Performance and Mexican cultural system I de II

Fecha: 2007-11-08 17:54:26por: Iris Atma (iris.atma@yahoo.com )


Good afternoon to all. In these art event dedicated to Manrique, I add me to the tribute to Jorge Alberto Manrique, who has been always, a hug and a kiss and all the recognition for his work. *

Diverse factors surround the performance work in Mexico: cultural politics, contemporary art and its protagonists. Of such form that the critic that I am interest to me to present you exceeds the analysis of the conceptual work, in this case the performance, and what I look for it is to give a social approach in order that we visualize the structure in which the performance lives or survives in our country.

The cultural performance system implies the actors around: I. Production: Professional schools, art universities, teachers, academics and theoreticians, photographers, video proffesionals, performance artists and collaborators, scenic clothes designers, make up and illumination proffesionals. .. To produce a performance can be as simple as to go out naked and with a newspaper, or to get a considerable amount of money and a specialized team. II. Distribution: Fairs, biennials, galleries, cultural centers and other artistic spaces, performance curators and theoretics, mass media, cultural journalists, catalogues, videos and other documents of the action publishers.. . Distribution is what it allows us, once completed the work that it leaves by the world to see that how it goes for it. III. Consumption: the performance public, patrons, collectors and sponsors... It is when the performance obtains a hearing that valued it within the system.

I. Production

The critic of the art and the performance, great absences in professional studies or could be a tourist-cultural strategy in Mexico
Although performance and art critic are common currency in the artistic system, this fact seems to be ignored in Mexico, except for few and honorable exceptions, in the art superior education schools, that ignore them like subjects in the curriculum, include them occasionally, or in the best one of the situations they implement its exercise like a extracurricular subject. The lack of an integral, updated, professional, global, quality artistic education of is one of the reasons that there are plenty of improvised, residual and amateurs “performers” and “art critics".

Some institutions maintain their curricula without modifications, instead of adapting them to the changing necessities of the time, their lack of renovation takes them to the rocky crag of obsolescence, they are even attached to the past in their names, for example, the use of the words "plastic arts" instead of "visual arts" we can see it in: the National School of Plastic Arts, ENAP, UNAM. The National Painting, Engraving and Sculpture, School, the Emerald, ENPEG, INBA. The Faculty of Plastic Arts of the Veracruzan University, etcetera. Although all we know that plastic arts include painting, sculpture, graph, whereas visual arts incorporate the new technologies and the conceptual art like digital, network, performance manifestations, et cetera, arts that are alive, that the students are eager to know them, whereas it seems to have an institutional resistance to include them in their curricula. In 1994, with the change of the old art schools to inhabit this new construction of the National Center of the Arts, the number of the student plant decreased; acts like this or like the more and more decreased budgets for artistic education, form a sophisticated exercise of state censorship, that affects the development of the performance art.

In the United States studies in Art Criticism and Writing, Art critic and writing are teached in diverse institutions like in the School of Visual Arts, http://www.schoolof visualarts. edu, the Masters of Arts in Modern Art History, Theory and Criticism (MAAH), is teached in the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, in its Web page http://www.artic. edu/ they assure that they impel the students to think beyond their ivory tower, translated to our Aztec land where we have also many ivory towers in the minds of artists and critics, and as well said José Luis Cuevas, “beyond the nopal curtain”. The California Institute of the Arts, http://www.calarts. edu through the School of Critical Studies, offers critical estudies, incorporating rigorous methods of cuestioning and reflection in the creative process, with the objective to generate enthusiasm to read, to write and to develop critical thought as well as artistic production. One M. F.A. in Performance and Interactive Media Arts, is teached in the Brooklyn College of New York, is a cutting-edge program in experimental and transdiciplinary artistic production http://www.interact ivearts.org

Considering the difference in this scene: How many years is Mexico behind in relation with our northern neighbor in terms of artistic education? By rough estimate, minimum thirty years... What as much we mexicans are back in relation to Europe? Almost ten years ago in a trip that I made to Germany, I decided “to look for Latin authors in Germanic bookstores", he he. I admire the critical work of Juan Acha, Peruvian author who lived and died in Mexico, and I asked in the main bookstores for its work, all the Germans watched to me surprised, they never had heard about him! So, after my insistence, they invited to me to ramble by the theory section, of course, with the intention that when I be already walking that way I could choose to buy some book of a theoretician less unknown. As I did not find it, I returned to insist and then they looked for him in the store computer inventory, to end up suggesting me most of the times: "it is a Hispanic name, why don’t you look for him in Spain, there probably you will find him"... I went to Spain, Madrid and Canary Islands, and I don’t know if it is because in the Madrilenian airport and in the city of duty free tourism the art critic are not in fashion, the case is that seeing the absence of Acha I ended up buying "The art of seduction" of Robert Greene. Doubtlessly, language and geopolitics are reasons that influence in education and artistic production.. . English favors learning and international distribution, and if we talk about Spanish, “The Mecca is Madrid”, and from there starts the Iberoamerican distribution. Probably network rules allow us short cuts into this sharp standars. I want to imagine that there exists the possibility, by governmental, private enterprise or from the civil society initiative, to foment the professional artistic education on such a way, that gringos and European come as tourists or “mojados” migrants to Mexico, wishing to update them selves in performance and art critic. I say cheers in order for that moment arrives someday.

