Perfomance in university television

Fecha: 2008-05-14 04:02:21por: Iris Atma (iris.atma@yahoo.com )


Mexican cultural television is usually progubernametal, stiff and back in time, that for we see reasons to send congratulations to TV UNAM by producing a contemporary performance program. Iris Mexico writes an analysis of the program contents, indicating the necessity of more theoretical quality in the mass media information.

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Congratulations to the university team that manages to include in the television programming contemporary arts subjects, like performance. The protagonists of the system of visual arts know that one of the strategies for creation of publics is the mention of the present art in massive media. One of the challenges is that the content combines quality in theoretical information with agility in timming and edition. The persons who work on the investigation that will culminate in a TV script, they have the responsibility to professionalize them selves in the information of contemporary arts, when that is the subject of the program, in order to maintain objectivity and to present a convincing speech even to eyes of specialists in the matter. It is important to find a balance between offering an artistic document and to entertain, so that the cultural television avoids solemnity by a side and by another one the banal thing, the common place and the superficial decorative thing.

In this article I will write about the program "Performagia"; the name is a copy of an performance event to the date promoted by Pancho López from the Museo del Chopo. This event is one of the efforts to frame and to institutionalize conceptual and contracultural manifestations. Although, the performance exists with or without the institution, with or without the centralism of the capital of the country, this event has gained popularity like marquee for action artists. The program seems to want to show what the performance is and which some of their main exponents are, reason why they interview diverse performers. The declarations of these artists are mixed with moments of their actions and with a voice in off talking about the subject. Nevertheless, the argument falls in theoretical inaccuracies, and basically it is limited to make a chronicle of one of the Performagia events in Mexico City. If the program is the documentation of an Performagia event, 2006, 2007?, it seems to me that it is necessary to clarify this information in the contents in order to avoid suppositions and mistakes in the spectator, because otherwise they cause the doubt about the program selection of contents, if it is made by the TV UNAM team and is a selection of the best from all Performagias since its beginning, or is about the performance in Mexico in general terms and/or is made by the jury from the Performagia event.

I
Performance Origin
Maris Bustamante affirms that she does performance since 38 years ago, when the performance is born... if the program has 2007 as date, we rest 38, so Maris affirms that the performance is born in 1969? In the same program, Hilario Alvarez, Spanish performer affirms: "Performance is born more than one hundred years ago" the voice in off shuts up, with this the spectator is left with the doubt about if believing to one of them or to another or if there is one third option.
Performance roots come from beginnings of twenty century with the dadaist, the Bauhaus theater workshop and other scenic and visual experimentations, among others, crosses the Beatniks movement, and is until the 60's when we found the term "performance" in the United States to describe events that include visual artists, poets, musicians, film directors, etcetera.

II
Artistic radically is in the work importance at its historical moment and NOT in its art gender
Bustamante affirms: "the non-objetual art is more radical than the objetual art". On the matter, no other program protagonist and nor the narrator talk about.
Of course; the painter Picasso is much more radical for art history, as cubism founder, that the 99 point something % of the present Performagia participants of program protagonist. Radically in art is not in its gender (Plastic arts: drawing, engraving, painting, sculpture, photograph. Visual and conceptual arts: installation, ambientation, performance, network art, theoretical art, non-objetual art) but in its historical importance: Residual artists lack importance; they are those who reiterate common or decorative places. It is precise that a proposal renews the artistic language, reason why is with the emergent artists (with quality work, in favor of dominant culture or with contracultural proposals, although still in process to gain a system recognition) and the hegemonic ones (the ones recognized by the system by their critical, market, or mediatic fortune) between those who it is possible to find so-me radical and therefore innovative proposals. The emphasis in so-me is given because the present system recognition can favor somebody by economic or social interests and not by the work importance in historical and aesthetic-artistic-innovative terms.

III
Images without reference or credit
For some strange reason, to exemplify performatic actions, they show in screen diverse works; painting, photographs, sculpture, installation, included in the exhibition "La era de la discrepancia,1968-1997" (the discrepancy era), presented in 2007 in the University Museum of Sciences and Arts of the UNAM. (MUCA); Although in this exhibition appear some performance documents, among them, "My heart" of Pola Weiss and “Patriotic tales” a video of Francis Alÿs in México city historical center. The problem is: the program includes images of this exhibition without notifying the spectator of the museum origin of these images and that many of them are not performance.

IV
Performaces Selection
In relation to the selection of the performances for the program, some of them are mere occurrences or artistic pretensions that lack of conceptual proposal. For example, Lorena Orozco with her action tries to convince us that drawing activities –like making portraits on a park- are cutting edge conceptual arts through the mere fact of locating her self into a cabinet in the subway facilities.

