Electronic Art in Peru: The Discovery of an Invisible Territory in the Country of the Incas

摘要

This article begins by recognising the cultural territory that defines Peru through an idiosyncrasy based on political powers and taking the permanence of its pre-Columbian past as paradigm. This is a patrimonialist perspective, eroticised and distant from the process of modernity that instrumentalises and capitalises the past and its constant reinvention through cultural industries and public policies. A second paradigm is that of a 'politically engaged art' with its basis in an indigenist and syncretic approach, elaborated during the 1970s and 1980s in a context of political violence. The development of new media art in Peru has emerged in this context to offer an alternative dimension for understanding contemporary art production in the country. The authors distinguish two different scenarios in Peruvian media art: a high-tech scenario with global aspirations and the professionalisation of work through technological media; and another scenario of productions related to critical local research on information technologies, mass media strategies and the culture of entertainment. Both scenarios are understood through the confluence of two events that have taken place since the end of the 1990s: The National and Iberoamerican Biennials of Lima and the Internacional Festival of Video/Arte/Electrnica (VAE). Finally, the article looks at the change in direction of the last instalments of the VAE Festival in the hands of a new organisation, Realidad Visual. A new generation of producers and promoters are developing the event in new directions. The main features of this new approach are described: interdisciplinarity, decentralisation of the event to other regions in Peru and the generation of new audiences and platforms for the diversification of Peruvian production of new media, in dialogue with an international context.