Artistic collectives and a look on the crisis of 2001: the case of Arde! Arte, 2001-2006

Abstract

Towards the ends of the nineties, Argentina was in a critic socio-economic situation, result of the application of a governmental program aligned with the proposals of the Washington Consensus. In 2001, the severity of the crisis became despairing and produced a series of protests demonstrations with its highest point during the events of 19^th and 20^th of December, know was Argentinazo.

Together with popular organizations such as unemployed and piquetero^[1] associations, some artistic collectives accompanied the protests with actions in public spaces. Arde! Arte was one of them. Between 2001 and 2006, the group operated on the streets of Buenos Aires with interventions that conjugated resources like irony, humor and denunciation, and tensed the relationships between art and politics from unprecedented perspectives while –because of its dehierarchized and horizontal nature– contributing to generate a gaze and memory of the biggest crisis in the country’s history.

This article will analyze some of their actions in the light of the representations of the crisis produced by Arde! Arte and its interactions with other contemporary collectives such as GAC, Etcétera and TPS.

^[1] The term piquetero refers to a person that –as a way of protesting– interrupts the accesses to urban centers.