The Legacy of Protest Song in Mexico

May 2, 2011 - 4:00 pm

Pablo Helguera, Pedagogical Curator and Independent Artist
Helguera will discuss the legacy of the protest song in Latin America, its relevance in Mexico, and the potential of protest song to be revitalized today to address local and current issues.

Discussants:
Eric Zolov, Franklin and Marshall College
Aldo Sanchez Ramirez, The Mexican Cultural Institute of New York

Born in Mexico City in 1971, Pablo Helguera is a New York-based artist working in performance and various media. His work focuses on topics ranging from history, pedagogy, sociolinguistics, ethnography, memory and the absurd, in formats that are widely varied including lectures, museum display strategies, musical performances and written fiction. He has exhibited extensively in many museums and biennials internationally. In 2008, he was awarded the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship. In 2005, he received a Creative Capital Grant that supported his recent project The School of Panamerican Unrest, a nomadic think-tank that physically crossed the continent by car from Anchorage, Alaska to Tierra del Fuego, Argentina, covering almost 20,000 miles. He has published ten books, including The Pablo Helguera Manual of Contemporary Art Style, The Juvenal Players, Theatrum Anatomicum, What in the World, Urÿonstelaii, and the künstlerroman The Boy Inside the Letter. In 2011, he received the first International Prize of Participatory Art in Bologna, Italy, and he has been recently named pedagogical curator of the 8th Mercosul Biennial in Porto Alegre, Brazil, to take place in September 2011.