“Potencias in potencias” is one of the texts that make up the catalogue for the first Experimenta Colombia, Festival Latinoamericano de Artes Electrónicas, held at the Biblioteca Luis Ángel Arango in Bogotá and the Centro Colombo-Americano of Medellín (in March 2005). In this article, the curator and art critic Ana María Lozano sets forth the ideas underlying an electronic arts event that mainly consists of video art. The festival seeks to provide the unique view of each participating country, adding up to an overall picture of Latin America, in a world that has evidently been globalized. To start off the text, Lozano lists Colombia’s social problems, similar to those found in various regions around the world, including Latin America. From there, she addresses the need for and the importance of constructing (audiovisual) narratives of today’s world from different perspectives. The writer focuses on the individual, daily, local, points of view that are resistant to the globalizing trend in economic and sociopolitical matters. Experimenta Colombia brings together selections curated by researchers from different countries such as Jorge la Ferla, from Argentina, and both Arlindo Machado and Eduardo de Jesús of Brazil. All this represented a gathering of visions that seek to establish differences as well as “finding differences within the similarities.”

In 2005, a work group was formed by the artists Mario Opazo (b. 1969), Andrés García La Rota (b. 1976), Ana María Lozano (b. 1964), Hernando Mestre and Marta Lucía Vélez; this group made it possible to hold the Experimenta Colombia, Festival Latinoamericano de Artes Electrónicas. The festival invited the exhibition of audiovisual materials from different places in Latin America, opening up a discussion space around the experimental video art in the region. 

Experimenta Colombia brought the Colombian art scene a resurgence of spaces dedicated to the exhibition of video art, in a trend that was extinct by 2010. These included the I Bienal Internacional de Video-Arte MAMM held by the Museo de Arte Moderno of Medellín [see doc. no. 1131191] and Artrónica, an international electronic arts show held jointly (between 2003 and 2005) with the French and German embassies in Colombia. The fourth round of Experimenta Colombia (2009) was held under the name Comunidad Comunismo. Although this festival maintained its interest in showing individual points of view, its organization and implementation was different in each round. 

Ana María Lozano obtained a master’s degree in Art and Architecture History and Theory at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia. In 2010, she was working on another master’s degree in Cultural Studies at the Universidad Javeriana in Bogotá. After working for five years on the curator staff at the Museo de Arte Moderno of Bogotá, she was subsequently chief curator for two years. She has been co-curator of events such as Fotología 6, Arte Cámara 2007, Fotográfica Bogotá 2005, Experimenta Colombia (2003 and 2004), as well as the VIII Bienal de Arte de Bogotá 2003, Arte, Ciencia y Naturaleza.