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To Moro, Montón and Lana, who will
never read this book
This publication accompanies the exhibition El
Bodegón – Post Mortem, presented at Dortmund
Bodega, as part of Colomborama, Oslo, april 2013.

Editor: Víctor Albarracín Llanos

Design: La Parte Maldita
Translator: Tupac Cruz
Transcriptors: Susana Eslava and Álex Bermúdez

This book is made from conversations:

Jaime Iregui with V. A. / Humberto Junca,

Carlos Mojica and Efrén Aguilera with V.A. /
Jimena Andrade and Marco Moreno with V.A. /
Pablo Marín with V.A. / Natalia Ávila Leubro with
Humberto Junca / Jairo Pinilla with Comando Trip

First Edition: 100 copies

The logos:

....................................................................................

Feel free to copy, share, republish and make

money with this book.
 Contents

7… Presentation

11… Empty spaces, critical archives and malicious

robots. A conversation between Jaime Iregui and
Víctor Albarracín

27… “The sound of the ‘capitalist invaders.’” A

conversation between Humberto Junca, Carlos
Mojica, Efrén Aguilera and Víctor Albarracín

43… Self-management, communities and a bed to

sleep on. A conversation between Jimena An-
drade, Marco Moreno and Víctor Albarracín

61… Necrophilia, sex, depression and fun. Words

by Pablo Marín Angel

69… Point of tension. A conversation between

Natalia Ávila Leubro and Humberto Junca

83… “Friquis calaveris mortis.” Words by Jairo

Pinilla
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 Presentation

This book is a companion-piece to the exhibition

El Bodegón–Post Mortem, presented at the
Dortmund Bodega in Oslo in the context of the
cycle Colomborama.

In that sense, the logical thing would have been to

compile a book discussing El Bodegón, reviewing
the project’s anecdotes, accomplishments and
ordeals, and to offer a critical historical account,
presumably compatible with the kind of heroic
yearnings that legitimate the production of an
international exhibition dedicated to this artists’
space from Bogotá that disappeared in 2009.

And yet, the fact is that, precisely, El Bodegón

disappeared in 2009. After five years of hectic
activity it vanished, and made way for a stream
of more fashionable cultural endeavors and for
an entirely new kind of art scene in Bogotá. This
new scene is, by all appearances, more carefully
managed, more prosperous, and open to a wider
set of opportunities. Opportunities such as the
present one: to make an exhibition and publish
a book about El Bodegón for an international
audience, something that would hardly have been
possible while the space still existed.

What I mean to say is that dying was El Bodegón’s

odd way of succeeding, and the space has
enjoyed a posthumous afterlife as the topic of
books, national and international events, lectures
and a feature-length documentary. Maybe that
should be enough, for the time being, bearing in
mind that the idea of a post-mortem triumph is
burdened with a suspiciously Christian undertone.

This book, then, will not be about El Bodegón;

it might be better to give these recollections
a break and to keep ourselves from telling the
same stories over and over again. It might be
better to avoid conferring canonical status, as a
banner for future undertakings, unto a bunch
of anecdotes about a gang of artists who were a
little drunk and pretty bored with the way things
were going in Bogotá ten years ago.

Instead, this book is about a different set of

experiences, and it is all the better for it: they are
not celebrated or successful experiences, there
is not much buzz about them in the cultural
landscape of Bogotá. They are also not the
most critical or traumatic experiences. The book
merely portrays the experiences of individuals or
groups of people who have worked, whether at
specific times or consistently so, from the end
of eighties until today, on projects or activities
pertaining to culture in Bogotá, and whose paths

9
have crossed with those of El Bodegón in one
way or another.

This, then, is a book of conversations and

testimonials, modest, simple and of mostly local
interest, and there is a chance that readers in
Europe might not find them very compelling.
There is very little in these conversations for
those who enjoy the touristic and the exotic;
they contain a simple account of cultural
experiences, developed little by little in Bogotá,
in the voice of their protagonists. Experiences
and situations, moreover, about which little if any
documentation is available, not even in the local
context.

This is a dry book, and this is already visible in the

editorial criteria under which it was conceived.
All commentary has been set aside, there will
be no biographical info on the interviewees, no
synopses, no illustrations, no footnotes and no
background information; all that remains is the
raw presentation of conversations / testimonials
dealing with the experiences in question with or
by those who were or are still involved in them.
In most cases readers will be able to obtain
information via Google about things that they may
not understand or which they might be curious
about.

I hope that, in spite of this, you will find a way to

enjoy it.

10
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 Empty spaces, critical archives
and malicious robots

A conversation between Jaime Iregui and

Víctor Albarracín

Víctor: I think it would be a good idea to begin

with a review of independent initiatives here in
Bogotá, because there is a general assumption
that spaces come out of nowhere, that they
emerge as a result of very particular conjunctions,
when in truth it might be possible to construct
a linear history, which in a way would also be
the history of a single institution: the history
of the independent as an institution. Here in
Colombia this history begins with cafés and
then continues, in the sixties, with the theater
company La Candelaria, gathering a wide range of
cultural agents and later on blossoming through
initiatives such as the ones you were and are
involved in –Magma, Gaula, Espacio Vacíio and
now Esferapública– all of which have their focus
on the field of visual arts and none of which have
received as much attention as their predecessors
from a historical point of view. Looking for
information about your activities in Gaula, for
example, I found only a couple of articles in El
Tiempo with a –relatively notorious– photograph
of a group of people posing and after that there
seems to be a fade to black and the only thing
available is a kind of oral tradition.

Jaime: I can see that: recently two people have

called me on the phone telling me that they are
looking to do some research on Gaula, and I got
to thinking and it is true that in those days we
did some interesting things, the truth is that
the space lasted for a relatively brief period of
time, the average life term of a space of that
kind: a year, fourteen months... and there is
documentation, I have documentation for some
of the things we did, but something like an
archive of the space as such does not exist. It’s a
very urgent task because obviously when those
activities took place there were no digital cameras.
Something that we did have, and that was very
important, was a very functional relationship with
El Tiempo, from the very start. José Hernández
was the editor of the Sunday paper and a group
of artists would get together in someone’s studio.
Carlos Salas was there, Danilo Dueñas... in those
days we were trying to decide what to do. The
space was born because at the time there were
a series of eventful openings in commercial
galleries: Conceptos abstractos at El Museo gallery
and other abstraction-themed projects at Casa
Negret. Suddenly things were being shown at

13
the Salón Nacional [de Artistas] and the Bienal [de
Bogotá] –it was a kind of abstraction-boom– and
when that boom was over I had come to know
about Danilo’s work from reading articles by
Caroline Ponce and Jose Hernán Aguilar, and also
about Carlos Salas. Those articles would typically
discuss about fifteen abstract artists at the
beginning of the year, in January, and then come
December the list was down to six. So we said,
“before the list disappears, let’s try to keep one
or two [abstract artists] from being forgotten,”
and we started to visit galleries and sites, looking
for a place where we might exhibit these works,
because we had been showing in institutional
spaces: the Salones, the Bienal –of course, the
Bienal was OK and everything, but we thought
it would be nice to have a spot for works that
required a particular kind of space–. So we set out
to find a space, and obviously we didn’t have a lot
of money... we didn’t really have any money... we
had to make do with money that we would come
by, with some savings or occasional earnings...
and we found a big space in La Macarena where a
woodworks had been. Carlos [Salas] made a metal
wall that was famous at the time, kind of gothic
and pretty weird, the floor was bare cement,
the walls where white, and that’s how the space
started. Of course we had many discussions
about what the space should be like, about the
name “Gaula” –obviously today the name brings
to mind the squad from the SIJIN– but our
reference was “Amadis de Gaula,” and the point
did have a lot do with an idealization of the artist
and of artworks, with the quixotic nature of the
enterprise of founding one of these spaces. But
we did not think of it as an independent space, it
was something that came about because we felt a
need for it. So then we inaugurated the space and
began to receive more and more attention from
the media and people would come, but there was
no talk of “independent spaces.” In those days
they were called “alternative spaces,” but there
wasn’t much talk of that either.

Víctor: They had not been conceptualized as

categories...

Jaime: Gaula was an artists’ space for artists

focusing on abstraction, so a point of debate
for us was: “Well, in addition to showing our
own works, what else are we going to show?”
We had in mind artists who were close to us, like
Fernando Uhía, or artists whose work had not
yet been shown, like Elías Heim, with whom we
did our opening show. He was a guy who had
just arrived from studying in Israel or Germany, I
don’t remember where. In those days the press
would give a lot of attention to artistic processes,
there was good promotion and a lot of people
would come. We had several shows, I myself did

14
not exhibit there because at the time I had a solo
show at the Museo de la Universidad Nacional,
curated by José Hernán Aguilar, but Danilo
[Dueñas] and Carlos [Salas] did have shows, as well
as Óscar Monsalve; María Teresa Hincapié did a few
things there, we did something really wonderful,
not so much an exhibition, more like an event,
we invited many artists... all of the artists in the
scene, to draw a line on the floor with a piece of
rope, so there were all these linear shapes left on
the floor and it was nice because it wasn’t an art
show or anything like that, it was a different kind
of event. And towards the end we began to grow
tired and, as is typically the case with these spaces,
there was a lot of financial strain, because we had
to pay for everything: drinks, invites, rent, and at
some point that became more important than
coming up with ideas. Towards the end we mostly
argued about ways to get money, because a thing
about this particular space is that it was conceived
as a space in which works would be for sale, at
the time we were hoping to able to pull that
off, but it was absurd because as gallerists we...
although we were not the ones in care of sales,
it was Danilo’s wife, who was the first manager...
so she would make some sales, but the situation
was very stressful and at the end we had a strong
argument with Danilo and he stepped out; after
that it was only Carlos and me... let’s say this
happenen in November of ‘91, then January and
February went by and three months later we gave
up. The space then shut down and Carolina Ponce
and Germán Martínez took over the property
and set up a place called Arteria. In truth it was a
brutal and traumatic experience for Carlos, Danilo
and me. When we closed up we didn’t want to
have anything to do with anything, and after a
while everybody began to talk about the place,
“too bad about Gaula” and things like that... More
or less the same thing that has happened with
El Bodegón, after closing the place acquires a
mythical status, but when it was running, it was
OK and all but still...

Víctor: They are posthumous myths.

Jaime: Posthumous! So I say to myself “I should

shut down Esferapública and see what happens,”
and when it’s shut down maybe I can put out a
book, right? But at the time it was incredibly hard.

Víctor: Before we move on I would like you to go

further back in time and tell us about Magma,
because I think that space sets an important
precedent before Gaula.

Jaime: Well, that was a very laid back place... I had

been living out of the country for about ten years
and came back here and my life was very similar
to the life of a recent graduate; everyone from

15
my generation was already working with a gallery,
or they had made a name for themselves, and
dealing with galleries was something that didn’t
interest me very much. So we rented a house,
along with Rafael Ortiz, Marta Combariza, Paige
Abadi and María Victoria Durán. We had studios
and would sometimes show our own work there,
but it wasn’t really a space in the proper sense...
that was before Gaula... and there wasn’t a space
like it at the time, at least not that I knew of. So
we would work there and put together a show
monthly or bimonthly, roughly speaking. The first
show was me and Rafael Ortiz, works by the two
of us. We worked a lot on it, towards the end
we were able to get some help from the Centro
Colombo Americano, we made a catalog and had
an opening, but such was our luck that the day
of the opening was the day when the Palace of
Justice was seized. Very few people showed up,
the people from Casa Negret came, I think even
[Edgar] Negret himself showed up. One of Rafael’s
works included a radio that was switched on, so
everybody was listening no Rafael’s piece, bombs
going of in the Plaza de Bolívar and the reporters
describing the scene, and everybody was scared.
My mother had a job at the senate, so I was also
very scared. It was horrible.

Víctor: And where was Magma located?

Jaime: On 69th and fifth. It was one of those

spacious English-style houses. Let’s say that,
in terms of how the space operated, it was
somewhat similar to how MIAMI works today,
to the extent that they also have studios there.
So we would just work there without any
expectations; the artists involved weren’t part
of a “boom” in abstraction or anything like that,
we just had our studios. So people would come,
we would screen German film series borrowed
from the Goethe Institut, we would set up a
projector and screen the film. Many of the films
we screened were silent, so we had the idea of
adding music to the films. It was a challenge but
also very relaxed. We also had shows by people
who were only starting out at the time: Nadín
Ospina, Eduardo Pradilla, Rafa, we did a show with
graffiti, we would serve chicha... it was a very calm
setting and much more relaxed than Gaula, where
we did try to play an active part in the art scene
and were, if you like, more “ambitious”...

Víctor: How long did Magma last?

Jaime: Magma lasted for about two and a half

years. From ’85 to ’87. It was a very cool place
and nice to work on... I like that kind of space. It
didn’t have the need for promotion that spaces
have today. Since we had the studios there people
would simply show up and look at works. Often

16
when people wanted to see Rafael’s work they
would go to his studio, period. Rafael would
show his work. It was a space for both working
and showing. Then we thought: “we should set
up a store fand sell objects made by artists in the
garage,” but even this was done with a very, very
informal frame of mind. We didn’t have to follow
a format requiring you to draft a manifesto and
state that things are going to work this or that
way, that we are going to make publications, there
was no dealing with the Ministerio [de Cultura]...
none of that.

Víctor: So the shift took place when Gaula was

born, because in Gaula one can make out a
strong declaration of principles from a branch
of the scene, as well as the first stages a certain
degree of mobility: Carolina Ponce was gaining
access to institutional spaces, New Names
[Nuevos Nombres] program at the Banco de la
República was born, and the categories of the
“independent” and the “young” began to take
shape, both of which would slowly become linked
with institutional aspirations as well. As soon as
something comes to be defined as “independent,”
the establishment begins to take notice and seeks
to absorb it.

Jaime: And really does absorb it. I think that Gaula

was not so different from the spaces that exist
today, inasmuch as they are run by people who
need to show their work and formulate their
own artistic guidelines... The work then becomes
visible and gains a place for itself in the scene,
but then people take a different direction, often
because the space eventually shuts down for
financial reasons, but also simply because we are
artists and not managers of cultural venues, so
finally we settle for the idea that art spaces have a
lifespan and, in addition to this, we just have other
projects to work on. It is not the same thing as
setting up a gallery: galleries last longer, and this
is why sometimes setting up a space feels like a
doomed enterprise, but that is not the case... that
is simply their natural life span, whether they close
after only six months or after a year. In my case,
I have been running Esferapública for thirteen
years and every year, when December comes, I
say to myself: “boy, I wish I could take a break, I’m
going to shut this down,” but then something
always turns up... Of course, Esferapública
operates in a way that is very much its own, it is
not very expensive to run and it is much more
fluid in nature, but let’s say that in a physical space
whose main purpose is the exhibition of works,
when you start out the first year paying for rent
and other things and looking for support, it’s
exhausting work. Even if there is support, because
when I had the opportunity to visit some spaces in
Europe I could tell that those people spend most

17
of their time submitting projects; they had all the
computers set up in the space, they were very
organized, they were in warehouses and things
like that but still they were at work all day long
trying to get support, and they spend more and
more money each time. So it’s a bit of a ball and
chain.

Víctor: And this is the case also where the dynamic

is nonetheless different. Because at the time, up
to a few years ago, it was understood that if one
worked on an independent project in Bogotá,
the claim was somehow to create a space of
resistance against the regime, against the “tyranny
of ‘the institution.’” In that sense, then, to keep
the space running was often harder, because
the logic at work was one of contestation, or of
undermining the work of institutions. And it was
not just that those involved had to deal with the
cost, they also had to deal with the fact that,
underhand, the institution was constantly tripping
them up, or looking for the weak spot, in subtle
and not-so-subtle ways. But now the dynamic has
changed, and it seems that the logic that guides
the creation of spaces is no longer the same,
rather now they entrust themselves to a strange
form of codependence with institutions, which
brings some fresh air into the latter and also gives
the spaces a little leg room to work with. And my
opinion is that as a result, and in a very conscious
manner, spaces are turning into, or created as
deliberate attempts to skip a few steps in the
process of social ascent, or to make a place for
oneself in the scene and gain visibility...

Jaime: Yes, it seems like the intention is, let’s

say, to create a narrative that will ultimately find
a home in museums and research projects,
right?... I mean, El Bodegón is in the process of
being transformed into a historical artifact, and
the same goes for Gaula... they become archive
material. That is what happened to us in Gaula: in
the beginning we did not think in terms of the
“institution”... We would visit spaces like Garcés
gallery, the Museo de Arte Moderno, the Colombo,
and they would make all kinds of offers, because
the point was to make a statement from a plastic,
aesthetic or pictorial point of view. The basis
for our activity were a few artworks, but now,
when people create an independent space, they
don’t really have a body of artworks, an artistic
project behind it, which would make the space
memorable in some way. Now, all that remains are
myths about the amount of effort required...

Víctor: Before the feeling was that the were

certain works or stances that required a platform
and a space was created for that purpose, while
now it seems as though platforms are created for
their own sake...

