Invisible Barriers

It was presented as related to the workshop “Environment, object and body” at the Festival Internacional of Performance Ebent ’03, at the Cotxeres Borrell of Barcelona, November 2003.
Duration: 30 min.
http://www.ebent.org/ebent03/home.htm

Invisible barriers: The deaf community is a culturally and linguistically seggretgated community, isolated by invisible barriers. My job as a Sign Language interpreter tries to minimize this seggregation. I asked a deaf person to talk about his artistic and cultural interests. I asked for him to write a text addressed to the hearing community about the social situation, culture and values of the deaf comunity, its situation of marginalization with regard to the hearing artistic world, and I transferred his text to a 15 m long paper roll. I used in a simplified way the role of Interpreter by lending my mouth for the transmission of his words. I pulled the roll out of my mouth as I fixed it on the wall under the row of works of art hanging int the art space called “Les Cotxeres Borrell”.

What is Art?

This is a work realized at the end of the workshop “Environment, object and body”, at the Festival internacional de Performance Ebent’ 03, at the Cotxeres Borrell of Barcelona, November 2003.
Duration: 45 min.
http://www.ebent.org/ebent03/home.htm

”What is Art” is a reflection about attitude and intention as necessary elements for creating art. By using sand collected from an artificial beach of Barcelona, located in a place where no beach existed before, I wrote the sentence “What is Art?” and, over it, I build the layout of an artificial beach in the room of Les Cotxeres Borrell.
The purpose was elaborating an artificial beach in the room with elements taken from an artificial beach located in the shoreline of that town. All around the room beach I spread garbage also previously collected from the artificial beach, and , dressed with the official clothes of local refuse collectors, I started cleaning it up and raking the sand as the local park and garden employees do. With respectful and meditative attitude, I elaborated a zen garden which, again, modified the appearance of the fake beach. Identical manipulations to the ones of local employees, in addition to an attitude based on presence and conscience, gave rise to a process of artistic intervention.

Perderse para encontrarse

International Festival of performatics actions Ebent 04. Barcelona (Novembre-Decembre 2004)
Duration: 45 min.
http://www.ebent.org/ebent04/home.htm

When I was a child I was dreaming of going away far. Dressed like a vagabond walk without course, without destination. Probably because I lived the first days of my life in a suitcase like cradle or probably to imitate the protagonist of the story that thousand times told me, Juanillo " the bear " or " the idiot", because to Juanillo he was changing his name depending on the one who was telling myself the history. My childhood is plenty of stories in which the protagonist travels. Stories that makes me travel and play lead in meetings and fightings against devils, against monsters to which win, against fairies disguised as witches. Travellers that return, after thousand incidents, rich to the place wherefrom they worked out poor.
To repeat the Archetype: The trip is a structure thousand times repeated in our cultural corpus, in our oral traditions. It has taken form and one forms constantly in all artistic manifestations. The religions often impose or recommend peregrinations. Travelling means to escape of the daily automatism. It is a door opened for the capture of conscience on one itself and a door opened for the capture of awareness of the relation of the individual with the world.
Elements of the proposal: The principal element is the "reelaboration", my personal reelaboration of the archetype for what, besides my own interpretation/production I use other reelaborated products: aesthetic elements of the Dance Butoh, reelaboration quasi contemporary of the Japanese tradition that arises in the 50’s of XX century, and Gurdjieff's Dances (gathered dances reinterpreted and re-elaborated from the observation of the former traditions of movement related to the religions of Asia in the first half of the XX century by Gurdjieff).

Genesi

Presented at “Actes de fe i generositat”. Festival internacional de performance. La Bisbal d’Empordà, Girona, España. (2005) Duration: 40 min.
Gresolart
Actes de fe i generositat. La terra sona
Human beings, in order to survive, have developed culture. “Culture” in the widest sense of the word. Habits, beliefs, norms, prejudices, prohibitions... An entire knowledge transmitted through generations and indispensable for the surviving of the community. Most of the time, in this “transmissible wisdom”packages, which conform and order human groups, the most important factor is not the individual, but rather the image of the individual that the package defines. This image has fed us, it has nurtured us, and our bodies receive it in a tactile way. Sometime in the past, the human species added to this wisdom the idea that we are here just transitorily, and that an authentic life is waiting for us in the other world. We ate the apple from the wisdom tree of good and evil, and lost the innocence required for living in Paradise. Therefore, we are travellers in transit through a territory which we do not know now and we will not know because it is not our territory. The one of us, the authentic one, will arrive after Death. Culture involves us and isolates us, filters and modules our perception, defines us and builds us as individuals, and frees us from the animality, transforming us into the beings of Creation which domesticates and subdues it. The other, sad, side of the shiny success is having made us strange in our own home.

