Technologies of Friendship and Confrontation (2009–2012) was an experiment in social aesthetics developed at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Buenos Aires. The project originated in a conflict that began in late 2008, when the student centre (CECSO) extended its dining hall into a university parking lot, transforming a space of transit into a space of encounter. The rector interpreted the action as “usurpation” and filed a legal case against the activists, breaking with the university’s democratic tradition and criminalizing student protest.
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In response, I initiated a project that invited artists to intervene in the disputed space. Rather than representing the conflict from a distance, the initiative placed artistic practice directly inside it. The works—ranging from performances and installations to photographs and videos—were created collectively with students and activists, transforming the parking lot into a site where law, politics, and art intersected.
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The project explored friendship and confrontation as complementary forces that structure democratic life. Friendship operated as a technology of association, creating bonds of trust, conviviality, and collective invention. Confrontation exposed the limits of institutional tolerance, the frictions between authority and dissent, and the conflicts internal to the collective itself. By staging these dynamics through performance and artistic production, the project opened a laboratory for reimagining public space and the politics of university life.
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Technologies of Friendship and Confrontation functioned simultaneously as an artwork, a civic intervention, and a platform for political imagination. It demonstrated how performance can act as more than a symbolic critique: it can generate environments where dissent, dialogue, and collective invention become constitutive parts of democratic practice.