GRIP, Internships Abroad "Buenos Aires Existe"

Teamworks - Buenos Aires, Argentina

On our first (and second) Wednesday in the city, a group of GIP in Buenos Aires interns and myself took advantage of the free, extended hours at MALBA (Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires). We wandered around mixed media from different political eras, across different parts of the Americas, amazed to find the art curated in a manner that ignores geography and European terms. MALBA's permanent collection clusters pieces thematically, exploring subjugation, power, and creation. There is City as real. City as dreamed. City as abstract. City as outspoken. City as marginalizing. Hanging at the entrance to another gallery is a street sign that reads "Buenos Aires no existe," quoting the first line of a cynical letter Marcel Duchamp wrote during his stay in the city 100 years ago when he was convinced everything porteño was borrowed from elsewhere. 

It takes just a few days of sightseeing to understand why Buenos Aires has been dubbed "the Paris of South America"--cafés line the streets and plazas abound. And though I haven't been to Paris, the city does have a recognizable vibe. There are parts of BA life, like the long bus commute to work from my homestay or the appearance of sidewalk magazine stands every few blocks, that are all too familiar to me as a New Yorker.

Still, Buenos Aires is bustling and proud. Porteños personally greet and say goodbye to every person they meet. Building exteriors are teeming with French-style swirls and political graffiti. Tiled sidewalks are narrow with bits often jutting out (a challenge for a klutz like me). Walking around in the rain becomes a game of dodging one umbrella after another. "Gooooolllll" floats from plazas with FIFA viewing parties to billboards plastered with Messi-sponsored products. Subway performers carry whole microphone sets onto crowded cars. People stride clutching their bags and recording audio messages to friends into their phones. Cigarette smoke tangos with parrilla smoke. Taxis spill freely over lane lines, and mayo oozes from churrasquitos that are impossible to tear apart. 

Buenos Aires is expansive and abundant. Rows of wrapped alfajores line corner store counters. Dulce de leche takes the form of spreads, ice cream, cakes, candy bars, and medialuna filling. Sunday market vendors sell mate gourds of wood and steel and ceramic and squash, covered with cowhide or Mafalda cartoons. An international poetry festival at one of the city's free cultural centers features a Dutch woman performing in English, a piece that was inspired by protesting porteños. Young men and women don green bandanas to show support for a law to legalize abortion that's being deliberated in the Congreso de la Nación. Money changers standing a few feet apart on a busy street cry out that they can offer "cambio, cambio." Journalists and actors clamor on the nightly news as the peso depreciates. Anchors discuss statements made by the President and by the Pope. 

Buenos Aires is excess, variety, and choice. And Buenos Aires won't take "no" for an answer. Beneath the street sign hanging in MALBA, the artist of the piece framed a letter of his own: "Mon Cher Marcel Duchamp, Buenos Aires existe."