In this text, Consuelo Pabón provides a detailed chronological description and a curatorial rereading of the actions that formed part of the project Actos de Fabulación – Arte, Cuerpo y Pensamiento (2000), an exhibition that toured different spaces in Medellín, Bogotá and Santa Marta. The exhibition took place in the framework of Proyecto Pentágono–Investigaciones sobre Arte Contemporáneo en Colombia (2000), organized by the Ministerio de Cultura and curated by Pabón. The author’s account of the exhibition experience consists of five sections: “Viajar” [Traveling], “Inauguración en Medellín” [Opening in Medellin], “Irrupción en espacios públicos” [Irruption in Public Spaces], “A la sombra de San Pedro Alejandrino (Itinerancia en el Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Santa Marta)” [In the Shadow of San Pedro Alejandrino (Exhibition at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo of Santa Marta)], and “Las múltiples planicies de Bogotá” [The Many Plains of Bogotá]. Thanks to the detailed descriptions in these sections, each of the actions undertaken as part of the project’s tour is given the importance it is due in Pabón’s curatorial discourse. She points out both commonalities and radical differences between the project’s various actions in intersecting, opposing, and parallel readings. Rather than addressing each action as a unique anecdote, these readings address the touring project as a whole. This text, then, provides a thorough account of how the performance experience ensued both inside the context of the exhibition and beyond.

This document is a record and/or formal report that marked the close of the research project Actos de Fabulación formulated by curator Consuelo Pabón (b. 1961). Proposed as an inquiry into Colombian art, Actos de Fabulación was the culmination of the section of Proyecto Pentágono that addressed art and the body. Proyecto Pentágono, in turn, was an alternative to the Salones Nacionales organized by the Ministerio de Culturain 2000[see doc. no. 1099666 and 1099681].

The text provides a detailed description of each of the works in the traveling show. It discusses both the timeframe and the specific space that each work as a unit and the exhibition as a collective curatorial project entailed. Wisely, Pabón does not limit herself to descriptions of the actions and the places where they were performed, but also shares stories about the travels where the artists are seen outside the exhibition context. This provides a more experiential understanding of the aura that the events generated in the participating artists and the public, as well as—indeed mostly—in the curator. 

On countless occasions, the personal experience that the text recounts is overshadowed, obscuring the role of the actions within the overarching curatorial project. This is the case even though, in the interest of discussing the possible socio-political implications of each action, Pabón disassociates the performances from the audience’s specific experience and its impact. This means that the text posits supposed reactions on the part of viewers, thus simplifying the experience and reducing it to a universal symbolic reading. One example of this is the theoretical discussion of Daniel Zuluaga’s work. The specific actions he undertakes—which are riddled with symbols and specific codes—are described. With the support of the curator’s discourse, those symbols and codes limit the ability of a non-expert audience (passersby and pedestrians) to take in the work, neglecting the actual experience that they might have with it.

Significantly, in this phase of the project the artists’ voices are not directly quoted, most likely for the sake of a record created around the figure of a more committed third reader that is embodied—if not always effectively—by Pabón.