La pregunta es, ¿Por qué en  la era en la que vivimos requiere sacudir e impresionar a las personas para que piensen? Aunque este tipo de arte a menudo se llama "alienante", lo veo más como un dedo poético en la garganta para curar una panza lleno de mentiras. Mientras presenciaba el auge del fascismo en la Alemania de 1930 y estaba entre los pocos que predecían el horror que sobrevino en Europa en ese período, el dramaturgo disidente del siglo XX Bertolt Brecht compartía el impulso de Quiles:

Mi objetivo es acercarme al enemigo [audiencia] y desencadenar en ellos una respuesta sísmica.

Para lograr la respuesta sísmica, Brecht desarrolló un dispositivo teatral al que llamó “géstico sociales"— la “expresión mímica y géstica de las relaciones sociales que vinculan entre sí a los hombres de una determinada época” — que infundía entretenimiento con las consecuencias espeluznantes del poder corrupto. De Brecht en el teatro:

La pompa de los fascistas, tomada en su valor nominal, tiene un gesto hueco, el géstico de simple pompa, un fenómeno sin rasgos distintivos: hombres pavoneándose en vez de caminar, cierta rigidez, mucho color, autoconsciencia sobresaliendo de sus pechos, etc. Todo esto podría ser el géstico de alguna fiesta popular, completamente inofensivo, puramente factual y, por lo tanto, ser aceptado. Solo cuando los pavoneos se llevan a cabo sobre cadáveres, vemos el géstico social del fascismo.

Quiles dice muy poco acerca de sí mismo o de su proceso, e invita a los espectadores a hacer sus propias interpretaciones. Mi interpretación es que usa las armas pulidas y seductoras de la publicidad—las imágenes sexualizadas, los logos corporativos, colores festivos a menudo, y una especie de "ternura" saludable para muchas de las figuras que retrata— para atraer al espectador lo suficientemente cerca para ver los cadáveres debajo del desfile.

Si el efecto es inquietante, rectificador o condenatorio depende de si uno tiene la perspectiva de colaborador, sobreviviente o perpetrador.

Adriana Gamondes es editora colaboradora de Age of Autism y una de las administradoras de redes sociales del blog. Traducción al español por Alberto Castro.

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By Adriana Gamondes

Age of Autism is honored to announce the release of a new book by Barcelona artist Luis Quiles titled The Antisocial Networks which Quiles describes as a personal dissection of modern society.

The book also includes several stunning expressions of vaccine politics which the artist has generously allowed to be published here for the first time.  Though most regular readers will recognize the figures immortalized in the images above, included are CDC Whistleblower William Thompson, California Senator and vaccine mandate crusader Richard Pan, and vaccine industrialist Paul Offit.

Quiles’ book is available for preorder on Amazon only in Spain, Italy and France, but since Amazon USA carries other of Quiles’ works, The Antisocial Networks may eventually be available for direct order in the US.  Quiles’ past and current works can be viewed via Instagram, Facebook, Twitter  and DeviantART.  

Predictably, the art of Luis Quiles is often flagged as “NSFW” (not safe for work) and “adult content” because it unflinchingly covers a range of ironies, tragedies, atrocities and exploitation from child sex trafficking to war collateral to the pandemic of cyber alienation. Be warned: his work is an assault on conscience. Just don’t ask him what it means. In the Spaceman crowdfunding website through which Quiles published the book to avoid censorship, Quiles will only outline his general intent:

I see my work as a way to grab people by the chest and shake them to make them think about what they see.

Quiles describes being bombarded with criticism that his work is gratuitously perverse by people who are either unaware of the long and honored tradition of artists using black humor, garish symbolism and raw suffering to trigger political awakening… or by those who are fully aware of the power of political art to do just that and would rather it didn’t.


If political art wasn’t powerful, Bill Gates wouldn’t have attempted to hijack the tradition  to push vaccines in 2015. Furthermore  political art and satire wouldn’t be included as major strategies in the bible of civil disobedience, The Politics of Nonviolent Action by Gene Sharp which has been used by resistance movements around the world.

The question is, what is it about the era we live in that requires shaking and shocking people to make them think?  Though this brand of art is often called “alienating,” I think of it more as a proverbial finger down the throat to cure a gut full of lies. While witnessing the rise of fascism in 1930s Germany and being among the few to predict the horror that overtook Europe in that period, 20^th century dissident playwright Berthold Brecht shared Quiles’ impulse:

My aim is to get the enemy [audience] at close quarters and unleash in them a seismic response. 

To achieve the seismic response, Brecht developed a theatrical device he called “social gestics” which infused entertainment with the grisly, graphic consequences of corrupted power.  From Brecht on Theater:

The pomp of the Fascists, taken at its face value, has a hollow gest, the gest of mere pomp, a featureless phenomenon: men strutting instead of walking, a certain stiffness, a lot of colour, self-conscious sticking out of chests, etc. All this could be the gest of some popular festivity, quite harmless, purely factual and therefore to be accepted. Only when the strutting takes place over corpses do we get the social gest of Fascism. 

Quiles says very little about himself or his process, instead inviting viewers to make their own interpretations.  My take is that he uses the polished, seductive weapons of PR—sexualized images, corporate logos, often festive colors and a sort of wholesome “cuteness” to many of the figures he portrays—to lure the spectator in close enough that they can’t unsee the corpses beneath the parade.

Whether the effect is unsettling, rectifying or damning depends on whether one carries the perspective of collaborator, survivor or perpetrator. 

Adriana Gamondes is a contributing editor to Age of Autism and one of the blog’s social media administrators.