Collectivism after Modernism - autonomous learning - Blogs

172 Rubén Gallo
This fascination with the street as a site of the production and
exchange of information was a constant theme in Proceso Pentágono’s projects
during its eighteen-year history. Felipe Ehrenberg explained that the
group “sought, with a sense of urgency, to connect as directly as possible with
the man on the street,” 12 and this was a desire shared by many of the other
groups whose members chose to stage projects outdoors in the midst of urban
chaos. In 1977, for example, the members of Grupo SUMA organized a project
titled Introducción a la calle (Introduction to the Street)—consisting, as
most of this group’s activities did, of painting political messages and striking
graphics on blank walls around the city—after declaring that “The man on
the street, with his endless anxiety and increasing loss of identity, is our point
of departure.” 13
But what were the origins of this sudden and widespread interest
in the street? Why did artists decide en masse that Mexico City’s streets were
alive and its museums dead?
The sudden interest in “the street” was, in part, a reaction to the
profound urban changes that affected Mexico City after 1950. The capital’s
population grew exponentially from 1.5 million inhabitants in 1940 to nearly
FIGURE 6.3. Proceso Pentágono, El secuestro (Kidnapping), action presented on a street near
Bellas Artes, in Mexico City, during the exhibition “A nivel informativo” (On an Informational
Level), 1973. Photograph courtesy of Víctor Muñoz.