February 9-10
Mexico City
Ayarkut Talks
Alternative Economy
Models in Contemporary Art
February 9-10
Mexico City
Ayarkut Talks
Alternative Economy
Models in Contemporary Art
Lafontaine 163, Polanco, 11550, CDMX
— All That Is Solid Melts Into Air is a series of talks, workshops and artworks around the fictional, symbolic and cold hard economics of contemporary art
co-curated by
Program
february 10
february 9
A series of talks, workshops and artworks around the fictional, symbolic and cold hard economics of contemporary art
February, 9
All That is Solid Melts Into Air
register
All That Is Solid Melts Into Air is a series of talks, workshops and artworks around the fictional, symbolic and cold hard economics of contemporary art. The title stems from a Marxist phrase which evokes the volatility, dynamism, melting and evaporation of some of our economical constructs as well as the momentum of the capital and its failures. The two-day program aims to imagine alternatives related to commoning practices, radical economies, fictitious currencies and digital escapes as well as to question the relationship between money, ethics, speculation and fetish. How can art navigate in a fluid economy where capital originates, distributes and fluctuates constantly? Is it possible to share resources under a neoliberal system? How may we develop a healthier relationship to the art system, one not defined by competition but cooperation?
co-curated by TERREMOTO
eng & esP
sync translation
Speakers & Moderators
Speakers & Moderators
February, 9
Panel Discussion / eng
I. Commoning: economic experiments and microeconomics based on collective share, surplus and labor
16:00 — 17:20
Participants:
ruangrupa [Idn]
Colectivo Amasijo [Mx]
ruangrupa (Indonesia, 2000) is a Jakarta-based collective established in 2000. Its nine members were selected last year as the curator of the 15th edition of documenta in Kassel, which is set to take place in 2022. Here, the collective discusses what it’s like to organize a major contemporary art exhibition at a time of unprecedented change.
Eva Stark
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Eva Stark
Customer Support

Eva is the voice of our brand. She spends hours making our clients feel cared for and enjoying their communication with the company. If you have any suggestions or ideas, you can write to her.
Helena Lugo is an art historian, researcher and curator. Lugo is also co-founder of the collective Palmera Ardiendo and has collaborated with Mexico City’s Salón ACME. She is also an executive director of Terremoto, magazine and publishing house dedicated to critical thinking around contemporary art in the Americas.
Three art collectives dialogue around their strategies for creating commoning practices using experimental economies, collective cooking, multispecies dialogues, cooperation, DIY and other hybridized practices in order to question the culture of scarcity rooted in colonialism, capitalism, and patriarchal structures.
Moderator:
Igor Kulakov [Ru]
Helena Lugo [Ru]
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February, 9
II. Take the Money and Run: The Ballad of Economic Dependency
17:30 — 18:20
Participants:
Nan Goldin [USA]
Evrim Oralkan [TBC]
Nancy Goldin is an American photographer and activist. Her work often explores LGBT subcultures, moments of intimacy, the HIV/AIDS crisis, and the opioid epidemic. Her most famous body of work The Ballad of Sexual Dependency has become an invaluable record of a creative community soon to be torn apart by the AIDS crisis - with many of the artist's photographs now haunting memorials of friends and lovers lost to the disease.
Eva is the voice of our brand. She spends hours making our clients feel cared for and enjoying their communication with the company. If you have any suggestions or ideas, you can write to her.
The opioid crisis and the sullying of the Sackler family’s name in museums across the Global North has spurred many a debate around the ethics of funding art institutions. Nan Goldin and the members of her activist group PAIN (Prescription Addiction Intervention Now), have demonstrated how collective organization and targeted action can persuade art entities to seek out greater transparency and accountability when facing the dilemma posed by capital with dubious sources. Can these institutions, often targeted by critics opposing a highly unregulated asset and labor market worldwide, efficiently protect themselves from corporate and individual patronage with an artwashing agenda? Which should be the limits of such practices, and how best to report and account for them?
conversation / ENG
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February, 9
III. Fictitious Economies and Radical Economic Practices of the Everyday Life
18:30 — 20:00
Participants:
Jota Izquierdo [Mx]
Fritizia Irizar [Mx]
Gustavo Romano [Esp]
Jota Izquierdo is a Spanish artist who lives and works in Mexico City. His work focuses on long-term artistic research that formalizes on essays, archives, mapping, documentary videos, and installations.
