Nicolás Rodríguez Melo interviewed by Gabriel Alicea

October 2020

Gabe: Let’s start off with a basic introduction. Who are you? Where do you come from? What’s your artistic background and maybe personal background if you’re willing to share?

Nico: My name is Nicolas Rodriguez-Melo, but I go by Nico Rodriguez. I use he/him pronouns. As you can hear from my accent, I’m not from the United States. I am originally from Colombia. I have been living in the U.S. for a little bit over four years. In terms of my artistic background, I went to art school down in Colombia. I initially graduated from the painting and drawing department, but I started doing work with a collective, a group of friends, and then we established a non-profit . That’s how I transitioned from a practicing artist to arts administration, being a curator , and doing the logistical aspects of artistic projects. Four years ago I came to the U.S., initially it was just for grad school. I moved to Chicago to do a masters in arts administration but then as I was living in Chicago, you know *shows wedding band* life happened and here I am, still.

Gabe: And this artist collective, how did you join that and what was there a message that you were trying to send out to the people?

Nico: This artist collective has been living for 12 years, so you can imagine a lot of things have happened in 12 years. Initially, in its conception, we were still in our undergrad when we started. What we saw was that in Bogota, Colombia, the artist scene is super enclosed and the gatekeepers are very well-defined. Because the gatekeeper’s are very well-defined, the spaces in which art facilitates itself are very well-defined. It’s a little bit different than the art scene here in the U.S. or in Europe. For experimental artists or young artists that don’t have their degree and haven’t had shown for the first time, there weren’t spaces back then for that. What we decided to do was, “let’s create a space for young artists, recent grads, so they can have their first show, their first programming, their first curatorial projects, etc., etc.” What we started doing is --of course we were still undergraduate students so we didn’t have any money-- we occupied abandoned houses, or houses that were going to be destroyed to build condos and occupy them, clean the house on the inside and do the basic lighting work here and there and turn those into exhibition spaces. Because they were abandoned houses, the projects that were happening there were very different from a white space gallery-style, they were more like installations and experimental projects and that’s how it all began.

Gabe: When you went to the warehouses and abandoned spaces, was it out of intention or was it out of opportunity?

Nico: I would say it started as an opportunity and after the first show it became an intention. The first show that we did was like, “we need a space and there’s this abandoned house close to where one of us lives and there are opportunities there”. After the first six months around the first show, we saw that there was also a tone and specific opportunity and we adapted this empty house methodology as our own and we kept doing shows around that.

Gabe: I saw the one video of the one abandoned house exhibition that had belonged to a veterinarian. Would that serve as a good example of these intentional shows?

Nico: Totally, that house was just a house. As we started exploring it, we found out that there was a former veterinary clinic that was there in the house and that there were still supplies. So all of these things that happen once you’re in a space and you start researching and exploring the space, then that thing becomes an overarching umbrella that inevitably permeates all the projects that happen inside. Each house, each project in the house had a similar process. One of the spaces used to be an abandoned theater so then that became part of the project, this one was an abandoned veterinary house so it definitely permeates the line of the projects that happen in those shows.

Gabe: With the abandoned houses, there did seem to be different subjects and topics depending on the building. Was there any commentary on human creation and nature that you were trying to convey?

Nico: Yeah, so initially it was --well we were young, a lot of things have happened since then-- now when we reflect back then and the ideas we held, it’s like oh so naïve, so young, but back then it was kinda like trying to say “F you” to the white space, to the white cube. So that was definitely one thing, but then as we kept doing the shows in the houses, we noticed how different the dynamics were from a traditional gallery show. The traditional gallery show is this neutral space and the basic dynamic that happens inside this space is just one of consumption. So you go there and you either go to the opening to get the snacks and the drinks and whatever, or you go to the specific programs, and that’s about it. With these shows, because we never sold a piece of work in the shows, neither was that the intention, people started coming for strange and different reasons. Some people were drawn by curiosity of what was happening in these abandoned houses. Other people related to what was happening before in those houses. Some people were like, “Is the veterinarian coming in? Is this what’s happening here? What’s going on here? Is the theater that used to be here coming back?”. It definitely changed the dynamic of what a traditional space is, in which you are the curator and you have a studio visit with the artists, you put out the show, and then you put up a text, and then everything is like preplanned. These abandoned spaces are the opposite dynamic. You inhabit this space, and you put things up, and then the juicy part happens once the opening is done. How people start coming in, then the people are curious about the theater then let’s make a talk about the theater, let’s create a program out of this interaction that just happened. If people are curious about this veterinary stuff, let’s find out who was running it and let’s bring them here to have a little talk. It switches the dynamic from us planning everything, and then the opening day is the finalized product to us facilitating processes. Once the opening happens, that’s when the creation starts happening.

