Editorial

 

Revolution? De-industrialization?

My name is Eduardo Cruces, latin american Artist and Writer. I have lived in Istanbul since 2021. I was born in Lota, a coal town in Southern Chile close by the sea, but since the shut down of the coal mine in 1997 I grew up in a post-industrial zone, same place but a totally different context, where I experienced the social dismantling and the cultural impacts of the economic reconversion on working class people and landscape.  

In fact, the contemporary phenomenon of deindustrialization and, even centuries before, the application of the Industrial Revolution have different characteristics and impacts in the so-called Global-North and Global-South or rich and poor countries as you wish to call them. 

Also, deindustrialization is a term rarely used in the field of art and there is not much literature on it, as its use comes mainly from economic and social sciences, and it has various associated variants that are still under discussion. One of them is the difference that the term industrialization adopts by adding certain prefixes: in addition to the aforementioned deindustrialization, postindustrialization and even transindustrialization are currently in use. To the above is added a new conceptual dimension regarding the equivalence to other terminologies that name our contemporary world as a state after the industrial society: information society, informational era, post-Fordism, postmodern society, knowledge society, etc.

Actually, the standar definition of deindustrialization is the decline in manufacturing production and the rise of a service economy. But this definition also includes other specifications depending on the geographic area and time, which can give it positive or negative connotations depending on the evaluation of its effects.

That's why, during the beginning of my artistic research, I explored other coal basins in Chile and other countries in Latin America, Europe and Oceania in order to find differences but also synchronicities. The result of that research is contained in an artist's book, where I collected coal waste and then transferred it into papers with a frottage technique. The book also included poems and photographs of drawing performances around several ruins and dumps. 

During the process, I feel a desire to reduce the rhythm and the capacity as an ecological gesture with a minimum of materials… it's like a desire for coherence of the conditions of making art… I ask myself if it makes sense to produce more artistic objects.

Then, as I recognized the limits of personal work, it became necessary to share this question in a collective way and to find together the alternatives and possibilities.

So, during 2018-2022, in collaboration with academics and artists, we propose a public seminar and performance festival about the relationship of Art and De-industrialization. The result is an edition of three books containing essays with documents and records alluding to the tension between different communities and the transformation of their landscape as sacrifice zones. Artists, activists and researchers contribute from Latin America, Europe and Africa. In addition, it includes different performances in the public space connected to the topics of the seminar, like: human rights, children rights, food sovereignty, artist workers, good living, etc.

During Covid-Times, I was part of the edition of 5 glossaries. Again, with the participation of many artists and researchers from The Americas and Diaspora. The method was different for the construction of each glossary, sometimes as a collective manifesto or as a game, the result of a seminar, a meeting or a dinner. This part included a workshop in Switzerland and Türkiye where we translated the list of 300 words from Spanish to English, Turkish, Greek, etc.

Finally, from 2021 until now, I propose a third stage of poetical collaboration, this time with still alive and also dead artists or intellectuals. The point is to extend the concept of “collaboration” through any pieces or work or poem or song already created in the “history” as an inspiration to continue. Then, together we reflect about the impacts of industrialization in our practices from a critical point of view since the beginning of XX century, such as Cultural Industries, Creative Industries and the contemporary Content Industry. The focus is to revert the ideological dimension of progress and consumption promoted by them.

Between the archives, as a loop, I return to my origins, the shutdown of the coal mine in 1997. On the cover of my book Des-Terra, you can see me as part of a massive miners strike in the Capital city of Chile. You can read in the banner the phrase “El Presente”, which means The Present. And, I guess, we can learn something about this memory: to question the nostalgic dimension of the past. Then, look at the present and make space for the present to look at us in order to open the future. 

As you can see these projects have many parts, many dimensions, many collaborations, as a long ongoing artistic research. Now, I consider it necessary to find a form where I can transmit an experience to you about these topics in a Revolution frame… But, considering that, at the end, even that concept is just a provocation here, an invitation to propose together other possibilities of living in the present…