Text for the 27th Sau Paulo Biennal catalogue - English version (2006)

To form neighborhood assemblies was one of the consequences of political and social fusion that took place on December 19 and 20, 2001. It was a very important experience, which gathered us together. With the evident dismantling of established politics, issues started to be defined by assemblies. Within this atmosphere of self-making, the Taller Popular de Serigrafia incorporated a horizontal structure and the possibility of multiple thoughts. It is a practice that aims at creating ideal working conditions and a sketch of a program, which champions the anti-capitalist fight and an independent left. Nowadays, the government is trying to take on these spaces of protest as if they were its own, by operating in the collective imaginary, dominating, for instance, the fight for memory and justice. Behind this strategy of legitimizing a progressive look, inequality perpetuates. A great part of society has again become numb, and those who still express their political viewpoints are attacked by the media and the State through lawsuits. In response to this scenario, we returned to one of the first ideas of the workshop: to teach silkscreen, art and drawing to those belonging to the movements of unemployed people with which we are associated. We wish to create, in the space where we work (a building occupied by the Assembly of Palermo Viejo), an arts and crafts school, where we can teach everything we want.

The impact of the drawings and procedures of Taller Popular de Serigrafia was possible because there was a need to create and multiply images that could testify about what was going on; that could speak of the state of mind of society. In this context of social agitation and questioning of the political systems of capitalist democracies, we spontaneously found companions willing to print their clothing during protest in the streets. The workshop is, thus, a collective experience of art and engagement, a way to take part on rebellions. Our work insists on a direct and cumulative action: the production of drawings, slogans, sentences, typographies, and ideas that are distributed mainly through silkscreen and flags, in protests where there is a confluence of Piquetero movement  (organizations of unemployed), leftist parties, assemblies, labor unions, recovered factories, students, activists and artists.