Title: Equilibrium and resistance

Authors: Lourdes Grobet and Yolanda Muñoz

Place:  Bering Strait

The idea that the Americas were populated by unidirectional migratory currents moving exclusively cross the Bering Strait has always caused me doubt, even annoyance. Three hypotheses guide me:

• • The energy of the pre-historical migratory flows is still open to scientific discovery. We know little about them, they were slow, long, and intense. Even today they accelerate and multiply exponentially.

 

• • The West of the Americas is Asia, a notion that has been systematically erased. “Western” culture has defined us, but construed in Europe. It is more than time for maps to be designed anew. The Americas should be redrawn visually and conceptually. Movement, the essence of life, cannot be fixed to a geographical dot; at best it may be symbolized.

 

• The cybernetic era is transforming human, cultural and economic-political flows as well as qualitative and quantitative distances in the geographical sense; it is also changing the traditionally accepted history of migration.

I wish to reopen the debate about multi-directional migratory and cultural contributions generated by America, at least on the aesthetic, symbolic level. A continent of the size of America, full of energy and dynamism, with its own cultures, is unlikely to have been the product of a single displacement from one point so far away.

This is my point of departure in creating a work that will be the result of thought and analysis of what civilizing movements have been and are now, a new evaluation of their different contributions.

These hypotheses about the Bering Strait imply comparisons between prehistory and the present, between Asia and America, between conquests, immigrations and emigrations, for example, about the explosive irradiation of contemporary Chinese migration from the West and its market.

On the other hand, the technological development of the electronic media has changed human behaviour in such a way that I cannot ignore it. It has altered styles of life, leading to massive displacement, as well as changes in relation to work, education, knowledge and territory. Boundaries are broken, distances are shortened, and being and placement imply spatial changes. It may even be necessary to restate the question of geographies. The organic changes and mutations of this moment in time are comparable to the times of the dinosaurs. Is not just the habitat that is at issue, it is humanity itself. We must be aware for the future.

The aim of this project is to contribute to the spirit of innovation in the cultural and social fields by means of artistic creation. The proposed work aspires to enrich the debate on ideological aspects that concern the whole society through exploring new spaces of aesthetic expression. Among the subjects that will guide this endeavor are global warming and its ecological and social implications; the redefinition of personal and social boundaries in a context of diaspora and massive migration in search of better life conditions; the frontiers imposed on people who face discrimination based on age, gender, disability, migratory status, sexual preferences, as well as the interaction/juxtaposition of different spaces of exclusion; and the notion of inclusion as the cornerstone for every work committed to discuss and promote reflection on issues that concern the whole community.

Yolanda Muñoz