Collectivism after Modernism - autonomous learning - Blogs

188 Rubén Gallo
And lastly, the Trojan-horse strategy deployed by Proceso Pentágono
in projects like “A nivel informativo” and Expediente Bienal X fostered
collectivism in a most unorthodox way. The group could have refused to show
in Bellas Artes, and it could have withdrawn from the Paris Biennale, but
it decided to stay in order to attack these institutions from within. Had the
group withdrawn, it would have isolated itself from institutions; its decision
to participate while criticizing the institution, on the other hand, fostered
discussion, debate, even direct confrontation between the group’s members
and Biennale ofWcials. As Ehrenberg argued, artists should neither become
“passive participants” in nor cut off all ties with the institution; they should
“use” their participation in these events for political purposes—in this case
for the purposes of forming a collective. Through the heated arguments
generated by Proceso Pentágono’s criticisms, Kalenberg and Boudaille were
brought into the dynamics of the collective—they were forced to do what
the members of Proceso Pentágono did at every meeting: argue and Wght
(no one ever said working collectively was always agreeable!).
In their utopian faith in the power of collectivism, the members
of Proceso Pentágono shared the spirit of the revolutionaries who drafted
the 1917 Constitution. As Ehrenberg noted, the groups had much in common
with “the ejido, the kibbutz, the koljoz.”
NOTES
1. On the TGP, see 60 años: TGP (Mexico City: Instituto Nacional de Bellas
Artes, 1997).
2. See, for example, the entry on “Mexico: Painting, graphic arts and sculpture,
c. 1950 and after,” in The Dictionary of Art, ed. Jane Turner (New York: MacMillan,
1996), 390.
3. Felipe Ehrenberg, “En busca de un modelo para la vida,” in De los grupos, lo
individuos, exhibition catalog (Mexico City: Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes, 1985),
unpaginated. All translations are mine, unless otherwise indicated.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. See the documents on the Tlatelolco massacre assembled by the National
Security Archive, http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB99/index.htm.
7. See, for example, “La desmemoria de Echeverría,” Proceso, June 11, 2002.
8. “Grupo Proceso Pentágono,” in Presencia de México en la X Bienal de París,
1977 (Mexico City: Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes, 1977), unpaginated.
9. “The only avenue perceived to be open to those who would pursue a politically
engaged art was one that led directly out of the museum.” Gregory Sholette,
“News from Nowhere: Activist Art and After, a Report from New York City,” Third
Text 45 (1998–99): 45–62.
10. Theodor Adorno, “Valéry Proust Museum,” in Prisms (Cambridge, Mass.:
MIT Press, 1967), 175.