Through sound performances, lectures, conferences and concerts by renowned artists, this programme seeks to explore and expand the content of the exhibitions on display at the museum.
These activities, curated by author, journalist and cultural critic Fernando García, involve different disciplines and scenes from the museum´s identity and its programming, bringing out the echoes from the exhibited works and those of the invited artists who, together with the public, dare to accept the challenge of experimentation and the desire to push the limits.
On Thursday, 12 December, the renowned illustrator and author Isol Misenta closed our 2024 Public Programmes cycle with a show highlighting one of her lesser known talents: as a soloist singer with a treasured repertoire that is only very occasionally performed live. Appearing as part of a trio alongside Nicolás Cecinini (keyboards and live sound processing) and Julián Horita (electric guitar), Isol gave an incredibly moving performance in which her voice ranged from barely a whisper to a shout. The artist’s playlist was inspired by two exhibitions that captured her interest: El aprendizaje infinito [Infinite Learning] and Dibujar es crear mundos [Drawing to Create Worlds]. Throughout the one-hour show Guadalupe Marín completed the concept of Isol with her overhead projector, superimposing transparencies to bring a collage to life in real time. She included images from her own archive as well as of some of the works from the aforementioned exhibitions. Isol has said that Marín’s light show is ‘magical’, and make no mistake, everything was indeed truly magical.
On Saturday, 7 December, the improv group Voley held a four-hour jam in the central room of the Celina Eceiza exhibition, Ofrenda [Offerings]. The Mar del Plata-based group, which consists of the musicians Mariano Ullúa, Mariana Pellejero, Nahuel Agüero and the artist Ernesto Ballesteros, created a hypnotic atmosphere and an extraordinary ambient soundscape with Eceiza’s soft architectural forms as a backdrop. Combining electronic bases with the bass, classic guitar, keyboards and effects and Ballesteros’ enigmatic vocalisations, they put the room into a trance. The audience relaxed, reclining on the soft pieces scattered around Ofrenda, allowing the comforting music to take them on a journey that intersected the psychedelic roots of Eceiza’s aesthetic with Voley’s freeform performance.
On Thursday, 5 December, our programme of activities in celebration of the 100th anniversary of the birth of the sculptor María Juana Heras Velasco came to a close in the museum auditorium. The event was a meeting of poetry and sculpture: the triptych Homenaje a Allen Ginsberg [Tribute to Allen Ginsberg] (1977) was on display at the event, while a projection of the letter the Argentine artist wrote to the American beat poet about how inspiring she found his poem ‘To An Old Poet in Peru’ (1960).A recording of Ginsberg reciting the line ’My rock and roll is the movement of an angel flying in the modern city‘, opened this Public Programmes event in which poetry and sculpture intersected. Fernando García gave a brief introduction discussing Ginsberg’s popularity in Buenos Aires in the 1970s, while María José Herrera contextualised the work of Heras Velasco within the Argentine Concrete tradition. Victoria Lopresto presented the work, which was produced by the Heras Velasco Archive Workshop and Fernanda Heras – the sculptor’s niece and director of the archive – and analysed the synthesis and abstraction of angel iconography from the pre-Renaissance through to modern times, as seen in Heras Velasco’s work.
On 29 November, Alan Courtis – sound artist and member of the group Reynols – unveiled his sound installation to accompany Sofía Bohtlingk’s exhibition El ritmo es el mejor orden [Rhythm is the best order]. Titled El papel del sonido [The role of sound], the work is created using electronic sounds produced by different oscillators, emphasising the frequencies around 60 Hz. These are played over speakers that are positioned behind two abstract drawings by Bohtlingk, selected by Alan Courtis. The two works by the artist – one of which is not on display in the museum – vibrate in response to alterations in the frequencies, which are amplified with a delay to produce a strange auditory effect in the room, turning Bohtlingk’s drawings into percussion pieces. This experience took place on Thursday 5 and 12 of December.