Gabe: From my understanding, your collective was based on making art and the experience more accessible, right?

Nico: At the beginning, yeah.

Gabe: Do you think that was successful? Did you face any challenges with that?

Nico: Yeah, the first couple shows were very “guerrilla” styled, although that’s a very charged word coming from Colombia, but they were very DIY. That kind of gave it this very interesting tone, but after we did a couple of the shows, development companies started approaching us. They were like, “Hey you’re creating these cultural activities, we don’t care what they are but we see an opportunity here. Maybe we can pay you and help you put up these shows in a property that we are going to tear down”. When that was happening, we just saw an opportunity there but looking back, it was like selling our soul. That was our first lesson. We did a couple of shows in partnership with development groups and even though they were very respectful and didn’t censor anything, we were playing a role in this gentrification process. That was a realization that we had after we did two shows in partnership with development companies. The second thing that we learned was from our last big show in an abandoned space which used to be a theater. With that one, because the theater was this huge, huge, huge, landmark theater in the city center of Bogota, we got overwhelmed by how interested the people were in the history and potential of the space, but not in the artworks that we put in. We were like “okay, so maybe it’s not about the objects that we put into the space, but rather exploring the social dynamics.” A show can be an excuse to have those social dynamics but it doesn’t necessarily have to be a show. That’s when we transitioned --this was about six years ago-- from doing shows in abandoned places to traveling around Colombia, doing some international projects, and focusing more on the social interactions. After we have those social interactions, then what projects can we create out of them? Those would be the two big lessons that we learned.

Gabe: So at first, it was about interacting with the space and then you realized about the social dynamics a space has and the stories and histories that go on in that space, right?

Nico: Yeah.

Gabe: I saw a little bit of the Fear Not workshop. Did you have anything to do with that one?

Nico: Oh yeah. The workshops, in full transparency, we have done a lot of workshops but they have always felt like something adjacent to the shows. Back when we did the Fear Not workshops around 2010, but now doing your own synth is super easy. Everyone sells the kits and it’s super accessible but back then, ten years ago, that was this uncharted territory. We created the kits, enrolled the people for free, and then there were these workshops about making this thing of the synthesizing process accessible for people. It aligns with this idea of creating accessibility. Maybe in this case it wasn’t about accessibility to a space but rather to a set knowledge. We had Fear Not and Switched on Sound, which were two series of workshops. Those workshops we loved and looking backwards, we’re always like, “those could've been way more, they could’ve been bigger, they could’ve been more robust,” but we kind of just left them there.

Gabe: It seems like the collective was not only based on making things accessible but also heavily inspired on making use of used things, right? Was that also due to opportunity or was there also another message that you were trying to say by using these older objects for new experiences?

Nico: That’s a good question. I think with these it was less about the opportunity and more about sharing those resources and more about the accessibility on that end for sure, yeah.

Gabe: Would you judge a workshop’s success based on the experience of the people there?

Nico: In the first workshops that we did in Fear Not and Switched on Sound, we were trying to replicate the college process outside of a college. It was like, these are the outcomes for today’s workshop so after this, you were gonna leave knowing how to act with a little synthesizer in your hands and then, somehow, you learn how to do it and that’s the thing, right. That was the first phase of the workshops but then after we stopped doing the shows in the houses and started traveling projects, we realized that, once again, it’s not about us figuring out about knowledge that’s fresh and new and somehow sharing that, but more about integrating ourselves with social processes and figuring out what workshops might be needed. In the first workshops, it was about being super groundbreaking and about innovation. In the workshops that we’ve done lately, it’s not about providing the newest and coolest content, but what workshop makes sense for the specific project that we’re doing. It could be a super redundant workshop or a traditional photography workshop, but as long as it makes sense for this social dynamic that’s happening, then that’s better for us. That’s when we stopped doing these one-off workshops and then the workshops blended inside of the projects themselves.

