While writing a presentation for the show we came across a lecture written (but never read) by Roberto Bolaño shortly before his death, titled Sevilla Kills Me. It already includes all we wanted to say, and much more.
“Where does the new Latin American literature Italian art come from?” If I stay on topic, my answer will be about three minutes long. We come from the middle classes, or from a more or less settles proletariat or from families of low-level drug traffickers who’re tired of gunshots and want respectability instead. [...] That is, [artists] today seek recognition, though not the recognition of their peers but of what are often called “political authorities”, the usurpers of power, whatever side of the political spectrum it might be (the young [artists] don’t care!), and thereby the recognition of the [collectors], or [...] sales, which makes [gallerists] happy but makes [artists] even happier, because these are [artists] who, as children at home, saw how hard it is to work eight hours a day, or nine or ten, which was how long their parents worked, and this was when there was work, because the only thing worse than working ten hours a day is not being able to work at all and having to drag oneself around looking for a job (paid, of course) in the labyrinth, or worse, in the hideous crossword puzzle of [Italy]. So young [artists] have been burned, as they say, and they devote themselves body and soul to selling. Some rely more on their bodies, others on their souls, but in the end it’s all about selling. So, where does the new [Italian art] come from? The answer is very simple. It comes from fear. It comes from the terrible (and in a certain way fairly understandable) fear of working in an office [...]. It comes from the desire of respectability, which is simply a cover for fear. [...] Frankly, at first glance, we’re a pitiful group of [artists] in our thirties and forties, along with the occasional fifty-year-old, waiting for Godot, which in this case is the [Biennale pavilion, the DAAD fellowship, the Prix de Rome, the Turner Prize].
[...] Some of the [artists] here are people I call friends. The rest of you I don’t know, but I’ve [seen] work by some of you and heard excellent things about others. […] It’s a promising scene, especially if viewed from a bridge. The river is wide and mighty and its surface is broken by the heads of at least twenty-five [artists] under fifty, under forty, under thirty. How many will drown? I’d say all of them. The treasure left to us by our parents, of by those we thought were our putative parents, is pitiful. In fact, we’re like children trapped in the mansion of a pedophile. Some of you will say that it’s better to be at the mercy of a pedophile than a killer. You’re right. But our pedophiles are also killers".