Sara Garzón's Curatorial Project "Worldmaking Practices: a Take on the Future"

     Sara Garzón's project Worldmaking Practices: a Take on the Future is aimed to convey the possibilities of what the future may hold through the perspective of Latin American Artists. The hopes are that by allowing for their artistic expression, we are able to find ways of sustaining a beneficial future for all. Of course, the project also highlights how significant events that have transpired through the years have also shaped our perspectives on how we may thrive despite our setbacks, thus the project helps not only find ways for a better future, but also better ways of coming together as a collective whole. Two artists that participated within this project are Alan Poma, a multimedia sound artist, and Kiyo Gutiérrez, a performance artist and historian.

      Alan Poma's work aims on creating a "sensory journey" for his viewers by combining sound, video and performance together. His Victory Over the Sun from 2016, where he dances in indigenous garments while dancing along with the star projections and accompanying music, connects with how indigenous cultures were able to understand the stars movements in order to predict natural disasters. Likewise, the Russian futurist movement utilized their understanding of the events that have transpired in order to successfully predict the Revolution of 1917. As such, Alan Poma emphasizes the idea of art existing within and outside reality, to which it has no form or linear concept, thus returning to a more primitive and archaic idea of time and space. In his mind, "Art will be the beginning of a revolution of time," and opening yourself away from the "linear" is necessary in order to predict a future.

     In comparison, Kiyo Gutiérrez utilizes her body as a means of conveying various environmental, social and political issues affecting our society. For instance, her Afloat 2020 performance conveys how the littering of plastic in our ocean prevents us from "floating" within our society and failure to recognize it is one way that keeps us "blinded" from the climate change crisis happening from underneath us. She acknowledges that our future is uncertain, to which she seeks out to understand how we can sustain a future despite the impacts of climate change, and figure out and reinvigorate our relationship between us and Nature. Through understanding those impacts plaguing our Natural world and what we can do to adapt towards those changes, we can be certain that there is a possibility that our future will be saved from an eternal extinction.

     Overall, I can connect myself with the aims brought upon all of these artists. The future is uncertain, like Kiyo Gutiérrez expresses, and finding ways to understand how impactful the changes occurring will affect us, while allowing for other ideas and perspectives to be brought "to the table," will ultimately allow us to determine what our future may hold. I believe all these artists seem to connect this idea of utilizing Nature and our surroundings to understand both how our world works and predict what will happen next, while also emphasizing this idea that nothing is linear or "set in stone." I agree with this idea, as all of us have undergone changes and experiences that we couldn't have possibly imagined within our lifetimes (especially within the last couple years). Although understanding climate change as a legitimate concern over how destroyed our world is becoming over time, this is only one of many different changes that we need to acknowledge, and this project is a great reference to not only understanding multiple perspectives but also see how these changes affect us all. 

     If I had a question for Sara Garzón, it would be how she believes art can be utilized to express what our future may hold?

Information Sources:

https://coleccioncisneros.org/editorial/debate/worldmaking-practices-take-future

https://coleccioncisneros.org/authors/alan-poma

https://coleccioncisneros.org/editorial/debate/contribution/andean-futurism 

https://coleccioncisneros.org/authors/kiyo-guti%C3%A9rrez

https://coleccioncisneros.org/editorial/debate/contribution/world-broken-jug