Cooperativa Cráter Invertido
Kuns by Return
19. Juli – 7. August 2022
Open Studio and exhibition with collective drawing performances as part of the Arnsberg Summer of Culture 2022

Cultural Office of the City of Arnsberg in cooperation with the Kunstverein Arnsberg

The Cooperativa Cráter Invertido is a creative community that arises from continuous creation. Based in Mexico City, the collective seeks collective responses and actions by developing forms of autonomization and reflection on political emancipation. Their practice of collective drawing, practiced in a stream of consciousness, liberates and strengthens their thoughts and visions. Their approach to political and social emancipation goes back to the early resistance of the indigenous population in the 16th century, who were forced to build monasteries and paint murals for the Spanish colonizers in Malinalco. The indigenous artists incorporated hidden symbols of the native gods and spirits into these Christian murals, thus resisting the imposed Spanish religion and culture. Cráter Invertido uses similar strategies in his collective drawings and animations. In this way, the lost spirits are evoked and the dominance of the double colonization they are confronted with is repelled: the Spanish occupation from the past and the effects of narco-capitalism on contemporary Mexican society.

The process of Kuns by Return, a collective comic conceived, developed and drawn by Waysatta Fernandez, Diego Teo and Jazael Olguín Zapata, is a tribute to collective imagination formation. It comes from the artworks that Crater Invertido has made and shown in contemporary art contexts (2015, Venice Biennale, 2015 Yakarta Biennale, 2016 Gwangju Biennale, 2017 Conundrum of Imagination, Leopold Museum, Vienna, 2019 museo de arte contemporáneo de Sonora, etc.).
Gemeinsam führen Sie den kollektiven imaginären Prozess, der sich aus dem gemeinsamen Zeichnen und Denken von Bildern ergibt, weiter. Wie könnte Crater Invertido durch ein Comicbuch seine eigene Geschichte als Kollektiv darstellen, seinen Kontext, sowie eine offene Erzählung weben, die sich zwischen Montage, Abstraktion, Geschichtenerzählen und dem Scheitern der Repräsentation bewegt? Eine geisterhafte Darstellung der Vergangenheit, die in der Gegenwart auftaucht?

What is collective imagination? It is the collective process of creating images and making these images accessible through drawing, and how can images from drawing haunt other media? These images are also part of a collective trauma or unconscious. The images embody processes of historical and personal contexts and yet remain open to any reader who engages with them in any way.

From July 17 to July 23, 2022, Crater Invertido will meet in Arnsberg to put the collective imaginary into a trance. Bodies will come together to conjure and provoke the drawings in the space, a kind of drawing exorcism, choreographic repetition of signs as symptoms of the present. A series of performances using drawing as a medium will make it possible to cover the architecture with drawings. Covering and revealing at the same time - stories, fragments, ghosts. It is also an opportunity to unfold the comic Kuns by Return, which was also exhibited for the first time at documenta fifteen and will be continued.

Photo documentation: Kun Liang