18
Jaime: Take an example, when we had Gaula,
the point of our activities was to show works.
Carolina [Ponce de León] and José Hernán [Aguilar]
–because in those days there was already critical
writing [in the press]– they would discuss the
works. At some point they mentioned the people
who set up the space, but then the topic of
discussion would be the works, the works and
nothing more. And for this reason, if Gaula is
considered important, it must be on account of
the works that were exhibited there at the time,
rather than by virtue of having been the first, or
one of the first, independent spaces. The work
of Danilo [Dueñas], Carlos [Salas], Elías Heim or my
own work... Because those works were exhibited
there first and then found their way to an
institutional context... The same thing happened
in El Bodegón; at the onset of El Bodegón there
were Edwin [Sánchez] and many other projects
that came about with it, and what needs to be
stressed are the proposals...

Víctor: The kind of specific contributions to the

field of art in Colombia, in terms of languages and
processes...

Jaime: And that is what you don’t really see in

other spaces. I am in part not entitled to say much
because I don’t attend many openings and I don’t
have time to see all the shows, but what I see in
recent spaces is a pragmatic effort to produce,
to get funding, to participate in competitions,
sending out tons of stuff over the internet and
gaining a lot of visibility, but there are no works
on sight. The same thing happens with the
regional salons and with young art: there is a lot
of emphasis on the production of young art, but
I can’t see why since there is nothing very strong
in view.

Víctor: There is no process of distillation, nor

is there a critical approach to what is being
produced. I feel this absence as well. But, taking a
few steps back, I think it would be interesting to
reflect on the step from Gaula to the creation of
Espacio Vacío, a space that had a longer lifespan.
How long was Espacio Vacío open?

Jaime: Espacio Vacío was open from 1997 to 2002.

That makes five years.

Víctor: And you were on your own there.

Jaime: It was just me. The short version of the

story is this, Gaula closed and I told myself: –I
will never get involved in something like this
again–... and then we started Tándem, another
collective project, with a philosopher of science
[Alfonso Flórez] and somebody else who worked
on literature about cybernetics [Isaac Dyner].

19
The idea there was mostly to work our way
into existing spaces, like the Galería Sextante or
some libraries, and to organize exhibitions or
produce publications. That was in fact the direct
predecessor of Esferapública, because for me
Esferapública is not a site for art criticism but
rather a space for discussion among artists. So we
worked on that project for about five years, from
’92 to ’97, we out together some shows, some
publications, a lot of stuff. It was like Esferapública
minus the internet. And José Hernández, who was
living in Ecuador and was passing trough here,
said: “well, I’m going to build a small house in
Chapinero, but I want to have some space for my
collection” –he collects our work, he was buying
from us when we had Gaula and afterwards; he
owns all of my work, for instance; he owns many
works by Carlos Salas, almost everything made
by Danilo Dueñas, and he owns works by Carlos
Rojas–. He wanted to build that place, Carlos Salas
designed it, and he wanted part of it to be an
exhibition space. So that was his plan and then
he said: “listen, why don’t we make a space like
Gaula, but different.” So we completely overhauled
the concept of Gaula and discussed it. This was
Carlos Salas, José Hernández and myself. Danilo
was abroad at the time and we were not in touch
with him. So we were thinking: “the idea is to
show this or that kind of work... conceptual, with
abstraction... no, we should show this other kind
of work.” Finally we said: “let’s inaugurate the
empty space, with no programming. Let’s not
put anything on the line, we’ll let the space be
empty, white, and from that day on, after people
come, we’ll start to absorb what is happening
in the scene, like a sponge,” and people did
start to show up. So we opened the space, we
finished construction, and we established very
clear rules of the game: it was to be a space that,
on the hand –these are small details but they
were important– would remain empty, but also,
from a financial point of view the idea was that
people would be given the keys to the place,
people would pay a fee to cover the cost of, say,
painting the place or hiring a guard, cleaning up,
all very basic things, but we did need to make
some money. People would pay a fee and our
expectation was that this fee would come from
money that people might have obtained through
grants, or through some form of support or from
a collector. So that is how it started, and on the
other hand in Gaula I hated having to go and buy
alcohol for the openings so that people could
drink it up... we were buying Tres Esquinas by the
gallon and spending a ton of money. In one night
we would spend a million pesos in booze and
everyone was happy, but the day after we were
all hung-over and broke... So what we did now
was to get some very good wine, and the wine
and the drinks would be for sale. So people would

20
buy a glass of French wine for 1000 pesos, and
everyone was happy but the booze was not the
point, the point was something else... then came
the time when the topic of independent spaces
came into discussion, well, there was already an
ongoing debate about institutions... institutions
this, institutions that, and we created the space
thinking: “OK, enough debating, let’s look at some
proposals.” And then none of those people who
did the protesting and criticizing ever showed
up, because they had to come forth with actual
proposals, but people who had produced work did
show up: María Fernanda Cardozo came up and
said: “I won a grant and I just made a video called
Flea circus [Circo de pulgas] and I want to show
it here.” A cool feature of this space was that the
artists could decide how long they wanted to stay.
So María Fernanda said: “I want to be there on a
Sunday, because it’s a flea circus and I want people
from the ciclovía to come inside” and then the
audience changed. The artist was also in charge of
the press, sending out invites and everything else.
I wasn’t in charge of anything, technically speaking
my job was to hand over the keys. And María
Fernanda was very well known, she presented that
same video at MoMA a month later, and she dealt
with the media very well, meaning that on the
Sunday of the opening her show was featured in
El Tiempo and El Espectador, in full page features...
so, of course, the place was crowded. There was
a magician outside, a stall selling corn, and it was
like a circus: kids walking in, lots of people... it was
incredible and she sold all her movies, fifty or sixty
copies of the video. But what made her so glad
was that she had taken a chance, because her
event was six hours long. These were the kind of
things that happened at Espacio Vacío.

Víctor: That was the first project?

Jaime: No, the first was a project by María Inés

Rodríguez, who made a kind of portable art show,
it was a suitcase full of tiny things. Then I think
came María Fernanda; we also did some works
engaging with the block, one of the pieces was
called What’s up with the block? [La cuestión de
la cuadra], there we told ourselves: “let’s get the
artists to work with the neighbors, so that they
find out a little bit about what we do,” and the
neighbors would say: “art? I’m not interested in
art... I already have a still life right here from an
artist who was at such and such biennial or won at
such salon.” So that was hard...

Víctor: But that initiative did come from you

guys...

Jaime: Yes, that was ours. Then we did Scenes

from the hunt [Escenas de caza], which was a
project of mine but also a collective one, for

21
which I did something like a curatorship. We also
invited people to participate in a project called
Simultaneous translation [Traducción simultánea],
which was also my work. Jaime Cerón was also
involved, he contributed some installations that
would be set up on the ceiling, so there were
curators involved and as a result a different kind
of relationship. Nonetheless, towards the end of
Espacio Vacío I spoke to José and thought that
we were running out of artists whose work could
be shown there. When the space is a novelty
everybody wants to be a part of it, and during the
first two years we experienced a huge boom. It
was interesting for many artists to be there. For
instance, Rolf Abderhalden made his first show
as a visual artists there. Also Clemencia Echeverri,
after her abstract pieces and the sculptures
that she did in Medellín, she presented her first
contemporary works there, with Rolf, in a project
financed by the Universidad Nacional and which
also included Trixi Allina. Rafael Ortiz also arrived
with a grant and then, the people who were
winning those grants and getting help from the
Ministerio would come to us and me and José
would discuss whether to work with them or not.
Because it was not space in which only people
with money could participate. A lot of people
would show up and ask “how much do I need to
pay, I have some still lives I want to put up” and
we would show them the door. The idea was that
it should work as an editorial space, because José
is a journalist; we expected to produce many
different things, including publications, but the
truth is that I was pretty much by myself in that
area. José went to live in Ecuador and each time
he came we would meet and discuss. Often he
would make the decisions and I would be working
ad honorem, I wasn’t making any money from it,
and the time came when I had begun to teach,
I was working at La Tadeo and they called me up
from Los Andes and said: “we want you to come
over to the university, we are looking to develop a
field of studies called Project Management, where
students are shown how to work on that kind of
project,” and that new field at the Universidad
de los Andes gave birth to an event called
Modus Operandi, which focused on the topic of
independent spaces, the point being to reflect
about that kind of process and to bring over to
academia the idea that an artist cannot be content
with building a portfolio and lobbying around, but
that also, particularly in a university like Los Andes
where the topic of autonomy is emphasized,
as part of its original mandate, that the artist
should come out of her studies and be able to
decide autonomously which way to go, knowing
that students there are often people who have
good financial support, people who have access
to resources through their family background or
through their connections. But the point was to

22
bear in mind that the artist too, the art student,
graduates and, in a context as precarious as ours,
has what is almost an obligation to create spaces
at first in order to gain visibility and access to
other projects. So then, in their first semester
students are shown the museum, the gallery
and the independent space. And when they see
the independent space they say: “hey, I can do
that.” This is often good, because there is the
possibility that a process may originate there,
but it can also be bad, because there is the risk
that the setting up of a space might become a
person’s sole endeavor. With Espacio Vacío it was
like that. Towards the end it was Espacio Vacío,
full-time, and Los Andes full-time, and Espacio
Vacío empty. And I said: “that’s enough.” That
cycle had run its course, but at Espacio Vacío I had
already started to compile a database concerning
fields of discussion that interested me, because at
Espacio Vacío I would invite people to participate
in discussions, so then we created something
on the internet, originally called Nonlocal, later
Momento Crítico and finally Esferapública. So what
I was most interested in were these discussions,
and that had more to do with Tándem than with
Espacio Vacío.

Víctor: Espacio Vacío closed in 2002, right?

Jaime: Yes, I think it was in 2002. We tried to make

some shows, one of them about the architect
Guillermo Bermúdez... things with more of an
institutional inclination. One day [César] Gaviria
showed up to look at the works and stuff like that.
We were looking for things along those lines but
in those spaces a time comes when you just feel...
it’s enough. In addition to that José wasn’t here.
So without José, who owned the place, and who
was also a journalist and whose idea it was for
us to publish... let’s say that Esferapública could
have functioned with that space as headquarters,
but it didn’t happen. At that time I was already at
Los Andes, and just as had happened with Gaula,
so with Espacio Vacío, I did away with the issue
of physical space, although I wasn’t paying for
anything, but it was nonetheless too much work,
setting up the shows and all of that, and it is very
painful for an artist –even if she does the whole
thing herself– when nobody shows up, and I
also noticed that the public that would come to
Espacio Vacío, although it changed depending
on the artist, was generally the same, and it was
the same public that I had access to through the
university. So I felt that I could get more done at
a university, by giving people the tools, by talking
about these spaces and creating an archive about
them, than actually running one such space.
Esferapública was another way to put the same
understanding of autonomy into action. Early
on people would send me texts by Hakim Bey

23
on autonomy, things that were available on the
internet, and then we started having the debates
and all of that. But in the beginning the idea was
to carry on the discussion about independent
spaces and about their viability in the local
context.

Víctor: Listening to stories by people who run

or have run spaces like these seems like, time
after time, rather than the fact of running the
space, what is most important is to kill it off,
no? It seems that all of these spaces follow the
logic of the “swan song” and that beauty comes
about through the death of the space. There
is a mythical construction that requires a death
as a condition for understanding the relevance,
historical, contextual or whatever, of the space
in question. The case of Esferapública is odd,
because after thirteen years it has already gone
beyond the logic that asks: what will happen if it
dies or stays alive, and, on the other hand, there
hasn’t been much debate about the kind of
space that it exemplifies, where you can find all
kinds of dynamic and institutional crossroads, but
there is also room for discussion, for people who
hate it and people who support it, people who
are bored by it, people who compulsively read
it. What are your feelings on Esferapública at its
present stage, or how do you come to terms with
that life process, with the life cycle of that place
that, perhaps, has lived way past the time when it
should have committed suicide?

Jaime: Yes... there are people who claim that

Esferapública is long dead, or who ask whether it
still exists, but when there is a debate everybody
reads it. That is very telling. In the beginning
Esferapública functioned in a very peculiar way:
first it was an email list, and discussions took
place in the list format and were brief. Early on I
preferred to open up a space and then close it,
because in order to be effective a space should
make an arrival and create a relatively powerful
question at a determinate time; to have an impact
on a given topic or institution or work or form of
thought, and then disappear.

Víctor: Of course. À la Hakim Bey... very transitory.

Jaime: Exactly, transitory, that was something I was

fond of. So then let’s say that Esferapública gave
rise to some issues and at some point there was
debate about the Bienal de Bogotá. And I thought,
now it shuts down... I apologize, before the Bienal
we held a debate, I think about something having
to do with Arborizarte or something like that,
and there was a discussion and I thought OK, I’m
shutting down Esferapública. At that particular
time, Ana María Lozano, who was the curator for
the Bienal de Bogotá, invited Esferapública to

24
participate by organizing a forum. I said no, the
forum does not seem right to me because then it
will be controlled by the Museo [de Arte Moderno],
we will be working for the Museo. So I said no,
I’m out. And I forgot about it and the Bienal came
about and Luis Fernando Valencia sent an essay
that stirred a huge debate and then I said “OK
now I’m shutting this whole thing down” and as
I was about to that the debate over the Barbie
dolls came up, so then once again the debate ran
its course and at that point I came to think that
the scene had appropriated this space, and new
debates came about. In the days of the Barbie
dolls we would hold five or six debates each year,
maybe four of them quite strong, and by 2008
or 2009, after Documenta, it had grown to fifty
or sixty discussions, out of which there would
be five or six strong debates. By 2011 I thought
that I realized that I no longer felt the need to
shut it down and that I, if I were to continue, I
could apply to obtain some institutional support
in order to keep going for two more years or so
and have time to go over the archive. So I sent a
proposal to the Ministerio to apply for one of their
awards, For me the point of Esferapública is to be
on the look for things that are taking place, not
just the debates but to see what is taking place
here or there. [As a result] there is less and less
debate and the nature of the site has become
increasingly editorial. When we got the prize,
we went through the archives, we worked on a
platform... Last year, for example, we had to deal
with one of those robots that infect the servers
with malicious code and we lost a huge amount of
information, so it costs a lot of money to retrieve
it, to format everything and repost the archives...
In conclusion, it requires more than just the space
being there, it requires a presence. Not just in
order to be on the lookout for things but also in
order to keep the platform up and running and
things like that. So the time came when I realized
that I am not so much interested in shutting
down Esferapública, but rather in the fact that
it has become a living archive. But as an editor
I am not interested in keeping alive repetitive
discussions, rather I am interested in revising
them to some extent in order to get a sense of
what is going on. And maybe, once we are done
with those revisions, it would be a good a idea
to consider carefully whether this is to become
an archive and whether to seek out the funds
required to get some people to analyze what took
place... it’s a very interesting archive. I think that
this is how discussions among artists should work.
Esferapública is a space for discussion where what
matters are the ways in which issues are conceived
and discussed, not the authors’ monographs,
although of course you can go through all of the
texts composed by each author. But it would be
interesting to find a way of reframing that archive.

25
Víctor: I think this is something that has never
been the case with any of the spaces run by
artists, or spaces of whatever kind, that you find in
Bogotá. Not even commercial galleries have taken
on the task of writing their own history and of
putting forth a critical reappraisal of their projects,
as Esferapública has been doing for the past
couple of years.

Jaime: This year, as the editor of Esferapública, I

would prefer to publish fewer texts, I would rather
devote time to the analysis of past debates and
maybe to make better use of Twitter, not in order
to tweet what’s on my mind, but in order to look
through the archives: “look there’s this thing here,
that thing there,” because that constitutes our
memory for a group of people –I wouldn’t say
that for the scene as a whole– but for a group
of people who participated and discussed. And I
am interested in making it so that we ourselves
are the ones in charge of this revision, although
historians might find the procedure somewhat
endogamic or incestuous. Consider the case of
El Bodegón... I find your way of writing about El
Bodegón very interesting, because it is something
that people can read right now, without having
to wait for ten years until the archives of
Esferapública find their way into the hands of a
small group of historians who might take over the
project and come over to interview me when I’m
an old guy. No, we need to do this now.

Víctor: Certainly, because an important feature

of Esferapública is that not only the discussions,
but also the revisions, take place in the heat of
the moment. We might say that, of course, there
is some distance when it comes to the revisions,
but on the other hand when the revision is posted
and discussed, you realize that some issues recur.
Fifteen years or more discussing about the Salón
Nacional and we have not really moved forward; I
don’t know how many years discussing alternative
spaces and the same applies. So the archive
allows us to see to what extent there might have
been an historical devlopment; I wouldn’t say an
evolution, but arguably a process through which
the field has undergone some transformations,
and it seems as though what has changed are
the discourses, while the fundamental problems
remain the same and the situation endures.

Jaime: Of course, these are dynamics that have

been around for a while and, in truth I think that
it is up to us, the artists and those of us who have
been involved, not to write the history –because
historians will raise hell– but to somehow put
together the archive. To organize the archive, a
collective archive. To fix some stances. Before
they show up and start to say: “Ah, this is

26
independent, this is dependent on this or that,
this is autonomous.” They classify you and you get
frozen into something, with the “classic picture”:
Víctor Albarracín when he was 22, Jaime Iregui
when he was 23. It turns into “archive fever.”
Instead things should be as they are when you talk
to Miguel López: the revision of an archive must
be undertaken for the sake of bringing its critical
potential back into play. So the idea of revision
implies this reactivation of a potential. Otherwise,
as Dominique Rodríguez used to say, what you get
is a “debate over dusty drawers.” The debate over
the Salón Nacional is like that, and so is the debate
over institutions, many debates have become
cyclical. For this reason, rather that shutting down
the space, I think it would be good to turn it
around.

