Recycling in Times of Crisis: The Case of Oligatega Numeric (Argentina)

The crisis of 2001 in Argentina was characterized by a popular uprising in the streets that generated a series of subaltern responses at social and political levels, which had a large impact on the way artistic productions were created. The temporary foundation of alternative modes of organization, such as public assemblies, local cooperatives and seized factories, had its counterpart in the artistic field in the emergence of colectivos (‘collectives’). Their collaborative and horizontal way of working soon became widespread cultural practice. While for many artists it was a political or ideological stance, for others, who were struggling to survive, it was a practical solution. The lack of economic resources forced them to recur not only to the power of a group of individuals, but also to recycling rubbish in order to be able to produce. Although various collectives’ works have received considerable academic attention in the past decade, how they made aesthetic virtue out of economic necessity is still far from being fully analyzed and comprehended. Moreover, only a few collectives have received proper coverage to date, while many others have fallen into oblivion. Thus, this paper aims to explore how this economic resource of cooperative work and wasted materials turned into a unique aesthetic in the case of the collective Oligatega Numeric and, in doing so, challenged other more established aesthetics such as ‘trash’ and ‘cyberpunk’.