As Onome Ekeh’s Especulaciones [Speculations] came to a close, the artist was interviewed in the museum auditorium by cultural journalist and international analyst Hinde Pomeraniec. With images of the works included in the show projected in the background, the conversation – with simultaneous interpretation provided by Marita Propato – shed light on Ekeh’s artistic origins in Nigeria as well as the references to the culture and history of the country that can be seen in the digital works and videos on display at the Moderno. Ekeh spoke about the pigeonholing of African-American artists and writers and described how technology has provided an opportunity to reimagine the past of a continent that was devastated by colonisation and extractavism. Far from rejecting AI, Ekeh made a statement that is a pure sign of the times: “The problem does not lie in the technology, but in the culture we live in”. The artist, whose work was on show for the first time in Argentina, took a bow to the thunderous applause of the full house.
On Saturday, 26 October, choreographer and dancer Alina Marinelli gave an astonishing performance that followed the instructions contained in the work Incidente [Incident], a highlight of Salta artist Javier Soria Vázquez’s exhibition El acto imprevisto [The Unforeseen Act]. His monochrome triptych with three lines that represent the musical notes A, D and F, is only ‘complete’ when viewers follow the lines with their fingers along the canvas and, in response, three violinists play the notes indicated, with an intensity that reflects the gestures of the viewers. From the time the exhibition opened, this scene repeated every Saturday between 5:00 pm and 6:00 pm to the great enthusiasm of both the audience and the musicians. To mark the closing of the show, the Public Programmes department asked Marinelli to expand Soria Vázquez’s original idea. With the help of a white ribbon, Marinelli extended the white line of the triptych, attaching it to different parts of her body and turning it into the score for the piece. The audience at the museum was captivated by her presence and ability to create geometric shapes with her body. While interpreting the movements of the extended lines, the violins produced surprising combinations of notes, and incorporated intense ascending and descending glissandos into each tone to reflect the choreography. It was a new, unexpected way to experience painting, music and dance.
On Thursday, 10 October, critic Laura Isola gave a tour of Alberto Passolini’s mural Soñar a borbotones [Dreaming in Spurts], which extends from the entrance hall of the Moderno to the second basement, as part of the exhibition Dibujar es crear mundos [Drawing to Create Worlds]. Isola revisited the connections between revolutionary muralism and the concept of splatter art, which reinvented modern art in the 1950s with abstract expressionism. With Passolini and Raúl Flores – curator of the mural and the group exhibition – in attendance, Isola began the tour with a general introduction to the work, pausing for a moment on the stairs and finishing up next to the museum library and in front of Passolini’s small-format drawings, also part of the exhibition, providing the audience with the tools to interpret the voluptuous and playful iconography of his work.
On Saturday 5 October, artist Tomás Espina opened the doors to Un Museo Popular de Arte Argentino [People’s Museum of Argentine Art], an alternative collection shown as part of the exhibition El Aprendizaje Infinito [Infinite Learning]. Espina carried out a detailed analysis of the different sectors of this particular museum on display at the Moderno for a courteous audience that was amazed by the strategies of the artist. He pointed out the engravings that depict key moments in the history of Argentine art, the series of masks that refer to the scenes, and the 31 paintings from throughout the country that are dedicated to the dinner paid for by Federico Manuel Peralta Ramos with the money he received from the Guggenheim scholarship. The guided tour by the artist, who is also the collector and curator of this unique museum, led to a discussion about the role of the author in popular visual culture.
On Saturday, 28 September at the El aprendizaje infinito [Infinite Learning] exhibition, Córdoba artist Lucas Di Pascuale presented his book Asterisca [Asterisk], a publication that compiles his reflections as a drawing teacher. With banners displaying some of the images and postulates of his book, Di Pascuale shed light on the contemporary characteristics of drawing. Positioning himself at the centre of a packed circle of visitors in the intimate Hall B, the artist was warmly received by an audience eager to hear his thoughts, as reflected in the almost forty works by Di Pascuale that make up this exhibition curated by Jimena Ferreiro and Alfredo Aracil.
