A contemporary history of circus arts in Buenos Aires, Argentina: the post-dictatorial resurgence and revaluation of circus as a popular art

The purpose of this paper is to study the process of resurgence and redefinition of popular practices promoted in the city ofBuenos Aires,Argentina, in post- dictatorial years, through the case of circus arts. Therefore, I will first present some historical data that will enable understanding of the transitional legitimacy given to circus in the late nineteenth century and synthetically introduce the social processes that led circus into a process of retraction. Then I will focus on the social actors who recovered these artistic languages in the post- dictatorship, contextualizing their practices with the socio-political changes of the time. The analyses will center on the way in which young artists recovered certain elements of the past to give sense to the present activity and innovated in the artistic practice, legitimizing their practices and challenging their recognition.Fil: Infantino, Julieta Lorena. Universidad de Buenos Aires; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentin

Notes, sources and aesthetics considerations for the study of Espartaco Movement (Argentina 1959-1968)

El presente artículo enfrenta el tratamiento desafortunado que diferentes historiadores, e incluso artistas, han tenido para con el Movimiento o Grupo Espartaco (Argentina 1959-1968), así como otras cuestiones que ahogan el estudio histórico y estético de este hito de la plástica argentina. Para ello, se realiza un esfuerzo inédito en análisis y aportación crítica de fuentes documentales y testimoniales. Por último, se aporta información sobre el exilio desapercibido de los Espartaco en España.This article confronts the unfortunated treatment that different historians and even artists have had upon the Espartaco Movement or Espartaco Group (Argentina 1959-1968) as well as other reasons that stifle the historical and aesthetic study of this milestone in argentinean art. This is made by an unprecedented effort in analysis and critical contribution of documentary and testimonial sources. Finally, it provides information on unnoticed exile in Spain

30° from the Northern Tropic: Art, region and collective practices from urban Latin American and Arab worlds

This thesis investigates the socially imagined representation of two areas of the global South, through the lens of contemporary art. It traces the historicisation of urban Latin America and the Arab world along a timeline of critical lenses, questioning their construction as imagined sites. Re-occurring tropes from exhibition spaces acting as representations of the global South on a macro-level are contrasted with observations from a local level, in an ethnographic study of nineteen artist groups of four capital cities of Latin America and the Arab world. The research draws upon sociological methodologies of research, arts methodologies and historicisation to chart the scope and function of these groups against the backdrop of the global art-institution’s so-called geographic turn and it’s romanticisation of the precarious state as the new avant-garde. Moving away from the traditional cartography of art and social history, this thesis offers an expanded concept of collectivity and social engagement through art, and the artist group as unit of social analysis in urban space. Putting these ideas into dialogue, artist-led structures are presented as counter-point to collective exhibitions and to the collectivity of national identity and citizenship. An abundance of artist groups in the art scene of each city represents an informal infrastructure in which a mirror image of inner-workings of the city and art world become visible through this zone of discourses in conflict. This unorthodox exploration of art, region, and collective expression launches into the possibility of new constellations of meaning, tools to recapture the particulars of everyday experience in the unfolding of large narratives. Examining the place of collective art practices in the socio-political history of the city, this intervention into current theory around the role of art from the global South traces the currents and counter-currents of the art-institution and its structures of representation re-enacted in places of display and public discourse -- the museum, the news, the gallery, the biennial,the street and the independent art space