Punto Ciego
Objects are closer than they appear
A blind spot occurs when we are unable to perceive something that is located in our field of vision: an area that prevents us from spotting floating particles and events that appeal to us. With a contemporary art approach, this sound space intends to magnify dissimilar voices and underlines nowadays realities. Each episode is a dialogue that explores how art responds to particular cultural, social and political conditions, by the means of work processes, artistic researches, and other means that widen the current practices.
Episode 07 · Water
Excess and humanity’s decisions make climate change a pressing matter. The water crisis grows exponentially, caused by transformations and tensions between the environment and industry as well as neoliberal dynamics that conceive this precious liquid as an object of speculation. The dispute over water engenders territory removal, activists’ assassinations and disruptions in communities, and should be understood as generalized violence against life itself. Carolina Caycedo, Antonio Monroy and Adriana Salazar share their thoughts on this situation and environmental justice: the relation with the ceremonial, the micro and macro political, the symbolic, the link with specific communities and the artistic practice as a form of mediation, denonciation and direct involvement in a debate that concerns all of us.
Episode 06 · Extractivisms
The natural asset’s extractivisms, as a result of neoliberal interests or private capitals, affect not only the environment, but also whole communities. In this episode we listen to considerations regarding the violent phenomena caused by systematic extractivisms: from the dispossession and deterritorialization, to real estate speculation, monocultures, the effects of mining and other noless brutal incidents, such as cultural appropriation. We bring together the voices of Ariadna Ramonetti, Edgardo Aragón, Sandra Calvo and Miguel Fernández de Castro, to share their stances on a reality that has taken the lives of activists in Mexico and the world.
Episode 05 · Job insecurity in culture
For this episode we reunite considerations and testimonies regarding an ever present and violent reality: job insecurity in the culture sphere. The constant weakening of labor rights for those who work in this domain, plunges cultural workers into a loop of exhaustion, tension and vulnerability. They are required to have both, a specialized professional training, as well as abilities to generate knowledge and symbolic content even when they are exposed to irregularities in their payments; they are forced to adopt great flexibility for almost nonexistent social benefits. María Minera, Irmgard Emmelhainz, Baby Solís, Alma Cardoso, Nuria Sadurni, and a guest who asked to remain anonymous, expose their stances on job insecurities that, whilst nonexclusive to the cultural sector, are commonplace within.
Episode 04 · (Vulnerable) Memories
Memories are fragile. Natural catastrophes may affect them, as well as the individuals that are unable to look for their wellbeing within a system of survival politics. In this episode, Ana Longoni, José Luis Barrios, Javiera Manzi, Diego Flores Magón and Lorena Méndez, share their thoughts and experiences around the vulnerability of memories and the urgency of taking care of them.
Episode 03 · Maternities
Punk is not dead, it’s the mums
Recently, we have witnessed how the number of critical voices that aim to understand maternity as a duality between the reproductive and productive acts, increases. What’s more, these considerations point out that the nursing labor tends to become invisible under the patriarchal capitalist scheme. In this episode, we call upon different artists in order to explore maternity within its complex relationship with the work condition and the difficulties that emerge because of it.
Alejandra Labastida, Núria Güell, Mónica Mayer, Adriana de la Rosa and several other women share their references regarding maternity, while they discuss the impact that it has had in both, their artistic production and professional development.
Episodio 02 · Racisms
We open the conversation to a generalized problem that has survived in societies: racism. Susana Vargas, Andy Medina, Yutsil Cruz and Laura Anderson Barbata discuss racism and the way they formulate it in their own artistic production. The episode is completed by the reading of the notion naco, taken from the Alfabeto del racismo mexicano [Alphabet of the Mexican racism] by Federico Navarrete, in order to address altogether the normalization of the phenomenon and the generalized cultural whitening.
Episode 01 · Feminisms
Amongst graffiti and debates, we focus our gaze on feminisms. Summoning the 8M, this episode meditates on the force earned by the fights for gender equality in the last decade, as well as the challenges and implications that the pandemic has had in the feminist movement. Joined by Rian Lozano, Lorena Wolffer, Restauradoras con Glitter and Natalia Millán from Brillantinas MUAC, it addresses opinions and points of view that emerge from different disciplines of art but that coincide in purpose and motto: #NiUnaMenos.
