SITAC Theory and Practice of Catastrophe

Theory and Practice of Catastrophe

EDUARDO ABAROA

Thank you all for being here, and welcome to the Ninth International Symposium on Contemporary Art Theory [SITAC]. I’d like to thank the Board of Conemporary Art—Patronato de Arte Contemporaneo A.C. (PAC for its acronym in Spanish), its board of directors and its SITAC committee members: Patricia Sloane, Osvaldo Sánchez, Mariana Munguía, Ery Cámara, Sol Henaro and Aimée Servitje, for their vital work in enriching the dialogue about contemporary art. I’m very thankful for having been given this fantastic opportunity to collaborate with all of on such an important event for the cultural life of Mexico City. I extend my admiration and give a strong thanks to all of the artists, writers, philosophers and curators who through their work and talent gave life to this edition of the Symposium, and its complementary clinics program, which Sol Henaro so brilliantly put together. I also want to mention the great work of María Bostock and of the team at SITAC who worked extensively to coordinate and give shape to this event. The years-long effort of many extraordinary people is going to crystallize in these next three days. I’m compelled to express my recognition and gratitude to all of them. Finally, on behalf of SITAC, I want to give a special thanks to the far-reaching generosity of the people, companies and institutions that sponsored and facilitated this valuable collaborative effort.

The title we have chosen for this symposium is Theory and Practice of Catastrophe. The phrase itself is our starting point. I found it quite ironic to think about delineating a theory of ‘catastrophe’. But, as we’ll soon learn, there is most certainly such a theory, and as a mater of fact it’s very important. But it hardly makes sense for someone to conscientiously propose a practice of catastrophe, and if it does make any sense then it’s only under the guise of irony, the absurd or the profoundly destructive. And yet, with a second moment of reflexion about the world and our current situation, I found this title appropriate.

By the end of 2010—which was so full of every type of disaster—this issue gained relevance, especially in places like Mexico, which now finds itself immersed in an array of serious problems whose solutions seem increasingly further from our reach. It’s from this point, and in an unorthodox, almost affective way, that I want to generate a discussion that, given the magnificent participants at this event, I know will be fruitful. First, it’s necessary to outline the material we’re working with. A catastrophe, broadly speaking, implies change. It implies a crisis or disaster after which nothing will be the same, an event of the utmost significance for the life or system from which it came, precisely because it promises an inevitable and irreversible transformation of this life or system. A great variety of implications spring from that simple definition, which will help us combine areas of study that in another context (outside of the realm of art) should rightly be kept separate. With that in mind, I look for a plurality of approaches and topics, creating a spiralling dialogue that I’m sure will accommodate disparate voices and, even, contrasting moods and states of mind. I don’t think, though, that this will lead to any trouble in treating our topic with the seriousness it demands.

The purpose of this symposium is to invite philosophers, artists, curators and writers to discuss the scope of an ancient and elusive word that, in its history since Aristotle, has denoted a dramatic or tragic element, that is to say, a ‘theatrical element’. Catastrophes are chiefly imaginary. They have long flooded so many cultures’ myths. Even today, the symbolic power of epidemics, floods, plagues and other mass traumas more sweeping than death itself have not dwindled. Our era can dress itself in all the trappings of empiricism, but the evidence that catastrophe narratives hold power over us is easily visible in the continuous rise of new religious sects, in the profits these narratives reap for the entertainment industry and their effectiveness as ideological and political tools to control the masses.

Imaginary catastrophes can be just as terrible as real ones. We know what a big role Saint John’s Apocalypse has had in Western history. While the text paints a horrifying description of the world’s annihilation, its end also makes a promise of salvation that has powerfully shaped our culture. Historians have underscored Christopher Columbus’ millenarianism, which drove him to search for, among other things, a route to reclaim Jerusalem before setting sail to the west. He couldn’t have imagined that his expedition would give way to the ruin of the civilizations of an entire continent. Total destruction as the final step for salvation is a common construct that can even be found within the philosophy of Marx who saw the collapse of the capitalist system as necessary for the rise of communism. As Naomi Klein has pointed out, the fear that sociopolitical systems have created in our recent history is part of a deterrence strategy that has had far reaching consequences on a global scale. Today—at the onset of this millennium—we’ve equipped ourselves with a slew of different versions of Judgment Day whose promise of salvation shields us against the tangible calamities around us, many caused by our own widespread inertia. This is why it’s not only valuable but vital that we try to understand the power that catastrophe holds over our imagination. Maybe art, as a way to transform the collective imagination, can generate dissent and narratives that question hegemonic ideologies. With a little luck, some of the new routes we pave will be less deadly than the old ones.

