Adamou (University of Essex)
Impossible Objects: Gabriel Orozco’s’Empty Shoe Box’ (1993) and ‘Yielding Stone’ (1992)

* Lucia Vodanovic (Middlesex University)
Failure, Obsolescence and ‘Non-Archivable’ Art

* Mara Polgovsky Ezcurra (University of Cambridge)
Shaman, Thespian, Saboteur: Marcos Kurtycz and the Performance of Institutional Profanation

* Catherine Spencer (University of York)
Ensnare, Engulf, Overwhelm: Marta Minujín’s Soft Sabotage

Chair: Sophie Halart (UCL)

13.30 – 14.30
Lunch Break

14.30 – 15.30

Erica Segre (University of Cambridge)
Pictorial Eviscerations, Emblems and Self-Immolation: Dissensus in the Work of Enrique Guzman and Nahum B. Zenil

15.30 – 16.00
Coffee and Tea

16.00 – 18.00

Afternoon Panel

Burn the Museum? Explosive vs. Implosive Postures

* Francisco Godoy (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid)
Out of Context. Rebel women and the Performance of Silence

* Lourdes Morales (Independent Researcher)
Cantos Cívicos. A Delirious Narrative from Mexico City

* Mariana Marchesi
(Universidad Nacional Tres de Febrero)
CAYC. System Art = Art and Ideology

* Olga F. Lopez (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid)
Paths and Diversions: El Museo de la Calle and the Subversion of Bartering

Chair: TBC

18.00 – 18.30

Concluding Comments and Questions
Sophie Halart and Mara Polgovsky

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Organised with the generous support of UCL Centre for the Study of Contemporary Art and Rainhart Gallery.