CIUDAD INFRA: MARGINALIDAD E INTEGRIDAD EN LA VANGUARDIA DEL INFRARREALISMO

This essay has two objectives: to problematize Infrarrealism as an avant-garde (neo-avant-garde or revolutionary avant-garde) and to explore those elements that would sustain it as such. It is because of that interstice of being either a neo-avant-garde or a revolutionary avant-garde that we propose that Infrarrealism would demand a critical-historical analysis, in the light of the tradition of the concept of avant-garde. Due to its own disruptive, polyphonic and rhizomatic nature, where the urban has transformed its own work and in that city they have found their lair (“the dead end”, as Mario Santiago wrote), we propose five central axes for the conformation of this movement, and that converse closely with the elements of a series of avant-gardes, especially Latin American: 1) the city as a symbolic space for artistic experimentation; 2) the flâneur and drift; 3) polyphony, as a group architecture and production mechanism; 4) the (self-) marginalization of culture; and 5) a vital ethic, which becomes a defense of the artist's integrity.