Neue Gesellschaft für bildende Kunst, April – June 2021
nGbK Project Group:
Valeria Fahrenkrog, Daniela Labra, Teobaldo Lagos Preller, Marcela Moraga, Paz Ponce Pérez-Bustamante
Participants: Maria Thereza Alves (Brazil/Germany), Gustavo Artigas (Mexico/Canada), Arts of the Working Class (Germany), Marylin Boror Bor (Guatemala), Andressa Cantergiani (Brazil), Victor de la Rocque (Brazil), Andrés Durán (Chile), Valeria Fahrenkrog & MITKUNSTZENTRALE (Chile/Germany), Galería CIMA (Chile), Manuela García Aldana (Colombia/Germany), Zoltan Kunckel (Venezuela/Hungary), Jaime Lauriano (Brazil/Portugal), Cheril Linett (Chile), Julia Mensch (Argentina/Germany), Ana María Millán (Colombia/Germany), Marcela Moraga & Salvemos el río Renaico (Chile/Germany), Daniela Ortiz (Peru), Dulce Pinzón (Mexico), PSJM (Spain), Matheus Rocha Pitta (Brazil/Germany), Doris Salcedo (Colombia), Carolina Saquel & Camila Marambio (Chile/France), Julia Weist & Nestor Siré (Cuba/USA), Michael Wesely (Germany), Kiyoshi Yamamoto (Brazil/Japan/Norway)
Artistic contributions to the event program:
Ana Alenso (Venezuela), Marilyn Boror Bor & VOCES de Guatemala en Berlín (Guatemala/Germany), Sara Buraya Boned (Spain), Cora Hegewald & Erik Göngrich (Germany), Fernando Llanos (Mexico), Eva-Christina Meier (Germany), Grace Passô (Brazil)
Between April and June 2021, the museo de la democracia opened its temporary collection and public program. The mission of this fictitious institution was to preserve, exhibit and mediate the concept of democracy as if it were a phenomenon of the past or an endangered species.
The museum’s current presentation is divided into three chapters:
1) Plaza del Kiosco [Kiosk Square]
2) Departamento de Oportunismo y Oportunidades [Department of Opportunism and Opportunities]
3) Oficina de Sueños [Office of Dreams]
The museo de la democracia reflects in its collection and exhibition practice on the aesthetic independence and political co-dependence of Latin American countries in relation to different cultural, historical, and political discourses and narratives. The museum’s work focuses on a period that roughly spans from the pre-Columbian past to the Bolivarian call for liberation, through to the triumph of the ›societies of control‹ (Gilles Deleuze). The mission of the museum is to examine, in a non-linear and historical-fictional way, the gradual process of ›erosion‹ or ›emptying-out‹ of the concept of ›democracy‹ and its institutions. The museo de la democracia presents works and collaborations that lead to incommunicable, fabulous, telluric, dreamlike, and necessarily critical perspectives of democratic processes in perpetual reformulation.
In collaboration with artists, theorists, activists, museologists and other actors, the museum presents a collection of 23 works that seek to preserve, interpret and exhibit relics of the memory of a post-democratic society. The museography radiates from the ›Plaza del Kiosco‹ – ›kiosk square‹ – where videos, books, different publications are provided, as well as a program based on forms of knowledge production that extend into talks, video projections, performances, readings, and workshops.
The museo de la democracia is a guest institution at the nGbK for almost two months. Within a transdisciplinary dramaturgy, connections are created between historical and theoretical research material. This dramaturgy is a hybrid between the analogue and the digital, the public and the exhibition space, the real and the fictional. It thematizes events from Latin America’s recent history and present – which echo and mirror global realities.
https://ngbk.de/en/show/496/museo-de-la-democracia
http://www.museodelademocracia.net
Photos: Benjamin Renter
Main image: Marcela Moraga, 2021
