Artistasdeguardia (Artist on guard) was an art collective active from 2007 till 2010. It was formed by Lucas Agudelo and Lucia Antonini. We started in 2007, inspired by the first collective that Lucia and Lorenzo Sandoval formed, called ACA, with whom we produced and curated the exhibition Bordilíneos that was shown in Oporto, (Portugal), Madrid and Valencia, (Spain) where Lucas participated as an artist.

As Artistasdeguardia, (1st season: Lucas Agudelo and Lucia Antonini), Daniel Gonzalez invited us to curate and organize an exhibition for the independent festival Ruidocracia that he was producing. For that occasion we invited the following artists: Democracia, Daniel Silvo, C.A.S.I.T.A, Tajedoraccec, Ángela Cuadra, Limber Vilorio, Raphaël Larre, Iván Pérez, Loreto Alonso, Flavio Escribano (Ars Games), Busto Bocanegra, Alfonso Escudero, Carlos Llavata and we were participating as artists as well.

In 2009 Alma Orozco joined the group and we released the works, "Stand de decisiones gratis" (Free of charge decision stand), “Arte/Amor” (Art/love) and “Fiestas de citas” (Quotation party).

In 2010 we stopped working as a collective.

WORKS

“QUOTATION PARTY”, AT STUDIO BANANA, MADRID, 2009.

Every guest should bring a list of 10 favorite quotations of any kind: philosophy, art, history, sports, cinema, TV, etc. The game was based on the fact that we could only speak using a “quotation script”. When we ran out of quotations, we could also try one of our fortune biscuits or pick one of the “quotations” from our different jars, organized by topics.

We wanted to highlight our culture of collage and fragmented narratives, whose meanings are often the outcome of any kind of combinations and intersections of information out of context. We also wanted to make fun of the formalities of most of the academic speeches, maximizing the use of quotations in an absurd way and claiming the TAZ (“temporary art zone”) as a form of collective creation.

“STAND FOR FREE OF CHARGE DECISIONS”, WHITE NIGHT MADRID, 2009.

 During the White Night, 2009, we set a stand on the street where we offered a service of making decisions, free of charge. The passers-by could present any personal conflict and we offered them the decision we thought the best, depending on the case. “Artist on guard” warned that we didn't assume any responsibility over the consequences of those decisions, in case they were put into practice.

The subject of The White night festival that year was: “gifts". The night of such an action lasted 5 hours and we received thousands of doubts about people’s lives.

It was fun, taken as a game, but at the same time, that action of listening was playing an important role. Initially we did it with certain irony: selling the unsellable and outlining how our society in some ways take decisions for us, making us believe that we are the ones thinking. But then we realized that we were covering a real need: opening a “space” for talking and be listened to.

“ART/LOVE”, PERFORMANCE, 2010.

“Ultimately, the reign of freedom, compromises us specially with the responsibility, either from the ethic and esthetic perspective. This can be the great lesson of contemporary love”.

We took the text written by the art critic Francisco Calvo Serraller for the catalogue of the national art prize for young artist “Premio de Arte Joven, Generaciones 07”. It speaks about the origin of Art.  We replaced the word “art” and its derivatives (“artistic”, “artist”…) with “love” and its equivalents (“lover”, “lovely”…).The reading gets thus a different meaning, creating a paradox in the search of the origins of art. This search might be as ridiculous as the analysis of the origin of love, and the reading creates beautiful surprises.

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