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El Incendio y las Vìsperas 1995. Heliography on wood. Photo: Norberto Pözzolo Esperando a los Bžrbaros 1995. Heliography on wall e wood. Photo: Norberto Pözzolo
Graciela Sacco
by herself Interference The multiple image transmitted by the mass media paved the way to new paths for fine arts, allowing many artists to display their work in novel spaces and circuits. It is not within the narrow limits of a museum or gallery that the artistic piece should be sheltered, but it should emerge and materialize itself in a decisive way in all contemporary places - in every one of them. With the resumption of democracy which took place more than 10 years ago, a group of artists which included me shared the wish to gather all the dispersed avant-garde works from Rosario, which played the leading role in Tucuman Arde.1 For the first time after a long period of silence - 16 years - this material which was gathered allowed us to restructure our artistic memory and fill the melancholic void in Argentinean art history; since that moment I believe I was able to think and feel the artistic practice beginning at an everyday-life setting, with a different ethical/aesthetic consciousness.2 The observation of the urban space and advertisement graphics also led me to recognize the existence of a visual colonization that encompasses the manipulation of mass media; I also became aware that the aesthetic strategies of communication displayed on the streets interact with all citizens and that the contemporary artistic image is a political image; political while it assumes its time both aesthetic and artistically.3 There is no doubt that the discourse on the current hegemony of image is based on the development of state-of-the-art technology, on multiplicity, on the strategic use of public and private spaces, nor that it is rooted in the superiority of a culture which prevailingly supports the iconic sign. For artistic practice which is committed to its time there is the possibility for it to interfere with discourse. The interference in an image causes a disturbance, penetrates the interstices, is evoked in the memory of objects and people; it is politically critical when it questions power in relation to human conditions, to the established order, to the formal stance which conveys its materialization. The purpose is to show that other forms, other discourses, other sounds inhabit the room that exists between these voids and that they can pose questions and raise doubts; it would be convenient to ask ourselves: does the system lie? As far as I am concerned, the objects I produce and which generate images are conceived as witnesses which remain in an inner space. The image which is generated by them - nearly always in the form of multiples - paved the way to signaling the urban space, to Heliomontajes, which interfere, introduce themselves, get mixed up with the circulating adds, add to the saturation of the manipulated environment; they pry the streets and appropriate the space of a postcard; their support can be a poster, small print, or TV. The juxtaposition of images both announces and denounces. Other times, these images are instantaneously captured from real situations; the appropriation and change in context or stance made by me metamorphoses them into artistic proposals. Therefore, that which is intimate becomes public and that which is public can be appropriated privately. The dematerialization of objects materializes images. Images and concepts give us an account of the world and share the impact of interference. 1. An artwork/denunciation which was performed in Rosario and Buenos Aires during the military dictatorship of general Ongania in 1968. The most interesting aspect of it is the original use of the mass media, creating a circuit of counter-information. The main character was a group of artists, most of them from Rosario and Buenos Aires. Sacco - Sueldo, Tucuman Arde, Argentina, 1987. 2. Renzi, Juan Pablo, "The Work of Art as a Product of the Relationship between Ethical and Aesthetic Conscience" (an attempt to structure a basis on the subject presented at the Primer encuentro nacional de arte de vanguardia, 1968). A text. 3. ".... for an image to be political is not so much a question of content or subject but rather of form. Politics cannot be restricted to the action of assuming power, of governing or administering a state or a city; it cannot explain power but the world...." Rouillë, Andrë: "La recherche photographique," Politique/Critique, nª 19, Autumn 1995 (Paris: Audiovisuel).
