The last oficial SPU debate finally took place, in Matucana 100, bringing together a good number of artists and general public from the Santiago art scene. After a brief introduction by Samuel Ibarra and Jennifer Flores Sternad, who coordinated the discussion, the guest speakers made presentations and comments around the topic of performativity and the institution. The points of view were very varied. Gonzalo Rabanal spoke about the collaborative work he has developed as part of the collective Deformes, more specifically an event made in conjunction with the annual march in Chile for September 11 and which, although it is considered a protest event, it has now been institutionalized by the government.

Mauricio Barría Jara spoke about the paradox of theorizing about performance art, given that although theory may lead to institutionalizing these art activities, it is not conceivable either not no write about them in order to understand them and document them. Alberto Kurapel, who is a well-known trans-disciplinary artist and dramaturg in Chile, made a multi-discliplinary presentation on the topic that included the reading of texts and music. Alexander del Re spoke about Perfopuerto, an organization that holds annual performance festivals in Santiago and Valparaiso, and argued for the necessity of artists building their own institutions in order to give space for experimentation. Soledad Novoa made an interesting review of a few Chilean artists who incorporate performance, but perhaps in a more multi-disciplinary manner and without making literal readings of this practice. She showed works of contemporary Chilean artists ranging from symbolic performative gestures to sculptural interventions in urban environments that invite interaction.

I asked the group the question of why there is so much emphasis in trying to conceive performance as a discipline such as photography or sculpture, and on whether there should be a clearer distinction between the term “performance art” of the seventies, defined by more concrete interests and aesthetics, and the notion of “performativity”, which permeates practially all activity in the contempoary visual arts.

Barria argued that it was important to regard peformance as a discipline in order to recognize and give adequate historic perspectives regarding the development of this “practice”. (This followed by a debate on what constitutes a practice and what constitutes a discipline). The questions from the public seemed to suggest that the general perception was that performance is closely aligned with political activism, and thus none of the discussion touched on regarding performance as something that may not be connected to social compromise. An audience member was critical of Deformes’presentation, arguing that he did not see much the point to make protest art about the military coup given that Chile is currently under a socialist government.

The discussion took over the evening in a way that the Panamerican ceremony was canceled and we had instead to conclude with a performance by the group Deformes. The action consisted in two people holding a piece of wood onto which two volunteers would start placing all sorts of random objects (chairs, phone books, tea cups, deodorants, etc). As the objects started accumulating, the artists would start to struggle with the weight, and later started walking around the gallery with the whole installation. In the end, most of the objects collapsed. It seemed to me that, given the peculiar dynamics of this encounter in Chile, the piece turned out to be the only possible statement that could be done in terms of a Panamerican Address of Santiago. The shelf and its random objects seemed like a metaphor of Panamerica: an unstable place, full of arbitrary things, all on top of each other, which pile up until they have no choice but to collapse. This, at least, was my impression in the delirium of being at the end of the 29th discussion of this project.

There is only one more appointment left, to which I will part today taking a 3-day long bus journey: Ushuaia.

If I had to imagine which will be a memorable moment out of the SPU's brief stay in Santiago, I am sure it will be our visit to La Peluquería Francesa and our discussion with performance artists Gonzalo Rabanal and Samuel Ibarra Covarrubias (La Peluqueria Francesa was an old French Barber shop turned into restaurant where now one combs dishes and ideas. " you have come at a very opportune time", said SAmuel, in reference to the proximity of Chile's September 11 (a date of huge political resonance). Samuel helped contexualize the current art scene in Chile, particularly in reference to performance art.

The chilean artworld, seen from an outside perspective, appears as very active and yet profoundly divided in aethetic positions, alliances and territorialisms both in practice and academia. An event that has particularly generated a lot of discussion is the upcoming publication of a history of chilean art edited by Gerardo Mosquera. It is to be expected that such a delicate and complex topic may generate criticisms even before it is realized, but in any case it has generated debates around the mechanisms of validation that help establish certain artists and ideas. it is partially under this climate where we will have our debates.

"We want to be the more facilitating as possible", promised, (and delivered) Camilo Yañez, artist and visual arts director of Matucana 100, who are now our hosts in Santiago. Camilo and his great team took us around the neighborhood to get the necessary materials to build the shool. This last stop before Ushuaia broke the record of efficiency and time in building the schoolhouse.

Matucana 100 is a space originated 4 years ago in Santiago's downtown, a very active working-class neighborhood. The space, lent by the government, offers exhibitions, films and other activities. It has positioned itself in short time as an important space of dialogue and presentation of contemporary art here and outside of Chile. The event here will focus on the relationship between performativity and institutionalization.

For reasons that I take full responsibility for, the SPU did not manage to do a full presentation in Buenos Aires. Too much miscommunication and difficulties put us in the end in a situation where we arrived to Buenos Aires without a location.

“unrest has made verbal school in Buenos Aires”. These were the words in an email sent to me by “Isabel, an artist from Buenos Aires” who came to the event yesterday at the Fundación Start. “ I regret that you did not get concrete action and hospitality here… today I share your sadness, and join with my frustration and impotence of not having more time to do something. It is fitting that the SPU almost did not manage to make a stop in this point. It is the epitome of unrest. Is it a nightmare?” Unexpectedly for us, the theme towards which many gravitated at the discussion (and which appeared to cause almost obsession) was the very fact that the school couldn’t be presented in Buenos Aires. Many jumped to the conclusions that this impossibility was indicative of an endemic flexibility of the porteño art scene. Although I made clear that I did not share this view, nor that I thought fair to blame a city for the difficulties of presenting this project which also included bad luck, still the debate went back over and over again to problems relating to educational and cultural institutions here.