On Wednesday, 11 September, artist and teacher Eduardo Stupía, a revered figure in the Argentine drawing scene, delivered a lecture, “En busca del trazo perdido” [‘In Search of the Lost Line’], to a full house at the Moderno’s auditorium. Over the course of almost two hours, Stupía used approximately two hundred images to reflect on what drives us to use drawing to communicate before we even have any artistic experience. Perhaps, Stupía argued, ‘the ultimate fulfilment of an artist lies in rediscovering that lost line’. Picasso, Rembrandt, Minujín, León Ferrari, Paul Klee and other artists provided case studies for his lecture. At the event, organised by the Public Programmes department, Stupía also drew relationships between the Moderno’s exhibitions, El aprendizaje infinito [Infinite Learning] and Dibujar es crear mundos [Drawing to Create Worlds].
On Friday, 16 August, the duo Cecilia Biagini (violin) and Federico Orio (percussion and bombo legüero) presented a performance of Timbre, the title of their only album, recorded in Brooklyn and Mar del Plata and dedicated to the memory of Rosario Bléfari. Full of spontaneity, the set saw Biagini, who is also a visual artist, abandon her violin to follow the different beats Orio played on his drums with the actions of her bow and her body. Sat in a circle, the audience was mesmerised as Biagini and Orio – who performed for a little over forty minutes – moved and weaved through the audience, ignoring the boundaries of the stage. As they performed their abstract music in the auditorium, images of the ballerina Ana Kamien – taken from a short 1970 film that is considered to be a pioneering work of dance video – were projected on the screen behind them. Only seven copies of Timbre were produced, some of which are held in private art collections.
In celebration of Alberto Passolini’s mural painting at the museum Soñar a borbotones [Dreaming in Spurts], on Saturday 10 August, Curator of Public Programmes Fernando García interviewed the artist in the Moderno auditorium, alongside Raúl Flores, curator of the exhibition Dibujar es crear mundos [Drawing to Create Worlds]. The mural stretches from the museum hall all the way to the entrance to the exhibition. It features imagery of Passolini’s own visual education: the artist claims that the only landscapes he encountered during his childhood were those shown on television, rather than in nature. This explains his inclusion of a living room – complete with television set – with images flowing across the auditorium screen as if Passolini had downloaded his visual memories from a USB drive. The images include vintage adverts for products ranging from a lava lamp to automatic washing machines and a Chevy coupe, to scenes from films and television programmes. To close the event, the artist staged a performative raffle full of small ‘prizes’ for the audience members.
The Public Programmes department organises many activities at the museum but, since 2022, ‘Misguided Visits’ has been putting a new spin on a classic museum activity: the guided tour. On Saturday, 3 August, writer Martín Kohan was invited to lead a visit to the main hall of the exhibition Moderno y MetaModerno [Moderno and MetaModerno]. Kohan began the tour at the entrance to the exhibition with a brief lecture on modernity, before reading eleven of his own unpublished essays on the following artists, each delivered in front of a work by the artist in question: Tomás Maldonado, Guillermo González Ruiz, Oscar Smoje, Juan Pablo Renzi, Kenneth Kemble, Alberto Heredia, Ricardo Carpani, Antonio Berni, and León Ferrari. After listening to his very unique interpretation of the works and their historical circumstances, the audience followed the author of Museo de la revolución [Museum of the Revolution] to the doors of museum’s historical building on San Juan where the Misguided Visit ended with a reflection on the riverside of the city.
For just four dates in July, the Moderno’s auditorium was transformed into a stage for a performance of Jérôme Bel, the aesthetic autobiography of the life of the French choreographer of the same name who revolutionised contemporary dance from the 1990s to the present. Given that the artist and his company no longer travel in an effort to reduce their carbon footprint, Bel invited Argentine actress Maricel Álvarez to play his role. There were four sold-out performances of this show in which Jérôme Bel – through Maricel Álvarez – expresses his aesthetic and political ideals, while his anti-choreographies (Shirtology, Show must go on and Gala, among others) project onto the screen. Following the last performance, Maricel Álvarez sat down for a conversation with Victoria Noorthoorn, Director of the Moderno, and Federico Igarzábal, Director of the Festival Internacional de Buenos Aires (FIBA), where the work was first shown in 2023.
