us:

The author of something that has not yet happened

My undergrad thesis supervisor keeps going on and on about me positioning myself. He wants me to clearly state that this project is mine or that I have appropriated my friend’s work. He says that if he was my friend he would be very upset because I appropriated his work. I reply that is probably the reason why we are not friends.

This work starts from my own personal experience (feeling alone) that happens to be shared by my group of friends. From wanting to share this experience, living it from a critical perspective and try and suggest alternatives throughout contemporary art’s dynamics, it’s no longer something individual but collective. That is why, very consciously, this research starts by writing using the first person singular and we end up writing in a bizarre plural with “x”.

Insertar_nombre has been developed by a group of friends and it behaves as one. Sometimes we all hang out in the bar, sometimes is just four of us, sometimes everyone has a terrible hangover and none wants to go out. Sometimes in this project we all participated, sometimes we were only four, and sometimes none had the strength to do anything.

However, insertar_nombre is being presented as an undergrad thesis, and because of that, it must be evaluated. That is why it’s important that this paragraph exists. I consider the most sincere thing to do is to expose my role in this project so that the jury can evaluate that. Insertar_nombre starts as an individual experience, which is shared by my group of friends whom I suggest we do this experimental-laboratory-artists in residency-experience. From the point the idea is collectivized, my role is the one of coordinating and curating the materialization of the proposals: Budgets, taking notes in meetings, finding resources, etc… All of these actions are compiled on this website, that can be edited anytime by the rest of the participants. I also wrote, thanks to many conversations with Esther, Nousk and Maria O, the theoretical considerations of the project.

I guess one could say my role in insertar_nombre is that of a curator/program coordinator/cultural mediator. In this sense, I’d like to emphasize my approach to the curatorial work in insertar_nombre came from the desire to generate in a collective way spaces of caring and listening where we can take care of each other, understanding the pieces as unfinished items and the proposals not as final results, but as a constant movement.
So for me, insertar_nombre is really not “my” project, just like a group of friends can never be composed of just one person.

To loop the loop, who is the author of something that has not yet happened?

My tutor says angrily I am not being clear.
He says it’s impossible to understand where “I” end and “the others” begin.

That’s cool, isn’t it?

Maria G Latorre

Thank you

David G Torres, Núria Gómez Gabriel, Pep Dardanyè, Laura Benítez and Marc Vives for being there physically and virtually.

Xavier Arenós, for analyzing every word and help to make this mess somewhat tidy.

Roque Latorre and Carmina Martin, for putting aside what they expected and jump to the unknown.

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In Spanish, the original language in which these texts were written, the plural person has gender. When speaking about a group the plural masculine has been traditionally used (the letter “o” or “a” determines the gender. For example "Amigos" (friends, masculine) or "Amigas" (friends, feminine). In an effort of finding a more inclusive way of using the language, we used “x” instead of “o”: "Amigxs".

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