Fritzia Irízar is a Mexican artist. She has participated in the Mercosur Biennial in Porto Alegre, the FEMSA Biennial, and group exhibitions at CA2M; CIFO Fontanals Cisneros Foundation, Miami; Giorgio Cini Foundation, Venice; the Museo de San Ildefonso, Mexico; and the Banco Santander Foundation in Madrid.
Artists doing worldbuilding have created imaginary societies, fictitious economies, made up currencies and other fake institutions to research different ways for the capital to circulate, distribute or engage with society. Whether from an ironic, whimsical or critical perspective, this talk tackles the possibilities of art to create other economic systems and values, that defy, resist and challenge our current social, political and economic inequalities.
Moderator:
Igor Kulakov [Ru]
Eva Stark
Customer Support

Eva is the voice of our brand. She spends hours making our clients feel cared for and enjoying their communication with the company. If you have any suggestions or ideas, you can write to her.
Panel Discussion / ESP
Fritzia Irízar is a Mexican artist. She has participated in the Mercosur Biennial in Porto Alegre, the FEMSA Biennial, and group exhibitions at CA2M; CIFO Fontanals Cisneros Foundation, Miami; Giorgio Cini Foundation, Venice; the Museo de San Ildefonso, Mexico; and the Banco Santander Foundation in Madrid.
register
Lafontaine 163, Polanco, 11550, CDMX
A series of talks, workshops and artworks around the fictional, symbolic and cold hard economics of contemporary art
February, 10
All That is Solid Melts Into Air
register
All That Is Solid Melts Into Air is a series of talks, workshops and artworks around the fictional, symbolic and cold hard economics of contemporary art. The title stems from a Marxist phrase which evokes the volatility, dynamism, melting and evaporation of some of our economical constructs as well as the momentum of the capital and its failures. The two-day program aims to imagine alternatives related to commoning practices, radical economies, fictitious currencies and digital escapes as well as to question the relationship between money, ethics, speculation and fetish. How can art navigate in a fluid economy where capital originates, distributes and fluctuates constantly? Is it possible to share resources under a neoliberal system? How may we develop a healthier relationship to the art system, one not defined by competition but cooperation?
co-curated by PAC
eng & esP
sync translation
Speakers & Moderators
Speakers & Moderators
February, 10
Panel Discussion / ESP
I. Artistic Practices that Go Beyond Models: Inside, Outside, Negotiating with the System
12:00 — 13:20
Participants:
Jaime Ruiz (Lugar Común) [OAX, Mx]
Alejandra Bolaños (Bruma) [JAL, VER]
Jaime Ruiz Martinez is co-founder of Lugar Común, an artistic initiative that promotes neighborhood participation and the production of public spaces in Pueblo Nuevo Oaxaca. His artistic practice has been developed at the intersection of participation, pedagogy and the visual arts.
Art historian and communicologist. He has been involved in projects related to art mediation and art writing. He was part of the curatorial team for Maps under Construction. Public Collections of Contemporary Art, 2009-2017 in La Tallera (Cuernavaca, Mexico). Since 2017, his main activity has been as content coordinator for the Patronato de Arte Contemporáneo, A.C.
Art historian and communicologist. Christian was part of the curatorial team for Maps under Construction. Public Collections of Contemporary Art, 2009-2017 in La Tallera (Cuernavaca, Mexico). Since 2017, his main activity has been as content coordinator for the Patronato de Arte Contemporáneo, A.C.
The projects gathered in this panel are characterized by arising, in all their conception and in the ways of their exchanges, to organizational references that go beyond those of capitalism in Western modernity. They also turn to thought models that have questioned said system. Through their practices, all of them collaborative and that appeal to experiences from other frameworks, they open spaces for reflection and artistic practices that escape an individualistic understanding of art that is conceived solely as the production of objects for a capitalist market. Located in Oaxaca, Lugar común appeals to tequio's modes of collective organization; In dialogue with the feminist methodology of situated knowledge and the tradition of activist political participation in Veracruz, BRUMA Laboratoria investigates an art history in a decentered way; while TAE (Transformación Arte Educación) explores collaborations between artists and intercultural pedagogical processes with the different communities of the state of Yucatán in the Mexican southeast.
