La arquitectura biográfica de Ciudades Paralelas

Abstract

This article examines Hotel, an intervention by Lola Arias that forms part of Parallel Cities, a project jointly curated by Arias and Stefan Kaegi. As part installation, part documentary intervention, Arias’s Mucamas reflects trends in contemporary art and performance to reassess the meaning of site-specific; to move toward co-authorship and social collaboration among artist, participants, and spectators; and to employ ethnographic and auto/biographical methods.

This article considers the contradiction inherent in this movement to diffuse authorship, on the one hand, and to emphasize the role of the auto/biographical, on the other. The tension that results from this contradiction is productive in redefining the significance and form of the auto/biographical in contemporary art. Furthermore, in focusing on the everyday work routines of housekeepers, Arias’s piece reveals an economy based on the consumption of experience, instead of objects, that highlights the complex interaction of work, city, bodies, and auto/biography.