27
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 “The sound of the ‘capitalist
invaders’”

A conversation between Humberto Junca,

Carlos Mojica, Efrén Aguilera and
Víctor Albarracín

Víctor: My feeling is that Bogotá used to be a

very closed city; it was very hard to gain access to
information about music, culture, art, probably
up until the end of the eighties, and to make
matters worse it has always been a very dogmatic
city. The crews of people who get together, even
when it’s young people, always function sort of
like a hooligan gang: you defend your own turf
and you’re set to destroy everyone else. From
that point of view what you guys were doing
with La Resistencia was very cool in those days,
because it was an open space; you would bring
together things from random scenes and created
a comparatively eclectic frame of mind. But I
would like to ask you guys to reconstruct the
atmosphere of the time and the context from
which you guys originated, to tell us why you
decided to produce a radio show, and why you
decided to give it that particular format... there
were four of you... each had a different taste in
music, and there were some points of contact
but each of you brought something unique to
the table, you were like the A-Team: there was the
cute one, the mad pilot, B. A. Baracus...

Carlos: This was in 1991, so some of the

nightclubs had already appeared which played
alternative music for people to dance to. TVG
had already opened, and before that there
had been La Casona, La Mansarda, Barbarie,
Vértigo, Barbie, Bolibar... I feel that we were in
tune with the arrival of grunge... that was the
setting at the time, the alternative rock scene...
I don’t know if it was under the influence of
that, but to some extent our project had some
connection with alternative rock. Or it was like
alternative radio.

Efrén: I think that what brought us together

was first and foremost our love of music; each
of us had an inclination towards a certain kind
of music and went that way, but obviously
when the others would start showing you many
other things... Humberto had things that we
had never heard, Charlie other things... Óscar
[Pinzón, fourth co-founder of La Resistencia]
had even more, because he had access to La
Musiteca’s stock, which in those days was a stall
owned by Saúl [Àlvarez] on 19th street...

29
Carlos: I would buy music from the record stalls
on 19th street. Saúl was there and there was also
a guy who owned a stall called Yes, he was hippie
and he had the best records...

Víctor: But you would always buy music by groups

from abroad...

Efrén: The problem was that there was not a lot

of music being produced in Colombia. And the
people who did release records were typically people
with money whose sound I didn’t really have a
taste for.

Carlos: I mean, who was making music at the

time? There was Compañía Ilimitada, Génesis was
already over, Pasaporte...

Víctor: But around that time, for example, Hora

Local and Chapinero Gaitanista were already
around, no?

Carlos: But hey didn’t put out a record until ’91...

Hora Local’s first album came out in ‘91, and there
was another record by a band called Sociedad
Anónima... also the Necronerds were a similar
kind of band... these were bands whose members
were rich kids from Los Andes. The pioneers of
that scene were a band called Distrito Especial. But
there just weren’t many recordings by local bands.
When did Estados Alterados release their album?

Efrén: I think it was in ’93.

Víctor: So we could say that the music being

produced in those days was rooted in something
like isolated “ghettos,” no? The punks, the
metalheads...

Efrén: Here in Bogotá we got to know more

about rock music that was being made in other
Colombian cities, and especially about that stuff
from the underground punk and metal scenes
in Medellín, through [José] Mortdiscos. Because I
think that he was the first person who took on the
task of going out there and bringing back groups
and recordings... Over there they did put out a lot
of stuff on vinyl and cassette.

Humberto: He also produced the first album by La

Pestilencia.

Efrén: He gave them part of the money to put

that record out.

Víctor: I remember that in his store you could buy

vinyl LPs released in Medellín during the eighties.
Stuff by metal bands like Reencarnación, and punk
compilations like La ciudad podrida...

30
Efrén: But in general there was very little music
being produced. We had no awareness of what
people were doing. Not even in Bogotá, where
there were a few radio stations specializing in rock
music, like 88.9, Radio Tequendama, Radio 15,
Fantasía...

Víctor: Let’s get back to the previous question, at

the end of the eighties you were all art students...
Is that where you all met?

Carlos: We all started school at the same time...

I lagged behind and, well, you guys did much
better in your studies... so we first heard about
the radio stations when you guys were about to
graduate, right?

Humberto: Yes. What you guys did when we were

students was very important to me. I mean the
concerts that you...

Carlos: Around ’87 we had the idea of organizing

some rock concerts at the university. We took on
the task in earnest; we went to Student Affairs,
there was a lot of resistance from them, finally
they gave us permission to do whatever we
wanted, but the only thing that they gave us were
some platforms for the stage, we had to get the
rest ourselves. And we organized a concert by
Hora Local with another band called Nueve... then
we had another one with a group called Yagé
Band, who were from the neighborhood Pablo
VI, and finally the concert by La Rata Poética with
Darkness and La Pestilencia. Afterwards La Rata
Poética became La Derecha. That was the last
concert from that batch.

Humberto: Those were very cool. I remember I

missed that last concert... I almost made it but
when I got there the scuffle had already started
and I ended up just taking pictures of people
arguing at the Plaza Ché. That in itself was
important to me because the “mamertos” [left-
wing militants, proverbially lovers of Cuban nueva
trova and Latin-American folk music] were saying
that this punk music was...

Carlos: ... the sound of the “capitalist invaders.”

Humberto: Exactly. And I thought: “well, they’re

right.” And I also heard what the rockers had to
say: “listen to the lyrics, this is a political band,
they are taking a critical stance with respect to
what is going on in our country,” and I thought:
“well, they’re also right.”

Víctor: It was interesting that a concert could

give rise to an argued debate between those two
sides...

31
Humberto: The craziest thing was to see the
mamertos throwing rocks at the punks, which is
kind of surreal because you would think that the
punks are the bad-asses who scare everyone else,
the real revolutionaries or something like that...
raw and primitive...

Carlos: Well, there’s two things to consider: the

punks were greatly outnumbered and they were
the ones who picked a fight. They figured that
because of their look everyone else would be
scared shitless and... this may sound chauvinistic
but this was La Nacional...

Efrén: Yes. I remember they were there in front

of the Architecture Department, and I was right
by the stage. And there were a bunch of guys
with huge mohawks... about ten of them... and
I thought: “where do these guys come from?”...
they looked like aliens.

Humberto: Those were all the punks in Bogotá... In

those days there was about fifteen of them.

Efrén: And those guys played and I thought the

concert was pretty cool. But afterwards the crowd
started heckling the punks... and throwing rocks
at them...

Carlos: The punks started to provoke the crowd...

thumping and punching... That’s what caused
the shower of rocks and bottles and many other
things being thrown by the audience.

Humberto: They had to pry open the doors to

the Architecture building to get away. They ran
through the school building trying to escape.

Víctor: It’s funny that the story of La Resistencia

should begin with a stampede of punks running
for their lives...

Humberto: Yes... to me that much is clear. I have

given a lot of thought to my recollections of
that event and, well, the thing is that I was taking
pictures, not of the concert unfortunately... I
was five minutes late. If I had been there on time
I would have gotten a bottle smashed into my
head.

Víctor: Generally speaking, though, was there

already an audience at La Nacional that would be
receptive to that kind of music in those days?

Carlos: If there was they were very passive and did

not have a presence.

Efrén: And it was for the most part people from

the Schools of Arts and Design. The weirdest thing

32
that I remember us doing is that we would lock
ourselves up in one of the studios at the School of
Design to listen to Siniestro Total and many other
punk groups from Spain...

Humberto: These guys would also lend me cassette

tapes that made the rounds, without a box or
anything written on them, so I wouldn’t know what
bands were on them but I would play them and
love it: Siniestro, Kaka Deluxe, Los Ilegales, Kortatu...

Víctor: OK, so this is how things were, say, towards

the end of the eighties, but when exactly did the
possibility of working on a radio show arise?

Humberto: I heard that the university was going

to launch a radio station, and that as students we
were able to request a slot.

Efrén: So we got together...

Carlos: Oscar, Efrén and Humberto heard about it

first... then you guys told me...

Humberto: We thought: “we sort of need someone

who’s more old school.”

Efrén: Somebody with a stronger basis on rock

music, because we were juggling with things from
different scenes and we didn’t know how to put
the puzzle together. So we needed Charly to give
the project a direction.

Carlos: Thanks a lot guys, that phone call... changed

my life.

Humberto: How did that phone call go, Charly?

Carlos: I don’t know, I remember that you guys

were telling me about it and we were walking
past the School of Design and I couldn’t believe
it: “we’re going to have a radio show, fucking
amazing!” and then things went their own way...

Humberto: Then we started to put the project

together pretty studiously, right?

Efrén: We wrote a document that was hundreds of

pages long...

Víctor: Just with scripts?

Humberto: No. If I remember correctly we first

worked on a discography, the idea being that we
would arrive and say: “look, we own all of these
records”... am I wrong?

Efrén: No, I think that we did have to turn in a

project and then we would be allowed to make ten

33
shows, that was like a consolation prize in case the
project was not accepted.

Humberto: No, the people from the station told

us: “we have a show called Invitado Musical and we
could try you guys out in that slot.” We wanted a
slot of our own and they told us: “no, guys, what
you can do is produce a special series, maybe
running for one week, which is to say five shows;
or ten shows, and then we’ll evaluate.” So we
settled for a series that ran for two weeks, ten
shows, one hour long each. They gave us some
guidelines for scripts, we changed some things...
And we started working on them.

Víctor: Were those taped at home?

Carlos: No. We would put them together. There

was something like a chronological sequence...

Efrén: The challenge was to produce the shows by

using our small resources. So we had to tinker with
things a lot to make it work, because we didn’t
have enough music to cover the entire history of
rock music, which is what we were shooting for...
So we adapted what we all had at hand...

Víctor: So at this point you guys produced those

ten shows at a time when the alternative scene
in Bogotá was beginning to take shape, and
these two things coincided: the shows and the
emergence of the alternative night clubs.

Humberto: Yes. But there is also this, that we were

working out of La Nacional, and this made things
rather crazy. I remember that I would buy records
by Silvio Rodríguez, I mean to say that we were
pretty schizophrenic in matters of taste. I for one
was never very dogmatic about rock music... and
I think I owe this to the fact that I witnessed that
debate at the Plaza Ché.

Carlos: Well, in those I was extremely dogmatic. I’ll

say even more, when I started hanging out with
you guys I felt that all good music came from
the past, but that was the first stage; the second
stage began when I met you guys and got to hear
tons of other records: you guys would show up
and play Front 242, The Residents, and I thought:
“what is this stuff, I have no clue.” So I learned a
lot and got a glimpse of this huge landscape...

Víctor: And when your run at Invitado Musical

was over did you start working immediately on La
Resistencia?

Humberto: No, about a year later.

Carlos: We made the shows for Invitado Musical

during the second half of ’91, and they aired in

34
November. Around March of ’92 they called and
asked us to do La Resistencia.

Víctor: And at the time were there any other radio

shows with a similar orientation in Bogotá?

Carlos: Of course... Clásicos del Rock had been

running on Javeriana Estéreo for a long time... and
for me that show was an education. They would
introduce the tracks but there was no jabbering.
So you got to listen to a lot of music, because this
was the problem with commercial stations: they
would play two or three tracks and then it was a
bunch of commercials and stupid skits... the same
as it is now.

Humberto: I guess that because of our education

in the arts, I don’t know if I should call it a
post-structuralist education, we had a strong
critical stance against commercial radio and its
hegemonic power.

Víctor: And that came through in the show. I

think that even though there was nothing like an
explicit manifesto, that stance was easily felt in
the shows that you guys started to produce, there
was a lot experimentation with the sound-making
possibilities of radio... you would play around with
established formats and genres, like the radio
soap opera, and with technical aspects.

Efrén: We also realized that there were some

oddballs who did not produce rock music as such,
but whom it made sense to include in the rock
slot and who were from here. Sometimes we
would play Noel Petro and Carlos Román.

Humberto: We were playing with that, not so

much on the basis of a particular sound but
rather by exploring a particular intent or attitude.
I remember, for example, that we once produced
a show about “gastronomic rock.” So we played
tracks that had something to do with food, but
we also brought bags of potato chips into the
studio and we were munching on the chips
while we were talking on the air; so, on the one
hand, you couldn’t really make our what we
were saying, and on the other we were being
absolutely rude.

Carlos: The truth is that we would take advantage

of any excuse... songs beginning with the letter
A...

Efrén: The shortest tracks in history, the longest

tracks in history...

Víctor: Another important fact is that this was

precisely the time when a scene of “alternative”
bands began to coalesce in Bogotá. You guys also

35
played a key role by promoting all of these bands,
you would invite them to the show, interview
them and play their music. I remember that three
of the bands who originated during those days,
1280 Almas, La Derecha and Aterciopelados were
on the show, and with them a whole tidal wave of
other bands.

Carlos: Well, I don’t know whether it is a cause or

an effect, as Víctor claims, but there was certainly
a kind of synchronicity. Things came together at
a given moment, there was something like a of
spirit of the times.

Efrén: And it was good, because in those days

there was no space for that kind of music. The
people from the radio stations were looking for
commercial hits or for bands that would continue
doing what the olds bands were doing. These
bands had a very different project, they really
were an alternative to what was going on. So to
have that space was very cool because we were
able to give people the opportunity to share
their work and we also had material that gave the
station an edge. It was very cool and many bands
came on the show...

Víctor: I also think that there were never as many

bands in Bogotá as there were in those days.

Efrén: Many of whom, in fact, never recorded

anything.

Carlos: Many never recorded... There was a lot,

a lot of metal. We always pretended to be very
open-minded and eclectic, but I would say we did
censor that... we never played any metal.

Víctor: Although it is also true that the metal

scene had developed an incredibly solid
infrastructure from early on... since the eighties, I
remember going to huge metal concerts in Barrio
Carvajal. There was a gigantic metal scene, and
there was Metal en Stéreo, a show that played
black and death metal on a commercial station,
hosted by that guy Lucho Barrera... and there was
access to all of the metal paraphernalia...

Carlos: Yes, they already had their own radio

station... But ska was also coming in strong...

Víctor: As we were saying at first, Bogotá had

always been a very closed city, and suddenly, in the
beginning of the nineties, these host of groups
came up trying to mix everything together. So
1280 Almas wanted to be the bastard childs
of Fugazi and Tito Puente, and Aterciopelados
a cross between Siouxie and the Banshees
and guascarrilera. There were so many mixed
influences...

36
Carlos: Héctor Buitrago [from Aterciopelados] had
a radio show on Javeriana: Astrorradio... it was
really good... he would play alternative music that
you couldn’t hear on any other station: Mission
of Burma, Echo and the Bunnymen... things that
weren’t new but that you would not have heard
on the radio here in Colombia.

Humberto: But you did get to hear stuff like that

on the night clubs.

Carlos: Well, because the clubs also picked up the

alternative banner.

Víctor: And out of nowhere there was a crazy

boom and now everyone was alternative... in a
matter of six months Bogotá became alternative.

Humberto: In ’93...

Víctor: And in that context you guys started to

build an audience, right?

Carlos: Probably, the thing is that we had no idea

of how to do that... we had no way of knowing
who our audience were.

Humberto: When we started producing the shows

for the rock slot and La Hora de la Resistencia
we designed an awesome visual campaign. We
printed some posters and pretty much plastered
the university campus with these very cool
posters, with the names of the bands and some
heads inside light bulbs, stuff like that.

Efrén: We made tiny stickers with La Resistencia’s

logo and we would paste them on all the record
stores.

Carlos: There was also a tacit agreement amongst

ourselves, that we would promote the show
rather than ourselves as individuals... we are still
committed to that.

Humberto: There are two commitments that

we still adhere to: our distrust of commercial
radio... although nowadays it’s hard to distinguish
between the alternative and the commercial...

Efrén: Yes, that boundary at this point...

Humberto: And the other is that we earn

nothing... (laughter)... we do it for free, which is
pretty suicidal...
Carlos: Yes... we do not present ourselves as radio
personalities.

Humberto: Our shows are not connected to our

names.

37
Víctor: In addition to that, the show has always
been open to a collaborative dynamic, and you
invite a lot of people to do things, to present their
music, to talk about their projects...

Carlos: Yes, maybe we developed this way of

working because, since the beginning of the
project, we saw ourselves as listeners rather than
producers... we were on the side of the listeners.

Efrén: And besides, many people are grateful after

participating in La Resistencia because that is when
their life and their passion for music blossomed.

Víctor: Moving on... I introduced the topic of bands...

because I think that as new ground was being
gained on the radio, other channels soon opened
up, obviously you could now hear La Derecha and
Aterciopelados on La Resistencia, but eventually
these bands would end up performing on TV
on Jorge Barón’s show, I don’t know if Las Almas
played there but they always say...

Humberto: ... that they were invited to perform

but declined.

