Grupo Scenica Internacional: Arts and Leadership: Strategic ventures for the socio-cultural development of Venezuela

Arts has been a topic of much discussion between the performers and critics at different times of history. From the gesture on the scene y to the stroke on canvas have been undeniable footprints in times of peace, in war, in large conventions, in major negotiations, treaties, at the peak moments, and in the most silent years. We have made room in the large drawers of world history: prehistoric, ancient, old classic, medieval, renaissance, romanticism, avant-garde, postmodern, twenty-first century… and not stopped counting titles and descriptions.

Art is the instrument of humans. From the cave of Altamira in Spain to the Sistine Chapel in Italy, from Gego’s Reticulárea 75 to the Carlos Cruz-Diez’s multiple colour-rithmics networks, from Shakespeare’s Hamlet to Schiller’s William Tell, from a non existent Colossus of Rhodes to a Gizah pyramid, it says, it announces, it manifests, loudly, silently, but in these there is a something. That something provides much analysis and understanding in different ways and discursive tensions, but there is a discursive tensión and a way a so rich and impressive as is the issue of power and influence. Art posses it and turn it into discourse or action – or both – at least as planned and expected. Art as an escape, as an enclosure, as a process is a field of power, a influence premeditation. This space of power comes from the hand of the human being: interest in creation, advocating the ideology, reporting the symbol, emancipation of a “just” social order.

Despite its space, art has created great and forgotten masterpieces; it has generated enormous political, religious, and even social disputes; it has put enemies and other countries in honest brotherhood; but in the last decades of twentieth century and in this first years of the twenty-first century art has not said anything else, it has not produced anymore, it has not generated more. Some say because art is dead; others, because there’s nothing else to be said; some others repeat and assure that that what they do is just a repetition; others translate their artirtic past; others turn it into context of their time; but – they insist – art does not give anything else. However, art continues, it keeps on gaining public and entire cities as the very theatrical beginning in Ancient Greek. There are still artista, creators, critics and thonkers. So what do we see today as art? A space of power? Power?

The cities are the main places where this power of art processes are fought. Gran Caracas, Maracaibo, Mérida, Barquisimeto, Maracay, Puerto Ayacucho and San Fernando de Apure are some of this places in our country. Today, in each one of this cities, artists –in addition to the dispute for physical spaces for the dissemination of the arts– present their work, practice their profession and put t use power. ¿How does this occur and in what way is developed this use of power? Leadership.

That is why “Grupo Scenica Internacional” believes deeply in thios kind of leadership and pretends to leverage as representative of a mixed character (private and public) of performing arts in Venezuela.

To make this possible, we’re structured in a horizontal base of shared leadership that consolidates into a collective decisions body, but clearly defined in regard to: External institutional contacts, internal organizational contact, creative, artistic and managerial elaboration, under a structure of independent and self-sustained projects, aimed at:

a. Actively penetrate the public into performing arts.

b. Develop strategies and projects for the renewal of cultural policies and cultural diffusion.

c. Investigate the current Venezuelan sociocultural reality to recognize our audience and their needs and motivations.

d. Run platforms of projects of social investment and sustainable development for the administration of cultural proposals and diffusion strategies.

This are just some of our goals. We invite every person, group, organization or institution interested in develop creative activities or in planning artistic strategies, to share their ideas and projects that surely will find a space to impulse the new socio-cultural leadership in our country and the world.