" Almost naked like the sons of the sea "

Presented at Infr’action 05 Festival international de performance de Sète, France. (septembre 2005) Duration: 40 min. http://www.infraction.info Based on the last verse of the biographical poem Antonio Machado's "Portrait" I did a meditation on the moment of the death and the life as a constant present time, on the creation of the past and the recollections that remain printed in the life of the persons. Constructed with autobiographical material I presented a poetical meditation with the only certainties that the human being has: the present moment and the certitude of the death.

In the inner cellar of my loved one I drank

Presented in “La interior bodega”, Cicle Inmaterial. Barcelona. (enero de 2006). http://lainteriorbodega.org/

The previous work

I understood this action as the third one of a block in which the same subject matter was approached. The first one, " To get lost to be found " was treating the topic of the archetypal trip. The trip that is reflected in the stories, in the histories of the heroes, in the religious orders. In the ways of life of the mystical orders. The trip that removes you from the mechanical routine, the trip necessary to test and confirm yourself in a experienced manner with the world. The trip one that you can find an treasure. The treasure of the oneself inner change. The second one, " Almost naked like the sons of the sea " was approaching the life as a trip. I was speaking about we coming from we don't know and go away, with the death, towards the same place from which we came. Of the memories of the persons whom we meet, of the memories from that already they departed, of the one that will stay of me when I go away to the place wherefrom I came here. " In the interior... " I proposed to work here the dimension of interior trip as metaphor of death and renaissance in brilliance. This action shapes a unit with the other two. Three it is a common number in romanic languages to speak about the unit. It's used in the holiest trinity to speak about god and in the psychoanalytic Freudian vision to understand the holistic human totallity: Ego, Id and superego. In the transactional analysis, father, adult and child and in Ogden-Richards's semantic triangle to speak about the sign and the linguistic sign (significant, important, relating). Three it is a conclusive and complete number. The third attemp is the definitive one, there are no two without three, where two people fit three people will do... I took advantage of the name and the previous use of warehouse of " The interior warehouse ". I took given the verse of the spiritual Canticle of San Juan of the Cross to which there refers the name of the place, The interior warehouse, to live through an experience of interior transformation. Two anecdotes, the same process In our culture and in the cultural global one through that we live, out of the psychology, we have not developed cultural social technology for the internal transformation of the individual. The suffering and the individual pain that all the human beings we take as the alone fact of living refuse socially recognizing as legitimal pain only the personal serious situations of mortal disease, lost of nearby relatives or other culturally typified tragedies. The rejection and not recognition of the personal pain of the individuals on the other hand has produced the whole cultural avoiding technology in the shape of rules of behavior in the expression of the pain and the emotions, generally of concealment, and about regulation on what an individual "must be" and LIKE "must be". In the process of liberation, already be of a dependence or of a mystical experience of transcendency and union there becomes indispensable the recognition of the cultural technologies to which before I was referring and of the procedure of what " must be " as step necessary to break them, them transgress and transcend . This one is the process that I believe that it happens in the fall in punctured of the alcoholic one and in the " dark night of the soul " of a mystic. The same process with result of liberation if one is successful in him(it). This is what I counted(told) in " In the interior warehouse of my dear one I drank " with Xavier Torns's invaluable help.

A Matter of Men!!!

Videoaction curated by the La Hostia Fine Arts for the Dvd Madrid Performa 07. Madrid (diciembre 2006).

http://lahostiafinearts.blogspot.com/

Duration: 4 min.

A matter for men!!! Is a continuation of my interest for the topic of pain, in the processes of recover from and integration of the pain in the life of people.

In this case, I narrow my focus on this topic into the content of male gender.

The cultural roles that the social machinery transmits in relation to gender do not contemplate the possiblility that men emotionally manifest their feelings. In this way, they ampute the psychological and quasi biological mechanism of mourning steps. Under the pressure of culture, we tend to link with women everything related to empathy, emotionality and crying. Hence, any man daring to use these potentialities proper of human beings will be considered not to be a man, or at least not a true man, or quite simply, a faggot. Men do not cry, they are brave, they have balls....

“A Matter of Men” is the slogan of a brandy label much publicized in the mass media; I make use of this very un-innocent slogan which has worked as a very constraining rule code for men, culturally transmitted.