Víctor: They declined! Anyway, what I mean to

ask is this: when a cultural scene begins to gain
ground, you can also see that a market niche
begins to grow and then it becomes massive,
and I like the idea that there are these bands that
start from below, from the margins, who are to
some extent rude or make something that is a
little noisy and in some sense new, and later slowly
position themselves within the industry, but then
there are also bands like Demencia, whom you
guys would also play on La Resistencia, and in this
case if you hadn’t done so there would have been
no record of what was going on in Bogotá...

Humberto: I met the guys from Demencia

because Efrén introduced me to them. Beto was a
friend of his... they were an amazing band...

Efrén: Yes... Beto played with his wife, Rocío.

There were other bands, they were all on that
compilation El Bogotazo.

Humberto: Yes: Escoria, Desarme and Demencia.

Efrén: But there is a very important point, namely

that when we started to promote specific bands
and showcasing the stuff that was going on in
Mexico with fusion and Culebra records, the local
record labels realized that there was a market
for that and that people would buy that kind of
music... so that’s when they decided to pick up
Aterciopelados and produce their first record.

38
Carlos: And Las Almas were left out, which was
very odd because Las Almas had a stronger
following here in Bogotá, but the industry people
were scared of them because they found their
lyrics too violent... too aggressive or incendiary...
so they were left out; or I don’t know if they
chose not to get involved...

Humberto: With Culebra?

Carlos: Because they signed Aterciopelados and La

Derecha, but not Las Almas.

Víctor: So at that point the boom subsided and

the wave retreated, right? I mean there was a
moment when things settled down, but things had
changed for good thanks to those bands who had
stirred things up, like maybe Las Almas... a punk
band with tropical percussion or whatever...

Carlos: But who did not sound like Santana...

Víctor: And then things took a different

direction... arguably it’s hard to define a sound
that could be called proper to Bogotá rock after
that wave in ‘93.

Carlos: Yes, it’s hard.

Víctor: There are some relatively distinct historical

phases, but in general it seems that there is no
logical evolution, is there? And it seems like at
that time, around ninety-something, the scene
crystallized, but ultimately it didn’t because
everything came apart and after that once again
there were only little things here and there,
maybe up until a couple of years ago when there
was a new boom around the music of Mugre, Las
Malas Amistades, Los Pirañas...

Carlos: Yes, there was a mood of latency... of

hibernation...

Víctor: And yet you guys were still at it,

interviewing new bands that were coming up...

Humberto: It’s also true that we did not make it

a point to paint an updated portrait of the scene
in Bogotá, it’s just that if we discovered a group
at a party, or if they would contact us, or if they
were recommended by someone else... so we
were very happy to hear something awesome
and obviously we would invite them to the show.
What is also crazy is that both Efrén and I started
making music... I don’t know why Cha didn’t...

Carlos: Because I’d already done that...

Humberto: Oh yeah, that’s true! ... Charly was in

Hora Local.

39
Carlos: I sang and played keyboards... but I didn’t
even make it to the record. They kicked me out of
Hora Local because I missed a rehearsal because I
took a hit of acid... they kicked me out because I
was a junkie and I because I wasn’t a preppie boy
from [La Universidad de] Los Andes... Whenever
people talk about Hora Local they describe it as
Eduardo Arias’s band, but Eduardo Arias was the
last member to join Hora Local... the last one to
jump on the train... he was like “the knight valiant
of the Bogotá underground,” and he obviously
realized that this band had potential. So he arrived
later, and obviously it benefitted the band a
great deal, because he was already famous for
publishing an underground fanzine, Chapinero...
and he had also done a little bit of writing on rock
music, during the rock music boom when Andrés
Pastrana was mayor... so this thing started out in
the press called the “rock page” or something like
that... and Eduardo Arias was also involved in that.
I have a lot of respect for him, I think he’s a smart
guy, but I also find him very opportunistic... that’s
how he was, I don’t know if he still is... I doubt it
because people chill out as they grow old... but
I find it amusing that people describe Hora Local
as his band. The band was really the work of Luis
Eduardo Uriza, Pedro Roda and the guy who
now conducts the symphony orchestra, Ricardo
Jaramillo. They were the core of the band. And
just like you guys asked me to participate in La
Resistencia, Pedro, with whom I had been friends
my whole life, asked me to join Hora Local... and
that was the band for about two years... no,
for about a year, and then came Eduardo Arias,
who obviously had an incredible amount of
information about music, he was very much up to
date and he knew about things that nobody else
knew about here...

Víctor: And this is another funny thing: arguably

since the end of the eighties you guys were
discovering music, you would find out about
music being made and then you would share that
on your show. And arguably what you guys were
playing and sharing on the show was all that we
thought that we needed to know about. That was
all you needed to know about to be up to date
on that region of the rock globe. And then in the
last ten or fifteen years you read a magazine and
twenty bands are featured and you realize that
you’ve never heard of any of them, that you’ve
never even heard of the people whom they cite as
influences.

Humberto: I know only that I know naught...

Víctor: So for twenty years you work on a rock
show devoted to a specific kind of rock music,
and suddenly there is so much information
available and you realize that those twenty years,

40
something like half a lifetime, are not enough to
get an idea of what is going on, and at the same
time you look around and now everybody has a
podcast...

Humberto: Chock-full of bands you’ve never

heard of...

Víctor: Everybody’s listening to all kinds of music,

everyone has a Soundcloud page where they
upload music and listen all kinds of stuff...

Carlos: Yes, but in that context there is no longer

anything like the kings of the underground...

Víctor: Right... maybe also there just is no

underground.

Efrén: I don’t know if it was Humberto who once

said, a long time ago, that if a record found
its way to our little corner of the world, this
forgotten corner where noting happens... and you
think that it’s an underground record, well it’s no
longer an underground record, because in order
for it to get here...

Carlos: But that is relative, there are still people

here who, very secretly... I know this because I go
to the flea market and find incredibly strange,
very rare, insane stuff.

Efrén: An example close to home is Héctor

Buitrago, when he got tired and thought that
from then on it would be CDs and nothing more,
the guy took his entire vinyl collection to that
guy who you buy from... his entire collection... a
bunch of records that he collected and brought
back from his travels... an insane amount of
vinyl, and people snatched it up like this (snaps
fingers)... in seconds.

Humberto: But there is something special

about being in Colombia, namely that, musically
speaking, we are extremely schizophrenic,
and from an early age we grow up listening to
rancheras, tango, carranga, balada, boleros, salsa,
vallenato and then rock. I was touched by rock music
because, of course, it’s rebellious, it’s the music of
the counterculture, and obviously when you’re a
teenager you need to distance yourself from what
your parents and relatives listen to... this is natural,
it’s obvious, and it’s also healthy... but I also think
that it’s cool to have been born here, and I think that
we got to live through some pretty cool times. I
do not disown ranchera or vallenato...

Carlos: And clearly if we were to narrate the

history of rock music that narration would be
inflected by our experiences as Colombians.

41
Efrén: But there is another thing about Colombian
rock, namely that until recently Colombia was a
country that no one would come to. So people
had to make everything up on their own with
three sticks and a wood guitar...

Víctor: But in ‘92 Mano Negra came over and then

they recorded the video for Señor Matanza here,
and little by little the country became a point of
reference. The thing is, as we make our way to
the present times, that nobody cared about the
bands you guys were interviewing twenty years
ago, nobody gave a damn, but what would have
happened if someone had taken an interest in La
Santa Bulla? or in some other of the groups you
were showcasing: for example Obra Negra, who
I thought were an amazing band, and nothing
ever happened with them. But nowadays you
guys interview Los Pirañas and Los Pirañas go on
to become a huge hit, their record is released by
VampiSoul and they rank highly on world-wide
end-of-the-year best-of lists...

Humberto: Well, but not because we interviewed

them...

Víctor: No, obviously not... but what I mean is

that things have started to happen. Las Malas
Amistades signed with Honest Jon’s... all kinds
of things are happening and there is feedback
between the local and the foreign, because it
seems that, as opposed to the early nineties,
when the scene was completely local and validated
only from within, now it makes a difference when
a band is reviewed on this or that blog, or when
their album is listed in the top ten of an American
or European magazine, or when an internet
station...

Humberto: What I think is going on is that people

realized, and on a mass scale, that they can build
an industry on their own... I mean that the old
philosophy of D.I.Y. finally took over.

Carlos: And technology allows you to do it.

Humberto: Exactly. Because everything became

so cheap... so now using Garage Band and a
couple of good microphones you can record at
home, and in addition to this something very
peculiar happened which I have been giving a lot
of thought to, namely that academic musicians
discovered juvenile chaos; so now you have
the guys from Distritofónica making very weird
records that work somewhere between rock
and traditional academic music; and of course
there’s Los Pirañas, Meridian Brothers and Frente
Cumbiero, people who are music geniuses coming
out of the academy. And this is new. Before
academic musicians coming out of La Javeriana or

42
the conservatory at La Nacional, well, you wouldn’t
find them making rock records, they would
become composers or academic performers.

Carlos: But in my opinion this kind of

diversification is at work also outside of rock
music, I mean that, for example, the new-found
appreciation for cumbia has something to do with
a rediscovery of the country, of local music.

Humberto: But it’s a rediscovery by way of a

mirror: the reason is that people started making
cumbia in Argentina, Mexico and Peru.

Víctor: What do you guys make of the scene

today? In the midst of the shit-storm and the
overwhelming chaos of information, how do you
guys feel about what is going on after twenty
years of making radio and playing music?

Carlos: Well, radio as we know is in its last thralls...

because access to music is less complicated
and people put together their own playlists and
blogs...

Efrén: Of course, I mean if you think about it, we

are the old guys now. So what is punk now? Punk
is something that we wouldn’t like... whatever
annoys the old guys is what makes punk be punk,
and now punk is reggaeton... whatever stands
against some values that you have put together
and forged and worked to conserve... and we can
no longer keep up with that intensity. And I think
that what matters, if you like music, is to hold
your ground, not for the sake of lecturing people,
but because you realize that there are things
that people might enjoy and that’s why we play
them on a radio show. Not necessarily with the
intention of taking on the role of a cultural show
run by very wise or specialized people, but just
for the sake of kicking some music around, music
that, because of everything that you have been
through, you think is worth a listen...

43
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 Self-management, communities
and a bed to sleep on
A conversation between Jimena Andrade,
Marco Moreno and Víctor Albarracín

Víctor: I would like you guys to begin with some

introductory remarks about Interferencia...

Jimena: Well, Interferencia is a space whose

direction we have been trying to determine
as time goes by, as we go along, and we are
interested in grounding our work on the human
capital that is available to us... so, for example, we
happen to know how to make documentaries,
or we happen to have the opportunity to work
with communities on pedagogical exercises
that deviate to some extent from institutional
parameters... we are interested in taking up all
sorts of issues along those lines: economical,
human and whatnot. So the project includes
activities, or actions, or interventions, the name
depends on the context in which we are working,
whether it is community-based or academic, or
the art context as well, since that is where we
are coming from, those are our origins, and one
of the things that interest us is to question or
problematize the image of the artist, of course,
since we are artists ourselves; the same goes for
the concept of the artwork, we want to explore
the possibility of an art product whose form of
circulation would have nothing to do with what is
legible as an “artwork,” what is understood as such
in the art context, something that might deviate
from that and generate a crisis or clash with that
notion. But we prefer to refer to that kind of
practice as something that is still “art;” for instance
we make translations, audiovisual products,
magazines or documentaries, we conduct
activities in certain neighborhood, conversations
or lectures within academic art institutions,
because I’m a teacher at the Universidad Javeriana,
and we think it’s cool to make some noise inside
the art context, and we do so by bringing up
topics that, although rooted in that context,
don’t get a lot of attention in the circulation
networks that are available in the field of art.
What matters is that Interferencia is a space that is
constantly being restructured and reconceived...
We started working on it in 2008, and what we
do today is very different from what we did back
then. The website [http://interferencia-co.net]
is very important for us, because it is something
like a medium through which we manage those
interventions that we have made, so that we have
some products that are archived there, and those

45
products function in an open way, we conceive
them as open because they can be inserted into
different contexts...

Víctor: You were saying something interesting just

now, namely that Interferencia cdeploys a mixture
of diverse forms of activity simultaneously.
And these forms of activity all seek to bring life
into certain regions and processes that involve
ordinary people, and in my opinion they do so in
an effective manner, and in that sense they differ
considerably from the way in which communities
are so often exploited by artists, or by institutions
or by the private sector. So then, what kinds of
relationship do you guys construct, with the
students or the communities or with the field
of art? What kind of relationship are you guys
weaving or attempting to weave?

Jimena: Well, we are interested in thinking about,

working with and participating in the community;
we are very interested in [Orlando] Fals Borda’s
principle, Investigación Acción Participativa
[Research Through Active Participation], which
entails that one thinks about a context by playing
a part within it. My feeling is that the products
that we have developed by working within those
communities are effective because we follow
that principle. What we have learned from the
communities is that it makes no sense to regard
ourselves as saviors, because we are probably
more fucked up than they are, or rather we
certainly are. But then you realize that it is possible
to function as a catalyst for something. So we
can help, for example, to accelerate a process
that was already underway, but for which people
lack certain skills or equipment that we have
access to, but they already have some amount of
knowledge at hand, so that a kind of symbiosis
kicks in and something gets done. So in that sense
we describe our work, in political terms, as a form
of community participation within a horizontally
structured field. That is the kind of relationship that
comes into play, with communities but also with art
students, I see no difference between the two.

Marco: I think that there is an important factor,

namely the fact that, without a doubt, we cannot
regard ourselves as one of them. You cannot
be part of a community of which you are not
a part, and so the point is to find a way to feel
comfortable there. It’s as simple as being able
to arrive somewhere and to sit on a chair there
and to feel comfortable in that chair. Maybe all
this talk about “being horizontal” is bullshit, but
nonetheless the relationship triggers a process
that can be cool and enjoyable when you are able
to feel comfortable, and that is enough, because I
don’t need to be one of them because I can’t and
because it’s also not what I’m interested in; but I

46
am interested in forging relationships that reach
beyond, let’s say, a particular task or a particular
set of results, because we want this relationship
to bring other elements into play that can make
it vital and strong: friends, going for a soda,
“let’s have a cup of coffee”... stuff like that. To
be concrete, right now we are working in Belén
[a neighborhood in Bogotá], with young people
from the neighborhood and with kids who come
from other parts of the city, and what we are
trying to do there is to create a form of memory,
bearing in mind that the neighborhood was once
located near the South-Eastern borderline of
the city, and that although nowadays it stands
relatively close to the center of the city, it remains
a distant or marginal place, it was and still is, a
working class neighborhood, although there
has been an increase in property value and, well,
we want to connect these issues to the kind
of dynamics that one finds in that particular
neighborhood and in the whole area that is now
described as the “expanded downtown” [of
Bogotá]...

Jimena: Also considering its place within the

global economy... Before that we worked in
Montería, through one of the Ministerio [de
Cultura]’s labs [for research and creation], and
there we went through a long process trying
to gain a full understanding of the context. We
started working on that lab four years ago, with
artists from the region, and, well, we had no
acquaintance with the context, and moreover
it was an art lab, so then when we were about
to start the second year we thought: “if the
lab is approved again we are certainly not
working with artists this time around,” and
then we worked with children from the public
school system and with some students from
the Universidad de Córdoba who were not art
students, but students working on a technical
degree on Computer Sciences and Media. It was
a very weird synthesis, because on the one hand
we had kids who joined the lab when they were
14 years old, and who were 16 when the lab
ended, and on the other we had young people
who were 23 years old or maybe a little older...
it was a scary synthesis because we didn’t know
how one group would react to the other, but
we did some very intense work with them and
towards the end we were able to encourage
a form of alternative circulation in a city like
Montería, where there are hardly any networks
that are not controlled by institutions.

Víctor: Circulation of what kind of things, or of

what kind of information?

Jimena: We made a documentary about the

people who extract sand from the Sinú river,

47
which functions as Montería’s main artery, and
there is a very worrisome situation there, with
people working under absolutely precarious
conditions, people who are extremely poor
and have no future, the “areneros.” If you
are an arenero that means that you have no
government I.D., you have no opportunities, so
you go there and work taking out the sand and
earn the day’s wage. You need no skills to be an
arenero, you just need to know how to get in
the water and bring out the sand... but there is a
huge problem, there are so many issues in terms
of labor and of natural resources... for example
members of indigenous tribes were formerly
fishermen, but the river no longer yields fish,
because the dam that was built in Urrá caused
incredible environmental damage, and as a result
a kind of gentrification is now underway, because
the sand that is extracted from the river is used
to make bricks that are used in construction
sites in the adjoining towns; I mean to say that
all construction work being done in Montería
and its surroundings relies on sand from the
Sinú river. So there is a boom in construction
all around, and it relies on a shift in the use
of natural resources: from fishing to sand for
construction, and many people are involved
who come from Medellín, who are connected to
violent organizations, to the paramilitary groups
which have a strong presence in Montería,
and so many other social issues enter the
picture. We have developed a procedure, and
we have used it on several different occasions,
which is that, although we were not trained as
filmmakers or anything like that, we focus on
the production of audiovisual material, as a way
of developing an understanding of physical
space that can then lead to an understanding
of the situation in human terms and allow us
to create a form of critical distance, and we
conceptualize this procedure with reference to
an essay by Lucy Lippard about emplacements,
sites and landscapes. We use that text as a point
of departure in order to work on a given context
in light of those three modules. When you
become acquainted with a physical space and its
geography, you necessarily become acquainted
with the human dynamics at work in that space
as well. And when you become acquainted with
the latter you necessarily take a stance, a position
of critical distance, and you are then able to
generate a landscape. In the end the landscape
is an audiovisual product. So this is how we work
our way into a community so that, for example,
we might work on a script for a documentary
about the areneros of the Sinú river, which
is what we did with those school kids and
university students. Then, the year after that,
we did...