To accompany the exhibition El aprendizaje infinito [Infinite Learning], curated by Jimena Ferreiro, Public Programmes invited historian José Emilio Burucúa and artist Diana Aisenberg to speak in the Museo Moderno auditorium on 28 July. Known for his research on iconology, Burucúa delivered a keynote lecture on the history of attributions in the historiography of art. From Botticelli’s Venus to different representations of The Supper at Emmaus, Burucúa shared his vast knowledge, revealing how echoes of that biblical theme can be found in 20th century tragedies, such as the Nazi genocide or the disappearance of people during Argentina’s last military dictatorship. Aisenberg, meanwhile, provided a lively presentation of the Diana Aisenberg Method, a space in which her roles as artist and educator coexist, and a method that, for more than 30 years, has shaped many of Argentina’s contemporary artists.
Based on a curatorial text produced by Victoria Noorthoorn and Francisco Lemus for the exhibition Moderno y MetaModerno [Moderno and MetaModerno], the Jornada Ser Modernos [Being Modern(o) Workshop], held on 18 July, provided a look back at the founding of the museum and the origin of the Pirovano Collection. Beginning in the morning and stretching into the late afternoon, there were three panel sessions with art historians, professionals from the Moderno, artists with ties to the museum’s history, and contemporary artists whose work engage with the 20th century abstract works of the permanent collection. Pino Monkes, head of Conservation at the Museum, along with architect and designer Martín Huberman and painter Gilda Picabea spoke about the Pirovano Collection from their different points of view. This opening session was followed by another titled ‘The Squirru Strategy’, featuring historians Florencia Qualina and Leandro Martínez Depietri, as well as artists Pedro Roth and Miguel Harte. The closing session, ‘The Parpagnoli Method’, included a lecture by historian Berenice Gustavino, an account by Rosario-based artist Norberto Puzzolo of his encounter with Sol LeWitt in Buenos Aires, and a presentation by Laura Buccellato, director of the Museum between 1997 and 2013. Over the course of the day, the auditorium was filled with historical images of the early years of the Moderno, from 1958 to 1969, including views of the galleries and the public in attendance when the museum was housed on the 8th Floor of the Teatro San Martín. The panels were moderated by Fernando Garcia, Curator of Public Programmes at the Moderno.
To accompany the exhibition A 18 minutos del sol [18 Minutes from the Sun], the Moderno, in co-ordination with the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration, organised a public Zoom interview to present the work of Engineer Clara O’Farrell at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. As part of the team working to explore Mars, O’Farrell is chronicling the participation of women in the space race and Argentina’s achievements in the field.
In June 1970, the Instituto Di Tella closed its doors with a final performance of María Lucía Marini es Marilú Marini [María Lucía Marini is Marilú Marini], her second solo performance to take place at the same venue where she had made her debut five years earlier with Danse Bouquet. On 6 December 2023, the dancers and choreographers Bárbara Hang and Ana Laura Lozza were invited by Public Programmes to recreate that last performance based on the few archival records available. Since there are no photographs or filmed footage of the performance available, Hang and Lozza took the original music from the event (which included Chopin, Manal, Satie, The Doors, and others) and created a choreography in the room where the Danza Actual. Experimentación en la danza argentina de los años 60 [Dance Today: Experimentation in Dance in the 1960s] exhibition was on display. Their movements stood out against the giant posters of their dance predecessors: Graciela Martínez, Ana Kamien and Marilú Marini herself.
