Vistas Del Arkivo Altavista
February 2nd - April 4th
Lodos
116 Calle del Artículo 123, Int 301, Col. Centro,
Mexico City
Giclée digital print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag Ultra Smooth paper with black aluminum frame 40 x 60 cm
Digital print on self-adhesive vinyl and screenprint on wall 120 x 180 cm
Giclée digital print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag Ultra Smooth paper with black aluminum frame 40 x 60 cm
Digital print on self-adhesive vinyl and screenprint on wall 120 x 180 cm
Giclée digital print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag Ultra Smooth paper with black aluminum frame 40 x 60 cm
Giclée digital print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag Ultra Smooth paper with black aluminum frame 40 x 60 cm
Digital print on self-adhesive vinyl and screenprint 120 x 180 cm
Digital print on self-adhesive vinyl and screenprint on wall 120 x 180 cm
Digital print on self-adhesive vinyl and screenprint on wall 120 x 180 cm
Digital print on self-adhesive vinyl and screenprint on wall 120 x 180 cm
Giclée digital print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag Ultra Smooth paper with black aluminum frame 40 x 60 cm
Images courtesy of the artist and the gallery.
Described as “the bastard daughter of the Public Education System in Mexico” by its current principal, teacher Armida Valverde Cabral, the Altavista Co-Operative Federal High School was established in 1967 following student demands to continue their high school education. After several demonstrations and continuous social disobedience, students and teachers occupied the Altavista High School. Amongst those integral to this project were a group of refugee educationalists; active members of the Mexican Communist Party who had graduated from the Teacher Training Rural Schools established during the socialist education period of Lázaro Cárdenas in the 1930’s. These teachers, survivors of an armed attack on Madera military base in 1965, remained resolutely committed to these long standing revolutionary principles. Altavista continues to this day to be regarded as an expression of co-operative models of education and has struggled in the face of an often violent political context, to maintain itself as an open and self-organized space. Since 2012, Altavista Proyect comes as a proposal by Diego Salvador Rios to gather and conceive diverse materials after events on education and art, with Altavista Co-Operative Federal High School as the main subject.
Throughout his visits to Altavista Co-Operative Federal High School Diego Salvador Rios has gathered diverse paraphernalia and historical material associated with the school, which include original constitutional documents, films, photographs, interviews, banners, clothes and ephemera. All of these materials have been gathered to become what the artist has proposed as the Altavista Arkive, an archive focused on its auto-poetical and biological connotations as subject for storytelling and speculative narratives, rather than the preservation and indexing of its materials. Exploring the archive as a meta possibility, as an image capable of creating images of images while continually nourishing itself.
For this exhibition, the six Archival Fonds that make up the Altavista Arkive are presented with their specific names and representational photographs. The photographs capture the school grounds and its vicinity. Additionally, six framed photographs document the events of the Altavista Arkive—Aktivation at May Day Rooms in London, back in October 2014. Which through a series of arkive aktivations, Diego Salvador Rios, along with current Altavista teaching staff and members of May Day Rooms, worked with historical material associated with the school and Altavista Arkive.