V
Selection of speeches that explain or describe the performance; "literary" subjectivity versus critical objectivity
Talking about the selection of the speeches that explain the performance; the scripwriter and therefore the narrator, put them selves in a subjectivity point of view, lacking theoretical and objective information. I mention something I remember of their words: “Performance is incoherence and logical, prohibited desire, fantasy and reality”.

The same subjectivity is privileged in the artist’s declarations: It is privileged that the program spectators to listen only to the performers to explain their own work, by this way, the spectator can’t have several points of view about the art works that manifest a dialogue with rational and critical objectivity, making so, it is limited the spectator vision when denying him diverse interpretation perspectives. For example: La Congelada de Uva, says that self-mutilation of an iron dick which wears in something similar to a lesbic underwear witch extra big dildo means to talk about “the need that someone cures your soul”, La Congelada, as all action artist, has all the right to say whatever she wants about her own actions. Nevertheless, hardly an objective evaluation of this violent self-castration would say that the message is about healing and cure. Television professionals could present, at least, both points of view, in order to favor publics’ creation and formation.

Performers protagonists
Some of the performers in screen are (name, country): Coco Fusco, Cubá. Rodrigo Viera, Ecuador. Damián Elso, México. Azzul Monraz, México. Hilario Álvarez, Spain. Ana Alonso, Venezuela. Elisa Ulloa, México. "Brama" Santos, México. Lorena Orozco, México. Congelada de Uva (Rocío Boliver) México. Víctor Sulser, México.

TV UNAM
TV UNAM is a project which has been benefited by Foundation UNAM http://www.fundacion.unam.mx, which is born in 1993, and in recent dates has counted with the support of great campaigns in massive communication media and of prestige ex-pupils like Jacobo Zabludowsky. http://www.unam.tv/ http://www.tvunam.unam.mx/ TV UNAM, the television transmitter of the Independent National University of Mexico, is born at the beginning of the 80’s. In the need of their own channel with open signal, UNAM creates a producer with budget and facilities to elaborate cultural and educative series. Their productions are transmitted by State and commercial channels. In these last ones, TV UNAM has space thanks to RTC agreements with the State Department (Secretaría de Gobernación).

TV UNAM programming, in a similar way to other cultural Mexican channels; 11, 22, usually is retro, progubernamental and back in time. They use to include in the programming science and technology in addition to productions about artistic culture. They sin giving preference to the North American, European art of art from the past, from at least fifty years ago, in damage of the contemporary, Mexican or Latin American artist’s diffusion. For example, in the programming from February 3 to 9, they include (program title and time that represents):
1, Chaplin, The Cure, 1917
2, Desolated Hause, of Charles Dickens, Victorian London, from medium to end of century XIX
3, The essential ones: Composers. Abbado, Nono and Pollini. They were born respectively in 1933, 1924 and 1942.
4. The cycle: After the battle. John Byron. 1723-1786.

It is time for massive media to reflect in their programming the alive and contemporary artistic culture. This is another of the reasons why the program Performagia deserves recognition, by including today arts documentation in the television programming.

Credits
The name of the series is "Especial Inventario" the contact email is: inventa@unam.tv, produced by TV UNAM, producer: Beatriz González, realization: Leticia Villavicencio, direction: Guadalupe Alonso, script: Nadia Rodriguez Martinez, Mexico, 2007. Rights are of TV UNAM.


Internet caffe
http://performancelogia.blogspot.com/ Performancelogía performancelogia@gmail.com
www.the-artists.org performance artists and art.
www.bris.ac.uk Live Art Archives at the University of Bristol Theatre Collection
www.emisferica.org e-misférica Performance and Politics in the Americas is a peer-reviewed, biannual publication.
www.performa-arts.org Performa, performance art biennial
www.infraction.info/ INFR'ACTION, performance art festival
http://www.artdaily.com/indexv5.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=17986 Coco Fusco in Miami
http://blacknetart.com/sweat/2002/03/taking-on-body-coco-fuscos-work.html sweat
http://caletadelibros.blogspot.com/2007/08/psicologa-social-de-las-organizaciones.html Caleta de libros caletadelibros@gmail.com
http://www.igac.org/container/deltmmachina/index.php/Hilario_Alvarez Hilario Álvarez ofideaslibres@gmail.com
http://bramasantos.blogspot.com/ Brama Santos bramasantos@gmail.com
http://congeladadeuva.blogspot.com/ Congelada de Uva saberescoger@hotmail.com

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Fecha: 2008-05-14 04:02:21por: Iris Atma (iris.atma@yahoo.com )