Some performance academics, can be or are educative virus in performatic education or learning Between the been born ones in the 50, who began their artistic carrer in the 70 in Mexico, and lived at the time of hippies, rock, love and peace, we count some radical performance artists like Melquíades Herrera. There were provoking, propositive protagonists, who pleased of the excesses in fashion: sex, drugs and alcohol... What caused the death of some by AIDS, cirrhosis, suicide, diabetes, overdose, etcetera. Between the survivors of that generation, some are dedicated to the performance education, are persons from the cultural sistem, who are generally calmer, conservative and work in the universities, institutions, academies, they make their daily work, often more just because they enjoy it than by money, since the pay in the matter of the artistic academy are from low to media. The problem begins when these colleagues of those who they were radical marginals to the system, talk about them selves as if they were the "real radical artists", because this version has its "James Dean attractive", they maintain this version in front of their eighteen years old students, twenty ans some years old students, who are beginning to learn, what is an art carrer about? Some people who dedicate themselves to give performance classes and who are considered the “pioneering and expert ones of performance in Mexico": Maris Bustamante, Mónica Mayer, Araceli Zúñiga, Maria Eugenia Chellet, and several more academics, fall in the vices of the "club of the mutual praises". In addition to the problem that implies an historical distortion, the point is that this restrains the true artistic education, since they are more occupied in selling the great, shiny and varnished version of themselves: "I made this project, and I am performance pioneering, and I knew this and that great artist", that in offering to the students critics, historical, aesthetic, spiritual tools and to foment that they work every time more, but not only the reception of the information but also the search of knowledge by themselves, that is to say, the learning. When we review in a critic form the foundation and trascendence of the performance work of these people (independently of the academic or documentary work) it appears not so great, and it falls much more if it is compared with the one of performers of international stature like Joseph Beuys, Name June Paik, Jas Ban Ader, Fluxus. Or if we spoke of artists related to Mexico: Francÿs Alis, Guillermo Gómez Peña.

It is sad to realize that even art schools as the Emerald are very conservative. The fact that institutional spaces as the ExTeresa Museum, trie to limit contraculture is a double edge weapon. This situation is worrisome because ego, favoritism, protectionism, the politically correct thing has gone straight throug the Mexican academy like a virus that blocks what is different, original, the debate and the controversy. .. In the United States passed the same, the genuine radicals from the sixty passed away in his majority, whereas academic that were the their contemporaries flooded the institutions making people to think that they are "dangerous and political activist" when in fact they are official culture workers and avoid all type of waves. There is too much "educative reform" in hand of the neoconservatives. The only form in which the education and the art production be alive and kicking is with freedom of expression, informed attitudes, new critics perspectives. The solution is that the academic ones, liberal students and culture protagonist denounce the rotten and corrupt where and how it is and forment free thought and free expression. All the one that worries about the future of art in Mexico has the democratic right to demand quality in education, and if he does not manage to improve at the moment the level of performance education, he can always embrace the learning: to make of Internet, the library, the colleagues, the cultural agenda, its professor, to embrace artistic faith, freedom of expression as flag and perseverance to survive and to learn in the experience.

The performer, an island between colleagues or part integrated to a cultural equipment and to the society
Creators often are beings introverts, solitaires, habitants of the myth of "the gifted and hermit artist" and they call temselves anchorets with pride. Mainly creators whose work can be produced in the individual action, as those from plastic arts, literature. The artists whose creation depends on a team tend to be more sociable: dance, theater or cinema, even music. Most of visual artists they are much more introverts, as far as corporal, verbal or social expression, that actors or dancers. The performer sails between both sides, since often he starts working with visual or conceptual arts, but is also nourished with scenic tools. Sometimes, like with Gurrola, the way seems to start in theater to land in the visual arts, nevertheless, as we know well, started in the architecture. .. The performer colleagues can include more performers, photographers, musicians, visual artist, vestuarists, make up, stage and set desing and video proffesionals, technicians of illumination, etcetera... There are performers which they please to work "in solitaire", and others that prefer to summon a great equipment. Some are pleased to appear in front of real public, and others to exhibit solely the documentation of their proposal, by videos, Internet, multimedia, or mass media. Teamwork implies to handle information of cultural promotion (planning, administration, fund raising management and diffusion of projects), to obtain as much leadership as efficient communication, and very important, clarity in a matter of egos, responsibilities and credits. The human nature could make us and make our teamwork: distrusted, sensitive, disoriented, without conduction, paralyzed... People exist to whom to work in equipment is simply something that they don’t mind and they aren’t interest about to learn to do it. Who are interested in working in equipment, they analyze the processes, become qualified in order to find the form to collaborate in armony. Every time is commonest to listen to speak of cultural management, art marketing and fund raising...

In spite of being able talk about a context of the present art, great part of the actors of Mexico art we continue within "the limbo lagoon" a Mexican art limb. We do not try to know us sufficiently between national colleagues nor between the Central or South American, Latin American, Ibero American, or even, to know the work of "that other" that can be Russian, Chinese, Arab, et cetera... We, general and lamentably, ignore ourselves an to the others with absolute persistence.

-go to the second part of the text...

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Fecha: 2007-11-08 17:54:26por: Iris Atma (iris.atma@yahoo.com )