Fragmenting Obsolescence

Les Abattoirs and BIENALSUR, the International Biennial of Contemporary Art of the South, present a programme of video works echoing the exhibition Assemblages. Taking Care of Things.

Taking place during the 5th edition of BIENALSUR, this collaboration is part of a shared desire for dialogue and exchange between artistic scenes, offering audiences a diversity of creative forms. It illustrates the links that Les Abattoirs has nurtured for many years with the Ibero-American scene.

Fragmenting Obsolescence. The Paths of Gathering

ARTISTS: Diego Bianchi (ARG), Marcela Cabutti (ARG), Bethan Hughes (DEU), André Komatsu (BRA)
CURATORIAL Work. BIENALSUR, Clarisa Appendino (ARG)

Fragmenting Obsolescence is a curatorial project comprising a series of exhibitions produced within the framework of BIENALSUR 2025. The project explores works and artists that challenge the modern notion of technological progress by suggesting potential fragmentations, ruptures, and fissures. This progress has led us to an unprecedented crisis, making it essential to imagine alternatives to the linear temporality that we adopt for objects, materials and beings.

This video selection allows us to think gathering as one of the most basic and archaic human activities. It combines two fundamental concepts: walking and the bag, which are both regarded as essential cultural artifacts. Despite their simplicity, walking, gathering items and storing them in a bag represent a situation that is both deeply rooted in the past and highly relevant in the present day. The videos that make up The Paths of Gathering feature characters who move, observe, search and attempt to find elements in their surroundings in a particular way. The videos also highlight the qualities and materials gathered in relation to their context, contrasting city streets with farmland.

In these actions, the body becomes an entity that collect and absorbs everything consumed, whether directly or indirectly. The works highlight the immediate surroundings of the slow and deliberate act of walking, involving the collection of waste, remains or plants in various contexts and locations. The gathered items are transformed into protuberances, halfway between technology and nature. In addition, these practices turn the body into a strange sponge, both symbolic and real, which moves through different settings while expanding its capacity for absorption and collection, becoming simultaneously a producer of waste and a consumer.

BIENALSUR
BIENALSUR is a wide-ranging initiative focusing on art, culture and contemporary thought. Organised since 2015 from the southern corner of the planet, BIENALSUR is the International Biennial of Contemporary Art of the South supported by the Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero (UNTREF) in Argentina.

Decentralised, democratic, horizontal and humanist, this biennial takes a different approach to the themes of today's world. From MUNTREF (the UNTREF Museum, housed in the Hotel des Immigrants in Buenos Aires) to Tokyo, BIENALSUR traces a new cartography of contemporary art, stretching over 18,370 kilometres.
This event simultaneously connects art spaces, creators, audiences and communities from every continent. Since 2017, more than 1,800 international artists have participated in the three editions across the globe. Unprecedented in its approach, BIENALSUR includes works and projects that are the result of open international calls, free and without determination of the subject to be addressed. Artists and curators are invited to consider specific proposals. From this call for projects emerge the curatorial paths and main axes of each edition. Projects are selected solely on the basis of their conceptual and aesthetic quality.

For this 4th edition, BIENALSUR is pursuing the project of shaping other paths for art and culture, constantly seeking new logics of artistic and social circulation on a local and global scale, asserting the right to culture and diversity. For six months, artists, curators, institutions and communities from the four corners of the globe will be joining forces with us to strengthen our actions and take up the challenges posed by the contemporary world.

Anibal Y. Jozami, Managing Director of BIENALSUR
Diana B. Wechsler, Artistic Director of BIENALSUR