Gabe: As you were traveling, did you adjust your workshops and projects according to the locations that you were going to?

Nico: Totally. When we were doing the exhibitions in the abandoned houses, it was like this methodology that would repeat just like a different house in a different part of the city. After we started traveling, we haven’t had a project that has looked the same as another project. Every project is different, different dynamics, different workshops, different projects overall. In one space we did an occupancy of a space for a month and we facilitated neighborhood advocacy workshops and we brought lawyers and urbanists and that was like this very specific project. In another project, we saw the need to hold dinners, so all the cultural players in a specific city had a gathering space and could determine a collective agenda. So that was more about cooking and cooking and recording conversations and that’s about it. In another project we created this sound cabin that was solar powered and that was in the middle of a mountain. So after we determined that it was more about the social interaction rather than the spaces themselves, no project has looked the same ever since.

Gabe: Because Colombia and a lot of other latin countries have a lot of culture and that culture can vary from town to town and city to city, would you find that hard to transfer that to the United States or do you think it might be around the same level?

Nico: Oof that’s a good question, when we were doing the houses in Bogota, we could put up a show in a month, when we started traveling, we realized that we needed a six month process to learn the landscape and learn the players before we even started to propose something. When we did that switch we acknowledged that -- this line from adrienne maree brown, “move at the speed of trust” -- definitely trust is an important thing. Once you build a methodology around that, it’s easier to embrace the uncertainty of being in a new place with new dynamics. Because you take the weight, the pressure, of you having to come up with an exhibition or whatever on your own and rather embrace uncertainty and meeting people and having conversations. So that has been key for me when I moved from Colombia to the United States. It’s been a very drastic culture shock, now government support is way more robust in this country than it is in Colombia but at the same time, social and cultural complexities are more complicated to spot and address here than in Colombia. So it has definitely been a learning curve, but once we learn to embrace uncertainty and think it more of a site-specific situation, that would make it easier and it has made it easier now that I’m here in the United States and half of the non-profit is in Colombia. So it has kind of allowed this multi-angled way of operating.

Gabe: With the changing social dynamics according to location, do you think that it changes or affects the way that your art is interpreted?

Nico: Yeah, totally, totally. Even when I’m presenting here in the U.S. the projects that I did in Colombia, even in those scenarios when it's like a fully-fledged out presentation with all the rationale behind a project, it’s hard for a common understanding to happen there, for sure.

Gabe: How much of that do you think is based on one’s socioeconomic class? Do you think that plays a role in how people interpret your art forms?

Nico: Yes, and there’s this thing with the latinx identity that happens here in the U.S. and there’s this need to group a bunch of these identities into this latinx brand name. I would say that the biggest barrier that I find is that our projects back in Colombia are so specific to the Colombian context. To be transparent with you, before I moved to the U.S. I had no idea about this latinx thing and I thought of myself as a Colombian that has done projects with Venezuelans and once travelled to Chile to do a project there and that’s how I think of myself. It’s impossible to think of ourselves as this combined identity, so when I come here to the U.S. and have these conversations about those projects, these projects look oddly different from what people think a latinx project should be, so it’s more than socioeconomic being the difference, it’s more of a sociocultural branding and understanding of what a project is. Because our projects, we talk so much about land ownership and displacement and the guerrillas and the paramilitaries in Colombia and that’s something that when you see a latinx project born in the U.S. and starts in the U.S. it’s not about that, it’s more about the abstract idea of latinidad to some extent. So yeah that’s definitely a clash. To be honest with you, Gabe, this year with the non-profit, since Covid is happening and we’ve had to put a halt on a lot of our projects and I’ve got married to my partner here and I’ve just decided that I’m going to facilitate my life here we’re doing a whole restructuring of our mission at the non-profit because inevitably we have a team operating in Colombia and now we have a team operating here in the U.S. that is pushing us to redefine where it is that we do things. And in that redefinition we’ve been talking a lot about what is Latin America. Is Latin America territories, is Latin America an idea, and what is our stance in front of that fact?

