The 44th AICA congress, held in Asuncion, Paraguay, was a remarkable event in many ways. Extremely well organized thanks to our colleagues from AICA Paraguay and, in particular, Adriana Almada, the actual president of the hosting section, with official support of the Ministry of Culture and our distinguished colleague Ticio Escobar, the acting Minister who showed special understanding and sympathy with including our meeting within the framework of celebrating 200 years of Paraguay’s independence, the congress was also on high professional level due to presented papers by speakers both from Latin America and other parts of the world. The selected theme, «Art and Criticism in Time of Crisis», offered the possibility to open a lot of questions that reflect the current situation of art as well as its critical reflection and evaluation in these particular economic and social circumstances that are not favourable to the material situation of culture in general and touch in many ways contemporary artistic production, too.
The issues discussed at the Congress were concerned with specific problems in various regions such as Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean as well as in the most developed Western countries. In the age of globalisation, the exchange of information is in fact easier but the conditions of art production, its presentation and distribution vary considerably. The same goes for the critical evaluation, the possibilities of publishing and presenting critical statements in other media within the specific contexts, determinated by cultural tradition and also by economic and political paradigms having their effects also on cultural scene, especially in terms of iconography and formal solutions proposed by the artists living and working in all the variety of environments.
One of the aspects largely discussed during the Congress was also the mediatisation of art and the role of informatics in creating and presenting artworks. From the point of view of production, the highly developed, sophisticated technologies offer many creative approaches to be explored and applied by the artists while, on the other side, the networking via the worldwide web multiplies the accessibility of artistic ideas to a public that was not used to visit galleries and museums. Of course, the same can be said for art criticism, in both senses : the reviews and essays analyzing the exhibitions in physical spaces, reach another public when published on the internet (as many internet users don’t read art magazines and newspapers), while in relation to art produced for and distributed exclusively by the electronic media, art criticism has to invent new terms (not to say, practically a new language) to present and evaluate it.
Certain contemporary art practices overcome the field of aesthetics and individual expression, concentrating instead on collective work, exploring issues related to ecology, social science, economy, human rights and many other spheres not directly present in artistic research in the past. Quite a few papers presented at the Congress treated these questions on adequate scientific and intellectual level and initiated interesting discussions both in the audience and among the participating speakers. This goes also for the two basic guidelines that directed the work of the Congress, that is – which perspectives and discourses are to be considered regarding the changing relations between art, criticism and society, and what is today the responsibility of the critic in front of the society in which he/she lives and works.
Finally, AICA presented for the first time its two awards, one for a distinguished contribution to the field of art criticism that was given to Ticio Escobar from Paraguay for his lifetime achievement, and one incentive prize for young critics that went to Franck Hermann Ekra from Ivory Coast.
In conclusion, we can say that our meeting in Asunción was fruitful and stimulating due to the quality of contributions and discussions made possible, among others, also by the grants from the Getty Foundation that allowed the participation of speakers from less privileged countries and we would like to express our gratitude for this support.

Brane Kovic
AICA’s Secretary General

***
Reportes adjuntos
Klara-Kemp Welch [English]
Aloyse Raymond Ndiaye [Français]
Elena Oliveras [English]

Atrás