48
Marco: ... we then thought something like this:
“OK, let’s now think about how these things that
you guys are now able to make can circulate
and reach an audience,” and we had the idea of
holding a festival in a neighborhood that, let’s
say, is in a very difficult situation, which used to
be one of Monterías largest illegally settled areas,
although the properties have now been legalized
and people were gramted land titles about fifteen
years ago. So we created a small circuit for the
exhibition of audiovisual works and we held some
workshops at a school there, the neighborhood’s
public school, and in that workshop we also dealt
with painting, stencil, photography, drawing, we
dealt a little bit with the construction of memory
through those media... we were trying to some
extent to work against the violence, because
when we got there we were astonished. We
arrived there and suddenly we would see a mob of
twenty people chasing after a guy...

Jimena: ... wielding sticks.

Marco: Wielding sticks, because the guy had been

caught stealing or something, anyway, the point
is that it was a very violent environment. So the
idea behind our third lab was to establish a format
for the circulation of some audiovisual materials
through that festival, the content of the material
being, let’s say, political...

Víctor: And the point was that the material should

circulate within that specific community?

Marco: Within the community, although, let’s

say, outside of people’s houses. The idea was to
introduce them to the principle of...

Jimena: ... “do it yourself.”

Marco: And for them to be able to do it. So, since

there were no screens, we would use a white
sheet, a projector that we were able to borrow
from an education bureau of education, although
only after jumping through endless hoops, and
then, whatever, a neighbor would bring a speaker
from his stereo... One day we had no projector,
they couldn’t lend it to us, and a neighbor
brought out his television set, so what we did was
to travel around with that cheap and mobile gear,
and in that way we were able to open up a space,
and to inhabit those spaces, which were often
dangerous... anyway.

Jimena: And we were also able to get some of

the tough kids from the neighborhood involved.
We also organized talks via Skype by people who
were working on related projects. So we would,
for example, hook them up with people from the
Ojo al Sancocho festival, and they would give a

49
talk for the people of Cantaclaro, and that was the
closing event of our festival... Cantaclaro is the
name of this neighborhood, which was once the
largest shanty town in Latin America. Nowadays
the favelas in Brazil take the prize, but back in the
day it was the largest.

Marco: There were also incredible contradictions

at work there... for example, the illegal occupation
was encouraged by the traditional political parties
in Montería, which had an interest in its electorate
and would bring people there so that they could
take over a plot of land that was owned by the
national government. But of course, it was a way
for them to get votes.

Jimena: So we then held the Festival de Afectos y

Efectos, through which we intended to generate
a certain kind of circulation, and then we had a
problem with one of the members of our team,
the coordinator, because he was stabbed, he was
almost killed, he was stabbed in the groin and he
almost died... and at that point we realized that
affective bonds had arisen within the group. I was
teaching and suddenly I got a call from one of the
kids: “Jimena, Nemías was stabbed”...

Víctor: And he was a member of the community...

Jimena: Yes, he was from the neighborhood,

from Cantaclaro. It was a horrible ordeal and it
happened as the festival at Cantaclaro was about
to end. We spoke to a community leader and he
told us that in fact the crime had something to
do with... we wanted to know why... and the point
was to intimidate us...

Víctor: To make you guys stop...

Jimena: We discussed the issue with a bunch of

people here [in Bogotá], we talked to the guy who
runs the Ojo al Sancocho festival, who has gone
through even worst situations, because people
have actually died, they have been killed... we
talked to a psychoanalyst who works with young
imprisoned criminals here in Bogotá and who
knows his way around the conflict... María Helena
Ronderos from the Entre las Artes [Association]
also gave us a lot of support. What hurt me the
most is that we were here in Bogotá and they
were going through that mess back in Montería... I
mean, it was a problem for all of us, it was the real
deal... In the end we came up with an idea, and
we needed to get approval from Nemías’s mother
while he was still hospitalized. The stabbing was
also an attack against the symbolic work that
we had been undertaking in the neighborhood
during that whole stretch of time. So we felt
that we needed to work against that process

50
of violence on a massive scale, and to get the
community involved, working on the streets with
stencil, against the violence that was taking place.
So it was up to Nemías’s mother, because he had
been directly affected, to decide, on the basis of
the options that we had outlined, because it was
up to her to go out there and find out who had
stabbed him. I mean, this lady would head out to
work every day, she would cross the street and
walk right past the kid who had stabbed her son,
and there was nothing that she could do, so it was
up to her. She said that to back down would be to
legitimize the crime, and that we should hold the
festival right there in the neighborhood. And so
we did it, we gathered a battalion of people. It was
a kind of exercise by the people there who were
moved by the violence. They did it themselves.
So at first there was about forty of us making
stencils on the street. My hair would stand on end
when I saw this, it was amazing. They couldn’t
touch us because there were forty of us and after
a while there were about sixty people making
stencils in the neighborhood. It was something of
a marathon because in just one day we needed
to make molds out of images and texts that they
came up with. And we managed to pull it off. So
a lot of work went into the production of the
texts and the images, and then we went out
and did the stencils, all within a day. We started
at two o’clock in the afternoon, at four o’clock
we took to the street with four stencil molds,
some people stayed behind working on the rest,
and then they used those on the street and it
was awesome because right where Nemías had
been stabbed they made some stencils against
violence, created by the people themselves.
They might have been criminals as well, because
they were not all what you would call wonderful
well-behaved individuals... we were also working
with kids who might have stolen some other kid’s
bicycle; the workshop was very well thought-out,
because we had to be as effective as possible:
we made an awesome set of stencils, with short,
powerful texts going straight to the point, and
at the ends there were seventy of us makings
stencils all around the neighborhood, and Nemías
was there on crutches.

Víctor: In addition to the labs sponsored

by the Ministerio de Cultura you guys had
already worked on projects involving other
communities...

Jimena: We have worked with members of the

wayúu tribe in the Guajira region. Our work there
was different in kind but it was also very powerful.
What we did was to work on the translation of a
set of concepts or words or terms, which pertain
to life and which motivate us and feed into our

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practice: what is the meaning, in political terms,
of self-management, autonomy, solidarity, the
ideal of progress, self-determination? A bunch
of words like these, what do they mean and how
are they translated by someone who experiences
them from the point of view of an ancestral
tradition. So, for them, solidarity is something
immanent to their lines of kinship; they know
what self-management is because they practice
it daily. You might think that collectivity is
something that can only be arrived at by way of
a philosophical construction, and that you then
need to pull all kinds of stunts in order to make it
real, but for them collectivity is given by ancestry,
so these translations are an incredibly powerful
piece of work, although in a different way, on a
different register...

Víctor: ... bearing in mind that, within the art

context, most artists rely on metaphors or
concepts that are completely disconnected from
the field, so that words like “autonomy,” “self-
management,” “self-determination” are part of
the vocabulary of contemporary art, and are
constantly used by the most fashionable artists
in the world, but with no grounding on reality...
and to speak of “self-determination” should imply
awareness of the fact that there are people who
die, who are really dying right there next to us,
alongside us, because they have tried to do what
they wanted to do, what they set out to do... so
it’s cool to think about bringing things back to
reality, since you guys begin where artists also
typically begin: with a text, a piece of theory or
whatever, but then you guys ultimately bring
things to the field of experience, your own
experience, and you guys come from outside
but...

Jimena: ... but we engage with reality.

Marco: In that sense I do think that some of the

content on our website [Interferencia] takes a
step away from the field of art... and I think that
our production, which, as Jimena says, is to some
extent not intended to circulate as an object or as
a finished product, does accomplish a pedagogical
function, that is basically its sole function.

Víctor: And from what I can tell your aims lie

outside of the habitual circles of art and artists,
outside of the small confines of the art world...

Jimena: But at some point our paths cross with

those confines and we find that interesting, not
because we like to get in there but because,
let’s say, we did some work in Valparaíso and
in the context of that project we organized a
media workshop in Pueblo Hundido, which is a
neighborhood located... you can imagine where it’s

52
located, since it’s called “Pueblo Hundido [Sunken
Town];” this is a neighborhood that has no drains,
no sewer lines. We made a documentary with an
artisanal fisherman who lives there, and eventually
it was shown at the Museo de Arte Moderno [de
Bogotá]. And what the hell is a documentary like
that doing in the middle of an exhibition in that
place? We like being a source of discomfort.
Something like that doesn’t look like art, and
nobody involved in the field of art is interested in
it, because it’s talking about gentrification, about
collective endeavors in a city like Valparaíso, about
how these come together, about the hard times
that Don Tomás is living through, an artisanal
fisherman who goes out and can catch no fish...
because Dutch fishing companies are given legal
advantages, and they go out there and take all
the tuna and salmon, and the artisanal fishermen
are only allowed to fish for hake, which is like
the poor man’s bread... so we are talking about
the most precarious conditions, but what is the
connection between what that old man in the
corner is going through and everything else that
is going on in Valparaíso? So we go there and then
make this documentary and later on there we are
standing next to all of these art people and well...
it’s like being the stone in the shoe. We didn’t look
for such things to happen, but they do happen,
and this also brings to mind what we were saying
just now about those terms and words that are
so often thrown around in the art world. I think
that the point of making that glossary of words
that pertain to life is also to create discomfort, or, I
don’t know, that it is a way to deal with the allergic
reaction that you get when you hear artists talking
over and over about autonomy, self-management,
collectivity, and then you feel like you’re on a kind
of limbo and you feel upset, because you realize
that those terms are being manipulated and taken
out of the cognitive practices from which they
emerge in order to promote things that, precisely...

Víctor: ... work in the exact opposite direction...

Jimena: When we made the documentary about

El Bodegón, we interviewed a gallery owner who
claimed that they were “self-managed,” so starting
from there we...

Marco: The guy claimed that the gallery owners

themselves, that galleries were an example of self-
management...
Jimena: ... he argued that, if we looked at
things closely, we needed to come up with a
comprehensive definition of self-management,
because according to him galleries were also “self-
managed,” not only them, also artists, collectives...
not just him, but still. So when we heard that
we decided to look at those terms closely, but
obviously we come from the academy and that is

53
a baggage that we cannot simply do away with...
I mean, I don’t come from the context of social
or political movements... our background is an
academic training in the arts, and that is where we
operate, although we have political commitments
and we are trying to sharpen them and give them
structure, so then, how do we deal with this
group of people from the art world?

Víctor: I also get the feeling, in the case of

Interferencia, that your political concerns have
become increasingly stronger, and that your
artistic concerns are gradually less important.
When I look at the old postings on the website,
which include interviews and testimonials by
artists, and translations that deal with issues that
specifically concern the field of art, I can tell that
as time went by things would head in a different
direction. Your work is very different from what
Colombian artists typically do when they approach
social issues, community-oriented work, or a
critical assessment of social facts. It seems that for
the average Colombian artist it is essential to loop
this kind of work back into the field of art, while
you guys, to put it bluntly, don’t really give a damn
about it. In your work one does not make out this
need for everything to end up in a museum or
a biennale, or to be shown in a galley, or edited
as a video with five copies printed for the sake
of collectors, which is how things usually work
no matter how politically committed the artist in
question might be.

Jimena: What is at stake in those cases is the

artist’s concern with his own possible demise... if
an artist disappears from the circuit, well then he’s
dead, so he needs to remain active, to keep on
producing stuff... in order to remain active he has
to produce and maintain his connections, he has
to feed them, he has to be “there,” and that is for
me one of the reasons behind our the website:
if I fucking feel like posting a translation, I don’t
need anyone, I post the translation and that’s it.
I mean, I have no use for a curator. Obviously, it
might happen that we need money to produce a
documentary about the history of Colombia, but,
unfortunately for us, we are artists and we need
to deal with the challenges that come with the
profession, so we know how to get things done
without any money and still be able to pay our
rent and utilities; it’s a sad truth of life, but that’s
how it is. So in that sense, of course, there are
some things for which we wish that we could have
some financial support, but if we can’t get any we
do them anyway. And how do we do them? Well,
this is where the website comes in: I don’t have to
worry about circulation, I know that the website
circulates within a confined and specific circuit of
people who have access to the internet, but it has
also allowed us to reach people in other countries:

54
for instance, there are people in Spain who have
come accross our videos and publish them there,
or in Chile or elsewhere, and we think that this...

Marco: The fact that everything is posted on the

website allows us not to have to worry about
being kicked out of the art-show map, the map...
I don’t know how to call it, but... at least we have
never been threatened with...

Víctor: ... censorship...

Marco: Right, censorship, and if such threats were

ever to materialize, well, I think that we would
laugh in their faces.

Víctor: Well, that is certainly a good strategy,

especially if you consider that local institutions
are very good at silencing artists whom they
find uncomfortable, through money or through
lawsuits, or simply by keeping them in check and
giving them just enough space for them not to
become restless...

Marco: There is also the option of being absolutely

crass and telling the artists who opposes them: “I
can make one phone call and have you removed
from the planet.”

Víctor: From a strategic point of view I find it

very interesting that you guys have remained
relatively immune to all such forms of blackmail,
incorporation, assimilation, censorship or
whatever, inasmuch as you guys are already
working at an entirely different level, where
it is no longer easy for them to get a grip on
you, while it’s so easy for the institutions to
get a grip on all other artists, on those who are
specifically working within and about the field of
art: artists talking about artists, for artists, with
artists.

Jimena: Circulating within the world of artists...

Víctor: ... which gives rise to an unhealthy form

of feedback by virtue of which everything boils
down to being part of a particular scene, having
a group, a name, a certain degree of public
attention... this is what many of us are still living
through day to day, and you guys have little by
little left this all behind and relocated elsewhere.

Marco: However, we are not naive enough to think

that we are not beholden to anything, because
there are other sorts of dynamic that do constrain
us...

Víctor: Of course, but oddly enough, although

you guys are risking something, what you guys
are putting at risk is no longer publicity, a good

55
name, a career as artists... it seems that there
is an interest on the part of artists in art for its
own sake, while for you guys art is just a means,
something that can be used strategically in order
to get to somewhere else.

Jimena: It’s a pretext, we can always say that it’s

only art after all: “look at this cool drawing that
we made for the stencil,” but we don’t really
give a damn about that, because what mattered
to us was to be able to write something on the
wall where Nemías had been stabbed... that was
the exciting thing, to see a crowd of sixty kids in
Cantaclaro, that was just thrilling... to watch them
carrying Nemías on their shoulders, because he
was on crutches you know...

Marco: Of course, I think that we are able to

encourage processes like these and bring life into
them, but they need to continue, and it is up to
the communities to do it, because we cannot
assume that we are teaching them anything and,
on the other hand, a community that can’t take
care of itself, well...

Víctor: Right, because it might also be the

case that a group of artists works with a given
community and maybe they can do that for two
months, two years at best, and then they leave
and...

Marco: The people in the community, they stay

there...

Víctor: Of course, an it is also worrisome to

consider that there are these highly questionable
assistencialist dynamics, which bind communities
to assistance from the government and from the
private sector, and ultimately shatter them. So it
is important to examine what happens when you
guys, as artists, leave a community and they carry
on, or fail to carry on with the processes that you
developed together, but one may also ask how
responsible you guys are for the continuation
of these processes, or to what extent it is
up to them... at any rate it’s a very complex
negotiation.

Jimena: Well, we argue a lot about this question

amongst ourselves, because Marco argues that...

Marco: ... that someone who needs help is in a

very bad place... I’m not talking about what the
government is in fact responsible for, but about
things that are not... I mean a community that
needs help in order to keep a cultural process of
their own alive, or something along those lines...
if they need someone to come from outside to
help them with that... I think that in that case the
community is just in a very bad place.

56
Jimena: I think, Marco, that at this point we are
also dealing with a subjective crisis, and that if
we are working on a project that considers itself
political, then this is what we are activating, I mean
the possibility of working towards a solution with
a community that is undergoing a subjective crisis.

Marco: Well, I don’t know if what are doing is

bringing such processes into life, or if it is rather a
matter of bringing continuity to something that is
already underway... I think that the point is that we
examine what is going on and say, I don’t know:
“listen, let’s do it this way and let’s work on it all
together,” and that when we do this people begin
to realize that there are other paths...

Jimena: And that there are other people who

want to work alongside them, and they come
together...

Víctor: Or then again they might just fail to

come together, you guys leave the place and the
process dies out... because one might say that
there is a strong tendency to assume that when
an artist gets involved with a community it is the
artist who bears the entire responsibility: if things
work out the artist is praised, if things don’t work
out the artist is to blame... and ultimately the
community becomes an instrument for the artist,
a group of puppets handled by the artist as she
pleases...