On Wednesday, 29 November 2023, filmmaker Andrés Di Tella presented two relatively unknown short films in the museum auditorium. Luz de verano [Summer Light] (2019) and Diario 6 [Diary 6] were programmed to accompany the exhibition Juguetes rabiosos. Vanguardia y destrucción en el arte argentino de los años 60 [Mad Toys: The Avant-garde and Destruction in 1960s Argentinian Art], which explored the connections between the avant-garde and Argentinian cinema in the sixties. Luz de verano takes a scene from Leopoldo Torre Nilsson’s La terraza [The Terrace] and turns it into a kind of group portrait of a generation of young people (Leonardo Favio, Graciela Borges, Dora Baret, and others) who hovered somewhere between idealised beauty and self-destruction. Some of the works included in Juguetes rabiosos touch on the same theme. Between the films, Di Tella presented an analysis of his work with the archive, the discarded footage he uses for his films, and the focus on rubbish in informalist works of the 1960s.
As part of the public programmes in connection with the exhibition Manifiesto verde Imaginarios pictóricos para un mundo en emergencia. 1940-2020 [Green Manifesto: Pictorial Imaginaries for a World in Emergency. 1940–2020], on 22 November 2023, Isabel Plante (UNSAM-CONICET) presented a detailed analysis of the works of Nicolás García Uriburu, a leading artist at the intersection of contemporary art and ecological activism. Plante examined Uriburu’s career, from his early Pop beginnings to his breakthrough on the international stage when he dyed the waters green at the 1968 Venice Biennale, and his historical collaboration with Joseph Beuys. She also drew a parallel between his work and the American land art movement, and showed a range of images and artists whose work complemented the themes of the Manifiesto verde exhibition, curated by Alejandra Aguado. As with the exhibition itself, the lecture by Isabel Plante, a specialist in the Argentine artist diaspora in Paris, formed part of the Moderno’s mission to highlight the potential of Argentine art to raise awareness of the destruction of our planet.
Within the framework of the exhibition Cultura colibrí. Arte e identidad en el under de los años 80 y 90 [Hummingbird Culture: Art and Identity in the 1980s and 1990s Underground Scene], the Moderno hosted the event Noy a Fondo [In Depth: Fernando Noy], with the participation of poet and performer Fernando Noy, curator Jimena Ferreiro, and curator of Public Programmes Fernando García. Though it was conceived as a public interview, the encounter turned into a café concert. It was a museological exercise based on a type of night-time venue seen in Buenos Aires, in which music, theatre and happenings intermingled. After the café concert came the basements and discos of the 1980s and 1990s, and eventually the stand-up comedy venues of today. These types of activities show how influential these spaces were on the art scene of the 1960s, 1980s and 1990s.
Accompanied by a playlist ranging from tango to tropicalism, Brazilian music and rock and folklore, Noy captivated the audience with his stories of the ‘Hummingbird Culture’. Against the backdrop of the voices of Goyeneche, Elis Regina, Tanguito, Luca Prodan, and Mercedes Sosa, the artist showed his own poetic power in his interactions with the audience.
Within the framework of the Manifiesto verde [Green Manifesto] exhibition, on Saturday, 16 September, poet Diana Bellesi (Zavalla, Santa Fe, 1946) was invited to add texts from her extensive collection of poems to works chosen by curator Alejandra Aguado and guest artist Florencia Böhtlingk. Bellesi chose to stand before a mural created by Böhtlingk specifically for that location, in one of the exhibition halls of the ground floor of the museum.
Bellesi recited her works over the course of a half hour, with her voice becoming the main instrument in this sound intervention. A loudspeaker was positioned in front of museum visitors, who were surprised by the appearance of the poet and of her deep voice, capable of moving audiences around the world. Another loudspeaker was positioned at the other end of the hall, producing a poetic ambience that contributed an additional layer of contemplation to the works of art.
A keen-eyed and sensual observer of the Argentinian landscape, the poet conducted a performative reading of 17 poems at the event and elicited applause with her recitation of the verses of “He construido un jardín” [“I have built a garden”]:
I have built a garden like someone who makes
the right gestures in the wrong place.
