|
Mr.
Ricardo Lagos, SOM Chair 2004, Senior Officials
of APEC Economies.
Distinguished
delegates of the APEC Economies gathered here
today. After this brief video presentation of
our institution, the Museum of Contemporary Art,
I would like to present the bilateral visual arts
exchange project we are fostering, Travesías
Crossings: Chile Asia Pacific by first clarifying
why do we think contemporary visual art is adequate
for this Crossings project.
Visual
arts have the great advantage of being non-verbal
expressions that can move across borders more
easily. Going beyond the limitations of local
speech, they announce the possibility of a complex
universal language, thereby contributing to mutual
understanding, from their own place of belonging.
The origin of symbolic structures, necessarily
set up in their own cultural landscape, also speaks
to other native forms, thus acknowledging the
profound need for dialogue, in the density required
by the challenge of a world where new communication
networks create ground-breaking cultural dimensions.
Reflection and the exchange of visual art exhibitions
among the different cultures that make up APEC,
will call attention to the significant socio-cultural
changes that have taken place in them. This will
represent an opportunity for artists to express
these cultural changes through their work and
observe the dialogue that their reflection arouses
when it is presented in a context outside their
own.
With
this exchange project, the artworks of each region
related to APEC will be interpreted from a new
perspective, one that has been practically non-existent
up to now, contributing to cultural dissemination.
Brief
Description
Travesías
(Crossings): Chile - Asia Pacific comprises
the curatorship, management and production of
a series of bilateral visual arts exhibitions
between Chile and APEC member cultures, to be
carried out in a period, initially established
as five years (2005 - 2010), which would be entrusted
to the MAC.
This
implies that the works of art sent to Chile from
abroad would be showcased at the MAC in Santiago,
while those sent abroad from Chile would be exhibited
by the network of Centers and Museums of Contemporary
Art of each participating APEC Economy.
It
should be noted that the overall curatorial guideline
of the exhibitions, established by the Museum
of Contemporary Art of Santiago de Chile, contemplates
the work of artists concerned with expressing
the great changes that have taken place in their
cultures, from a historical and macro-social perspective
as well as in people's daily life. However, the
selection of artists from participating economies
will be responsibility of the Museum of Contemporary
Art or the Art Center of each invited Economy.
In the case of the Chilean sample, the selection
of artists will be responsibility of a Curatorial
Committee determined by the MAC.
Being
the MAC a University Museum, we believe in the
importance of promoting a bilateral exchange of
cultural goods, and contributing to a theoretical
reflection and proactive debate about culture
and globalization. Taking this into account, along
with the exhibitions, we will organize conferences
and publish catalogues to contextualize the artworks
exhibited and the cultural background of them.
For this purpose we encourage the presentation
of papers that -from the analysis of the latest
contemporary art production in each economy -
portray the original culture, the cultural and
social changes, significant historical events;
memory and present times.
One
of the projects, theoretical grounds is based
on Article 10 of UNESCO's Universal Declaration
on Cultural Diversity, adopted on 2001, that stipulates
the importance of reinforcing the creative and
diffusion capabilities of culture at world level,
considering the current imbalance in the flow
and exchange of cultural goods at international
level, with the purpose of allowing all countries,
"particularly the developing ones and those
in transition to development, to establish viable
and competitive cultural industries at both domestic
and international levels".
|
