Lecture by Carla Macchiavello & performance by Christy Gast

Carla Macchiavello: ‘We were always fueguinos’ and Christy Gast: ¿'Onde va la lancha? 

Date: Wednesday 13 July 2016 
Location: Gertrude Contemporary, Studio 18 (upstairs)
Time: 6pm for a 6.30pm start, finishing approximately at 8.30pm.

Discipline, Ensayos, and Gertrude Contemporary are pleased to present, ‘We were always fueguinos’ a lecture by art historian, Carla Macchiavello and ¿'Onde va la lancha?  a performance by artist, Christy Gast. The evening will be convened by Camila Marambio.

Cala Macchiavello will present a talk exploring how the fluctuating appropriations and reenactments made by Chilean artists of images of Tierra del Fuego since the 1970s question identity, violence, and sovereignty. In the midst of the military dictatorship, the bodies and landscapes of Tierra del Fuego and the southernmost regions of Chile were imagined by several artists as the margin incarnated—an ambiguous border inside and outside the nation where a battle of inscriptions took place. During the transition to democracy in Chile, the images of fueguinos’ bodies and southern landscapes continued to be appropriated as signs of internal colonialism and a globalised yet marginal national identity. Today they still act as signs of contested identities and haunting memories of a violent past. 

¿'Onde va la lancha? is a 25-minute lecture-performance by New York–based artist, Christy Gast. Gast provides a live voice-over for a video projection that was filmed in the fjords of Tierra del Fuego. We find ourselves inside an artisanal fishing boat during a storm, its creaking and rocking provides the rhythm for a song; the audience joins in. We are under water with a whale. The whale whispers, we learn its song. We are underwater collecting shellfish; we sing the forgotten song of the west wind. The lecture begins as a conventional artist's talk, but as the camera dives below water the tone changes—the audience and the artist are immersed in the world of the fjord and must come to terms with its inhabitants, past and present. 

 Biographies:

Carla Macchiavello is an art historian who works with Latin American contemporary art, performance, video, and the relations between art, politics, and performative practices. She has published articles and essays on contemporary Chilean and Latin American art since the 1970s with an emphasis on artistic practices aimed at social change. After receiving a PhD in Art History and Criticism from Stony Brook University, New York in 2010, she worked as Assistant Professor in Art History at Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá, Colombia, and since 2015 she has been an Assistant Professor in Art History at the Borough of Manhattan Community College, CUNY, New York. She has curated exhibitions on recent Latin American art and formed part of curatorial and editorial committees, including La Otra 2011 (Bogotá), the journal Cuadernos de Arte of Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Seismopolite, and Más allá del fin/Beyond the End for Ensayos, an art and science program in Patagonia. For more information click here.

Christy Gast is an artist based in New York whose work across media reflects her interest in issues of economics and the environment. Gast’s work stems from extensive research and site visits to places that she thinks of as ‘contested landscapes.’ These range from beaver-ravaged sub-Antarctic forests, to a mountain in Phoenix undergoing a politicised name change, to the extensively engineered canals and dikes around Lake Okeechobee that divert water from the Everglades. She is interested in places where there is evidence of conflict in human desires, and she traces, translates or mirrors those conflicts through her art practice. Her work has been exhibited at MoMA/P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, Performa, Artists Space, Harris Lieberman Gallery and Regina Rex in New York; the Perez Art Museum of Miami, Bass Museum of Art, de la Cruz Collection, Locust Projects, Casa Lin and Gallery Diet in Miami; as well as Mass MoCA, the American University Museum, L.A.C.E., High Desert Test Sites, Centro Cultural Matucana 100 and the Kadist Foundation Paris. 

Image: Christy Gast, ¿'Onde va la lancha?, 2016. Video still (rough seas). 

Please note this event is only accessible via stairs.