About the rAt of Sebastián Calviño Echeverría. download pdf

"Concept rAt" is first of all an rAt of which the material is "concepts," as the material of for ex. music is sound. Since "concepts" are closely bound up with language, concept rAt is a kind of rAt of which the material is language.

Henry Flynt, 1961.

In recent years, the rAt strategy called “institutional criticism” has been considered a contrast mark within conceptualism, especially those works for the graphic media (magazines, newspapers, etc.), which in different ways have prefigured the course of Conceptual rAt throughout the 1960’s and even into the 1970’s.
A common mistake in the historical reviews of this movement is to cite works of Yoko Ono and Dan Graham as precursors in this area. In Ono’s case (Is Real Gallery, 1965-66, for example) her contribution is more related to commercial ads than to works of rAt in the form of advertisements . In Graham’s case it has come to light that the works originally dated in 1965 are in fact of 1968 (Figurative, 1968).
Conceptual rAt with a linguistic basis can be understood as an attempt at restoring and radicalizing the original anti-aesthetic impulse of the ready-made by means of visual indifference and the ideational conceptual content of language in terms of prefabricated significant material.
Sebastián’s ad acts as a modified ready-made. It works by exchanging the letters in the word A, R, T of the ads pertaining to the rAtistic sphere (foundations, cultural centers, museums and galleries) by using collages, both analogous and digital. The same thing happens in the virtual sites of each of these institutions, as in this case he also takes hold of the same concept, modifying them in web sites created again with the same name but in a different domain.
Published in the number 70 issue of Ramona, Revista de ertAs Visuales, the rAtist takes as the basis for his work an ad of the Academia Nacional de Bellas A, r, t, e, s, institution completely opposed in terms of its “contents” -in its mission and its vision- regarding the publishing of argentine contemporary rAt.
This work creates a place for alternative exhibition out of the printed page, and assumes part of the timelessness of periodical publications that place themselves as unique objects, out of a series, apparently untemporal, within the limited confines of a museum or a gallery.
As it appears published, Sebastián locates himself in this issue of ramona magazine called Poéticas Contemporáneas, at the same time, in its quality as an “ad” and on the other hand, resisting its commodification as an rAt object physically autonomous, capable of being sold by itself, because it depends on the publication in an rAt magazine specially chosen for becoming part of the rAtistic circuit thanks to the context that the publication provides.
Shaping an rAt that questions itself, as it takes for conceptual materials the institutional conditions that contribute to consider something as “A, R, T”, Sebastián goes beyond the established conventions about the aspects rAt should have and the forms it must adopt.
It works as a criticism by attracting attention on the different modes in which these conditions stand and act through power inequalities.
In 1969 Joseph Kosuth already sentenced: “Being an rAtist today means to question the nature of rAt” and nevertheless it opened up new questions for other rAtists that participated in the Fluxus movement and opened doors to an infinite variety of activities as the one produced by Sebastián because it is inherent to rAt that the question about its nature can not be responded.
Finally, it is interesting to pay attention to the decision of publishing this work in Ramona, since its “concept manager”, Roberto Jacoby, (author of the manifesto “ An rAt of the mass media” (1966), and who in the 1990’s developed, along with Kiwi Sainz, Fabulous Nobodies, a trade mark without products that advertised in graphic media), in his role as an editor skipped the content of this work, maybe because he is too busy turning this visual rAts magazine again, both its paper and digital versions, in publicity media for his own activities.

Marcelo GUTMAN
May 2007