Manifestos for Experimentation
27–31 October 2015
Terence Gower
Manifiesto
30 October 2015–10 January 2016
Museo Experimental el Eco
Sullivan 43, Colonia San Rafael
C.P. 06740
México DF
T +52 (55) 55355186
contacto [at] eleco.unam.mx
Museo Experimental El Eco first opened in 1953 as a visionary project space dedicated to the “art of its time,” conceived by the German artist Mathias Goeritz and Mexican entrepreneur Daniel Mont.
Manifestos for Experimentation is aninternational art event, taking place between October 27 and 31, commemorating Goeritz’s centennial and El Eco’s 10th anniversary as a University Museum. It proposes an overview of processes, career trajectories and case studies as a way to articulate a historical and critical panorama of specific practices, places and agents shaping the various angles of Latin American modernist thought. Emphasis is laid upon the notion of experimentation in contemporary art practices today: visual arts, curatorial practice, architecture and concrete poetry, which were the fields of action in which Goeritz was very involved himself.
Over the course of one week, different activities will take place at El Eco and other venues, aiming to open new avenues of research and conversation around experimentation in the arts. The events are comprised by two keynotes, three roundtables, one case study, a design project, one publication, and a live performance of Terence Gower’s new piece Manifiesto.
Participants:
Aracy Amaral (Brazil), Roger Adam (Spain), Galería Metropolitana / Ana María Saavedra and Luis Alarcón (Chile), Terence Gower (Canada), Jennifer Josten (USA), Manuela Moscoso (Ecuador), Tobias Ostrander (USA), Daniel Escotto, Luis Felipe Fabre, Daniel Garza-Usabiaga, Miguel A. González Virgen, Gabriela Jauregui, Carlos Molina, Víctor Palacios, Guillermo Santamarina, Patricia Sloane (Mexico)
Publication:
Dissonance of El Eco, a critical essay by David Miranda (Mexico) tracing connections between El Eco and a broader spectrum of historical references linked to experimental architecture and exhibition-making.
Roger Adam (Spain) has created a graphic design project in the form of an abstract typography alphabet, taking Goeritz’s Poema plástico (plastic poem), presently at the yellow column of El Eco, as a starting point. Functioning in the museum’s website, the alphabet evokes the impossibility of completely decoding a message, as well as the collective creation of a poem.
Terence Gower
Manifiesto
Manifiesto juxtaposes music and architecture, two forms of expression that employ rhythm, harmony, proportion, and dynamics. Mathias Goeritz, in his 1952 Manifiesto de la arquitectura emocional and in his manifesto’s built form, El Eco, added emotion to this list of architecture’s essential characteristics. Canadian artist Terence Gower has incorporated Goeritz’ manifesto into a new musical composition that will be both performed live and played back in El Eco for the duration of his exhibition.
Gower commissioned New York composer Will Orzo to develop a basic gospel melody—a musical form that uses emotion as an engine for spiritual elevation—for a selection of key phrases from Goeritz’ text. The performer of Manifiesto—Rachel Sharples, a young gospel artist from Queens, New York—worked with the artist and composer to record Orzo’s composition as well as her own improvisations on the text. Gower has arranged Manifiesto to demonstrate how cultural manifestos have an emotional and spiritual function similar to that of religious musical forms.
A vinyl record has been produced in an edition of 100 for this exhibition.
About Museo Experimental El Eco
Located in Mexico City, this unique inhabitable sculpture presents temporary contemporary art projects by Mexican and international artists. It is part of the network of art institutions run by the National Autonomous University of Mexico (unam). El Eco is a meeting place for the arts. It seeks to offer various contexts for new artistic practices and the development of cultural knowledge. Emphasizing experimentation, emotion and interdisciplinary thinking, the space continually takes inspiration from its unique architecture and the diverse conceptual interests of its founder, the artist Mathias Goeritz (1915–90).
More information on our events is available at www.eleco.unam.mx