Catastrophe always makes the front page. And mass media inevitably affects our perception of the world’s most excruciating misfortunes, with that in mind the communications term Marshal Mc Luhan coined—implosion—is apt. Today we find out about the on-goings of our immediate surroundings in a deficient way, but still we pretend to know about the earthquake’s aftermath in Haiti, about Bangladesh and its floods, and Mexico and Colombia with their narcotrafficking problems. As if all of that could peacefully be processed in the morning while reading the paper over breakfast. The characteristic indifference of many post-industrial societies contrasts with the intense violence present in every type of mass media: television, newspapers, video games. The claim that these representations of violence instigate the people that consume them to commit real acts of violence is debatable. But it doesn’t cease to be disturbing that real narcotrafficking organizations take Francis Ford Coppola’s characters as models, giving themselves names like La Familia in the style of classic mafia films. The border between the raw, morbid curiosity of another’s pain and the slow, emotional contemplation of it can be blurry in any context. But the trivialization of suffering and violence definitely reaches its climax with the incessant mass consumption of images. In the last decades, art has done an exceptionally good job of presenting a critical analysis of mass media, and we’ll see evidence of that throughout this symposium. On the other hand, some of SITAC’s participants have served as an effective counterpoint to indifference and have worked in natural-disaster rescue teams. Many have even proposed that rescue work be observed as art. Others have created community action programs that address various social problems.

If earthquakes, plagues and droughts—as necessary, indifferent events in the world’s evolution—are an insuperable part of human existence, then the misfortunes that some human groups have inflicted on others are the hallmark of civilization’s evolution. Today, we speak with horror of the large-scale military mayhem, but also of the quieter, but tremendous, economic upheavals that affect the lives of dozens of millions of people. Today, natural catastrophes and man driven ones seem to have forged a pact and now work together in the massive destruction of our ecosystems. There are an ever-growing number of examples of global industrial production processes frequently, drastically, perniciously and definitively affecting populations and the environment. One example will suffice. The first scientific warning of the dangers of climate change came, approximately, in 1998. But because of politically motivated reasons, the copious array of evidence that the world’s scientific community provided has been left ignored. Forty per cent of the greenhouse gasses that threaten our planet were produced since 1998. At least we can take comfort in noting that we’ve developed a greater consciousness of the damage human activity has reaped on its own environment. We can see the evidence of our destruction in floods, forest fires and heat waves due to climate change, in the uncontrollable oil spills, the over-exploitation of every type of resource and the disappearance of species on a scale that has been little before seen in the world’s entire history. We can’t dispute the role that the technological innovations of just the past few centuries have played in this downfall. But we have yet to see if a technoscientific development could, if not stop, then at least forge a new direction for the transformation of the planet.

In this conference we’ll see some examples of how contemporary artists have gone above and beyond the goal of encouraging awareness of these problems by establishing efficient technologies that promote a more sustainable development. Other artists have generated alternative technologies as a subversive political tool against the systems that dominate and exclude marginalized communities. Yes, over the course of three days, the topic at hand can become depressing, but we are looking for examples in which a new direction in the art world, one that has been gaining momentum, has been able to shed light on more and more concrete solutions. For many artists throughout history—from Leonardo to Vertov— technology has played an important role. Today, we’re witnesses to how artistic practice can turn itself into a critical form and discourse of obsolete and destructive technologies.

We have in our favour modern science’s ever growing understanding of the phenomenon of the extreme. The progress of their studies has been unprecedented, from René Thom’s Catastrophe Theory to the ideas of Ilya Prigogine and even the relatively recent Chaos Theory. Science’s focus on stability and regularity has ceded to the study of turbulence, bifurcations and breaking points, which have revealed a complexity unimaginable before. Science doesn’t hide its excitement of the capacity tsunami-generated water molecules have to organize and rearrange themselves, nor its excitement of common grasshoppers’ ability to transform into plagues of locusts. It’s possible that the growth of human knowledge is catapulting nature and humanity into an entirely different and unknown phase of existence.

Maybe it’s impossible to parcel art from disaster or from ‘the critical moment’. Works of art, as Deleuze and Guatarri once said, are expressions of a chaosmos, a harmonized order, yet one that implies facing the abyss. Artists are doing exactly that, looking for the cracks where explanations collapse and lose their usual meaning, looking to make the terrible plenitude of life visible through destruction and even self-destruction. Art can’t be a passive contemplation of existence, or just a thesis, no matter how important the thesis may be. Art can challenge us to confront the darkest nooks of our psyches, and help us understand our neighbours and ourselves better when confronting dangerous or distressing situations. Our primary goal is to peel away from a sublime awe and fascination toward a greater capacity for critiquing the era we live in. So in this moment I want to reiterate my invitation to plunge ourselves into this undertaking.