Trama, a cooperation-and-discussion program among artists, was in operation in Argentina between 2000 and 2006.
The program organized debates, workshops, lectures and projects for artistic interchange whose outcomes were documented on a web site as well as in a series of printed matter.
During its working period, Trama fostered the establishment of a cooperative network of artists-organizers, providing exchanges and training in issues related to cultural management for more than 70 artists’ organizations, training and stimulating their platforms through connections with the international art milieu and giving visibility to the resulting productions while furthering inter-regional artistic exchanges in Argentina.
From the very first stages, the program prioritized the need to open channels for South-South artistic interchange. This objective was fulfilled through its participation in the RAIN network and contacts made during research trips in South America.
Founded by Claudia Fontes, Trama managed its activities through different teams of artists, validating the artist-run culture in Argentina as an expanded field of the artists' practice.
For more information: see under publications.
Documentation about Trama is also available in the Artists’ Documentation of the Rijksakademie, Amsterdam.
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read » 2006 Residency and exchange with Rene Hayashi and initiative El Levante
read » 2006 Again for Tomorrow, Trama in exhibition College London
read » 2006 Painting Beyond Painting, Lucas Di Pascuale participates in workshop by CEIA, Belo Horizonte, Brazil
read » 2005 Encounter of artists cooperation in Latin America
read » 2005 KO Video Festival Durban
read » 2004 Network Research trip Latin America
read » 2004 The South Project
1-4 July 2004
What does it mean to live in the south?
The South Project is a five-year program designed to develop networks for cultural exchange between countries of the south, including southern Africa, Australia, the Pacific and Latin America. South 1 was the initial gathering of representatives from participating countries to develop the parameters for future south-south exchange.
South 1 was a unique opportunity to learn what is happening in our latitude and consider what role Australia might play as a southern nation.
Participant:
Claudia Fontes
read » 2004 Regional Meetings Cultural Management Analysis for Artists
March 2004
Regional Meetings for analysis of artistic management
As a continuation of the networking activities initiated with the Research workshops on cultural management for artists, Trama organizes in 2004 four regional meetings for the analysis of artistic management, dedicated to emergent artists' run initiatives.
In March 2004 forty two young artists’ organizations and artists managers will gather in four meetings in the cities of Salta, Córdoba, Posadas and Bahía Blanca. The activity will be coordinated by Carina Cagnolo, Jorge Gutiérrez, Gustavo López and Daniel Besoytaorube, the four of them artists successfully experienced in running their own organisations/initiatives.
The participants joining the activities come from all over the country.
read » 2004 Infest
Feb 2004
InFest will be the largest gathering in Canada of representatives from Artist Run Centres around the world. Spanning five days, it will include discussion forums, exhibitions, a networking session, Artist Run Centre presentations, public education programs, and an assortment of social events. The focus is on exchanging ideas and strategies to advance artist run culture, generating a sense of community that transcends national borders, and encouraging international collaborations. The goal of InFest is to strengthen the presence of Artist Run Centres within the cultural ecology and public imagination on both local and global levels.
The current international growth of Artist Run Centres is unprecedented. There is, however, no consensus of what defines an Artist Run Centre. Structures, funding models, modes of criticism, and curatorial practices vary according to differing social, cultural and economic contexts. But central to these initiatives is a stronger role for the artist in determining culture, and the provision of creative spaces that add an alternative to established public or private art institutions. InFest is an event that proposes and expands notions of what Artist Run Centres can be.
Artist Run Centres from all regions of the world are encouraged to attend InFest. It is a timely and meaningful opportunity to share our collective experience and knowledge, as well as to instill a sense of confidence within this growing cultural activity.
Participant:
Claudia Fontes
read » 2003 Project Analysis and Development
The workshop on project analysis and development was coordinated by the artist Pablo Siquier (Buenos Aires) and the Belgian artist Anne-Mie van Kerkhoven (Amberes)
The fellowship-holders, Agnes Geoffray from France and Laura Belém from Brazil (invited through CEIA), took part in the event. Ten other artists from Argentina chosen through a contest joined this working team. Eight out of these ten vacancies are reserved for artists from Mar del Plata and the surrounding areas, the two vacancies left are for artists from the rest of the country.
Artists selected were Daniel Basso, Andrea Cavagnaro, Teresita Olhaberry, Margarita Ciarlotti, Matías Duville, Fabián Ramos, Juan Souto, Inés Szigety, Mariano Ullua y María Inés Drangosch
The meeting was practical and theoretical. For 20 days the artists, taking part in the event, developed a project to be submitted as a reply to this call. The coordinators proposed interactive exercises to the group so as to deepen the knowledge of their peers’ creative processes and the subsequent articulation of the differences and coincidences in the emerging problems. The critic reflection of the national fellowship-holders was stimulated in the exchange with the other foreign fellowship holders through debates and in the presentation of their ideas.
