What will you work on?

“A culture without design is a culture without plan, without project, without destination”.
Eligio Calderón

“The City, as a laboratory where reality is the support and a platform for the process of change and social renewal, as a metamorphosis of the everyday, where the past is not canceled, but it is transparent and transcends.”.
Raymundo Sesma

My response and reaction must certainly be constructive, not by imposition, but by analogy. Understanding that my position as an artist and as a human being is to react to any event, in the sense of building in terms of what is already constituted and established. In the sense of understanding, a fundamental attitude from praxis in an involved universe.

The “involved universe” refers to an understanding of the body, of the subject, of oneself within an urban context, multidimensionally open to others; in the critical and creative sense of the fundamental praxis of what is to come, with a look to the future. In an act that transcends it.

Where the city becomes a platform, a field that gives life to participatory and constructive actions, intellectually and sensorially. Where collectively – from a multidisciplinary perspective – the projects are developed and analyzed transversally, from the constructive point of view of the dialectic.

The city becomes a sort of laboratory of interdisciplinary actions, which treats the real world as a living matter that is modified and transformed through a 360-degree landscape vision and social responsibility.

The city is made by those who live there, who in turn imagine it and draw it.

Grúa Portuaria, Basilea, Campo Expandido VII.
Year 2007.

Each problem implies an action and, in turn, a specific praxis, practiced and experienced. A fact that determines openness and acting symmetrically. In this way, the city develops itself like a map, like a design that generates an image, which becomes knowledge and certainty.

As constructive thought and criticism within the social body. As a dialectical notion, as a transversal vision. The concept of social architecture does not necessarily speak of constructing buildings, but of ideas where there is not just one author, but of which we are all authors and creators — in our ability to influence the events and decisions of a particular society.

This is how Advento A.C. was created in 1993 in the city of Puebla, Mexico — with the intention of being a support and emancipation platform for what had already been established. Involving the different creative sectors of society, as an access bridge between them.

“With an attitude that acts directly in social life instead of keeping us at a safe distance, untouchable from social reality and untouchable from itself”. In the words of the American critic Donald Kuspit.

Involved universe, social architecture, as a constructive and critical practice within social praxis.

Here is the importance of the different disciplines as they are the platforms for connecting with the real world.

In Italy, a perfect example of this philosophy would be the work that the artist Michelangelo Pistoletto is developing, through Cittàdellarte and in particular the UNIDEE academy. It’s an institution founded 25 years ago and which has developed several projects that involve different disciplines —in an attitude of emancipation from the various media, as conveyed in the global project of the Third Paradise. This involves different countries of the world, which through their embassies develop and complete the spirit and philosophy of the artist.

Parco Fundidora, Monterrey, N.L., México

Work involving different sectors of culture, such as intellectual institutions, artists, designers, etc., making it a participatory project. The importance of this work and its concept lies in the strength of its insertion into the social fabric, which arises from the artist’s imagination as a model that synthesizes and combines art and life, in his creative process where 1 + 1 = 3. Perfect example of a constructive, participatory, social, ethical and global attitude. Today more than ever, it is important to take as an example these ideas and actions of characters and individuals who over time have given us a legacy as a heritage of humanity — to be studied and applied in an evolutionary sense from the praxis. Creating awareness is already an urgency, as it is urgent to understand that we are not alone, and that the interest of one person is that of everyone. Design is the ethics of the future.

Raymundo Sesma