Legitimacy, change and positions

Something is happening in the art scene. Protests here and there, complaints about political actions, about who controls, about the ways and means, about the lack of ethics…The institutional system modifies its significance out of a certain fear, the market increasingly defines the agenda but its very voracity might bring down its own structure, and the so-called independent sector can’t find its place and seems to have lost confidence.

During the good times we witnessed a sort of peculiar approximation, with institutions moving towards the modus operandi of the independent sector and vice versa. Some doors were opened and some projects of a flexible nature were generated and horizontal working systems were proposed. In some cases the existence of other possibilities that weren’t institutional were directly annihilated and in others the greater professionalism of some individuals was boosted. Within the independent sector it was considered normal that the institution was the new objective, in many cases forgetting the original motives that triggered the various proposals. Some of this persists and the institution has passed, by fluke, to the side of precariousness. Lets see if we accept it as normal or if a fist comes banging down on the table.

In the economic, systemic, political and ethical crisis that accompanies us, the art world continues to remain numb. There are complaints and gestures, but what if we leap into action? What if we reorganise the whole structure? What if we do without those who govern? What if we try without money? Are we legitimated for this kind of action? What is the context that we perceive, and the one that we actually have? Can we think in terms of responsibility? Are we ready?

In this edition of A*Magazine we present three new texts. Paloma Checa interviews Paloma Polo about her exhibition at the Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid, Imma Prieto analyses the exhibition “Estación experimental” currently on show at Laboral de Gijón, and Sonia Fernández Pan takes a look at M I A M I, an independent space in Bogotá.