We offered some assistance to the selected artists for the production of their projects, as well as, a modest grant to buy the necessary material. As regards as the invited artists of other provinces, we gave them accommodation for 20 days and a return ticket from and to their hometown.
The foreign artists participated in talks and debates open to the community.
Participants:
Annemie van Kerckhove, Agnes Geoffray, Laura Belèm
read » 2003 Cultural Management Research for Artists II
Workshop for the research in cultural management for artists. In the past years the Argentinean art scene changed a lot. The formation of a new generation of artists engaged with contemporary thoughts and language in a new artistic production arose in the cultural scene of several cities in the country. In a very short time a new cultural map was drawn, which obliges the community to redefine the art system. The absence of spaces dedicated to these thoughts made many artists take the initiative to create new public, independent spaces. Trama organized an intensive workshop of research on the meaning of independent artists’ initiatives offering a theoretical and practical support in order to provide these artists with tools to afford their aims in a more professional way. The workshop included lectures, debates and practical proposals with subjects as fundraising, networking and politics. Subjects of the debates varied from "the identity of artists initiative" to the "relation individual art work vs. social based artworks" or "the conditions imposed by Post colonialism and globalisation". Initiatives from Tucuman and Buenos Aires (Argentina), Durban (South Africa), Cameroon and others presented themselves to the group and brought in their own subjects on these matters.
Participants:
Diego Trejo, Apeiron Zool, Casa 13, Beatriz Scolamieri, Julia Masvernat, Colectivo Terraza, Cristian Segura,Martín Molinaro, GURE AMETS,
Jorge Gutierrez, La Baulera,
Sebastián Codeseira, Proyecto Venus, Amadeo Azar, MOPT, Mauro Machado, Taller El Levante,Mariela Scafati, TPS
read » 2003 Meeting art organisations Latin America and the Caribbean
October/November. Fundación Proa, Buenos Aires.
Duplus Project activity jointly managed with Trama.
This 6-day activity will include a research workshop on independent showrooms, followed by an open-to-the-public debate coordinated by invited theorists: Francisco Reyes Palma y José Fernández Vega.
Participants:
ESPACIO AGLUTINADOR , GALERIA METROPOLITANA , ESPACIO LA REBECA , HOFFMANN’S HOUSE , ESPACIO CAPACETE , PROYECTO TRAMA , PROYECTO DUPLUS
read » 2002 Cultural Management for Artists
December 2002
Workshop for the research in cultural management for artists. In the past years the Argentinean art scene changed a lot. The formation of a new generation of artists engaged with contemporary thoughts and language in a new artistic production arose in the cultural scene of several cities in the country. In a very short time a new cultural map was drawn, which obliges the community to redefine the art system.The absence of spaces dedicated to these thoughts made many artists take the initiative to create new public, independent spaces. Trama organizes an intensive workshop of research on the meaning of independent artists’ initiatives offering a theoretical and practical support in order to provide these artists with tools to afford their aims in a more professional way. The workshop includes lectures, debates and practical proposals with subjects as fundraising, networking and politics. Subjects of the debates can vary from "the identity of artists initiative" to the "relation individual art work vs. social based artworks" or "the conditions imposed by Post colonialism and globalisation". Initiatives from Tucuman and Buenos Aires (Argentina), Durban (South Africa), Cameroon and others will present themselves to the group and bring in their own subjects on these matters.
Participants: Tutors and lecturers: Ricardo Basbaum, Fernando Frydman, María José Herrera, María José Figuerero and Sue Williamson.
Initiators: Leo Battistelli, Carlota Beltrame, Daniel Besoytaorube, Mario Gemin, Marcelo de la Fuente, Ana Gallardo, Santiago García Aramburu, Goddy Leye, Gustavo López, Francisco Alí Brouchour, Sandro Pereira, Streak and Carina Cagnolo.
read » 2002 Context I: Point of view (the Netherlands - Argentina)
Context was a project developed by Trama for the RAIN network. It is a chain of co-operation and exchange amongst artists who were intented to travel through seven different cities in the frame of the RAIN network; San Miguel de Tucumán (Argentina), Jakarta (Indonesia), Bamako (Mali), Durban (South Africa), Belo Horizonte (Brazil), Mexico City (Mexico), Mumbai (India) and Amsterdam (NL).
