In defence of appearances

Andrea Soto Calderón

There is a long tradition of thought that has asserted the power of truth in opposition to the inconsistency of appearances, assigning a place of impoverishment of experience to those activities that are linked to the superficial, the spectacle. We would like to introduce a degree of dissent against this sort of spectral hygiene, to state, in the words of Bachelard, that: “The doctrine of material imagination will never be fully understood until the equilibrium between experiences and spectacles has been reestablished.”

If the task of art has less to do with denunciation than with imagination, constructing a scene for these non-existent realities, that have no image, no body, no voice, then how can we manage to render visible, give appearance to, something that has none? Why is it so important for appearances not to be ultimately ruled out?

Using a variety of images, particularly those regarded as “impure”, we would like to ask some questions of the forms of the gaze, the creation of contemporary images and their political charge, and so to argue for the potential that appearances have in constructing new imaginaries and creating other forms of meaning of the common.