Ancient Chinese Secret / 8:11
[mp3 .zip archive / 14.5MB]

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By Lourdes Morales, Javier Toscano, Daniela Wolf

Performance/Video, CUE Art Foundation, New York, NY, March 2008

What is left to be done in the New York public sphere? How does one creatively stir someone to action and distinguish this plea from a spectacular mediation? Our project for CUE Art Foundation intended to answer critically these types of questions by setting up a creative, yet conceptual practice. With a certain melancholy of sorts, we published and distributed an open call [ongoing and available for download] looking for musicians and composers who would like to hear their work played over the public radio of this metropolis. Our collective, with no musical experience, turned into mediator for mass distribution of a musical piece, assumed this negotiation while simultaneously affirming the playful possibilities of invasion of the public realm through radio waves - probably the only incursion left - and the signaling out of the limits of the art system as part of the show business industry. Only intuitively and from an aesthetic perspective, music is proposed as a means that can re-write and speak out a distant experience. If radio can work as a testimony for poetics, for the spoken word, for onomatopoeia, maybe it can also bring about the traces of unattended differences and carry over the voices of those dissenters that only ephemerally try to alter the New Yorker's experience of the everyday

The winning composition Ancient Chinese Secret (available for download above), written by Jeff Morris, was played by the collective on the opening night and transmitted live through Neighborhood Public Radio (NPR), on the night of 13th of March, 2008.

Laboratorio 060 is constantly looking out for artistic operations with an affective social incidence; curating here becomes a medium in itself, a functional role for the creation of cultural meaning. We assume "art as a strategy for thinking", and curating as a means for critical developments.

Laboratorio 060 Interview - Conducted by Ryan White (CUE Art Foundation)

How did you all meet/How was the collective started?

Some of us knew each other before, but we all met at a seminar for curatorial studies that was organized in Mexico City in 2003. In this place, we found out we had a lot of common interests and concerns, we all wanted to react to what was going on in the art scene, and we started sharing thoughts and developing strategies.

What is your process for developing projects? Do you all sit around and brainstorm?

Currently, we know already what might be of interest to the whole group, we have developed a line of thought and a group of work that tries to open itself to what we understand as a political practice in the art sphere. When we develop a project we always look into the circumstances and the logic that the participants may bring about. We then brainstorm in order to acknowledge possible outcomes for a specific action. We never apply a rule of majority among ourselves, whenever there is an argument that raises an opposition to what is being thought, we strengthen its point, as if it were an opportunity to bring the project into a crisis, before its actual development.

What, in your eyes, makes a good project? What makes a project not just good, but successful?

A good project is the one that is able to affect different kinds of spectators at different levels. Such a project generally produces critical responses, not in the way of a cause-effect relationship, but as a sting which is difficult to avoid and has to be further analyzed. A successful project comes whenever chance plays a role, whenever the project has already opened up a space for it and sets up the rules that can incorporate it and give way to an un-thought outcome.

What kind of projects/what types of subject matter are you looking to work on in the future?

We do not deal with a subject matter as such. Our projects try to have an effect over a specific field of action, by negotiating with it or by outlining the opposing forces at play. We love the public sphere, those places where art is just one more element but not the favored one, where it can deal with other fields in order to bring about fruitful exchanges, culturally speaking. Our future projects deal with social problems or urban settlements, with researching the needs of specific groups or the cultural possibilities of alternative energies, to mention some examples.

Are there any areas of society specifically that you feel have been underserved by the arts community?

In our days, maybe almost every area. The generations of the 60s and 70s explored a vast array of fields, and maybe because of that, current artworks have retreated to isolated, endogenous areas. The art system talks to itself quite sophisticatedly, but it seems dumb when initiating a dialogue in many other social areas. Many things are happening right now, and the art world doesn't seem to be responding accordingly.

Have you seen any social (or non-social) changes take place as a result of your or any other artists' practices?

