The director of the International Festival of Contemporary Art SACO, the Polish Dagmara Wyskiel, will have a special participation in the Future Congress that starts next week, the main meeting of scientists and intellectuals of the season.
Wyskiel will be part of the panel “A change of perspective”, to be held on the same Monday, January 18, at 11:15 am, together with the Turkish professor and economist Daron Acemoğlu and Petra Künkel, member of the Executive Committee of the International Club of Rome.
The panel will discuss “the complex problems that currently afflict humanity and the need to unite all fields of knowledge to seek a joint solution to this crisis, in favor of the common good,” as announced by the Future Congress.
Doctor of Art from the University of Fine Arts in Krakow, Wyskiel is also a co-founder of the SE VENDE Collective, Mobile Platform for Contemporary Art.
The Polish woman has already been invited twice to the Future Congress, for example, for her work linking art and science, “a field that we developed a lot at the festival (SACO),” she explained.
His current participation is linked to “interdisciplinary territories and multiple connections”. “We are convinced that new discoveries are going to occur through various fields, in our case through art, opening the door to new observations, new inspirations, new layers of understanding of our world,” he said.
Wyskiel has experience in this regard, having been invited as an artist to the ALMA astronomical center, and linking astronomy with artistic residencies in Antofagasta.
Art against depression
The event will also be a space to talk about his experience at the head of the festival –which took place a decade ago in the north of the country– which, like the entire cultural world, has been hit hard by confinement.
The ninth edition of SACO, with eight exhibitions (in 2019 there were 12, with 40 thousand visits between Antofagasta and San Pedro de Atacama), half of them face-to-face, has been complex. It was necessary to change the production dates twice (from July-August to September-October and finally December), with all that logistically that implied in terms of the exhibition spaces and the artists’ agenda, which – I explain – “showed incredible flexibility and a great commitment to SACO “.
The economic crisis will also force the event to go from being annual to biennial. There will be an edition in 2021, ideally between August and November and another in 2023. Also, the even-numbered years from 2022 there will only be residencies, research, educational and editorial projects, as well as links with the community and science.
The director of SACO stressed the need for art in a context of stress and anguish that the pandemic has generated: “We cannot just stay with pharmacies, supermarkets and open malls. Human beings also have other essential needs (… Society does not resist more screen, more virtual encounters. Virtuality increases the gap. In many populations only one member of the family has the Internet, an Internet that sometimes does not reach many towns and oases. We are making products for ourselves , for those of us who have the luxury of a personal computer, an education and a habit of consuming art, and a very fast Internet. A very small group, the rest need us to reach them with our cultural products “.
To this is added that many cultural exhibition spaces, such as libraries, universities and cultural centers, remain closed and it is not known when they will reopen, which is why he highlighted the need to use beaches, streets, roofs and other public places for that purpose. In this sense, he urged to hold cultural meetings, no matter how small, because “the community is going to appreciate it, we cannot live with commerce alone.”
Cultural blackout
Wyskiel highlighted the four face-to-face exhibitions of the last edition of SACO as a “true act of resistance”, including the coming of artists from abroad to mount their samples and hold workshops, with the port of Antofagasta as one of the stages of the exhibition “Now or never”, with all the sanitary measures of rigor. Still, he questioned whether a capacity was required of them while the local mall remained at full capacity.
“It is very sad, but it is reality. The pleasure of shopping is one of the few that remains,” he criticized, in the midst of what he described as a “cultural blackout as it has not been experienced since the dictatorship”, in a situation that “If it is not war, it is absolute resistance.”
“Many visual arts, dance, and theater spaces are closing, many forever. We are going to get out of the pandemic in a Chile more impoverished in infrastructure and cultural programming, because the Government has turned its back on those of us who feed the spirits and we come to the community with cultural products. The Ministry of Culture has not understood the situation of cultural agents and spaces, nor have cultural policies been designed to ensure their survival, “criticized Wyskiel.
He also spoke of the difficulty in obtaining resources, something that already began with the social explosion, which unleashed a reluctance among private contributors towards artists for their support of the social movement. “If it is not a priority for the Ministry, less so for private companies,” she lamented, and declared herself lucky to know that she has some resources for the future, a situation that other cultural entities do not have.
The director of SACO pointed out that while there was a 10% cut in public funds, among private funds “there is a decrease in interest in giving real support to cultural projects”, for periods shorter than the previous ones. “There is a discomfort of the ruling class, of the establishment“, he concluded.
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