CAM Perennial

Since 2012, Contemporary Art Month (CAM) has invited a guest curator each year to organize an exhibition of work by San Antonio-based artists. The 2021 CAM Perennial exhibition features nineteen short videos by eleven Texas artists. Curated by Doreen A. Ríos, Here, the rivers run both ways is centered on the idea of territories.

Due to COVID-19, CAM moved their exhibition outside of the gallery to present a city-wide, multi-location viewing experience. SAMA is screening the CAM Perennial in its entirety in the Arcade Gallery from March 5 through April 18, 2021. 

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Here, the rivers run both ways 
Curated by Doreen A. Ríos 

When thinking about territories it becomes clear that the first one we inhabit is our body. As we keep expanding the definition, we come to terms with the fact that most territories grow outside our skin, yet our need to visualize said territories is very much embedded in our collective imagination through its representation.

Uncharted territories become lines, traces, and boundaries that are always in motion, always recreating their behaviors. Navigating real and imagined territories is an act of placing ourselves within a series of moving flows and everchanging landscapes. This exhibition expands on the notion of wandering, the intimate—yet collective—daydreaming and, of course, the cultural mythologies delineated by migration, gentrification, gender, and communication systems.

Scripted in two chapters—territory as body and territory as land—this selection reveals a series of unstable and fragmentary cartographies where constant hybridization is key. The visitor becomes a traveler between physical and symbolic territories inside a city that behaves as a dynamic system in flux where art is released into the wild in order to activate other sensibilities outside the white cube.

Chapter 1: Territory as body
“Our task is to make trouble, to stir up potent response to devastating events, as well as to settle troubled waters and rebuild quiet places.”
—Donna Haraway

RECAPTCHA (2020), Heather Warren-Crow, 4:04 min.
Conceptual Migrant (2020), Patty Ortiz, 7:01 min.
Don’t Shhh Me (2020), Patty Ortiz, 3:58 min.
The Romance of Seeking (2020), Hannah Spector, 5:32 min.
Visible nest (2020), Julia Zipporah, 1:00 min.
#BIRDEATINGOTHER (2020), Julia Zipporah, 2:00 min.
Video Documentation of the Experimental Interactive Documentation of The Institute of Memory Workshops (2015), Daniel Jackson, 2:50 min.
“ An Old Ruinous Vault, With A Strong Grated Door, Through Which The Moon-Beams Are Gleaming” (2021), Daniel Jackson, 2:10 min.
A Love Affair with the Desert (2020), Karen Y. Martínez, 2:55 min.

Chapter 2: Territory as land

“The knowledge that makes a difference in changing the world is knowledge that travels and mobilizes, shifting and creating new forces and agents of history in its path.”
—Anna Tsing

Uncertain Site (2020), Hugo Santana, 3:01 min.
Archive for the Unconceivable (2020), Hugo Santana, 8:08 min.
(be)coming home (2019), Francis Almendarez, 3:48 min.
Dinner as I Remember (2017), Francis Almedarez, 3:14 min.
untitled (point in movement) (2015), Betelhem Makonnen, 3:05 min.
(w)here is here (2015), Betelhem Makonnen, 2:33 min.
Separated Together (2020), Hedwige Jacobs, 0:10 min.
Personal Space (2020), Hedwige Jacobs, 0:59 min.
Oceanic feeling (2021), Hannah Spector, 7:59 min.
Impresiones y paisajes (2019), Verónica Gaona, 5:21 min.