By using poetic language, I treat two options for experiencing pain. The self-punishment and the non-verbalization of pain: drinking for forgetting. And the challenge that we men can pose to the amputant culture by using the biological capacities which we are born with. Self-introspecting us, expressing our feelings, crying because of what hurts us, and completing the mourning circle in order to assimilate the lost and pursue our search for happiness. Expressing our emotion not only completes us as human beings, but also becomes an engine of self-questioning and social change.

ALTERACIONES

Performer-colaborator in the performance of Beatriz Hoyos and Miguel Losada. Sala de la Cacharrería, Ateneo de Madrid. Madrid. (junio 2007)

Duration: 15 min.

http://www.ateneodemadrid.com/imgInvitaciones/Arteypoesia.pdf

(Re) Producidos

Performer-colaborator in the performance of Beatriz Hoyos and Antigona Corral. Presented at the “Aeropuerto de Barajas Terminal T-2”. (junio 2007) Duration: 1 hour.

Siamese twins. White night in Madrid. Siameses. La noche en blanco

Presented at La noche en blanco in Madrid 22/09/2007 Cuartel del Conde Duque.
Project "uno equis dos"

Growing. Becoming a man (or a woman)

Creciendo. Haciéndome un hombre (o una mujer) presented at Clave53
Duration: 15 min. 20/10/2007.

Hell is coming/World ends today

Hell is coming ... (pdf file) is a project by Andreas Templin selected for Madrid Abierto 2008.

My work in this project was to perform fundamentalism in the streets of the inner city of Madrid like a fundamentalist american preacher during 8 days five hours a day.

My own evaluation about my work in this project can be readed here .

Sellos para "La Más Bella De Pega"

Strip of stamps created for the experimental art review La Más Bella in its last number "De Pega".
Edition february 2008.
http://www.lamasbella.org/
La Más Bella De Pega
All artists' stamps

Action in acción!MAD 08

Action in acción!MAD 08
Link

Madrid 27/11/08
Sala OffLimits
C/ Escuadra 11

Llorar
(por mi, por lxs demás, con lxs demás)

Presento está acción como continuación de otras anteriores en las que he trabajado sobre el dolor implícito en la vida de las personas y su proceso de integración.

No cuestiono el dolor (el dolor inevitable) pues para mi el dolor es parte integrante de la vida.
El proceso de integración, el duelo que sólo se hace sin la interferencia de las normas culturales amputantes, puede ser un elemento de riqueza y superación personal, un elemento de crecimiento y renovación.

Los hombres desde que nacemos soportamos la prohibición, el condicionamiento y el entrenamiento para no llorar.
Se elimina de nuestras vidas un elemento clave para la integración del dolor, el reconocimiento de que el dolor existe y su expresión e integración a través del proceso que comienza necesariamente con las lágrimas.

Los hombres somos una pieza clave en la transmisión de la cultura de la organización social basada en la supremacía masculina y la anulación de la mujer. Esto nos hace pagar el precio de necesitar parecer fuertes y además forzarnos a creerlo y eliminar de nuestro comportamiento cualquier rasgo de debilidad sólo aceptable en lxs que no son HOMBRES.

La supremacía masculina, además de injusta y cruel para con las mujeres, lxs niñxs y para con otros seres vivos, requiere un precio a pagar que consiste en la autoamputación para desarrollar capacidades y mecanismos inherentes a la especie humana, vivir las emociones de todo orden y ser así seres humanos en plenitud.

Mi acción Llorar (por mi, ... ) recorrerá el camino de un hombre imposibilitado culturalmente desde el nacimiento para integrar el dolor a medida que se produce sólo porque se le ha asignado en el momento de nacer, y asume posteriormente, un género.
Reflejará la toma de conciencia del dolor, de los mecanismos culturales de amputación (emocional, sexual, empática) y la brutalidad con que se ejerce la supremacía.
Reflejará también la ruptura personal con la cadena del abuso y el enriquecedor ejercicio de la sanadora capacidad de llorar.

Llorar
por mi para poder reír abiertamente.
por lxs demás para permitirme sentir cómo se sienten lxs otrxs.
con lxs demás para sentirme al lado y no encima de lxs otrxs.

Agradezco a la performer Analía Beltrán que me haya permitido el uso de la grabación de una acción suya para complementar la mía.

Agradezco enormemente a Juan Carlos Rodríguez-Correa su imprescindible colaboración para poder llevar a cabo este trabajo, sin él no habría sido igual.