The case in point is that in the very end, a group of supporters led by curator Victoria Noorthorn, the Spanish Cultural Center in Buenos Aires and Roberto Jacoby and the Fundacion Start gave us a space and resources where to hold the debate at the last minute and promote an intense and unique dialogue.

A wonderful thing for us was that Adetty Perez de Miles, our old friend and official chronicler of the project from the beginning, managed to arrive to Buenos Aires in time for the discussion. She will also join us in Santiago.

The debate in Buenos Aires was strange, polarized, and really long (“you are getting a good piece of Buenos Aires”, someone said). And although the discussion followed its own logic and making speakers fall in line was like herding cats, the evening did if anything that Argentinians are certainly committed to debate. Victoria Noorthoorn started the debate with a studious series of reflections that tried to contextualize the SPU practice in the context of Argentinian art. She started talking about the project as “an affirmative attitude in regards with the power of action and the effective construction of a discourse and its possibilities”. Noorthoorn spoke about the (now unavoidable) subject of institutional critique and the recent article by Andrea Fraser where she says that i.c. always functioned within the system, as well as artists themselves. “the question is what kinds of institutions we create”, Victoria said. She later did an interesting review of practices and actions by Argentinians artists that related performance with pedagogy, starting from the avant-garde group Madí and the generations of the 60s to contemporary practice today. Artist and writer Alicia Herrero spoke about her interests in border issues and said that the term “Panamerican” is problematic to her, and that the very difficulties of the project to go from border to border illustrated the very impossibility of panamericanism.

Azull Blaseotto questioned the statement by the SPU that it is a public art project, and she suggested to reconsider the meaning of this term, specially because in Argentina the term “public art” means “art sponsored by the state”. “ [the SPU] is a contextual practice, not a public one”.

Artist Eduardo Molinari threw a number of provocative ideas, amongst which was the question on whether we can turn the idea of “unrest” as an emancipatory force. He proposed to analyze the concept of education from the perspective described by the next Document, where there is a search for the right ways of doing an autonomous practice. Going to the dictionaries, Molinari showed the relationships between the definition of school with the military discipline, and established a parallelism with the rigid interpretations that pedagogy has in Argentina.

The presentations generated all sorts of responses that went from questioning the way in which a non-initiated public participates in public art to debating the current state of education institutions in Argentina.

At the end of the discussion, a number of enthusiastic and hungry participants decided to continue the discussion and, in a very Panamerican spirit, write the Panamerican Address of the People of Buenos Aires at the Restaurant La Americana. The text, which was written in the form of an exquisite corpse and which perhaps may have appeared attractive to the Grupo Madí, reads as follows:

THE PANAMERICAN ADDRESS OF THE PEOPLE OF BUENOS AIRES

At the barrio del Congreso, at the Pizzería de La Americana in the city of Buenos Aires, those who are here together declare:

On the first instance:

There is no truth nor falsity; all borders are hereby extinguished; hair removal is declared to all; we affirm the importance of ambiguity; we grant free access to all public spaces and the opening of all public spaces; we are simulacra; we are the institution; all cemeteries belong to the state.

On the second instance:

We are entirely separated (since this is the second instance); we live in a flat, overlived space; situations construct statemenst; nor public nor private; they can be walked around by foot; true intimacy lies elsewhere.

On the Third instance:

Argentina had once a Panamerican School of Art, which had as its logo an image of La Gioconda. That is not the kind of school that we want today. There are no schools nor universities in Buenos Aires. Our city limits like where the Pan-American highway starts. La panamericana is done at night, and it is a trap. There are many hotels there. Pablo, you should stay longer. Things here are not what they appear to be.

Signed: First instante: Diana Aisenberg, Ana Gallardo, Graciela Hasper, Alicia Herrero, Roberto Jacoby, Victoria Noorthoorn. Second instance: Sydzaga Babur, Andreu Badii, Victoria Márquez, Adetty Pérez De Miles, Megha Rapalati.

Any visitor to Buenos Aires would agree in that it is the least Panamerican city of Panamerica. Its great attraction to the outside, as well as its own romance with itself, make it such a self-contained universe that, in a similar way to New York or Mexico City, it exerts its own logic and its own laws. Additionally, the artistic life in Buenos Aires has intensified in recent years, and the amount of spaces, publications and daily events related to the visual arts have grown so much that there is now an intense activity that has attracted many artists from the outside.

Maybe due to these reasons it was hard for us to find a site for the SPU. After one year of negotiations and proposals with a long list of organizations, we ended up arriving to this city without a host. Fortunately, the Foundation START, which produces Ramona magazine and is directed by artist Roberto Jacoby, opened its doors to us, thanks to the recommendation of curator Victoria Noorthoorn.

Despite the little we know about the complex visual art world in Buenos Aires, the one thing that appears self-evident to us is that it is a highly argumentative and verbal community (Ramona, which is a visual arts magazine, is a text-only publication). So it is not surprising that even before the debate we found ourselves in the interesting situation of having a debate about the debate, at a meeting between Jacoby, Noorthoorn, and SPU coordinator Jennifer Flores Sternard. The group speculated and argued over what the different participants would argue, how these comments would be representative (or not) or the Argentinian community, the way in which different political positions will make themselves evident at the discussion, etc. For starters, there are already certain positions formed about the project here. Upon my arrival, one person told me: “I essentially see this as a failed project”. Antonio Muntadas, who happens to be here in Buenos Airs and who saw the first debate in New York, said: “ I see this project as Body Art”. In any case, and whatever way the debate will take place here, we do hope it will be representative of the way in which artists in Buenos Aires see art making in general from their own moment and circumstance.