"The Place of Action": Geopoetics and Politics in Cecilia Vicuña 's The Precarious (2016)

Abstract

Cecilia Vicuña (Santiago de Chile, 1948) is a Chilean poet, visual artist and filmmaker who, after spending a season in London, lived for five years in Bogotá until she finally established herself in New York, in 1980. Originated in different countries, over the decades her books, films and installations have sought to revalue Andean cultural roots through different themes, materials and formats. In this paper we will offer a reading of Lo precario, a peculiar "Minimum Anthology 1966-2016" in which Vicuña reviews her career through a selection of poems, images and reflections that inquire precisely about "the precarious" as an artistic and conceptual category. In the Latin American and transnational poetics of this author we will trace some proposals that, based on the aesthetic meeting of industrial wastes and elements of nature, convey a sharp criticism of today's global capitalism. An inevitable parallel will then arise with the geocritical approach, which also aims to destabilize, problematize and give new dynamism to the perception of human spaces and the ways of inhabiting them. Finally, we will evaluate the political potential of this poetic in the light of the discussion held by Nicolas Bourriaud and Jacques Rancière regarding the politicity of contemporary art.