Raqs Media Collective: It is possible because it is possible
Forensic Architecture: Forensis
September 26–November 1 2015
Opening: September 26, 17h
Fundación Proa
Av. Pedro de Mendoza 1929
Buenos Aires
Argentina
Hours: Daily 11–19h
T +54 11 4104 1000/43/44
prensa [at] proa.org
www.proa.org
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From Saturday, September 26 through November 1, Fundación Proa presents exhibitions by two renowned artistic groups. It’s Possible Because It’s Possible presents the work of Raqs Media Collective and is curated by Ferran Barenblit and Cuauhtémoc Medina; Forensis, by Forensic Architecture, is curated by Eyal Weizman, Anselm Franke, and Rosario Güiraldes.
Raqs Media Collective and Forensis reflect widely on notions of the “present”; both groups are interested in using different perspectives to bring awareness to current problems encompassing globalization, cultural differences associated with the economy, global politics, and contemporary subjectivity. The diversity of new artistic practices widens the spectrum of how we think about art.
What does it mean to create images today, and how does history take charge of these images’ meaning in their various forms of production? In what form can art update the tensions that are produced by the “real” in our time? Can an exhibition transform itself into a forum for debate and participation? Can cultural institutions succeed in intervening in contemporary reality? In these two separately conceived exhibitions, Proa presents these questions as a means of strengthening interest in the aesthetic and political processes that accompany artistic research.
For the multidisciplinary group Forensic Architecture,aesthetic work cannot be separated from research, at once generating opposing discussions and politics regarding space, urban fabric, and the means to inhabit them. Making use of satellite maps, photographs, videos, and personal and public archives, they pose unresolved questions for our time. Forensis formulates these discussions to challenge the viewer and offer an active glimpse into cultural and geopolitical conflicts through an aesthetic lens.
Raqs Media Collective analyzes the effects of global capitalism, interrogating the personal and social spheres in which the contemporary unfolds. Raqs proposes a form of imagining in which both the linear organization of the world and the historical absurdity that it signifies are viewed, paradoxically, from the same perspective. The works of Raqs are an invitation to realize, in the face of the prospect of a stable reality, the possibility of imagining new utopian configurations or possibilities.
Both shows are accompanied by parallel series of activities, through which Fundación Proa sets out to revitalize discussions about the “present.”
