The Vera List Center for Art and Politics and The Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural & Educational Center present NEO-EXTRA-ACTIVISM–Protocols for Buen Vivir, an exhibition of work by multidisciplinary Argentinian collective Etcétera. This exhibition is the third and final chapter in Etcétera’s two-year 2020–2022 Boris Lurie Fellowship, and the first solo presentation of the collective’s work in New York City.

As an extension of their long-term project THE MUSEUM OF NEO-EXTRACTIVISM (MNE)*, the exhibition presents artistic research that analyzes postcolonial and post-neoliberal models of natural resource extraction. Etcétera—led since 2007 by co-founders Loreto Garín Guzmán and Federico Zukerfeld—focuses on the connections between art, socio-environmental imagination, and resistance movements by environmental activists and artists from the Americas. Etcétera’s current research questions how nation-states and corporations hold responsibility for socio-environmental crimes and violations of the rights of human and non-human beings, and connects international artists, environmental activists, and local communities across Latin America and New York.

The exhibition brings together materials collected through the first two chapters of Etcétera’s research—NO WORK, NO SHOP: Socio-Environmental Imagination and Pedagogies of Action and RESPONSE-ABILITY* A Manifesto on Ecocide—alongside posters, installations, videos, and performances from the collective’s twenty-five-year archive. Centering the Indigenous notion of “Buen Vivir,” or “good living,” the exhibition is a proposition for living well through community, which expands to creating art, culture, and knowledge through non-extractivist approaches.

Central to the exhibition is Letter for Buen Vivir, an installation documenting a 2019 intervention at the United Nations Headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland. The two directors of MNE, dressed as “Original Corn” (non-genetically modified corn costumes), Garín Guzmán and Zukerfeld delivered a letter and petition to the members of the United Nations Assembly and several departments in the building. Their letter makes a simple plea on behalf of all organisms, asking for both recognition and protection of all “human rights, the rights of other animal and plant species, bacteria and all living organisms that are part of the earth.” The corn features in a number of other works on view in the exhibition, including flags and banners that document Etcétera’s actions and performances. Hung from the ceiling or propped on wooden structures, the banners place the viewer in the middle of the Etcétera’s protests and mass movements, in effect issuing a call to action and activation.

As with the collective’s performances and actions, the exhibition is offered as a space for meeting, sharing, and organizing around urgent topics with a collective spirit. A central question “What does Buen Vivir look like in an urban setting?” invites the public to think alongside Etcétera in search of alliances and common imaginaries for environmental justice and climate change beyond our own territorialities. Responses to this prompt are recorded in the gallery and can also be submitted as images, text, audio, or video to vlc@newschool.edu for inclusion in the dedicated exhibition space as well as its documentation.

Formed in 1997 in Buenos Aires, Etcétera is a multidisciplinary collective composed of visual artists, poets, and performers. Since 2007 co-founders Loreto Garín Guzmán (Chile) and Federico Zukerfeld (Argentina) have led it. In 2005, they were part of the founding of the International Errorist movement, an international organization that proclaims error as a philosophy of life. In addition to participating in exhibitions in museums and biennials such as the biennials of Jakarta (2015), São Paulo (2014), Athens (2013), Istanbul (2009), and Taipei (2008), they often work with street-art, public interventions, actions, and performances that are necessarily contextual, ephemeral, and circumstantial. In 2015, they received the Prince Claus Award in the Netherlands. Their work has been recognized for its denouncement of human rights and environmental abuses through theatrical and poetic actions and statements often exercised at personal risk.