Wrong, not in error, but in place
like speaking with a reflection in the mirror
instead of with the one who is reflected in it.
I have built a garden to be able to converse
there, side by side with the beauty, with the ever
silent yet active death working the heart.
Leave the baggage behind it repeated, now that your body
can glimpse the two shores, there is nothing more
than the precise gestures
to let go, to take care of it
and be, the garden.
The artist Eduardo Basualdo immerses us in the aesthetic imaginary of Pupila [Pupil], his first solo exhibition in a museum in Argentina. In this audio-visual presentation, the artist reveals his creative process as he works from sketches to the final installation, and discusses the connections of a work that challenges the gaze from and towards contemporary art. With the participation of curator Alejandra Aguado and Fernando García, curator of Public Programmes.
On Wednesday 11 January, artist Mónica Giron, born in Bariloche, gave a Master Class in the auditorium of the Museo Moderno, thus marking the opening of the 2023 Public Programme calendar. Accompanied by Javier Villa, curator of the anthological exhibition of the artist, and Fernando García, curator of Public Programmes, Giron held the audience’s attention as she discussed the inner life of her works, where uncertainty is one of the central components of contemporary sensibility. Weaving together narrative and philosophical readings (from the Tao to George Gurdjieff and Gilles Deleuze) and unexpected discussions on art history (from Auguste Rodin to Carlos Alonso) and popular culture (from Winnie the Pooh to Patoruzú), Giron arranged the images of Enlaces Querandí [Querandí Connections] in relation to the new perspectives provided by Google Earth, climate change and the rescue of a native culture at the edges of fiction. The recording of her keynote lecture, available on the Museo Moderno’s YouTube channel, also reveals the mechanics of the working relationship between the curator and the artist, the result of their long interaction. The “Master Class” cycle has been conceived as a platform for artists to use their own voices to respond to the inquisitiveness of the museum’s audience.
The Sakura & Cardón concert is an intercontinental encounter between Cocaibica – the organic electronic folklore project produced by musicians Mariana Baraj, Leo Camargo and Marcelo Baraj, featuring elements from the Bolivian and Argentinian cultures in combination with ancestral and modern sounds that invite the audience to dance – and the Ensemble Selene, a quartet formed by artists Song Bonggeum and Chang Jaehyo, from South Korea, Mariel Barreña, from Argentina and Hiroe Morikawa, from Japan.
As part of the public programmes tied to our exhibition Cuerpos contacto [Contact Bodies], the Museo Moderno invited guitarist, singer and composer Richard Coleman to revisit the nocturnal underground scene of the 1980s. He was part of the same scene both as a member of the original line-up of Soda Stereo and as the leader of the bands Fricción and Los 7 Delfines. Coleman performed a solo show that was specially created to dialogue with the Cuerpos contacto exhibition.
Performing against a backdrop that projected Alberto Goldenstein’s work El mundo del arte [The World of Art], Coleman played a repertoire of songs that ranged from his first composition, “Arquitectura Moderna” (1982), to his legendary cover of David Bowie’s 1978 classic “Heroes”. With this performance, he created live sound portraits, as his soundscapes coincided with the photographs of Alfredo Prior, Jorge Gumier Maier, Marcelo Pombo and María Moreno, among others. Accompanied only by his guitar and an effects pedal, Coleman created a hypnotic sound environment that, given its unpredictability, became site specific. The finale was extraordinary. With the sound of “Heroes” resonating through the hall, Coleman guided the audience to the first floor, where he finished his concert under the archway of the Ave Porco discotheque, on display as one of the Sergio De Loof pieces that is now part of the museum’s collection.
