Collectivism after Modernism - autonomous learning - Blogs

The Mexican Pentagon 175
Wlled it with rats, as if to suggest that the city’s inhabitants were becoming
like rodents trapped in a cage). 17
But the group’s projects did not merely point the Wnger at these
problems; they also proposed ingenious, utopian solutions to many of these
ills: many of Proceso Pentágono’s actions were designed to counteract alienation—one
of the inevitable symptoms of urban modernity. This effort began
with the formation of the group: four artists renounced the isolation of individual
production, a staple of capitalist production, in favor of collective organization.
For them forming a group was part of “the struggle against bourgeois
individualism and against the [ruling class’s] vision of the world.” 18 As in all
big cities, pedestrians had little time to interact with one another as they
rushed to and from their jobs, so Proceso Pentágono staged mock accidents
and random acts of violence that jolted them out of their routine, made them
pause for a second, and inspired them to talk to their fellow denizens—or at
least to members of the group—about their feelings and anxieties. In projects
like El hombre atropellado, dozens of random pedestrians had the experience
of seeing their words—and their feelings of shock, fear, disgust—transmuted
into art, written on the sidewalk, and inscribed onto the fabric of the city.
A magic cure for urban alienation: random pedestrians were now coauthors
of the city as text.
Above all, these outdoor projects were a serious effort to vindicate
the street as a privileged site of social interaction. At a time when walkable
streets were being replaced by freeways and vast modernist complexes
like Tlatelolco, projects like “A nivel informativo” forced museum visitors—
including those who traveled by car and were enthusiastic supporters of the
government’s “modernizing” urban projects—to experience the unpredictability,
the intensity, and the violence of Mexico City’s public spaces.
There is one Wnal characteristic of “A nivel informativo” that I would like
to examine: its deployment of an original form of institutional critique. Most
of Mexico City’s Groups were passionately opposed to government-run institutions,
and they refused to exhibit their work in museums, galleries, or cultural
centers, opting instead for streets or public plazas. Proceso Pentágono
shared this aversion toward ofWcial institutions, but its members adopted a
slightly different strategy: instead of refusing to show in government-run
spaces, they accepted such invitations whenever they came, but only to lure
visitors away from the museum and into the street. The group turned art
into a Trojan horse—a clever ploy that allowed them to penetrate enemy
territory in order to stage a Werce battle from within. 19 (Proceso Pentágono
used a strategy that was the exact opposite of that preferred by the U.S.-based
activist collectives analyzed by Gregory Sholette: many of these American