Dr. Ramón H. Rivera-Servera
2023 Plenary Keynote
Huáscar Robles, 2023 GIA Conference Blog
Dr. Ramón Rivera-Servera’s discourse on art and resistance was the apt vehicle to bid farewell to GIA's last night in Puerto Rico. It was an invitation, a virtual journey, and a call to action. Art cannot exist without its political context, and in Puerto Rico and the Latinx universe, this is a maxim cultural institutions are contending with from San Juan to Washington and beyond.
“You can’t be programmatically bold if you’re fiscally vulnerable.”
On the last night of the conference, the GIA leadership recognized the hands that built the conference from its inception. CEO Eddie Torres thanked the GIA’s “dream team” behind the conference, among them Director of Finance and Operations Champ Knecht, who earned one of the best quotes of the evening: “You can’t be programmatically bold if you’re fiscally vulnerable.”
Rivera-Servera, a scholar and writer who found himself fundraising for the arts, was able to see Puerto Rico’s Post María’s art movement from within. That was the vantage point he shared with the audience through a series of walks and history lessons that felt like traveling through a Robert Smithson essay. Walking in the shoes of others is the only way to understand or regard, as Susan Sontag wrote, “the pain of others.”
And that’s what we did.
Rivera’s remarks owed much to the development he witnessed at the Puerto Rico Arts Initiative, affectionately called La Prai, an expression that echoes its feminist, queer, and black-affirmative base. La Prai sprouted with emergency funds but is becoming part of the island’s art vernacular. For him, these experimental artists are at the forefront of the industry precisely because of their imagination. “Art is the most efficient builder of worlds; from imagination, we bring them to fruition,” he said.
This adage is perhaps one of the conference’s takeaways. Yes, there were slaps on funders’ hands and scoffs at hoarding donors, but globally, artists at the conference clamored for their visions to see the light - their visions of a fair and environmentally stable world.
In the roadmap of his speech, Rivera-Servera paused in the land of statistics, reminding the audience the Latinx sector comprises 20% of the U.S. population but receives a thin slice of the nation’s philanthropy cake. And who’s at the bottom of those vying for funds? “Latinx, queer, feminist work and experimental practices have yet to find a fair source of support,” he said.
During the next three virtual visits, Rivera made the case for those “fringe” art collectives. First visit: remembrance. The political instability that births the art collectives that rage against tyranny can’t go unregistered. In the “poetics of historical access” history lesson, Rivera demanded we see the spaces that register our political and environmental struggle as precarious. He added artists are the ones creating this record for the next generations. His words echoed the tussle currently taking place in Washington D.C., where the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Latino opted against art that represented the Latinx historical struggle in favor of folklore.
That is not where you find history, Rivera-Servera would argue. History lies in the body and this was Rivera’s second walk/history lesson. In the “history of artistic agency” segment, he said we interpret the world through the body. Reciting the opening sentences from the Habitar lo imposible book on experimental dance, Rivera read: “It is from and through the body that one can inhabit the world. How do we perceive it otherwise? The body is not only a biological entity but a social construct that carries its history, its experience, its struggles.”
Precisely because of our mnemonic relationship with history is that these experimental queer practices – some of them rooted in choreography and an amalgam of sounds: bomba, plena, perreo combativo – need to find their place in the philanthropy world. When they explode, it’s a national choreography. He recalled when former governor Ricardo Rosselló was ousted, queer artists voguing against oppression weren’t the only sector taking to the streets. “There were caravans and horses, kayaks, motorcycles, ATVs, and vehicles they could use for protest,” he said.
“Now, the university cannot be the sole source of funding for the work going on. I want to invite you to fund artists, to follow their impact, to partner with communities and universities.”
The third and final walk was through the desolate halls of the University of Puerto Rico’s Humanities Department. Once a bustling hub for art and art movements, the campus has dried after political and economic instability. Rivera exhorts funders to throw institutions a lifeline so they can continue to fuel the art moments that resist oppression and, ultimately, reimagine our urban landscape into one that is inclusive and, well, gorgeous.
“Now, the university cannot be the sole source of funding for the work going on,” he said. “I want to invite you to fund artists, to follow their impact, to partner with communities and universities.”
Rivera-Servera concluded his virtual tour, but many remained on that map, hopefully searching for ways to support the architects of resistance, those who –citing band Cloud Cult– vogue through earthquakes, storms, and fires in their dance shoes.
