Each/Every: CADA's Radically Democratic Dramaturgy of Dissent

Abstract

We are therefore saying that the work of expanding the habitual levels of life is the only valid art installation / the only exhibition / the only work of art that lives.We are artists and we feel ourselves participating in the grand aspirations of all, presuming today, with South American love, the gliding of eyes over these lines.Oh, South America.In this way, together, we construct the beginning of the work: a recognition in our minds; erasing the trades: life as a creative act …That is the art / the work / this is the work of art that we propose.—¡Ay Sudamérica!,Colectivo Acciones de Arte, July 1981At 11a.m.on 11 September 1973, the Chilean Air Force bombed the presidential palace, La Moneda, as part of an attack that ended the presidency of Salvador Allende, suspended democracy, and initiated the repressive military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. Eight years later, on 12 July 1981, in the midst of dictatorship, six airplanes again flew over Santiago in military formation. This time, however, the planes did not drop bombs. Instead, they scattered four hundred thousand pamphlets with a text that urged Chileans to claim their space, thoughts, and lives by asserting the potential for artistry within all people. This art action, titled¡Ay Sudamérica!(Oh, South America!) and orchestrated by the Colectivo Acciones de Arte (Art Actions Collective, or CADA), subversively re-created a central moment from the violent history of the military coup in order to disturb and articulate an alternative course for that history (Fig. 1). In doing so, CADA challenged the regime's conception of Chilean citizenship by calling for an expanded space of existence and invoking the possibility of an artistic and contestatory subjectivity within everyone.