In this chapter, Consuelo Pabón discusses the philosophical platform she used to curate Actos de fabulación – arte cuerpo y pensamiento (2000) [Acts of Fantasy – Art, Body, and Thought (2000)], created as part of the Proyecto Pentágono — Investigaciones sobre arte contemporáneo en Colombia (2000) [Pentagon Project – Research into Contemporary Art in Colombia (2000)], under the auspices of the Ministry of Culture. Pabón describes the curatorial process as a learning experience in which the participating artists had the final say. The formal result was of secondary interest since the main focus centered on the process and the experimental value of art works that stressed the concept of doing with the body and from the body. Thus, the exhibition was not the final objective of the exercise but the vehicle for researching the artists’ ideas. Pabón mentions the importance of the “place” from which one speaks; she is speaking as a philosopher, a teacher, and most of all as a student who uses her body in her normal practice. Basing her work on the concept of materiality and the poetics of the body, as discussed by the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche and, more currently by the French thinkers Gilles Delleuze and Michel Foucault, Pabón contextualizes the idea in order to create an underlying theme for her project. The project is essentially conceptual in nature and revolves around the body (seen as an object associated with thought) that is consequently more in touch with life.    

The Proyecto Pentágono [Pentagon Project] was created as an alternative curatorial research platform designed to generate cultural spaces for the exposure and promotion of Colombian art. It was proposed as a more frugal solution following discussions about the effectiveness of the Salón Nacional de Artistas [National Artists Salon] (1998), and accepted in light of the cuts to the Ministry of Culture’s budget that were imposed when the Pastrana administration took over at City Hall in Bogotá.    

The decision proposed a project structured on three levels: a first, theoretical level that would be the basis of the curatorial proposal; a second, practical level that would be based on a search for works and the creation of a video exhibition; and a third, public level involving experimental works that would be updated as they came in contact with the public during traveling exhibitions. Due to the nature of the project, this situation probably created a more lucid space regarding what the curator termed “the fantasy of a people to come.”

This document is important because it pinpoints the occasion when, for the first time, performance practices received official recognition under the banner of the Salón Nacional as part of an exhibition project designed specifically for the particular area; they were also the first curatorial projects that fully acknowledged the importance of the artists’ voice. In this introduction, Pabón defines the object of the research as being based on the idea of using the body as a field of exploration, focused exclusively on works expressed with the body and from the body. This awareness of performance work—understood as a space reserved for process and action—gives her the necessary clarity to justify “the place” from which the curatorial approach was launched, thus giving her an awareness as a student of what body artists do. However, the curatorial support (based on philosophy) risks becoming defined in terms of the same performance object. Why? Because it leaves the body exposed to the vagaries of will, preventing the will from being understood as the possibly un-performable act to which the author alludes. It also relegates performance to a space of sensory reflection that is inextricably linked to life, ignoring other factors that play important parts, such as the act and/or the context in which the performance takes place.