Collectivism after Modernism - autonomous learning - Blogs

176 Rubén Gallo
groups began showing in art spaces but found a more politically desirable
alternative on the street; Proceso Pentágono, on the other hand, started by
making projects on the street and later moved into the museum in an effort
to crack it open.
THE 1977 PARIS BIENNALE
During its eighteen-year history, Proceso Pentágono participated in several
museum-sponsored exhibitions, and the group always used its projects as
Trojan horses designed to attack the institution from within. This strategy
was most successful in the group’s 1977 project for what at the time was one
of the most respectable institutions in the international art world: the Paris
Biennale, held every other year at the Palais de Tokyo.
The story of Proceso Pentágono’s unlikely participation in this
venerable European institution contains all the drama, suspense, intrigues,
and plot twists of a good thriller. It all began in 1976, when the director of
the Paris Biennale, Georges Boudaille, decided that the event was to include,
for the Wrst time, a section devoted to Latin American art. He entrusted the
selection to a Uruguayan critic, Ángel Kalenberg, then director of the Museo
de Artes Plásticas in Montevideo.
These were the days before the advent of the jet-setting international
curator, and instead of Xying all around Latin America to visit studios
and select the works, Kalenberg asked local critics and curators to recommend
the most interesting young artists in their countries and send him a
selection of slides and CVs. In Mexico, he tapped Helen Escobedo, a young
sculptor who was running the University’s Museo de Ciencias y Artes and
had transformed it into a showcase for young, experimental art.
Although Escobedo was initially asked to select individual artists,
she convinced the Biennale organizers that the most interesting art projects
in Mexico were being done by collectives and recommended that they invite
four of the most politically engaged groups: Proceso Pentágono, SUMA,
Tetraedro, and Taller de Arte e Ideología. 20
The Biennale organizers accepted the proposal, and the story
might have proceeded to a happy ending—an exhibition in Paris, international
acclaim, museum shows in Europe and New York—were it not for
Proceso Pentágono’s deep-seated anti-institutionalism, which added a few
unexpected twists to the plot.
As the time to travel the Paris drew nearer, the members of Proceso
Pentágono grew increasingly suspicious of Ángel Kalenberg. On February
22, 1997, Felipe Ehrenberg circulated an open letter titled “Who is
Ángel Kalenberg?” to the three other groups selected for the Biennale. Why,