Order and Cleanliness: A Proposal for Organizing Worlds (2023) is a project that involved negotiating possible ways to organize the residual objects of the National Fine Art school "La Esmeralda" to create a shared world between artists Ana Sofia Esteva and Fernanda Farjeat. The project's foundations are taking the absurd seriously, creating agreements and commitments about what might seem most insignificant, coupled with the bureaucracy this entails within an institution belonging to the INBA (National Institute of Fine Arts).

The space

The exhibition text

Things and objects

We selected objects cataloged as in disuse from the waste storage area (using approximately only 5% of its capacity). These objects cannot be discarded because they are cataloged by the INBA (National Institute of Fine Arts), but neither can they be disposed of because they are classified. They exist in a limbo between being an object and a thing. We then carried out a thorough cataloging process, we proposed a classification, and subsequently arranged the items in the space. This project included a performance of arranging the objects that was executed throughout the month of the exhibition.

As a duo, we worked from the gestures and principles of Fishli & Weiss, adapting them to a specific context: the art school ENPEG La Esmeralda and its current circumstances (a time when there was no internal director; the INBA appointed an external director, and numerous teachers were unjustly dismissed). Our only way of contributing to the current situation was through absurdity, treating the school's waste as a minimal, insignificant terrain of conflict. We seek to deal with the byproducts of creative processes and play with the infamous and everyday question they trigger: is this art or is it garbage?

The bureaucracy

catalogación orden limpieza.pdf

Cataloging format

20231017185934.pdf

Complaints and suggestions format

solicitud orden limpieza.pdf

Visiting format

Note:

This exhibition was canceled two weeks prior by order of the school's administration. We were told that the disused objects were too delicate and that it was impossible to generate the necessary bureaucracy to use them. Our alternative was to use the space during the month allotted to us (having won the competition) to hold an open forum for complaints about the school and the dismissal of certain teachers.

A week before the opening, the exhibition was rescheduled; the "bureaucracy" had been successfully navigated. The condition was that we would not hold the open forum, as this had not been included in the competition proposal. On opening day, no authorities attended, and our exhibition received no publicity.