Gabe: Would you say that this collective idea of latinidad might be harmful to the different cultures within it? It seems to be painting things in a broad stroke, right?

Nico: Yeah, these are my personal views, not the non-profit’s views, but I personally think that whiteness is a concept that is always ever-morphing. A good example would be Irish diaspora and how when they came here they were treated as foreigners and then they were able to find their place in this whiteness. So I have this metaphor around whiteness, so three white individuals that have lived here for generations in the U.S. and then have an Irish-American and an Italian-American and a German-American, when those six people are in a room, then there is a definition of whiteness but when you take those three immigrants out then there is a different definition of whiteness. And how comfortable white people are with the changing nature of whiteness makes it a powerful political tool because they define what whiteness is. Now with latinidad, we don’t define what latinidad is, we have other people define what latinidad is so there is a missed opportunity there because I do feel like sometimes putting everyone in the same basket is a little complicated. But if you’re thinking about the political process, the reason the white vote is so strong is because when it comes to the political process they’re not thinking “I’m an Irish-American I’m not white” or “I’m Italian-American I’m not white” or “I’m German-American I’m not white” they see themselves as white, for that specific process they renounce their heritage and whatever and they become white and they become such a powerful voice. We don’t have that for latinidad, that’s why the latinos in Florida are up for grabs for the republicans and the latinos that live in New York are hardcore democrats and we have this spread-out thing. If we learn to weaponize our latinidad and we learn that in some spaces I am Colombian and I’m not latinx, and in some spaces I’m latino, if we learn to be comfortable with the double nature the latino project in the United States is going to explode. And it’s already happening, like I’m talking like it’s not but I personally feel that this current administration is being so aggressive not because they think that they can stop something, it’s that they acknowledge that it’s unstoppable now. White people are going to become a minority in this country and that’s a fact, you can slow it down with policy but it’s just unstoppable at this pace. So I feel like our job as individuals that hold these different identities in this specific country is just to think about how in 20 or 30 years, people of color are going to be the majority in this country so how can I today start building the base for that future. And that base can look many different ways, in the political realm, etc., etc, etc.

Gabe: Like, you said, the definition is defined by the people in power and I agree that in reality we should be associating ourselves with each other because there are a lot of bridges in our culture. We all come from a similar history and there’s a dominance and hierarchy that other countries have not experienced. Do you think this topic might overtake that collective grouping of latinx people?

Nico: I hope so. I hope that we embrace that double-sided nature, it’s a political weapon. Identity is a political weapon and the more we get comfortable with that the more we can start writing the narrative on those terms. I hope that’s the direction that we’re moving toward. I’m afraid that I see so much energy inside the latinx community, going inside of it, trying to debate and argue in favor or against this identity and it’s like this energy that’s inside a closed space and I feel like we’re wasting our efforts on ourselves when those efforts could be more powerful directed outwards. Yeah, I definitely hope that down the road we can get more comfortable with that dual nature and know how to weaponize it. That has been the unstoppable force behind whiteness, you know.

Gabe: So because it’s a collective effort, just as with your collective efforts in the past, is there any worry that an individual will lose their individuality and sacrifice parts of themselves towards a common cause?

Nico: Yeah, that is a good way to put it, this summer I got the chance to do a fellowship with --I don’t know if you’re familiar with NALAC-- the National Association of Latino Arts and Culture. It’s the only nationwide latino advocacy organization that we have in the U.S. which is insane. For so many latinos that we have here there’s only one cultural latino overreaching organization. I feel like the work that they do in that, they have been doing this work for 30 years, you know. Now they are setting up for the next generation and passing the baton. I feel like one of the core things that they have is that there is space for both things. There is space for our particular communities or our particular identities and at the same time, there’s space for these big moments of gathering and grouping ourselves in a big identity. Those things don’t have to clash with each other and the reason why they’re clashing right now is because there’s a lack of resources and a lack of a network. When there’s a lack of resources then we have to choose which one of these identities we are to capture those resources. So once again I don’t think that it’s inevitable that we have to lose something to gain the other thing or reject this thing to stick to this stuff. So it’s up to us to build these networks and those resource pools down the road for us to be able to have that dual nature.