Jimena: Or we might consider things the other way

around, because communities are hardly angelical...

Víctor: Of course, there is a complex game where

each is taking advantage of the other...

Jimena: They know, because every community has

dealt with a bunch of people who show up and
tell them the very same things, or similar things,
so they evaluate what they can get out of it. No
one is naive, no one. So it’s a matter of sizing each
other up, I size you up, you size me up, and if we
establish that we are not going to fuck each other
over, then we see...

Víctor: If we can work on something together...

Jimena: ... if we can work on something or not...

and if it’s not possible, then we split, and if it
seems possible then that’s awesome. We have
thought a lot about this here, with the work
that we are doing now in Belén, because that
neighborhood is right next door to where we
live, and yet there is such a huge gap between
their lives and ours. It is a terrifying fact that kids
from Belén are not allowed to come into Nueva
Santafé, it’s a shame, so we are interested in

57
thinking about, and we have been doing it for
a while, about ways to develop processes that
involve the community and which may allow us to
work against gentrification, to some extent, and
to establish paths of communication between the
neighborhood of Belén and Nueva Santafé. The
bottom line is that we, the inhabitants of Nueva
Santafé, are responsible for gentrification.

Víctor: Of course, you as artists living in Nueva

Santafé are part of the problem.

Jimena: Of course, this used to be part of the

neighborhood of Santa Bárbara, there used to
be houses here [which were expropriated and
demolished in order to build the residential
complex, designed by revered architect Rogelio
Salmona].

Víctor: Speaking of Santa Bárbara, tell us a little bit

about what you guys are doing there, your work
on a community vegetable garden. Is that part of
the project you are talking about?

Jimena: Yes, well, we are interested in getting

involved with the neighborhood, and how else
are we going to do that if not by chipping in?
Belén is a small neighborhood, but there are many
vegetable gardens, in fact a huge amount. So for
about a year I have been working in one of these
gardens: I have a plot and I grow things there;
right now I’m growing beets, carrots, corn and
beans, and I participate in all the proceedings of
the garden, which is run by the community. The
garden I work on was established about three
or four years ago, it’s big, it’s located on the
premises of the neighborhood church, which is a
very old building.

Víctor: And people from the neighborhood work

on the garden...

Jimena: People from the neighborhood and then

there’s me, but for the most part its people from
the neighborhood. Doing this has allowed us to
understand, for example, that there is a process
of population displacement underway, people
from [the town of] Choachí are moving into Belén:
women who are running away from domestic
violence, people who are running away from so
many forms of violence at work in Colombia,
and they end up in Belén, but they have a very
difficult time dealing with the fact that they are
now uprooted, because they come from peasant
families, and in the garden they find a way of
reconnecting with all those things from which
they were forced to break so dramatically. So I run
into peasant women who teach me all kinds of
stuff, because I’m pretty clueless, I basically just
mess up the plants, I mess everything up, I don’t

58
do anything unless I am given instructions... by
now I know a little more, but in the beginning
I would always put my foot in the wrong place,
rip out the wrong plant, I would mess everything
up. The point is that we plant everything there
together, and the garden yields a wide variety
of produce, and right now I am in charge of the
seeds, which is a task that I think is very important,
because it deals with something that has great
political significance: seeds as a form of resistance
against huge processes at work in neoliberal
economics... if you work on a farm it’s for the
sake of “potatos” [a staple food for the working
class throughout the Andes], you have to eat,
it’s a process of self-management, and here we
come to terms with the meaning of this word,
self-management. So we have also worked on
expanding our glossary project, and we ask the
people working on the garden at Belén: “Doña
Anita, ma’am, what does emancipation mean to
you?” And then Doña Anita, who manages the
garden, a lady from the neighborhood who left
Santander with her family in order to escape the
violence in the sixties and landed in Belén, she tells
me: “emancipation means that I don’t need to
shop in El Éxito or Carrefour [the dominant super-
market chains], because I have my lettuce here,
the lettuce is clean and I emancipated myself.”
So this is participatory work that we are doing in
Belén which allows to become acquainted with
the community and to create affective bonds; I
mean, I go with Doña Anita to the doctor, I let her
hold on to my arm and walk with her there; or if
I get sick she comes over and brings some aloe
for medicine. If we don’t establish such bonds it’s
not possible to work with a community, because
then you will never cease to be just a foreigner
who shows up and philosophizes or analyzes
and contributes nothing. Our participation with
the community in Belén is in harmony with
our intents: the produce that we eat here at
home comes from the garden; I plant things, I
reap them and we eat them here, and maybe if
the crop is large we sell some of it, we look for
someone who might buy some lettuce, acelga,
quinoa...

Marco: In a neighborhood like this you will find

many dynamics at work that make the community
strong, the problem is that its inhabitants have
been stigmatized for such a long time, but there
are many things going on similar to the gardens;
I think that there are maybe three or four
vegetable gardens, and also in many, many houses
in Belén people grow produce in their backyard,
but you also find craftsmen here, not the kind
of craftspeople who go into fashion in touristy
places, but craftsmen like a man who makes
stands for plant pots, carpenters, tailors...

59
Víctor: ... crafts properly speaking...

Marco: ... not just one, so many crafts, yes...

Víctor: And from that point of view, self-

management means that you can walk over to
your neighbor’s place and your neighbor can build
a bed-frame for you, and you don’t have to go to
Homecenter and buy a piece of crap made out of
composite...

Jimena: Exactly, which means that this product of

self-management is something that I have a use
for in life... it’s the bed where I sleep.

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 Necrophilia, sex, depression
and fun

Words by Pablo Marín Ángel

Early on I was fascinated by comic books, so

at some point I began to publish newsletters
and stuff like that back in Medellín. I had just
finished high-school, around ‘92, although I had
already been printing some things here and
there since ’90. Around this time a small group
of authors came together, people who were
working on comics and graphic humor, nothing
too sophisticated, and with them we published
a magazine called Agente Naranja; that was the
first publication on which I worked, along with
three friends and some guests. As time went
by we gradually improved the magazine, and its
content became more acid, or serious or personal;
we published it for several years. After that we
teamed up with Andrés Buitrago, Marco Noreña
and Tebo, who had their own magazine, Sudaca
Cómic. We had Agente Naranja and sometime
later we created another one called Santa Bisagra,
around ’95 or ’96. At that point we formed a
collective called Plan 9, and by then we already
had several different fanzines going on, as well as
some magazines with a relatively wide circulation,
we were printing about two thousand copies of
each issue, which was a lot at the time and still
is. In those days there were other people around
who realized fanzines as participants in Plan 9,
so there were more comics around, there were
fanzines that compiled comics made by people’s
friends, and each had a particular editorial
tendency: some focused on absurd material,
others specialized in crass stuff, and so on. So
there was one called Culo, another one called Puta
Vida, and by now as a collective we were releasing
something like seven different fanzines, seven
titles, some were periodicals and some were not:
of some there was only one issue, of some three,
of some five... We released six issues of Agente
Naranja, three of Santa Bisagra, two of Sudaca –
we did put together a third issue of Sudaca, we
had all the material, but we never had it printed.
After that we got into all sort of problems, with
the people from the book fair, with the office of
the District Attorney – because of the content,
bullshit like that – they called us satanists and
they shut us out of bookstores and we were
never allowed to participate in the Bogotá book
fair again. The gist of it is that they ran us out
of business, because our only way of recovering
our investment and collecting resources for new
publications was by selling the fanzines at the
book fair, so we got sick of it all and started to
work on different things individually.

63
Hold on, I forgot about Prozac, which also led
to some turmoil... at some point we got tired of
Agente Naranja, because we had some partners
and they left, so we wanted to change the name
of the magazine and we chose Prozac. I have no
idea how this happened, but the people from the
pharmaceutical company, Eli Lilly and Company,
found out about it, they heard that we were
publishing a comic book magazine full of morally
dubious materials and whatnot, and so we also
got a call from their lawyer, giving us trouble for
using the name “Prozac” without authorization;
he also told us that we were just plain nasty.

In those days there were two magazines devoted

exclusively to comics, Acme in Bogotá and
Agente Naranja in Medellín. One of the people
who owned Acme also owned a company that
distributed publications at the national level,
La Librería Francesa, and Leonardo Rincón [his
partner] was a professor at the Universidad
Nacional and had a bunch of connections with
the Ministerio de Cultura or some shit like that,
so they were awarded a few grants and that
gave them a huge boost. We were just a bunch
of kids putting out comics, trying to figure out
how to get them printed, and that was it, so we
would publish whatever came out of our gut. I
made Santa Bisagra with Diego Luis Jaramillo, he
was sort of my partner there, and we decided
that the content shouldn’t be funny, but rather
transgressive, and when the fanzine was still
being printed by photocopy we thought that it
would be a good idea to have this transgressive
content, the politically incorrect stance typical
of a fanzine, but to give it a good design and
presentation, we wanted it to look nice, to give
the content a different form of presentation so
that people would pay attention to what we were
doing in a different way, so they wouldn’t just
be looking at this badly printed, unstructured
leaflet. We wanted a different focus for the zine,
which is why Santa Bisagra stood on four pillars:
necrophilia, sex, depression and fun... those
were the four topics that Diego and I wanted to
deal with, and we also had some guests, once
in a while we would tell someone: “here, take a
couple of pages and do whatever you feel like,”
and that was it. It was funny because, since the
magazine had a decent appearance – it had a
well-designed silver cover – then people would
run into it at a bookstore in some city, and they
wouldn’t even look inside, they couldn’t anticipate
that the content would be so strong, that inside
they would find vaginas and people literally eating
shit, and so towards the end of the nineties the
magazine was sold, just like that, at the Librería
Nacional [a nation-wide main-stream bookstore
chain], until somebody actually bought a copy one
day, had a look inside and complained, and then

64
somebody else and whatever, so once again we
got into trouble.

At this point me and Diego Luis, after working

together on Agente Naranja, Prozac and Santa
Bisagra, decided to switch to work on video, we
made a few false documentaries, one of them
was called Buscando a Wilmar, and we also did
some animation, we did an animated version of
one of my comics, it was Little Red Riding Hood
but transposed into the paisa culture, we did
that and because of it some people from Bogotá
contacted us, people from a production company
who wanted to do an animated soap opera, and
they hired us to work on that. So we spent some
time working on these things. I was in a weird
limbo state for a while because, when I first came
to Bogotá I was not involved with comic fanzines
or any of that, instead I decided to work with
Rodrigo Duarte on Cinema Zombie, around 2004,
at the Museo de Arte Moderno, so we started
doing that, which was a series of screenings of
B-series, bizarro horror, cult movies, a whole
bunch of movies...

I mean, to tell the truth these were the kinds

of movies that I grew up with, Reanimator or
Commando, Chuck Norris flicks, movies about
gigantic crocodiles with meager production
values, and I would watch then on crappy theaters
full of faggots who were there to check out the
young boys... so my thought is that, I don’t think
that it is possible to reproduce that atmosphere,
but the films do retain that kind of insanity,
their nature is to show things in their raw state,
because often what you have is just some director
who really just wanted to make this one movie,
so you don’t even know the guy’s name, but he
made it and released it as best he could, and it’ll
be a movie about a little girl who is raped seven
times and then grows up and sets out to exact
revenge on the rapists... so you think: “man, how
do they come up with stuff like that,” and films
like that will just never get made again, I mean
a movie where you see an underage girl naked,
that’ll never happen again, or a movie with a
crudely depicted rape scene, not many people
take chances like that any more. So it’s a good
thing to screen those movies, movies that were
made in the sixties and seventies and are far more
edgy than anything being made nowadays.

There is also some food for thought here, my

sense is that people can tolerate certain things in
real life that they won’t tolerate on the screen, so
then if they see a soap opera about drug lords or
paracos, like the one that is being broadcast now,
Los Tres Caínes [about the lives of the Castaño
brothers, leaders of the Autodefensas Unidas
de Colombia], they freak out and complain, but

65
what did they have to say when the events being
portrayed were going on –and they still are– in
real life? There they are saying that television
is shit, and we’ve know that for a while, but
what they are really saying is: “oh my, they are
showing these horrible things,” and yet they
never put themselves in the shoes of the people
who are eating shit right next door, everyday on
the street, and isn’t that more terrifying than
watching some actor recreating something that
already happened? Get over it! I know that things
like these happen in other places as well, I mean
here in Colombia we are shitty people, but similar
things happen all over the world, people work on
a representation of something and the audience
reacts much more dramatically than they would
if they were to witness the event in real life. So
one day we were screening A Serbian Film and
some guy walked out, completely enraged, and
he spat on Rodrigo... we’ve been called all sort of
names, and then you think: “what now, somebody
is going to have me killed because I screened a
movie? No fucking way!”.

When we chose the name “Cinema Zombie” we

weren’t thinking about the zombie phenomenon
as such, the idea was rather that these movies had
been buried for a while and we wanted to bring
them back to life. And since they were all marginal
films, and many were horror movies, then the
name was a good fit. Anyway, the name also
comes from some people with whom we used to
work in Medellín and who run a space that works
along similar lines.

The fact is that we always work very much in

earnest, although the movies may not be very
well made or very good; but there are also very
well made movies that somehow got buried as
well... for instance we opened our first season
with El Topo by Jodorowsky, and we also screened
Pink Flamingos by John Waters, and these were
both great movies and they were hits back in
the day. It’s true that we would also screen some
very transgressive movies, some that were pretty
funny or straight up shitty movies, but the
premise was that we wanted to rescue them and
raise their profile. And we would also supplement
the screenings with printed material discussing
the films and the directors, and that allowed
people to understand why we were screening
these films and to realize that we weren’t just
goofing around.

At first Cinema Zombie was a film club, hosted by

the Museo, and for each season we would screen
about thirteen films. After four years we switched
to a festival format, now it’s a week-long festival
including retrospectives of old films, we have

66
international guests and an official selection of
feature films and shorts, about 150 films last year.
In addition to that we are now asking people to
present one-minute shorts inspired by the main
theme of each festival. Last year the theme was
“humans versus science” and this year, in October,
the theme will be “crazy women;” the idea is for
people to make a one-minute short with whatever
technology they have at hand, with their phone
or their computer or whatever they have at
hand, and the reason for this is that we want to
encourage people to do away with the stupid
assumption, shared by most people who make
films in Colombia, that you need to spend millions
of pesos on a movie that screens for two weeks
and nobody watches.

In any case I think that it would be good to reach

an agreement with government institutions and
create funding for films like these, which are
not so expensive to make and manage to have
a bigger effect, and which are likely to be more
entertaining. Most of the good things being
made in Colombia today... well, there’s Adolfo X,
a paisa guy who makes action movies in the vein
of the Wachowsky brothers but with elements of
the paisa culture; there’s also a group of people
in Pereira called Pereirywood who just made
El carnicero paraco, a comedy-gore film; well,
there are also other people making some pretty
good things, but those two are the ones who
are working the hardest, they have schools for
actors and they make their own special effects,
which are pretty good, but they do it all with
their own money, they get no support from the
government.

Nowadays we want to move into production, we

are looking to produce films that have nothing
to do with what is typically made in Colombia,
I mean nothing to do with “national or social
reality” films about indigenous peoples and ethnic
minorities, those landscapy type of films that
basically function as government advertising, you
know, “Colombia es pasión” [the marketing slogan
for the advertising campaign commissioned by
the government to improve the country’s image
abroad]. And, well, we are also working on a
couple of documentaries, one about the culture
of comics in Colombia, and another one about
Jairo Pinilla, because nobody has made a rigorous
and serious documentary about Pinilla, going
beyond the fact that he is a picturesque character,
and we should remember that Pinilla’s films have
been the highest-grossing Colombian films to
date, and there has been no recognition of this
fact. The movies that people are making these
days, like La sirga and Chocó and stuff like that,
they’re not bad, but they are only seen by people

67
who are part of the film circuit, and we want to
reach a different audience. The truth is that, if we
are going to spend a thousand million pesos on
a movie, it should at least be a movie that people
will actually go and see and have a good time
with, I mean, damn it, the funding for those films
comes from people’s tax money, they are the
ones who pay for the director and the production
team... so I think that it would be a good idea
to reconsider the production standards and pay
attention to the kind of product that is ultimately
reaching the screens, and to make sure that the
point is not just for a bunch of insiders to pleasure
each other and say: “wow your film looks so good,
the photography is beautiful.”

Just the other day I was talking to someone about

these films that are tailor-made for the festival
circuit, made even to be seen only in international
festivals, and about the fact that those festivals
screen these films because they like the idea of a
rural Colombia, they want to see little poor black
children and the country’s socio-political issues
and whatnot, but they have no interest in showing
another side of the country... I don’t know, just
the story of three kids who go out to party and
something happens to them...

68
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 Point of tension
A conversation between Humberto Junca
Casas and Natalia Ávila Leubro

Humberto: What year your did you begin your

studies at La Tadeo?

Natalia: I think I started at La Tadeo around 2000

or 2001. When I began to study art I had already
finished Occupational Therapy at El Rosario, I
already had a degree. I finished high school very
young, so I was able to get a degree, work for
a while, and then go on to study art with no
problems.

