ISCP TalkMay 24, 2016, 6:30–8pm
Panamerican Doubt and Unrest
Víctor Albarracín, Artistic Director at Lugar a Dudas, and New York artist and MoMA’s Director of Adult and Academic Programs, Pablo Helguera will engage in a “throwback Tuesday” discussion about 2006, The School of Panamerican Unrest, the first days of Lugar a Dudas, and the misconceptions of Panamericanism and typical humor in Colombian online art forums (called “bullying” everywhere else). Please join them at ISCP for loads of bittersweet nostalgia, broken utopia and fun.
Víctor Albarracín Llanos (born Neiva, 1974) is a Colombian artist, writer and curator. His work as an artist focuses on the topics of institutional critique, vulnerability and estrangement, precariousness, and irony, through the amateurish use of different cultural mediums, including music, literature and video. A long time educator, Albarracín has taught at several art programs in Bogotá from 2000-2016. He is also a published contemporary art writer and has published the books: Feign, 2015; El tratamiento de las contradicciones, 2013; and Materials for a Makeshift Shack, 2013. In 2009, Víctor Albarracín was awarded the Colombia National Art Critic Award and in 2013, he relocated to the United States for a Fulbright fellowship. Albarracín is a co-founder of El Bodegón, a seminal artist-run space in Bogotá, and was a member from 2005-2009. He is part of the curatorial team at 44SNA, the Colombian National Artists’ Salon, that will take place in September, 2016, and was recently appointed Artistic Director at Lugar a Dudas. Albarracín now lives and works in Cali, Colombia.
Pablo Helguera (born Mexico City, 1971) is a New York based artist working with installation, sculpture, photography, drawing, socially engaged art and performance. Helguera’s work focuses in a variety of topics ranging from history, pedagogy, sociolinguistics, ethnography, memory and the absurd, in formats that are widely varied including the lecture, museum display strategies, musical performances and written fiction. His project, The School of Panamerican Unrest, is a nomadic think-tank that physically crossed the continent by car from Anchorage, Alaska to Tierra del Fuego, making 40 stops in between. Covering almost 20,000 miles, it is considered one of the most extensive public art projects on record as well as a pioneering work for the new generation of artworks regarded under the area of socially engaged art. Helguera has worked since 1991 in a variety of contemporary art museums, most recently as head of public programs at the Education department of the Guggenheim Museum in New York (1998-2005). Since 2007, he is Director of Adult and Academic programs at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. In 2010, he was appointed pedagogical curator of the 8th Mercosul Biennial in Porto Alegre, Brazil. Helguera is currently Senior Resident of Location One in New York.