POINT OF VIEW – Germaine Kruip
The starting point for Context was in San Miguel de Tucumán, Argentina. The invited artist Germaine Kruip (NL) realised her performance Point of View in collaboration with artist Jorge Gutiérrez and his theatre group La Baulera and philosopher Jorge Lovisolo. Point of view was developed in Amsterdam and in Sweden and now the performance took place in the Plaza de Indenpendencia in the city. The actors directed by Germaine Kruip were mixed with regular passers-by. The tension provoked in this piece between fiction and reality and between the idea and its’ realisation conditioned by the context, writes the text.
read » 2002 Artistic Projects and Contexts of Creation
Research Workshop on “Artistic production and creation contexts” was held in the city of San Miguel de Tucumán from October 1st to November 9th 2002. The activity was organized by artist Carlota Beltrame and coordinated by artist Aldo Ternavasio -from Tucumán- in collaboration with artist Sigurdur Gudmundsson -from Iceland- who had been invited by the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten, Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
A jury composed of artists Ana Claudia García, Tulio de Sagastizábal and philosopher Jorge Lovisolo selected ten projects by Argentinean artists (8 from the Province of Tucumán: Gely González, Pablo Guiot, Natalia Lipovetzky, Damián Miroli, Fabián Ramos, Roxana Ramos, Karina Simón and the duo Charles Vuillermet-Ricardo Fatalini; and two by visitors from Buenos Aires and Córdoba: Amalia Pica and Lucas Di Pascuale, respectively from the Rijksakademie: Michael Coombs (from England) and Erik Olofsen (from Holland) also participated in this event with their own projects.
The proposal made by the organizers in Tucumán aimed at a group discussion on the needs posed by this context and their incidence on artists’ creative process, both at conceptual and formal levels.
The participants carried out their work on a project for a month. They went through different stages: presentation of and debate on the hypothesis underlying the projects selected, development of the projects, conclusions and public discussion of the works.
Aldo Ternavasio led the debate throughout the first two stages and Sigurdur Gudmundsson joined him for the last stage.
Both artists, renowned locally and abroad, lectured on their work at the “Eugenio F. Virla” Cultural Centre, Tucumán National University.
Participants:
Michael Coombs, Erik Olofsen, Sigurdur Gudmundsson
read » 2001 Artistic Practice and its Social Projection
oktober 2001
In our second year of activities we proposed a research workshop on artistic practice and its social scope. The proposal -conveniently ambiguous- wanted to offer the artistic community the possibility of testing projects whose conceptual or thematic axes question the raison díetre of an artistic practice as fragile and uncertain as the Argentine one in late 2001.
The selected artists were: Sonia Abián (Posadas, Misiones), Claudia del Río (Rosario, Santa Fe), Santiago Pagés de Arteaga, Sebastián Friedman, Florencia Blanco, Grupo de Arte Callejero, Eduardo Molinari, Rocío Pérez Armendáriz, Diana Aisenberg, Leonello Zambón y Lucas Ferrari from Buenos Aires.
The jury was made up by sociologist Christian Ferrer, Gabriela Massuh, cultural programming art director of the Instituto Goethe and Eva Grinstein, art critic.
These artists worked and compared their ideas as a group during two months, at the end of which they presented the projects carried out in the public cycle of debates "Networks, contexts, territories" late in November 2001 in the Buenos Aires Instituto Goethe's auditorium.
Ade Darmawan (Jakarta, Indonesia), Andreas Siekmann (Berlin, Germany), Dennis Adams (U,S,A,) and Oscar Brahim (Buenos Aires) were the invited artists. Reinaldo Laddaga, (Rosario/U.S.A.), via the Rijksakademie Charles Esche (United Kingdom / Denmark), and Christian Ferrer (Buenos Aires), were the theoreticians who joined the group for the final debate cycle.
The artists confronted the projects developed during the workshop in different situations.
At first, in an intimate situation, with Christian Ferrer’s intervention; he contributed his professional point of view to the analysis of the intention of the projects just before putting them into practice.
Immediately afterwards, the artists developed their projects with the assistance of Trama’s co-ordinators. The universe of projects covered from urban topics to publications and research on a specific social theme, by means of photography, opinion polls and other strategies, as well as working logics from areas as diverse as sociology, advertising, social photography, linguistics, anthropology and history.
While the local artists carried out their projects, we invited Ade Darmawan, artist from Jakarta (ruangrupa), Indonesia, to join Trama during twenty days, to develop a work with an Argentine artist and show the results of this collaboration during the debate meetings. The way in which Ade works, his interest in urban dynamics, and the references to situationism in his work made him the perfect workmate for Oscar Brahim. Oscar likes to introduce himself as "graphic interventor" rather than as an artist, while supporting his family by driving a taxi. During ten years he worked in the street visually "attacking" advertising signs, in a clear critical expression towards the symbols of globalization and advertising.