Humberto: And do you still work as an

occupational therapist?

Natalia: No. I only worked on that for a year,

before I started at La Tadeo.

Humberto: Did you pay for your own college

tuition?

Natalia: Yes. But by working part time on different

jobs.

Humberto: How did you get involved with El

Bodegón, and why did you find it interesting?

Natalia: To some extent it was a matter of chance.

I remember that Víctor Albarracín, who had
been my teacher, and Gabriel Mejía, who was
one my classmates, invited me to collaborate on
the project. At the time I was in a sort of limbo,
because we were done with our coursework and
my thesis project hadn’t really taken form yet.
In those days I was working as a guide at the
Fundación Gilberto Alzate Avendaño and I wasn’t
doing much more. So it was an appropriate
moment to participate in that project and try to
build something with other people.

Humberto: That means that you developed your

thesis project while you were working with El
Bodegón.

Natalia: Exactly. In fact there was a moment when

some us who were members of El Bodegón tried
to propose our work in that space as a potential
thesis project. Most of the people who were part
of El Bodegón: Gabriel Mejía, Kevin Mancera, Juana
Luna, Liliana Parra, Alfonso Pérez... were in the
same generation as me and we were all working
on our theses at the time.

Humberto: What year was this?

71
Natalia: 2005, I think.

Humberto: What did they tell you about El

Bodegón? How did they present the project to
you?

Natalia: At first there were different ideas. Some

people were inspired by what was going on with
La Panadería, in Mexico, and they would make
jokes, like: “we’ll do something similar and call it La
Empanadería.” There was a place in La Candelaria
called La Torre de Isa (the owner was Isabel, who
was dating Juan Manuel Lara, another founding
member of El Bodegón) and we held some early
meetings there. In those days we didn’t have a
very clear sense of what we wanted the place to
be about: it could be a place for showing work, or
for selling things, or a studio... In those days we
didn’t know.

Humberto: Why did you decide that El Bodegón

should be a place for exhibitions rather than a
studio?

Natalia: I think it was because we found that space

on third avenue.

Humberto: What is the first thing that El Bodegón

did?

Natalia: First we had some parties. There were two

pretty lame parties and then we had a concert by
Silverio. And then we had our first show which was
by Wilson Díaz. Those weeks when were hosting
parties to gather money and consolidate the
project, not knowing what it would become, were
terribly uncertain; but there was the thrill of doing
things together and having fun. That was very
important.

Humberto: Let’s talk about your thesis project.

What exactly happened?

Natalia: The mess began when I finished my

coursework, My generation was the first to earn
a degree through the credit system, so we no
longer used the old semester-based system,
which had a set framework for the thesis project
and the entire mechanism of advisors and judges
and exhibition. And, well, since those mechanisms
were no longer there, two semesters before
finishing our coursework the people in our
generation started to raise inquiries before the
administration about how our thesis projects were
going to work; but the administration never gave
us a clear answer. We finished our coursework,
we went on vacation, and we came back next
semester and still we had no clue. Then me and
Kevin [Mancera], after filing memoranda and

72
letters of inquiry addressed to the administration,
decided to write a letter to the Dean’s office,
signed by all of our classmates, complaining about
the situation. The first reply from the Department
was incredibly rough and established a politics of
fear. They told us: “because of the letter sent to
the Dean’s office, you will no longer be allowed to
make collective thesis projects and, in response
to your question, you are free to develop your
theses with or without an advisor, it’s up to each
of you, it is not a problem that concerns the
Department.” With that reply it was clear that the
Department was shaking off any responsibilities
towards its students. That’s where the problem
started.

Humberto: I’m confused, though, the thesis was

optional?

Natalia: No. The thesis was still mandatory; but

now you could work with or without an advisor,
and at the time the only person with the authority
to approve a thesis project was the chair of the
Art Department, Sylvia Escobar. Some time later
we were able to have that last point modified,
so that there would be a committee in charge
of overlooking the thesis projects and granting
approval. But in those days it worked like this: you
would let the Department know that the project
was ready, then you had to hand it over to Sylvia
so that she could read it and approve it and after
that, with the approval of the chair, you would set
a date to present the work and have a defense. I
found the whole thing disrespectful. After having
paid, and a hefty sum at that, for ten semesters –
because we are talking about a private institution –
you were left to deal with your thesis by yourself:
come and show us the work when you feel like
it, and it’s all up to you, if you want advisors you
have to find them and reach an agreement with
them on your own. And this was an issue, because
the professors with whom we might have been
acquainted, and who we would first consider as
potential advisors, would often respond to our
invitation with something like: “well, I would be
happy to work as your thesis advisor, but only if
there is a commitment from the Department, an
endorsement, and if the work is remunerated.”

Humberto: So, the way things stood, the advisor

had to either work for free or charge the student.

Natalia: For the student to pay the advisor

directly was a possibility, but I don’t think anybody
contemplated it. From an ethical point of view it
would have been extremely complicated.

Humberto: Who was your thesis project advisor?

73
Natalia: Víctor was my advisor in the last of
the thesis projects that I presented to the
Department.

Humberto: How many thesis projects did you

present?

Natalia: I was forced to present three different

thesis projects. The story is complicated, so I will
tell it step by step. After we received that reply
from the Department, most of our classmates
decided to simply do any which project and
graduate; but Kevin and I filed a complaint, we got
the university tangled up in paper, challenging the
Department’s lack of institutional commitment to
its students and the arbitrary nature of some of
its decisions, one being the decision not to permit
collective works or processes to be used as thesis
projects, which made no sense considering that
during our studies we had been taught to work
collectively in several assignments. If you want to
have a look at them, our letters and complaints
have been scanned and posted on a blog called
Unlove story [Una Historia de Desamor] [http://
unahistoriadedesamor.blogspot.com/]. Later, at
the beginning of 2006, we were summoned to a
meeting with the Vice-Dean for Academic Affairs,
mister Juan Manuel Caballero, who told us: “listen,
enough with the letters and complaints, what
is it that you guys want?” So that is when we
proposed to use El Bodegón as our thesis project.
In person Caballero told us that we could do that
if we chose to. At that point El Bodegón was very
much a real and interesting cultural platform; it
was no longer just a place for parties. But in spite
of our agreement with Caballero, Sylvia Escobar
unfortunately took it upon herself to deploy a
strategy of disinformation and debilitation against
us. The Department never summoned us as a
group to inform us that the project concerning
El Bodegón would not be accepted; but they did
summon us, repeatedly and separately, and told
us many different and confusing things: that
“there were probably too many of us” or that
“we should have our thesis consist of a series
of special exhibitions” and on and on... finally,
after such a long wait and so many objections,
we gave up on that collective thesis project. And
it’s a shame, because it would have been a very
good opportunity for La Tadeo to gain visibility
by supporting a space and a process initiated by
its own students and faculty, if you consider how
important El Bodegón was yet to become.

Humberto: When did this happen?

Natalia: We proposed El Bodegón as a thesis

project on March 2006. Then Kevin and I thought
that we could base our thesis on a research

74
project concerning the relationship between the
art market and the drug trade in Colombia, partly
in light of some conversations that we had with
a lawyer whom I was dating. He had connections
and ways to obtain information about some
gallery owners and art dealers who had to
some extent faced legal procedures because of
their links to the drug trade. Nowadays this is a
very difficult topic to think through and track
down because documents have gone missing
or because the people who were able to give
testimony are gone or no longer willing to do it.
But at the time we came very close to obtaining
first hand information, we had that opportunity,
so Kevin and I considered it and in July 2006 we
presented that project to the Department. At
this point something that I mentioned earlier was
already in place: there was a committee for the
approval of thesis projects, as a result of all of the
complaints that we filed.

Humberto: Do you know who were the members

of that committee?

Natalia: I have no idea. But Manuel Santana

[academic coordinator] probably knows. I should
point out that the only interlocutor, the only
person within the Department who was respectful
towards us, was Manuel Santana. Towards the end
most arguments and replies would reach us by
way of Manuel. He was the one showing his face.
Often Sylvia would not even agree to speak with
us. This is why Manuel was the one who told us
one day that, concerning our new thesis project,
the committee considered it dangerous for us
to deal with those topics. After which he added,
on a strictly personal note, that he perceived this
as an act of censorship against us. At that exact
moment Manuel Santana began to question some
of the Department’s decisions and to openly take
the side of the students. And for this reason he
was soon fired by the Department.

Humberto: For supporting you guys?

Natalia: Of course. I remember that I saw him one

day at the café in the Planetarium, underneath
the Galería Santafé, and he told me that one day
they simply told him: “go to Human Resources
and pick up your letter, you no longer work here.”
Just like that. And that was because he stood up
to Sylvia. In those days several other members of
the faculty began to leave La Tadeo, like Fernando
Uhía, Juan Mejía, Fernando Escobar... I mean, there
was discontent not only among the students.
The thing is that when Manuel Santana was fired
and our thesis project about art and the drug
trade was rejected, Kevin said to me: “I’m sick of
this!”; and that’s when he began to work on his

75
thesis in drawing, 100 Things I Hate [Cien cosas
que odio], and among the things he hated he
drew Sylvia Escobar, with the subtitle: “I hate lousy
administrations.” I understood Kevin. Before we
were censored there was an incredible effort to
wear us down. They would tell us: “make a couple
of changes here and bring the project back in
a month and we’ll have a look and make some
more corrections” and they would take weeks
before getting back to us with these corrections...
almost six months went by like that... until we
got bored and there was nothing else we could
do. I remember that towards the end of that
period Kevin and I had very strong arguments
with Sylvia. Kevin would loose his patience and
leave her talking by herself because we had
reached an absurd level of miscommunication
with the Department’s administration. I think
that at this stage the problem was personal.
Without intending to we had gotten into a war
with the chair. The possibility of a conversation,
of an even-minded dialogue with the chair of the
Department, was lost for good.

Humberto: And what happened after that?

Natalia: Kevin decided to make his book, 100

Things I Hate, and I decided to spend a whole
month, the month of December, living in a
shopping mall. That was my next thesis project:
to inhabit that space and give myself completely
over to it. I remember that Kevin would come
to the mall to show me his drawings, my friends
would come and visit... I ate breakfast, lunch and
dinner there, I even spent Christmas and New
Year’s there.

Humberto: I once heard you say that this project

was a response to the fact that the Department
wouldn’t let you do anything, wouldn’t allow you
to graduate.

Natalia: The idea came from an appraisal of

everything that had taken place with my thesis
and with my degree until then. On the one hand I
felt tired and extremely sad. At that point I wasn’t
even angry about the thesis, I was sad. Sad to find
myself so powerless before one single person
and her decisions. But, on the other hand, I had
developed an exercise for a class with Giovanni
Vargas on Time-Based Arts (it was a class about
performance) that explored the idea of inhabiting
a “non-space.” What I did then was to spend an
entire day sitting next to a shoe-shine man on
19th street and 3d avenue. So towards the end of
2006 I thought: they won’t let me do anything, I
don’t feel like doing anything, so I am going “to
not do anything” and the shopping mall was the
perfect place to do that, because it is a place of
passage that in the end is inhabited by no one,

76
an expansive and strange “non-place.” So that’s
why I spent December living on a shopping
mall. I would spend the whole day listening to
Christmas carols, the guards looked at me with
suspicion after a while... until New Year’s came
and I had become close to one of them and
we hugged when I said goodbye, it was very
emotional. I even found other people who were
living in the mall: there was a kid with Down’s
syndrome who never left the place. And there
was another kid with autism whose grandmother
would bring him by everyday so that he could
be distracted by the music and the lights from
the shops. If you just walk in, buy something and
then exit the mall on any given day you wouldn’t
notice such things.

Humberto: You collected the receipts for every

purchase that you made, as a document, right?

Natalia: Yes. I collected all the receipts. And at

the same time I kept a sort of diary where I
would retell a little bit of what had happened to
me during each day. Some days were incredibly
boring and other days “something” would
happen. If you want to see the documentation
for the project, it is posted on this other blog:
http://dondebogotatienecorazon.blogspot.com/.

Humberto: “Where Bogotá has a heart.” Is that

the title you gave to this new thesis project?

Natalia: No. That was the mall’s slogan. My title

for the project was Point of tension [Punto de
tensión].

Humberto: Did the jurors assigned to this thesis

ever come to the mall?

Natalia: I socialized the thesis there. As I

mentioned, Víctor Albarracín was my advisor,
I’m guessing he saw that I was having a very
hard time and said: “I will be your advisor.” At
that point there were already other people, like
Edwin Sánchez or Víctor, who were questioning
many of the things that were happening in the
Department. Víctor too had some run-ins with
Sylvia Escobar and he understood very well what I
was going through. So yes, the socialization took
place in the mall, and Sylvia was present, because
she was part of the jury for all theses, and the
other jurors were there as well: Paula Silva (who
blindly followed Sylvia’s lead) and Giovanni Vargas.
Víctor Albarracín was also present as my advisor...
and some friends, Kevin, Edwin Sánchez, Paola
Sánchez. To put it bluntly I flunked that thesis. It
was rejected.

Humberto: Why?

77
Natalia: Oddly enough, at the time of the
socialization other sorts of tensions were at play
arose and weird things happened. In those days
Edwin was student rep for the Department, and
he took the part so earnestly that he recorded all
Department meetings and transcribed everything
that had been said. And in that socialization he
videotaped everything that happened and this
made the jurors very uncomfortable.

Humberto: He was secretly taping?

Natalia: On this occasion the camera was in plain

view, but I know that he did tape some meeting
swith Sylvia using a hidden camera. The bottom
line is that the two of them were directly at odds.
After everything that had happened Sylvia felt
very uncomfortable around Edwin, Víctor and
me. Maybe that’s why the socialization was a flop.
I remember that one day I sent Lucas Ospina a
link to the project’s blog, just to know what he
thought of it. And he told me that he had already
heard about my thesis from Giovanni Vargas, who
had asked him for advice: he felt trapped between
two jurors (Sylvia and Paula) who would in no way
allow me to graduate.

Humberto: Did you at any point think that you

were on a kamikaze path?

Natalia: For sure! At some point I told myself: I’m

never going to graduate, so it doesn’t matter
what I do.

Humberto: What did they think about all of this at

home? Did you tell your parents about what was
going on?

Natalia: Yes, of course. They were all completely

up to date. Not just the family nucleus, but the
extended family. All of my uncles knew about
what was going on... in fact I was able to graduate
because of an uncle... but that comes later. The
answer is yes, I think that the idea of living in a
mall was not only a way of giving myself up, but
also a way of giving up on my academic life. The
truth is that it was a horrible experience.

Humberto: But in addition to your case, there

were many other students whose theses were
being held back. Do you know how many?

Natalia: No. But the number is in the blog Una

historia de desamor. I remember that when I
met with mister Caballero he asked me: “Are you
scared of working on a thesis project on your
own? Why does it need to be a collective project?”
And I said to him: “if that is your argument, you
should examine how many theses are held back
at this moment; because it looks like everyone is

78
afraid of turning in a thesis by themselves.” I think
that by then only three theses had been approved
for 2006. All remaining theses were up in the air.
The people who eventually graduated when I did
should have graduated long before.

Humberto: But how many held back theses are we

talking about?

Natalia: About 80% of the theses that should have

been turned in at the time.

Humberto: Why do you think that a Department

chair would do something like that? What did
Sylvia gain from it?

Natalia: I think it’s an example of what happens

when power falls into the wrong hands. I
understand that there are power relations within
the academy, there’s no way around that. There is
a hierarchical order and there will always be. But in
the case of Sylvia the problem was built into her
personality. If she had been acknowledged in and
fit for the field of art – because the thing is that
Sylvia was nowhere to be found at an opening,
she had nothing to do with what was going on
in the art scene in Bogotá – she would have
undoubtedly acted otherwise. Anyway, the point is
that I flunked the thesis, the one at the shopping
mall. That’s when Víctor said to me: “dude, let’s
put all of this up on a wall, let’s explain everything
that is going on in Esferapública, because there
is nothing more that we can do. Let’s see if we
can kick up a shit-storm or something. This thing
needs to explode somehow because it can’t keep
on like this.” So Edwin started to videotape some
interviews with Mario Opazo, with Manuel Santana,
with Fernando Escobar, with Jorge Sarmiento
(who was then a student at La Tadeo and a rabid
detractor of Sylvia) discussing the problems in the
Department. I wrote something for Esferapública
but they refused to publish it. Sometime later
Víctor wrote something which did get published,
the debate began and the videos were uploaded.

Humberto: When did this happen?

Natalia: This was already in 2007. Víctor sent in his

piece and a very cool conversation came about.
A lot of people spoke their mind on the topic. In
spite of this, the Department did not respond.
Some pseudonymous comments turned up
from people who in some way spoke for the
Department; I remember the pseudonym “Well
Dressed Tadeo Girls.” The bottom line is that, on
the basis of the material that was now up on the
web, the idea came about – and it must have
been Víctor’s – that the next thesis project should
be precisely that multilateral discussion about

79
what was going on in the Art Department at the
university: I mean, to present that institutional
critique in an exhibition, considering the issue
from different angles, different perspectives, from
the point of view of students, faculty, academics,
artists. This is how my next thesis project came
together. So we presented the Department with a
new date for the socialization of Point of tension
– we didn’t change the name because, if we had
done that, I would have had to present a new
written project and have it approved. What I did
was to send the Department an invite for a new
socialization at El Bodegón. By sending that invite
I basically renounced the previous socialization. At
El Bodegón I covered the walls with photocopies
of all the letters, replies, receipts, filed complaints,
documenting what had happened to me for
the past three years... and there were two small
tables with two thick books: one was made up of
printouts of everything published in Esferapública
on the topic up to that day, and the other one was
my diary from the mall.

