Attempting to define “art” often invites infinite digressions about the word’s boundless meaning, which makes it necessary to try to find the essence of such a vast concept in order to reach anything clear. If we could remember that art is but the successive discovery of what is possible in the sensibility of each era, we would arrive at the conclusion that art is the maximum expression of our power — something like the figurehead (that evocative figure that once adorned the front of ships) of each cultural moment. Art possesses the virtue of trailblazing, of changing the story that governs each epoch and even of modifying it entirely. Through the use of imagination, our most powerful tool, the collective sensibility is capable of conceiving of new interpretations, weeding out prejudices and expanding the limits of what’s possible.
In a historic moment as unique and urgent as the current one, it is essential that creativity fully assume its suggestive, vector-like power in order to make credible and desirable the wide-scale transformation that circumstances already demand. Only through the organic, numerous configuration of a new collective story can we confront the great hegemonic myth of today that, for the first time taking the cold form and substance of a mathematical equation, threatens to diminish the world and the very humanity that gave rise to this most inexplicable extinction. Given this, the aesthetic delight and self-absorption that has been appropriating the meaning of art today no longer responds in any way to the moment’s immediacy. Once we glimpse the abyss at our feet, it no longer means much to delight in the contemplation of art. Rather, it is time to imagine with intensity those fragile and oscillating bridges that guide us to an uncertain destiny that, nevertheless, might be the one for which we’ve been groping for so long.
