***  Haus der Kulturen der Welt: Forum1 Archive  ***
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
   [Date]: Sat, 09 Oct 1999 08:09:11 PDT
   [From]: "Raul Ferrera-Balanquet" <ferrera98@hotmail.com>
     [To]: forum1@hkw.kbx.de
[Subject]: On web curating/exhibiting

Buenos D’as from the Mayan world:

Curating has been an important issues in my life for a long time. (You all 
may think that my nostalgia for memories is too much, but I can avoid it, 
the experience of our lives marked our bodies in very interisting way).

When I read Pat's comment about Christy's proyect, sound bites from the 
discussions I previously had with media makers of color came to my mind.  
The exclusonaries tactics employed by art institutions, galleries and even 
alternative art centers in the space where I had lived resonated on what 
Juan was addressing on his narrative reflection.

I can never forget that although we, in our altruist frame of mind, could 
view art as a comunal and visionary space, the post capitalist art 
instutions, through the years, had outcast from their collections a great 
number of important artists. Some of them who have made their work about 
political and ideological issues.

Juan comments hit a cord. How many time we have ran across great  artists 
(painters, writers, media artists) who should be recognized and be selling 
their work; and nobody knows them because they have not been able to figure 
out how to market themselve.

Yes, I want my art to be sold because I do know that art is what I do best 
and I would love to be living off my art, not doing other types of jobs 
which take me away from painting, drawing, writing and the web.

When Janet Swartz offered the link to the museum of Monterrey, I was eager 
to navegate through the exhibit. Although the critical framework of the 
exhibit is worth of analizing in deep, I was astonished by the absence of 
Mexicans, Latinos and Latin American web art, eventhough the curator stayed 
that he was fascinated by the amount of technology that he found in rural 
Mexico.
I asked myself if the "discovery of computer technology in rural Mexico," 
did not make him think that there were web artists and projects to be 
included on his exhibit or may be in later exhibit that he could take to ICA 
in London?

Has the Media Center of the Museum of Monterrey has ever focused on the work 
produced by Mexicans, Latinos and Latin America, or are we invisibles 
because we do not have curators who look at ourwork, and organized exhibit 
about us? Do this happen because we do not have the technological apparutus 
and the money to pay programmers so we can have DHTML or CSS or even complex 
JavaScript in our work?

Years ago when I was curating media arts for alternative spaces in USA, 
Canada and Latin America, I realized that my work of as curator was about 
researching, about finding the subtextual levels of the works and the 
metaphorical ways in which they communicate the experience of the artist, 
independently of their cultural, gender, sexuality or economic status, but 
above all, how those works communicate among each other.

I did love the work that Christy's did for "My" Millenium. I was very 
global.  I first had to do my traveling to get in contact with trAce and 
then, through trAce e-mailing posting, I found out about the project and 
began working with Christy.

Then, what are the solutions? It seems to me that I am reliving the same 
kind of expericies I had when I was making videos. Should I go to therapy to 
figure out how to sell my work for $20,000 or stop making art, get out of 
this marketing frenzy?

I guess not.  Being the product of one of the most violent third world 
revolutions makes a warrior, a cultural warrior. Therefore, I must continue 
traveling through our historical time

Raul Ferrera-Balanquet, MFA
Interdisciplinary Artist and Scholar
ferrera98@hotmail.com
http://www.artswire.org/krosrods/curriculum/index.html