Comparte

… art does not try to readjust or fix the machine. Instead, it does something more subversive and disturbing: it shows the possibility of another world.  - Subcomandante Galeano

The Zapatistas are coming to The Netherlands as part of their Journey for Life. Zapatismo is a historical leftist anticapitalist movement that since its uprising in 1994 has had a huge impact and it is an inspiration for many movements, organizations, collectives and individuals worldwide. Their visit is basically a call to organize. To organize as you can from your own trench. To fight collectively against the Hydra of capitalism. Which is destroying the world. 

Zapatistas come to meet with the Other Europe. To listen the Europe from below and to the left. The first group of Zapatistas sailed in a boat from Mexico to Spain in April and arrived at the end of June. The big group of 150 people arrived in the middle of September.

As they said, only 500 years later, they crossed the Ocean to rename the Old Continent as Slumil K'ajxemk'op. As an act of poetic justice they come to conquer Europe. Exactly five centuries after the Spanish destroyed Tenochtitlan. 1521 marks the formal beginning of the systematic exploitation and destruction of life by the Capitalist, Colonial and Patriarchal regime we have been bound to live on. But also 1521 marks the formal beginning of world resistance against this half century old process of dispossession by accumulation. Their visit proof they were never conquered.

So we want to share the arts that we do with the small group of Zapatistas visiting Amsterdam. Refunzionaling the category of “extemporary” which is how the Mexican State called the indigenuos people without papers. The Zapatistas named La Extemporánea (The Extemporary) to the group of rebel Mayans that are visiting Europe. We are inviting to think together what could be an art that is not contemporary? If contemporary it is within the capitalistic notion of time, art that is trying to go beyond the neoliberal notion of time, is it extemporary?

CompArte is the cultural event the Zapatistas organize in their autonomous communities. As with many of their initiatives they invite you to organize it in your own capacities, within your own time and geographies. So inspired in this non-liberal way of organizing the aesthetics we are sharing our arts with the compas.