Participants:
Dennis Adams, Ade Darmawan
read » 2000 Meeting for Confrontation of Artworks
In the Meeting for Confrontation of art-works in Buenos Aires, 2000, artists debated, among themselves and with other artists that were invited, about the way their works were constructed. This was done over a two-month period. Each artist had a salon somewhere in the city where he/she presented a conflictive project to discuss with the group.
The local artists selected for this meeting were Claudia Martínez from Tucumán, Mónica Millán from Misiones and Horacio Abram Luján, Ernesto Ballesteros, Claudia Contreras, Marina De Caro, Nora Dobarro, Magdalena Jitrik, Res and Mónica Van Asperen from Buenos Aires. José Ferreira, (Johannesburg, South Africa ) and Marco Paulo Rolla (Belo Horizonte, Brazil), were invited by of RAIN.
The jury was constituted by Arturo Carrera (writer), Marcelo Pacheco (art historian, curator) and Horacio Zabala (artist and architect). Artists invited towards the end of the meeting, to confront the group’s work were Víctor Grippo and León Ferrari from Argentina, Jaroslaw Kozlowski from Poland and Richard Deacon from England
Participants:
Jaroslaw Kozlowski, Richard Deacon, José Ferreira, Marco Paulo Rolla
read » 2000 Meetings for Analysis of Artworks
The meeting for Analysis of art-works in Buenos Aires was carried out during one and a half months and were coordinated by young artists.
Two tutor artists were invited to coordinate the debates: Tulio de Sagastizábal (Buenos Aires) and Lisa Milroy (England).
Artists selected for the Buenos Aires Meeting were: Marita Begué, Florencia Cacciabué, Nicolás Domínguez Nacif, Raúl Flores, Oriol Guillén Arruabarrena, Ani Schprejer, Juana Neumann and Carina Moreira (all of them from Buenos Aires), Facundo Ceraso from La Plata, Valeria Gopar, Juliana Iriart, Raúl La Cava from Mar del Plata, and Sandro Pereira from San Miguel deTucumán.
The jury who selected this group was constituted by Diana Aisenberg, Tulio de Sagastizábal, Pablo Siquier, Mario Gemin and Claudia del Río.
Meindert Koelink (from the Netherlands) and Pia Wergius (from Sweden) were invited through the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten, Amsterdam.
Parcipating from Rijksakademie: Lisa Milroy, Tulio de Sagastizábal , Meindert Koelink and Pia Wergius.
read » 2000-2005 publications
2000 - insights and Context
2001 - Society Imagined
2002 - Images, Narratives and Utopias
2003 - The network as a common place
2005 - El encuentro
read » 2001 Series of debates Networks, Contexts and Territories
November 2001
Web site Trama
Between November 20th and 24th, and as the closing of the Workshop, the series of debates "Networks, Contexts and Territories" was carried out at the auditorium of the Goethe Institut in Buenos Aires.
The ten local participants presented their projects in different stages of their process. Artists Oscar Brahim (Argentina), Ade Darmawan (Indonesian), Andreas Siekmann (Germany) and Dennis Adams (EEUU) presented theirart work.
Christian Ferrer, Reinaldo Laddaga and Charles Esche presented the texts published here, and analyzed and debated the projects that were shown.
The methods of circulation of works in contemporary art were discussed during the cycle, and strategies for construction of significance in relation to the social projection in each specific context were analyzed.
Lectures
Disaster, folly and forgetfulness. The precarious mold of Argentine art
Christian Ferrer
Reparations
Reinaldo Laddaga
Can everything be temporary? Art, institutions and fluidity
Charles Esche
Participants:
Christian Ferrer, Reinaldo Laddaga, Charles Esche
read » 2000 Meeting for Confrontation of art-works
In the Meeting for Confrontation of art-works in Buenos Aires, 2000, artists debated, among themselves and with other artists that were invited, about the way their works were constructed. This was done over a two-month period. Each artist had a salon somewhere in the city where he/she presented a conflictive project to discuss with the group.
The local artists selected for this meeting were Claudia Martínez from Tucumán, Mónica Millán from Misiones and Horacio Abram Luján, Ernesto Ballesteros, Claudia Contreras, Marina De Caro, Nora Dobarro, Magdalena Jitrik, Res and Mónica Van Asperen from Buenos Aires. José Ferreira, (Johannesburg, South Africa ) and Marco Paulo Rolla (Belo Horizonte, Brazil), were invited by means of Rain.
The jury was constituted by Arturo Carrera (writer), Marcelo Pacheco (art historian, curator) and Horacio Zabala (artist and architect). Artists invited towards the end of the meeting, to confront the group’s work were Víctor Grippo and León Ferrari from Argentina, Jaroslaw Kozlowski from Poland and Richard Deacon from England.
Participants:
Jaroslaw Kozlowski, Richard Deacon, José Ferreira, Marco Paulo Rolla