Gabe: So with NALAC, it seems like you would prefer that it would be more widespread with different associations for different regions, right?

Nico: Mhm, yeah, totally. I have to be honest with you before I did that fellowship, I felt like I didn’t have a place here, I was still like whatever. But they were like “this is not about the Chicanos or the folks that migrated from Cuba and Puerto Ricans, those individual struggles matter a lot and they have to be the basis for our latino project but that doesn't mean that you don’t play a role and there’s space for this role.” That’s when they talked about this idea of latinidad and how this idea can be weaponized to some extent, in a good way. I keep saying weaponized but I mean in our favor. So definitely that’s the step forward, and once again, white folks are going to be the minority eventually in 30 or 40 years, whatever, I think the current data is that it’ll be 2030, 2050, something like that. So as that inevitable process happens, it’s up to us to build the networks and the resource platforms looking forward to that. We have seen that there’s also the other side of the coin, I myself as an immigrant, I have interacted with so many different viewpoints of immigrants here in the U.S., that’s how whiteness works because white folks absorb other people when it’s convenient. Going back to the examples of the Germans and the Irish and whatever, at some point they were scum so to speak and then they became part of the white imaginary and we’re already seeing that with some latino populations right, they come here and because there’s this strange energy around the latinidad project or there’s not a definition of that, they start behaving in a way that they want to be absorbed by this whiteness and they start absorbing these conservative ideals, etc., etc., etc. And that could happen you know, we could have a minority white country but the whiteness imaginary can still be the dominant imaginary. So that’s already happening and that’s already happened so how do we combat that?

Gabe: I’ve also noticed this whiteness imaginary occurring in latin countries as well, it’s interesting how they swallow this media that dictates this whiteness and this ideal of whatever that means.

Nico: Totally, totally, yeah.There’s a lot of that in Colombia.

Gabe: Is it difficult to make or foster a community of people of different backgrounds or do you think it’s a similar level of difficulty to foster a community of people from the same background?

Nico: I think everything goes around a shared vision. If there’s a shared vision, it doesn’t matter if it’s equal or different backgrounds, it’s easier to rally people around that. But if there isn’t a shared vision then it’s more complicated. What I see is that from my perspective, this concept of the American Dream, which is the reason why so many of us migrate to this country is an imaginary that circles around a shared vision of whiteness. And that’s a complication there, what’s a shared vision look like that’s not around whiteness ? What does that look like and what are the values of that? The faster that we’re able to define that, the easier it’ll become to find these points of gathering.

Gabe: How strong do you think art plays a role in defining or facilitating that shared vision?

Nico: I always like to take a step back from art and think about culture. Culture plays --it’s the role. Our shared narratives are always around culture, whether we like it or not. All the ideas that I had about this country that are very different now that I’ve lived in it for four years, I consumed them through culture. Y’know and how that culture has been so dominant inside of the U.S. and outside of the U.S. In a similar way, I feel like culture can play a key role in reshaping these narratives and creating this shared vision, right, it’s the key. Culture is the key, always. But it takes more than some culture-making to shift the balances, but it’s key, I think it’s the key. There’s no other centralized--maybe you could think that maybe history is one, but we live in a society that is so based on consumption, and culture can only play that role. It’s so versatile in the way that it creates content for consumption. That’s my perspective, anyway.

Gabe: You said you were culture-shocked when you came to the U.S. do you think it’s because there’s a sense of absence of a firm culture?

Nico: Can you explain that a little more?

Gabe: Although culture definitely shifts from town to town and city to city, I feel as if the U.S. doesn’t have this real identity. If you were to ask anyone on the street what it means to be American, there will be little overlap in answers to that question.