Visita desorientada [Misguided Visits] is a cycle that puts a new spin on the classic guided tour of a museum. The first edition was led by the poet, actor and performer Fernando Noy, who took participants through the galleries of the Cuerpos contacto [Contact Bodies] exhibition. Noy is both a witness and the protagonist of many of the works and subjects on display in the exhibition. For instance, he can be seen in a photograph from the 1980s together with Batato Barea and Alejandro Urdapilleta in the piece El mundo del arte [The World of Art], which was mounted for the occasion.
For his performance, Noy gathered the audience at the centre of the hall to begin a very different tour of the show. Characterised by unique histrionics, Noy presented an account of his own story, beginning with his links to hippy culture (also seen in the psychedelic section of the show), Brazilian tropicalism (the event took place the same week Gal Costa passed away) and the Buenos Aires underground, on which he placed a particular emphasis. The audience hung on his every word, as if he were a fortune teller capable of predicting the future based on the past. From his sharing of the details behind the works of Emeterio Cerro, to the emotional final full of his recollections of Batato Barea, Noy shone like a torch illuminating the cellars of the underground.
Francisco Lemus, one of the curators of the Cuerpos contacto [Contact Bodies] exhibition, and Fernando García, the museum’s Public Programmes curator, along with critic and writer Daniel Molina (who has a huge following on twitter, @rayovirtual) discussed some of the works and artists from the 1980s and 1990s underground scene. Molina was one of the leading figures of the era, working as the director of the Arts Department of the Centro Cultural Rojas and as a journalist for the magazine El Porteño, the only media outlet entrenched in the scene. Behind the images of Batato Barea, the photographs from Alberto Goldenstein’s El Mundo del arte [The World of Art] and flyers for the band Los Redondos, Molina is present, both as witness and analyst of the essence of the underground. “It was the only moment in which art achieved the utopia of being outside the market, because nobody was interested in what we were doing”, he said. The conversation took place against the backdrop of a screening that included scenes of the band Virus playing at Obras in 1984 and the last night of Parakultural, with Batato, Urdapilleta and Tortonese receiving an applause in the recorded footage and in the auditorium of the Moderno at the same time.
In the passageway where the show Baile fantástico [Fantastic Dance] was hanging, Cartón Pintado analysed his work from a historical perspective to give an account of the Argentinian grotesque in its DNA. Fernando García, curator of Public Programmes at the Museo Moderno, led a tour through images by other artists that are reflected in a certain way in the work by Cartón. After discussing how Disney films and Japanese anime influenced his childhood, Cartón spoke about Florencio Molina Campos, Antonio Berni, Pablo Suárez, Marcia Schvartz and Marcos López. In this way, the artist and the museum interacted, in real time and in front of an audience, revealing how this exhibition belongs to a style that is rooted in our painting.
Once the conversation came to a close, Cartón played some of his songs, accompanied by Horacio Cristofanetti (lute), Nina Kovenksy and La Piba Berreta. The name of the event was a reference to the exhibition-concert in which Jorge De la Vega presented his work Rompecabezas [Puzzle] in 1970.
In the hall dedicated to Florencia Rodríguez Giles’s exhibition Sintomario [Symptomary], the guitarist and composer Florencia Ruiz premiered a suite inspired by the artist’s mural and video Sensibles y vengativos [Sensitive and Vengeful], the piece at the centre of her show. Ruiz, who is internationally-recognised, wrote an instrumental piece with subtle vocalisations that follow the mutant imagining of the mural and the scenes of the video, the sounds of which mixed with those of her guitar. The suite was divided into three parts of about fifteen minutes each, surprising the public as they entered the room without prior knowledge of the intervention. When developing the composition, Ruiz conversed with Rodríguez Giles so that she could get to know the artist’s concerns and incorporate them into the sounds.
For the intervention, the composer placed herself at one end of the exhibition hall with her pedals and other items so that she could go unnoticed. Two amplifiers were placed under the mural to reproduce the clean, broken sound of her guitar, which ranged from an evanescent layer of ambient noise to a noisy high tone that also allowed her voice to be heard. Once the suite was finished, Ruiz improvised for ten minutes, mixing her own playing with the sounds of the video.