Humberto: How long did that show run for?

Natalia: It was a one-night event, as was always

the case at El Bodegón. The evening of October
24 2007. Very few people showed up and,
obviously, no one from the Department came,
and I never heard from them afterwards: I
wasn’t summoned to turn in documentation
for the socialization, or for an interview with
the jurors, or anything, zip... as though nothing
had happened. That’s when I quit El Bodegón.
I made a severe break with everything around
me. I even fell out with Víctor. So I was left
with no Department, no advisor, no Bodegón.
However, and in spite of this decision, I should
say that my friends from El Bodegón were a
great help to me during that whole stretch of
time: Víctor, Kevin, Edwin... they were incredibly
important for me. I left El Bodegón for different
reasons that have nothing to do with the topic
we are discussing.

Humberto: With no advisor and your thesis still

in limbo, what did you do?

Natalia: This was the beginning of a new stage.

As I said before, my entire family was aware
of what was going on. So I spoke to one of
my uncles, who is a lawyer, and he said: “Well,
let’s file a tutela [a legal complaint concerning
fundamental rights]. What they have done to
you has no basis.” We did this and there was
a legal decision in my favor, issued on April 16
2008.

Humberto: Do you remember how the

complaint was argued?

80
Natalia: I argued on the basis of my right to
graduate, to become a professional, and to have
access to everything that is contingent upon that:
wages, decent housing and health. On page seven
of the complaint the claim is stated as follows:
“Unreasonable prolongation of these terms may
impinge on fundamental rights. For the principle
of good faith is valid in constitutional law. And
said principle implies that Universities cannot
refer to their own regulations, nor to the principle
of academic autonomy, to avoid diligence in
supporting and bringing to prompt realization the
academic stages required for graduation.” For this
reason, when the court decided in my favor, the
tutela forced La Tadeo, it forced Sylvia Escobar to
grant me a date to defend my thesis before the
jurors within eight days after the decision was
published, and in the presence of the Dean of the
Division, Alberto Saldarriaga. The ruling did not
state that my thesis project should be approved
for graduation; but it did state that I had the
right to defend my thesis. So I was able to defend
before a new set of jurors: Natalia Kempowsky,
Fernando Escobar and Óscar Moreno. Escobar
told me that, had it not been for the grading
system established by the Department, my thesis
could have been declared meritorious. And that
was that. After that, on July 31 2008, I was able
to graduate. When I stepped up to receive my
diploma everybody on the auditorium cheered.
The truth is that if the students had gotten
organized from the start we could have spared
ourselves three years of torment. Nonetheless,
I found the discussion in Esferapública and the
show at El Bodegón (which was a symbolic act) to
be incredibly important, but thinking realistically
what did the trick was the tutela against Sylvia
Escobar, which eventually also caused her to leave
the University, because the institution was at the
time seeking accreditation, and the fact of having
a legal ruling against the chair of a Department
was a great hindrance.

Humberto: Nowadays what are your thoughts on

El Bodegón?

Natalia: I think that it was unquestionably doomed

to disappear. In my opinion the coolest thing
about El Bodegón were the things that worked
against it: our differences, the chaos that we
amounted to as a group, and which allowed the
space to move and do everything that it did. It was
insane to have new shows or events every week or
every two weeks! Nonetheless it worked out due
to the diverse forms of thinking and possibilities
contributed by everyone who was involved; but by
the very same token there were a lot of scuffles
and tensions. I remember that I was in charge of

81
 –
–
–
collecting the quotas for paying the rent and that –
caused me a terrible ulcer. Sometimes I had to –
ask my mom for money to complete the month’s –
rent, and when those who hadn’t paid would –
show up at the next opening as though nothing –
had happened I felt like strangling them. It was –
horrible, that part of it was a pain in the neck; but
–
the rest was pure joy.
–
Humberto: Is there an event that you remember –
loving the most? –
–
Natalia: Oh, there are several. But I loved the –
parties. Especially the “quinceañeras.” Because we –
had two: one in Socorro!!! and one in El Bodegón. –
The one in Socorro!!! I enjoyed a lot because at El –
Bodegón I was usually in charge of the door or the –
money, so it was hard to have a good time.
–
Humberto: And is there a show that you are
fond of? –
–
Natalia: I thought Edwin [Sánchez]’s show [Sheer –
hatred (Odio puro)] was amazing. And I am –
very fond of the show we put together with –
plastic toys from Bartoplast, because I wrote –
the curatorial text. It was very interesting to do –
research for that show. And I remember that one –
of the sons of the owner of La Fábrica Nacional –
del Muñeco, a company that had already gone
–
out of business, came to the opening. He told me
that when they heard about the show his family –
wanted nothing to do with it; but that he was of –
a nostalgic frame of mind and felt the need to –
come and see. And he brought with him an old –
poster and showed it to me and told me stories –
about the rise of the company and about its –
demise. It made me a little sad to hear this story, –
but I was also moved. –
–
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 “Friquis calaveris mortis”
Words by Jairo Pinilla

The lines for Triángulo de Oro went around the

block. The film was shot in Spanish and dubbed
into English; the idea was to pull a prank on
Colombian people and I pulled it off. A reason for
the film’s success was that people didn’t know
that they were watching a Colombian film.

I got into filmmaking in Mexico, I went there to

do advanced studies at an American company
called Burroughs Enterprise. On the plane that
took me there I met Flor Silvestre and Ana Berta
Lepe; at first they looked much too red to me
because I was used to seeing them in black and
white. We became friends and through them I
met César Costa and Javier Solís. One day they
asked me to work on a film as an extra and that’s
when I got hooked up on film, watching the
light crew work, the extras, the cameramen... I
came back completely broke and with my mind
set on making films in Colombia. I wrote the
script for Funeral Siniestro and spent three years
looking for funds, but nobody wanted to risk
their money. I met people like Alfonso Cruz, who
was supposed to own all of the building blocks
in Bosa, the guy told me that he would finance
the film if I then made a movie about his life.
He led me on for about a year until I got bored.
Then I made a deal with Carlos Rodríguez, a guy
who ran a trucking business: the deal was that
he purchase the film stock and I would cover the
cost of developing and editing the film, because
I had a credit agreement with a lab in Venezuela,
and once we covered our expenses he would
get any additional money that the film made.
I had to learn everything from scratch: from
working with the lab to the distribution of the
film. After many failed attempts I managed to get
a distribution deal with Cine Colombia, because
the president of the company told me that he
would distribute the film if his employees liked it.
We held a private screening in Medellín and there
was so much screaming and clawing that the guy
agreed. On the day of the premiere for Funeral
Siniestro they also premiered Grease, El Patrullero
777 and Abba: The Movie at El Cid; Funeral... was
playing on the four cinemas on the other side of
the street from El Cid. El Cid was crowded and
the cinemas were empty. The deal was that if the
movie didn’t do well in the first few days, they
would stop screening it, so I was scared to death.
The next day, due to the bounce-back effect, the
screenings were filled to capacity and the movie
was a hit. The trucking guy kept all the money
that the movie made, because I have been a man
of my word since I was a child. I think with the

85
money from the ticket sales the guy bought a Big
Mack Truck.

Then a guy turned up, Captain Guillermo Silva,

who probably went to see Funeral... with his
girlfriend... and she probably clawed him real
good because the guy came out convinced that
the movie was great, so he sought me out and
told me: Jairo, I want to invest on a movie. I told
him that I had written a script for a film called Área
Maldita, and I told him the story. He asked how
much it would take to get the movie made and I
told him six to seven million pesos. The deal was
that he would front the money and that I would
take in no earnings until he had made his money
back. We purchased equipment for the movie
and found a castle in Chinauta. In those days they
had found a huge marihuana plantation in the
Guajira desert and we went to shoot some scenes
there, we rode in army helicopters and borrowed
weapons from the F2, that was a real mess: the
machine guns did not work with the blanks, they
would get stuck because the wax is not strong
enough to kick out the shells, so we had to use
live ammo. So for each blast-off we all had to get
on the floor and leave the camera rolling and the
guy there blasting away. I made the sound for
Área Maldita on the bathroom at home: I removed
part of the door, set up a glass panel there and
the projector in front. Three or four people would
squeeze into the bathroom, look at the projection
and dub the sound.

When we finished that movie I was broke, because

it look a lot of time for the Captain to recover
his investment. Me and my wife would watch
TV and hear them say: “Jairo Pinilla, the great
Colombian film director”... and I couldn’t afford
a cup of coffee. When some money did start
coming in, and although it wasn’t much, the
only think I could think of was making another
movie. I had the script for 27 Horas con La Muerte
and somebody agreed to produce it. That year, I
remember this very well, I was asked to be a juror
for the Cartagena beauty pageant [where Miss
Colombia is elected], and all of the beauty queens
wanted to be on a film because “they loved the
movies.” I met Ivonne Maritza there, she wanted
to work and she had been elected first princess,
or vice-queen or something like that; at any rate I
kicked up a storm trying to make connections and
to get what was needed to make the film. When
we were almost ready to start my partner called
me up and told me that somebody had defaulted
on some money that they owed him and that he
didn’t have enough money to finance the film. I
myself didn’t have enough money to make it on
my own, and Ivonne was really excited, so since
she was good friends with [Gonzalo Rodriguez]
Gacha [one of the leaders of the Medellín cartel]

86
she told me that she would try to get him to
lend a hand; but Gacha declined. She convinced
another friend of hers but he couldn’t give us all
of the money at once. I told him: “No problem, as
we work on the film we’ll see what we can do...”
This time it was different because the film was a
coproduction. 27 Horas... was also a hit.

Before Focine was created I had the idea of

publishing a stamp that could be sold in the ticket
stalls at the movie theaters in order to establish
a fund for film- makers, so that producers could
receive support from the cinema industry. They
told me that the idea was good and whatever...
the bottom line is that I was the one who came up
with the concept of Focine. And they did create
it and started lending money out to everyone,
but when I went to ask for money to make T.O.
Triángulo de Oro they denied my request. Why?
They said that they were not a charity organization
and that I needed to show backing for my loan.
I told them that I knew how to make films and
that I also owned the equipment. In those days
I edited a journal called Tevecine, or something
like that, and when my loan request was denied I
wrote an article where I said: “the government-run
company Focine does not lend money to people
who know the craft of filmmaking, they lend only
to people who own four haciendas in Los Llanos,
four buildings, four transportation companies.
If you don’t own five bus lines in Colombia you
cannot be a filmmaker. I have proof that Mister
So-and-So, by which I mean myself, is a filmmaker,
I have made movies and all of that, and yet there
is no money for me because I cannot show that
I own six haciendas in Los Llanos as backing for
my loan.” The people at Focine were not happy
about that article, but finally they granted me
a loan. They told me that I could only borrow
10’400.000 pesos and I thought: “that doesn’t
even cover the cost of coffee breaks, but it helps.
With the money that I have, plus my credit lines,
plus Focine, I can work something out.” They
told me that they would hand the money over in
November, and pay attention to what happened
then: they gave me the money on November or
December of ’83. Focine, being a government
institution and all, assumed that it would take me
three years to complete the film, because that’s
how it was with all the other people to whom
they were lending money. So for the first year
the loan was interest-free, and then in November
of ’84 I was supposed to start paying back the
10’400.000 at an interest rate of who knows how
much, and then I had two years to settle the debt.
So I thought: “excellent, perfect, that means I
have three years after disbursement to pay back
the debt,” but right there and then I thought:
“let’s not be morons, shit I’m going to make this
movie in the least possible amount of time.” I

87
told everyone who was going to work on the
film: “folks, we have a record to beat against the
government, against Focine, they think that it’s
going to take us three years to complete the film,
but we’re going to try to make it in four months.
Are you willing to work through December with
me? Christmas Eve, New Years Day, January 6th
Arrival of the Magi, wherever we may need to
go and whatever it takes, are you up to it?” And
they all said: “YES!” And that’s what we did: we set
up a work schedule, we went to Panama, we got
permission from the U.S. Air Force and they help
us with the shooting, and so did La Flota Mercante
Gran Colombia [Colombia’s Merchant Navy]. First
we shot in Panama, then in Buenaventura, finally
in Melgar and Usaquén. We were done shooting
by the end of January, I edited and did the sound
in February, and then I went to Mexico and
dubbed the film into English in ten days. On May
12th I came to Focine with the film, I told them
“folks, here’s my movie, I came through with my
part of the deal, here’s the money that I borrowed
from you guys plus my own, here’s my work, I’m
done.” They took note of how long it had taken
me to make the film and were not happy at all,
because I was premiering the movie and paying
them back and, given the arrangement, they were
not making any earnings from interest fees.

By then MGM had already purchased international

distribution rights for T.O... anf the film was
scheduled to premiere simultaneously in Bogotá,
Caracas and Panama City. But we needed
authorization from Focine to premiere the film. I
went there to request authorization but they told
me that there was a problem, that the manager
was on a trip and some other excuses. I wrote
a letter to Belisario Betancur, who in those days
was President of Colombia, explaining that I had
fulfilled my part of the deal with that government
company and that I needed authorization for the
premiere because I had a deal with a multinational
distributor. That asshole never wrote back. Then
I wrote to Nohemí Sanín, who was Secretary of
Communications, and I attached a copy of the
distribution contract with MGM and she also
never wrote back. Come October the day of the
premiere arrived and, since I had no authorization
from Focine, MGM cancelled the distribution
contract.

Finally I found out that María Emma Mejía had

been named manager of Focine, and a few days
later I got a letter from them. I thought that this
would be a letter authorizing me to release the
film, but no, they demanded that I pay interest
fees for the first year of the loan. I met with María
Emma and I told her that I had fulfilled my part of
the agreement, that the money was right there
in those cans of film. I asked how else did she

88
expect me to pay, whether I was supposed to sell
my house and whatnot to pay for these interest
fees... At last she authorized the premiere. Since
I had lost the contract with Metro I went to Cine
Colombia and asked them to distribute it. They
saw the film and said OK, the film opens next
December. Imagine that, one more year of waiting
after such a long time waiting for Focine to come
through. So I said no, because then I would have
to pay for a full additional year of interest fees
and with the film cans in storage underneath my
bed. I decided to distribute it myself, and I pulled
it off because I had connections with the movie
theaters (the knew that my films yielded good
revenue). Obviously they stole a lot from me, but
since the film was a hit I still had enough money
to pay back the money I owed on credits from
Venezuela and Mexico.

Around then Focine sent me another letter

saying: “Congratulations, your movie is very
good, hundreds of people have seen it.” I was
surprised to find out that they were keeping track
of me, but of course, they were on the hunt
for the money. I went to Focine and asked what
the problem was, since I had two more years to
settle the debt, and I took the opportunity to
find out what the debt amounted to by then.
Well that debt had sure grown, because there
were as many interests charged upon interests
as you can imagine (also some that you couldn’t
even imagine), so by then I already owed them
13’000.000 pesos. I went through the numbers
and realized that I didn’t have enough money
to pay them back, I only had 7’000.000. Pacho
Norden, who had just finished Cóndores no
entierran todos los días, had already lost his
house, his car and whatnot to them... because
he still owed them a third of his loan. Well I’m no
moron so I wasn’t going to let them do that to
me. I sent them a letter telling them that I didn’t
have enough money to pay them back, and that
as a result I was going to make another film, in
order to use the earnings from that film to settle
my debt, because I am not skilled in the art of
stealing, but I am skilled in the art of making a
movie. So I made Extraña Regresión, which was all
in English. Focine did not like this policy because
they had invested 150’000.000 to make just half
of a movie called El día que me quieras, and I had
made two whole movies with less that 10% of that
sum, and mine had sold more tickets. The lawyer
whom I later hired to work on the case told me
that I was only guilty of being too honest.

The day of the premiere the theaters were

packed, but Focine had embargoed the movie
and all ticket sales had to be handed over to a
tribunal. I couldn’t understand why they would do

89
 #
#
#
that, since they knew that I would be able to pay #
back my loan with the money that I earned from #
that film. “It’s like if I buy a taxi cab on credit and #
then they take it away, how am I going to pay back
#
for it if they don’t let me work it.” As was to be
expected the theaters were not happy about this,
#
because they were forced to hand their money #
over to the tribunal. Three days later they stopped #
screening the film, and they were entitled to #
do this, because there was no reason why they #
should be getting in trouble with the law. When #
I got to my studio they had taken everything, #
equipment, film cans, everything, and according #
to them the debt was now settled. I sued Focine #
and had very bad luck because the first lawyer
#
whom I gave the case to decided to move abroad,
and the next one, who was handling the case
#
pretty well, died in a car crash. So that was the #
end of it, “friquis calavera mortis”! #
#
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