Podcast
¡El Arte no Calla! - Episode 13: An Artistic, Celebrative, and Sensorial Approach to Activism in Venezuela - with Labo Ciudadano
"¡El Arte no Calla!,” a monthly Spanish-language podcast of the Artists at Risk Connection (ARC), explores art, freedom of expression, and human rights in Latin America. In each episode, ARC's Latin America Representative Alessandro Zagato will invite a different guest to help analyze the varying states of artistic freedom in Latin America and the violations that artists and activists are suffering in the region.
¡El Arte no Calla! - Episode 13: An Artistic, Celebrative, and Sensorial Approach to Activism in Venezuela - with Labo Ciudadano
In this episode of ¡El Arte no Calla!, we sat down with Seymar and Angel from Labo Ciudadano, an innovative Venezuelan collective experimenting with new forms of activism that use a creative, artistic, celebrative, and sensorial approach to organization and protest. They reflect on the situation of strong repression affecting their country and the tremendous diaspora of millions of Venezuelans who were forced to move abroad. Through the articulation of art, culture and politics, Labo Ciudadano is attempting to reconstruct a fragmented social fabric, starting from its internal differences and complexities, which have been suppressed and fractured by state power throughout the years.
Alessandro Zagato (AZ): Can you tell us about yourselves and the Labo Ciudadano Project - when did you feel the necessity to start with this initiative?
Labo Ciudadano (LC): In 2017, we experienced the largest cycle of protests in Venezuela. In that context, a group of people got together after a call from some friends - who today are directing an organization called Ciudad Laboratorio, which is allied with Labo Ciudadano. They were organizing some non-violent protest workshops as an answer to the context of social upheaval, and as an answer to the violence perpetrated by the police, who were repressing any attempt at social mobilization. This initiative brings together people who feel the necessity to express their unconformity in a creative and non-violent way, and explore the field of sensibility and perception as a way to mobilize. During these first meetings, the bookshop where they were hosted was packed with people, highlighting a widespread necessity to raise up voices and say ya basta (“we need to have a better life!”). This was an opportunity to meet people with different sensibilities, experiences, and ideas who were gathering once a week and developing peaceful protest tactics. Thereafter, when the constituent process began and street protests diminished, many of us started reflecting beyond protests and Labo Ciudadano came up with a broader perspective of citizen activation, human rights defense, creativity, and political innovation. A new collective of activists took shape focused on citizenship, sensibility, and pleasure as ways to get organized.
A.Z.: When you talk about sensibility and pleasure as a form of mobilization and experimentation, what do you mean exactly? How does a collective sensibility develop in the context of repression?
L.C.: It is exactly in a highly repressive and polarized context - where polarization is a governmental strategy to exercise and maintain power by dividing and fragmenting - that we observe sensibility and beauty becoming fundamental necessities. If there is something that they can not take from us, it is the necessity to live, to feel pleasure, to enjoy, and be cheerful - like when after a meeting we feel the need to stay together and, for example, drink a beer and keep discussing and reflecting. And we see that the will to celebrate is something that brings us together, and that it is not banal. Celebration is a terrain in which we can meet people who come from very different experiences and with whom we might have even greater divergences, but we have sensibility and celebration is common. Something that we have discovered in these years of walking, experiencing, and studying together is that celebration can also be a form of resistance and organization. Historically, popular festivities and celebrations are ways in which people have resisted oppression - we feel that this is something that can bring people together and facilitate sharing and organization.
A.Z.: Historically, celebrations have been opportunities to organize dissent and protests. I'm thinking, for example, about carnival, and the way it temporarily and symbolically flips power dynamics. In this sense, how do you conceive of the relationship between art, culture, and politics? Is it possible to produce new politics starting from these encounters in the field of sensibility and cultural and artistic manifestations - or is this a utopian ideal?
L.C.: A friend of ours has done a lot of research on this topic of the interaction between art and politics. He argues that although art may not have the power to transform societies, it least offers some insight, some perspective. It shows other ways of seeing life beyond the usual dichotomies such as left/right-wing, conservative/progressive, men/women - any of these dichotomies that are imposed by systems of oppression can be transcended by art. Artistic intervention needs to build upon our diversities and particularities. And this is essential in Venezuela, where this strategy of polarization has been imposed on us by those in power for more than 20 years and which has resulted in the dehumanization of society. The idea of politics comes from the notion of “polis,” which indicates the public space in a city where people can have dialogue and come to agreements, but where they can also play out/discuss the conflicts and disagreements that are normal and natural in diverse societies like ours. We need to accept those differences and not try to eliminate or hide them. Art gives us the opportunity to live and create together despite/in spite of and thanks to our differences.
A.Z.: Of course. I also think that situations can be transformed through perception, but we need to first perceive things in a different way before being able to transform them. Art can be a powerful tool in this sense. Could you give us a concrete example of an initiative that you have developed as Labo Ciudadano?
L.C.: We understand art and culture as a sector, a field of possibilities, and artists as actors operating within this field of society. Parasistema, for example, is a project that we developed according to this vision. It involves a series of workshops where we train people to produce artifacts that could have the power to activate other people - that is how I would resume/describe it in a few words. In these workshops, we explore different types of tools and forms of art, like sound, serigraphy, poetry, performance, stencil making, and so on, with an activist perspective. Our first group of workshops was titled “What do I do with this indignation?” and the main seminar was based on the idea of catharsis as the expression of this indignation through art. Parasistema is an investigation into alternative forms through which to raise our voices from the field of the sensible/the field of sensibility. It has been amazing because we started this with low ambitions/expectations but we saw registration from hundreds of people from different parts of the country and the world. There is also a necessity of expression stemming from platforms that are different from Twitter and the usual protests and marches, for example. In the second cycle of Parasistema, with the help of Renato Berrmudez, we addressed the relationship between art and politics from a hacker type of perspective of transformation from within. There we focused much more on processes of creation without seeking a specific outcome, but investigating this interplay between art and activism.
A.Z.: My last question has to do with the fact that the situation and the way activists and human rights defenders work has changed a lot due to the COVID-19 pandemic. I would like to know if your way of operating has also changed and what you have learned in this process as well as what would you recommend to other collectives and individuals.
L.C.: We have two things to say on this topic. With the first edition of Parasistema, we discovered the potential that being virtual can have when it comes to connecting people from different countries and territories. And this is essential for us. Before the first edition of Parasistema for example, we used to organize small, in-person events, and this direct contact with people was what we really loved. Sharing, discussing, and building up this connection that is not only related to work or politics creates an effective/meaningful connection that stimulates us to do things together. We were really used to these dynamics, but then the pandemic kicked in and together with Provea we decided to start this experiment. And we were surprised to see how many people got connected with Parasistema and from so many different parts of the world, which was so powerful, because our social fabric and networks have been hit so hard by the government. A way in which we are aiming to change things is by reconstructing this social fabric which was fragmented by those in power. And we need to remember that six million people were forced to leave the country - therefore we need to be aware that this social fabric/network needs to be rebuilt beyond the borders of our country. Connecting virtually to the Venezuelan diaspora has shown us what this extraterritorial social fabric may look like. However, we have been missing social contact; we miss seeing each other, and working together in the same space, because Zoom does not allow creativity and interaction to flow in the same way. We need to see each other and we have slowly gotten back to those spaces where we can have direct contact and take back the public space.