This text points out the efforts made by groups like Helena Producciones and Lugar a Dudas [see doc. no. 1098601] to create and further spaces of resistance that attempt to redefine the city of Cali in relation to the artistic and cultural scene that has prevailed there since the nineties. On the basis of the life and work of Andrés Caicedo, a symbol of regional identity, María Inés Rodríguez (b. 1968) depicts organizations active in a society where money obtained by illegal means and cultural production are enmeshed. This state of affairs leads to cultural stagnation and an almost pathetic convergence of real life and the imaginary of horror movies with their special effects. The text revolves around three paradigmatic topics—regional identity, special effects, and terror—all of which the Helena Producciones collective has addressed since the nineties [see doc. no. 860414]. Rodríguez points out how, in a society numbed by the mass media, organizations like Helena Producciones vigilantly defend their position as platform for critical debate and experimentation.
A crucial reference in Rodríguez’s text is Andrés Caicedo (1951−1977), an author from Cali. In the seventies, a young Caicedo wrote narratives that revolved around wealthy young people from Cali who, eager to break out of their comfortable worlds, ventured into the most sordid and sinister parts of the city, getting embroiled in situations that would lead to their deaths. Like his characters, Caicedo died young, committing suicide at the age of twenty-six. Active on the lively Cali cultural scene of the seventies, Caicedo was one of the founders of the Cine-Club of Cali, a cradle of avant-garde film at the time. Caicedo’s intense work produced at a young age made him into a crucial figure for the city of Cali and its culture; he expressed the sense of uneasiness and sociopolitical terror experienced by Cali youth in the seventies. Caicedo formulated an analogy between horror fiction and vampire novels, on the one hand, and his historical moment, on the other. Caicedo’s death as a young man is symptomatic of the hopelessness experienced in the face of the sociopolitical reality of the city of Cali and of Colombia in general at that time.
Colombian curator María Inés Rodríguez lives and works in Paris. The events she has curated include the V Bienal del Caribe for the Museo de Arte Moderno of Santo Domingo and, in 2007, the Encuentro Internacional de Medellín. Since 2005, she has been one of the curators invited to participate in the Bogotá chapter of the Alianza Francesa’s program for curators. She sits on the advisory board of Revista Valdez. She created Tropical Paper Editions, a publishing house geared to artists’ projects. At the time of this writing (2009), she is the curator of the Museo de Artes de Castilla y León (MUSAC) in León, Spain.
For further information on the nineties, see “Una historia de Helena, Festival de performance II, doc. no. 1099696.