Nico: Yeah, yeah. I don’t know if that would be what gave me the culture shock but I totally agree with what you’re saying. The most consistent thing is that this country is a land of opportunity, that’s the only consistent thing but that’s not a cultural identity either, that’s just like a slogan, at best. It’s interesting, this that you’re saying, yeah it’s complicated. It’s also complicated, like a country that has made such an aggressive effort to impose narratives across the world that hasn’t gone through that process internally. Maybe that’s why we’re seeing what we’re seeing now. We’re seeing anti-government militias on the rise, and we’re seeing these hybrids of proud boys, that some are right-leaning, and some of those proud boys are hand in hand with the BLM movement and we have these boogaloo boys. Yeah it’s a good point that you bring there, maybe there hasn’t been a thorough examination of this being an American. This confusing space leading to these divergent movements, then of course we have the big cities which circulate around people who received college education that have an ingenious way of thinking. Yeah, that's an interesting, that’s a cool thought that you have there, Gabe.

Gabe: How would you compare being a Colombian where you have this cultural sense of music, food, and the way that you interact, and the U.S. doesn’t really have that because our food is based on other foods and our music is typically derived from Black people but they’ve been mistreated constantly in our history. So culture and social interaction, because they come hand in hand, they define our future, right, is that something that you and your group were interested in highlighting?

Nico: Yeah, totally. Totally. The whole process that we’re doing this year of rethinking ourselves, and rethinking ourselves as an organization that works in two different countries is that how can we articulate those two conversations that are happening. What is the role of rethinking latinidad, latinx, Colombian, Latin America playing in that. I go back to this quick sentence that I said earlier today, Latin America is not a territory, it is an idea. That is our new premise. In the beginning it was about the abandoned houses and then afterwards it became about social interactions and now it’s about thinking Latin America, deconstructing Latin America, whatever that means.

Gabe: That sounds good, I’m excited for the future, because your past projects definitely evoke that questioning on what the space is, what you can do as a person, and now with this idea of a shared vision or a commonality, I believe that is a really good progression. It kind of defines the course of humanity and how we build ourselves up based on that space that we are in.

Nico: I couldn’t agree with you more, Gabe.

Gabe: Do you think there is a way that is the most effective in getting people’s attention. Is there a part in art and activism that really grabs the attention of people who aren’t really even interested in the topic?

Nico: That is a good question. That is a good question, we’re living in very complicated times in which-- you know I am a firm advocate for this Marshall McLuhan phrase that "the medium is the message." The medium is as important if not more important than the message. So I’m also thinking a lot about the mediums that we use these days to process information and process intuition and what are the dynamics behind that. It’s tricky because on one end we are living on the illusion that these platforms have a lot of potential and we have myths around it. Like we have these myths that the Arab Spring was only possible because of Twitter and if it wasn’t for Twitter, the Arab Spring wouldn’t have happened. Then we have myths that are like, we are getting access to all of this footage about shootings and police brutality because of twitter. And y’know as with every myth, it’s half fact and half fiction and I’m more interested in what’s the other half of those platforms. Y’know what is it that we’re renouncing for being on those platforms all the time.

So part of me thinks that the balance is still positive and we can still use those platforms. Like lately, this last week when “#ProudBoys” was trending it got co-opted and LGTBQ+ content was being put inside of #ProudBoys and there were proudboys and prideboys and you would look at the hashtag and there was this pride content and I was like “wow this is brilliant,” this is activism to some extent, right? It’s very different, very far from a gallery show or whatever, half of me is very hopeful of those things, the other half of me is like, what brought me here, what created the non-profit at the beginning and all the lessons that we have learned from that non-profit have happened through sitting across from each other and having beer and having food and having conversations and all that stuff. Sometimes I feel there’s no dynamic that can replace that, at all, that physical thing. Sometimes I think we should paralyze the Twitter servers and just see what happens, where are those new gathering spaces. This summer was a good example of all those gathering spaces, we were in the middle of a pandemic, risking our lives and then we were shoulder-to-shoulder protesting on the streets and creating mutual aid networks, etc. In that protest thing outside of those platforms and in these mutual aid networks there’s a lot of opportunity for culture and art to happen; and a lot of culture and art happened around those things, but what's the ideal medium? Should we just embrace and co-opt these platforms or should we just destroy them and find gathering spaces out there in the streets, that’s the question to be answered, I think.

Gabe: Alright, I think we’ll end, it’s been a good conversation with you, I really enjoyed it.

Nico: Same, Gabe, I appreciate your questions and your research on the group.

Gabe: Have a nice day, bye.

Nico: Thank you, you too.