Anticathexis and undoing in Derrame's psychic apparatus
(Subtitile of the cartoon):
Augusto Pinochet: –Tell me mirror…Who is the most beautiful of them all?
The mirror: Beauty will be convulsive, or not at all.
There has arrived on the table of our editorial, with something of a delay, the reply to our manifesto "Unmistakable signs of miserabilism in the Derrame Group of Santiago of Chile, published in the collection "The Anti-Miserabilist" (January 2006), and already distributed in the five continents.
To have waited so much time in order to read this puerile declaration! In Prima Fascie, the technique adopted by the collective from the other side of the Andes, seems to have been to deny everything (because they cannot even believe it themselves) only in order to end up confirming everything, exactly and in the manner that we had accused them of. Here is a summary where they put forward their arguments:
* Yes they accept financing from the Catholic University = it's because they are poor (what are they expected to do if they have no money, sit with their arms crossed doing nothing?);
* Yes they have presented work in the Paul Getty Foundation = that's because they "attended" as exhibitors, and not of course because they were the "organisers";
* Federico Schopf, eulogist of Neruda, is not their Godfather = it's only that he presented them publicy;
* They admit that Brugnoli, the curator of the Museum, also presented them = but they don't have anything to do with him;
* It's a fact that they don't participate in any social struggle (students, workers, mapuches etc) = this would playing the game with the "stalinist apparatus" and the "hackneyed old revolutionaries";
* They make revolution through art, that is, by other means, through the spirit = "spilling all manner of energetic and astrophysical fluids";
* For this Roberto Yañez affirms: "I don't believe that the denial of the existence of God leads anywhere, and in this sense we have regressed to the times of ignorance" =…(regarding this confession, so clear and so mistaken, they maintain a prudent silence…Is it not worth a single word? Or a note in the margin from the surrealist point of view? Has the cat got their tongue on this one?).
* Enrique de Santiago, who presented himself in the Chilean - North American Foundation of Culture (an entity which has the backing of the Rotary Club, the diplomatic legation of the United States in Chile and - as always, inevitably - the Catholic University), disseminator of a nauseating esotericism by means of his web page, and Ernesto Gallardo (curator of his exhibition of August 2000 in the Artium Gallery, presented as "Professor of the State in the Plastic Arts through the University of Chile"), it's true that both of them belonged to the Derrame Group = but now they don't belong (did some astonishing metamorphosis take place in the meantime? Or are they simply the two most successful students to have graduated and advanced their career through the Derrame Group).
Later they get all hot and bothered when they are described as puppeteers.
They, of course, invoke "a Mad Tea-Party" of Lewis Carroll.
But we believe that what they admire about Lewis Carroll isn't the spirit of Lewis Carroll, it isn't the image of Alice lying deeply asleep on a couch, as was portrayed by Clovis Trouille. The manner in which they relate to Lewis Carroll is this split of personality, and of an era (the Victorian era) which expounded this fanciful notion: that you can be a deacon and a poet at the same time; Dr. Jekyll AND Mr. Hyde; Dorian Gray AND his picture…
That which the Derrame Group can never perform, is the miracle of being themselves, and at the same time, being surrealists.
Río de la Plata Surrealist Group
Buenos Aires / Montevideo
Translated by: Oscar McLennan
Buenos Aires – october 2006
(Subtitile of the cartoon):
Augusto Pinochet: –Tell me mirror…Who is the most beautiful of them all?
The mirror: Beauty will be convulsive, or not at all.
There has arrived on the table of our editorial, with something of a delay, the reply to our manifesto "Unmistakable signs of miserabilism in the Derrame Group of Santiago of Chile, published in the collection "The Anti-Miserabilist" (January 2006), and already distributed in the five continents.
To have waited so much time in order to read this puerile declaration! In Prima Fascie, the technique adopted by the collective from the other side of the Andes, seems to have been to deny everything (because they cannot even believe it themselves) only in order to end up confirming everything, exactly and in the manner that we had accused them of. Here is a summary where they put forward their arguments:
* Yes they accept financing from the Catholic University = it's because they are poor (what are they expected to do if they have no money, sit with their arms crossed doing nothing?);
* Yes they have presented work in the Paul Getty Foundation = that's because they "attended" as exhibitors, and not of course because they were the "organisers";
* Federico Schopf, eulogist of Neruda, is not their Godfather = it's only that he presented them publicy;
* They admit that Brugnoli, the curator of the Museum, also presented them = but they don't have anything to do with him;
* It's a fact that they don't participate in any social struggle (students, workers, mapuches etc) = this would playing the game with the "stalinist apparatus" and the "hackneyed old revolutionaries";
* They make revolution through art, that is, by other means, through the spirit = "spilling all manner of energetic and astrophysical fluids";
* For this Roberto Yañez affirms: "I don't believe that the denial of the existence of God leads anywhere, and in this sense we have regressed to the times of ignorance" =…(regarding this confession, so clear and so mistaken, they maintain a prudent silence…Is it not worth a single word? Or a note in the margin from the surrealist point of view? Has the cat got their tongue on this one?).
* Enrique de Santiago, who presented himself in the Chilean - North American Foundation of Culture (an entity which has the backing of the Rotary Club, the diplomatic legation of the United States in Chile and - as always, inevitably - the Catholic University), disseminator of a nauseating esotericism by means of his web page, and Ernesto Gallardo (curator of his exhibition of August 2000 in the Artium Gallery, presented as "Professor of the State in the Plastic Arts through the University of Chile"), it's true that both of them belonged to the Derrame Group = but now they don't belong (did some astonishing metamorphosis take place in the meantime? Or are they simply the two most successful students to have graduated and advanced their career through the Derrame Group).
Later they get all hot and bothered when they are described as puppeteers.
They, of course, invoke "a Mad Tea-Party" of Lewis Carroll.
But we believe that what they admire about Lewis Carroll isn't the spirit of Lewis Carroll, it isn't the image of Alice lying deeply asleep on a couch, as was portrayed by Clovis Trouille. The manner in which they relate to Lewis Carroll is this split of personality, and of an era (the Victorian era) which expounded this fanciful notion: that you can be a deacon and a poet at the same time; Dr. Jekyll AND Mr. Hyde; Dorian Gray AND his picture…
That which the Derrame Group can never perform, is the miracle of being themselves, and at the same time, being surrealists.
Río de la Plata Surrealist Group
Buenos Aires / Montevideo
Translated by: Oscar McLennan
Buenos Aires – october 2006
