El Club de Protesta | The Protest Club
El Club de Protesta | The Protest Club
2011
The Highline and the Hudson Guild Theater, New York, NY
El Club de Protesta
Free Songwriting Workshops
May – June, 6-8 pm
Hudson Guild Fulton and Elliot Centers
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About the artist
El Club de Protesta consisted in the creation of an association and activity center focusing on the repurposing of the protest song. Focusing primarily on the Latin and North American traditions of the protest song and on current issues surrounding immigration, El Club de Protesta held a series of public workshops organized in collaboration with Hudson Guild, a community center based in Chelsea. Pablo Helguera and composer Carlo Nicolau led workshop participants in the study of protest songs and guided the collaborative effort to update these lyrics to address current issues. These sessions culminated in public concerts with professional musicians on both the High Line and the Hudson Guild Theatre.
“El Club de Protesta exists with full consciousness of its simultaneous timeliness and anachronism, of the cultural, class and language barriers that distance art from its subjects, of the fact that it is exclusive and progressive— but it is its contradictions that lie at the core of its mission: to bring together opposite forms, disparate ideas, and in so doing to write the new lyrics of current issues and public life.” – From El Club de Protesta’s mission statement.
In conjunction with the project, the Bildner Center of the CUNY Graduate Center presented ‘The Legacy of Protest Song in Mexico’ on May 2, 2011. Helguera discussed the legacy of the protest song in Latin America, its relevance in Mexico, and the potential of revitalizing protest songs to address local and current issues. Participants included Eric Zolov (Franklin and Marshall College) and Aldo Sanchez Ramirez (The Mexican Cultural Institute of New York).
Pablo Helguera
Pablo Helguera (Mexico City, 1971) is a New York based artist working with installation, sculpture, photography, drawing, socially engaged art and performance. Helguera’s work focuses in a variety of topics ranging from history, pedagogy, sociolinguistics, ethnography, memory and the absurd, in formats that are widely varied including the lecture, museum display strategies, musical performances and written fiction.
His work as an educator has usually intersected his interest as an artist. This intersection is best exemplified in his project, “The School of Panamerican Unrest”, a nomadic think-tank that physically crossed the continent by car from Anchorage, Alaska to Tierra del Fuego, making 40 stops in between. Covering almost 20,000 miles, it is considered one of the most extensive public art projects on record as well as a pioneering work for the new generation of artworks regarded under the area of socially engaged art.
Pablo Helguera performed individually at the Museum of Modern Art /Gramercy Theater, in 2003, where he showed his work “Parallel Lives”. His musical composition, “Endingness” has been performed by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. Helguera has exhibited or performed at venues such as the Museo de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid; ICA Boston; RCA London; 8th Havana Biennal, PERFORMA 05, Havana; Shedhalle, Zurich; MoMA P.S.1, New York; Brooklyn Museum; IFA Galerie, Bonn; Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, Tokyo; MALBA museum in Buenos Aires, Ex-Teresa Espacio Alternativo in Mexico City, The Bronx Museum, Artist Space, and Sculpture Center, amongst many others. His work has been reviewed in Art in America, Artforum, The New York Times, ArtNews, amongst others. In 2008 he was awarded the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship and also was the recipient of a 2005 Creative Capital Grant. In 2011 he was named winner of the International Award of Participatory Art of the Region Emilia-Romagna in Italy. He has also received the Franklin Furnace and Art Matters grants.
Helguera has worked since 1991 in a variety of contemporary art museums, most recently as head of public programs at the Education department of the Guggenheim Museum in New York (1998-2005). From 2007 to 2020, he was Director of Adult and Academic programs at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. He has organized close to 1000 public events in conjunction with nearly 100 exhibitions. In 2010 he was appointed pedagogical curator of the 8th Mercosul Biennial in Porto Alegre, Brazil, which took place in September, 2011. He is currently Assistant Professor of Arts and Entrepreneurship at the College of Performing Arts at the New School in New York.
He is represented by Kent Fine Art in New York and Enrique Guerrero Gallery in Mexico City.
He is the author of many books, including Education for Socially Engaged Art (2011) and The Parable Conference (2014).
He writes a weekly column titled Beautiful Eccentrics.
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Credits and Supporters
El Club de Protesta
Free Songwriting Workshops
May – June, 6-8 pm
Hudson Guild Fulton and Elliot Centers
Hudson Guild and More Art presented Free Songwriting Workshops led by Pablo Helguera and Carlo Nicolau at Hudson Guild Fulton and Elliott Centers from May to June, running from 6 to 8 PM. Conducted bilingually, the workshops provided an opportunity to explore the legacy of protest songs in Latin America and the U.S., with participants contributing to crafting lyrics for a concert featuring new protest songs during the summer at the Highline.
Featuring
Eleanor Dubinsky, Vocals, Cello, Guitar
Pablo Helguera, Vocals, Guitar, Project Director, Workshop Director
Sebastian Cruz, Guitar, Music Preparation
Carl Onicoloau, Violin, Music Director
Participants
Sue Machlin, Amy McCarthy, Robert Soret, Helen Rosenbaum, Susan Lippman & Donna Panton
Supporters & Partners