This is a tricky question, and just because of that it needs to be responded. It is a variation of the "Can art change the world?" question. If we think of it the way the 20th century avant-garde did, that is, that art could bring about a revolution, then the answer is no. But don't read this too hastily: a revolution is a massive way of acting. In this way, art cannot bring about massive changes in the social field. What can, really? This is way too much to ask for. Instead, art can bring moments of change for the people participating in the projects, not only as public but as producers of meaning themselves. We always seek to get involved with different sorts of people, so at the end we believe there is a value in this exchange. This change comes at the level of an experience. We have seen it happen, we have seen people undergo the most diverse processes; learn things, value things, produce meaning. That's probably why we take very seriously our role as mediators. We cannot say if changes are permanent, or how deep they reach. What we do like to ask ourselves is what kind of processes can affect someone beyond his/her expectations. And we always try to go for these, however fragile or futile it may seem. In the end, our own purpose is to keep on this track, which leads to no single destination, maybe to a utopian way of thinking. In the end, we always look into the possibility for a change as a blind force that keeps us going.

How would you like your work to be interpreted by the communities you serve?

In the most diverse ways, but always critically.

Do you believe your work serves academic and/or social and/or political means?

Again a tricky question, just because it is very complex. We recognize an aesthetic field in the political system: symbolic interchanges or diplomatic cultural events belong to this. There is also a political structure in the art world, just as in every other field. Since we are always looking deeply into the contextual traits of a project, we have become skilled in evaluating what is at risk, what is being negotiated in a certain operation. We always try to assert our position in the art world, to ex-pose ourselves, so that we can interact critically within this specific political structure. But we do this by avoiding being located: that's why our practices don't follow a specific subject matter or even a single way of negotiation. This has many times provoked confusions in what other parties expect from us. Anyway, it is quite clear for us: we always try to serve social means, by working politically from our field of action. If this serves the academy we don't know yet. Two of us are currently doing PhD research (philosophy and art history) while another one works within an art institution. This gives us a great perspective of what needs to be done and opens possibilities on how we can deal with concrete situations.

Do you see the collective as a global entity, or more of a national/cultural body?

Definitely as a global entity, one with which to get into a dialogue with, a partner for a negotiation. Nationality is an accident; art and culture our means for strategy development.

Have you ever come upon any social or political resistance to any of your projects?

Many times. But not on the usual censorship way, in which something is simply banned. We have experienced many problems just because we work differently, because people don't know whom to talk to, as if there had to be a leader, or because the art system is built around the figure of the genius-individual and is yet incapable of accepting group thinking and interaction. We have had difficulties because we usually transgress art-world diplomacies and try to do things not as they are usually done, but as we imagine how they can be. For example, once a magazine contacted us for a project, and they thought we would do something irreverent, in a funny way. But for us this kind of irreverence has been very well absorbed, we didn't want to mimic a transgression. We wanted to negotiate with them instead, and they refused. There are moments when deep theoretical thinking is more transgressive than a good laugh. For, as far as we have experienced, laughter is already part of the contemporary art system.

What was the most meaningful outcome from any of your projects?

In Frontera: loads of experiences with the people on the place, anecdotes and problems that stirred and still move a lot of theoretical concepts in our work. We are still trying to acknowledge one of the basic questions we made there: can art live beyond its discursive field of operation? Or put differently: Can art and life still collide at some point?

What was the most unintended consequence of any of your projects?

Again, many different things. Many times we have had troubles with the art-world from the least expected operation. Or in the process of doing a project, the reactions to it from possible participants: one time we were looking for people who thought of themselves as resembling the Venus of Milo. Well, a girl came and took off her plastic arm, just as the statue of Venus lacks an arm. She told us she attended the open call because her boyfriend had so many times told her that for him she was his own personal Venus. A newspaper even got her whole story.

Do you see yourselves individually primarily as artists, curators or something else?

As cultural agents and producers of meaning.

How has the Mexican government reacted to your projects?

Our government lacks imagination. And its cultural institutions are so weak that they can barely react to their own inoperativeness. Even if we see ourselves as working politically, we don't see our government as a direct opposite, there is nothing really substantial to oppose to, and we are not looking to that anyway. Instead, we might come into a dialogue with a museum in order to develop a certain outcome. And in these cases, our government, through its institutions, becomes a partner - even if at some moments unreliable - with whom to negotiate.