Moderator:
Christian Gomez [Mx]
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February, 10
II. The Gilded Gaze: Wealth and Economies on the Colonial Frontier
13:30 — 14:20
Participants:
Candice Hopkins [TBC]
Juan Canela [TBC]
Сurator from Mexico. In 2018, Torreblanca was appointed Director of Curatorial Projects at INSITE, where, among other initiatives, she founded and is the editor-in-chief of the INSITE Journal, and for which she recently conceived Commonplaces, a curatorial platform to be developed in Lima, Peru, Johannesburg, South Africa, and the border region between Baja California (MX) and San Diego, California (US).
Eva Stark
Customer Support

Eva is the voice of our brand. She spends hours making our clients feel cared for and enjoying their communication with the company. If you have any suggestions or ideas, you can write to her.
The opioid crisis and the sullying of the Sackler family’s name in museums across the Global North has spurred many a debate around the ethics of funding art institutions. Nan Goldin and the members of her activist group PAIN (Prescription Addiction Intervention Now), have demonstrated how collective organization and targeted action can persuade art entities to seek out greater transparency and accountability when facing the dilemma posed by capital with dubious sources. Can these institutions, often targeted by critics opposing a highly unregulated asset and labor market worldwide, efficiently protect themselves from corporate and individual patronage with an artwashing agenda? Which should be the limits of such practices, and how best to report and account for them?
conversation / ENG
register
February, 10
Panel Discussion / ESP
III. An Infinite Horizon: Building Projects from Other Imaginaries
14:30 — 16:00
Participants:
Laura Cortés SOMA [CDMX]
Andrea Torreblanca Common places [Mx]
María Paola Malavasi Lachner Teor-ética [Cri]
Jaime Ruiz Martinez is co-founder of Lugar Común, an artistic initiative that promotes neighborhood participation and the production of public spaces in Pueblo Nuevo Oaxaca. His artistic practice has been developed at the intersection of participation, pedagogy and the visual arts.
Сurator from Mexico. In 2018, Torreblanca was appointed Director of Curatorial Projects at INSITE, where, among other initiatives, she founded and is the editor-in-chief of the INSITE Journal, and for which she recently conceived Commonplaces, a curatorial platform to be developed in Lima, Peru, Johannesburg, South Africa, and the border region between Baja California (MX) and San Diego, California (US).
Art historian and communicologist. He has been involved in projects related to art mediation and art writing. He was part of the curatorial team for Maps under Construction. Public Collections of Contemporary Art, 2009-2017 in La Tallera (Cuernavaca, Mexico). Since 2017, his main activity has been as content coordinator for the Patronato de Arte Contemporáneo, A.C.
The projects gathered in this panel are characterized by arising, in all their conception and in the ways of their exchanges, to organizational references that go beyond those of capitalism in Western modernity. They also turn to thought models that have questioned said system. Through their practices, all of them collaborative and that appeal to experiences from other frameworks, they open spaces for reflection and artistic practices that escape an individualistic understanding of art that is conceived solely as the production of objects for a capitalist market. Located in Oaxaca, Lugar común appeals to tequio's modes of collective organization; In dialogue with the feminist methodology of situated knowledge and the tradition of activist political participation in Veracruz, BRUMA Laboratoria investigates an art history in a decentered way; while TAE (Transformación Arte Educación) explores collaborations between artists and intercultural pedagogical processes with the different communities of the state of Yucatán in the Mexican southeast.
Moderater:
Carmen Cebreros [Mx]
Cultural manager and curator, interested in artistic management practices, collective education processes, and institutional critique. She is currently one of three Co-directors in TEOR/éTica, an independent contemporary art space, located in San José, Costa Rica.
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Lafontaine 163, Polanco, 11550, CDMX
Ayarkut is an international cultural organization honoring the voices of artists who respond to the social and political challenges of our time. We see contemporary art as a catalyst for changing the world.
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