martin bonadeo | texts

Argentine urban landscape was transformed quickly at the end of the Nineties: closed shops, walled in banks, "cazerolazos" (pot-banging) and street protests, judicial repression, increasing poverty…… let´s say decline. Nevertheless, today it does not seem absurd to think that the true ruins actually consist of bad aftertaste left by majestic architecture of multinational firms and shopping malls. Leftovers of a worn out model but in its gaps are growing alternatives values and attitudes. Economic and political abandonment means death but on the other hand it can also testify birth of other ways of living: neighborhood meetings, exchange centers, community kitchens, waste recycling circuits and organizations. Urban space multiplies and people start to build their own city in the middle of hollow institutional and regulated architecture. The artists presented in this exhibition investigate these new cultural community examples, in some cases this kind of situation-orientated art explores and acts as critical reflection, in others it writes down notes of the new unknown social architecture.

español