Chronology
Graciela Sacco was born in Cha˜ar Ladeado, Argentina, 1956. Graduated in Fine Arts at the University of Rosario. Lives and works in Rosario. Solo and group exhibitions 1994 Urban Intervention I: Public Schools Marks, Rosario, Argentina; Urban Intervention II: Bocanada, Rosario, Argentina. 1993 Ventanas, Seis and a Remorse to the Heaven, instalaçâo/installation, Casal of Catalunya, Buenos Aires, Argentina; Transporte Critica, instalaçâo/installation, Museum Sivori, Centro Cultural Recoleta, Buenos Aires, Argentina; Transporte Critica, Centro Cultural Bernrdino Rivadavia, Rosario, Argentina. 1992 500 Repression Years, mail-art, Museo Sivori, Centro Cultural Recoleta, Buenos Aires, Argentina; Grafica Alternativa, Museo Sivori, Centro Cultural Recoleta, Buenos Aires, Argentina. 1991 La Line Roja, Series of the Anounced Maja, heliografics, Museo Municipal de Bellas Artes Juan B. Castagnino, Rosario, Argentina. 1990 Tomarte, First Alternative Biennial Encounter of Art, mail-art, Centro Cultural Bernrdino Rivadavia, Rosario, Argentina; Banner Exhitibion, Shopping Center Spinetto, coordinated by Fernando Bedoya, Buenos Aires, Argentina. 1986 New Vision of the Engraving, Institute Jung, Buenos Aires, Argentina; Concierto, installation, General Cultural Center San Martin, Buenos Aires, Argentina. 1985 Xilo, al Encuentro de la Xilografia, group exhibition, Museo de Arte Moderno de La Plata, Argentina; Contra-Accion Verde, urban intervention, Memmorial Flag, Rosario, Argentina. 1984 International Seminar of Mail Art and Latin American Association and of the Caribbean of Mail-Artists, Centro Cultural Bernrdino Rivadavia, Rosario, Argentina. 1983 Jovenes Artistas se Manifiestan, group exhibition, Centro Cultural Bernardino Rivadavia, Rosario, Argentina; Biennial Salon Arche, Museo Nacional de Belas Artes, Buenos Aires, Argentina; Version de Madera y Trapo para un Tiempo Cualquiera, installation, Centro Cultural Bernrdino Rivadavia, Rosario, Argentina; Sobre Historias, Magia y Demas Deudos, Space of Art of the Pje. San Telmo, Rosario, Argentina; The Struggle for the Human Rights, group exhibition, Centro Cultural Bernrdino Rivadavia, Rosario, Argentina; Rosarinos en Buenos Aires, Arche Foundation, Buenos Aires, Argentina; Homage to the Recording Carlos Pamparana, La Plata, Argentina; Al Margen, grafic file organized by Associated Plastics Artistics (APA), Centro Cultural Bernrdino Rivadavia, Rosario, Argentina; Museo Provincial de Bellas Artes Dr. Pedro Martinez, Paranž, Brazil. 1982 Testigos Blancos, urban installation, Plaza Santa Cruz, Rosario, Argentina. 1980 Collective Exhibition in the School Superior of Fine Arts, Fac. of Humanity and Arts U.N.R. Awards 1994 Scholarship grant, Fondo Nacional de las Artes, Buenos Aires, Argentina. 1993 Scholarship grant, Secretaria de Cultura de la Provincia de Santa Fe, Argentina. 1993 Financial Assistance to the Artistic Creation, Antorchas Foundation, Buenos Aires, Argentina. 1992 Special mention, Alianza Francesa de Rosario, Rosario, Argentina. 1991 Special mention, XXIV Annual Salon of TS of Rosario, Museo Municipal de Bellas Artes Juan B. Castagnino, Rosario, Argentina. 1989/91 Scholarship Grant by Unesco, Consejo de Investigaciones y Ciencias Tëcnicas. 1988 Salon Anual de Arte Moderno - Amigos de Arte, 2nd prize Museo Municipal de Bellas Artes Juan B. Castagnino, Rosario, Argentina. 1984 Special mention, XXIII Annual Salon of Artists of Rosario, Museo Municipal de Bellas Artes Juan B. Castagnino, Rosario, Argentina.