A young man with a beautifully sculpted body, dressed only in silver briefs, performs a dance on a podium lit by bulbs.
He wears headphones, so only he can listen to the music: absorbed in it, he presents himself as an object before the public gaze.
This happens five minutes a day - each time at a different time - at the
Félix Gonzalez-Torres
exhibition
.
Relationship politics
, which the MACBA of Barcelona dedicates to the Cuban-American artist who died in 1996 due to complications derived from AIDS.
That pandemic that continues to operate while the Covid-19 pandemic has not been eradicated either.
These are bad times for bodies.
And yet, or perhaps precisely because of that, the art world seems to require them more than ever.
It is not uncommon for museums and galleries to be the scene of dance shows, while
performances such
as González-Torres' piece occupy an ever-increasing space in their programming.
The Venice art biennale has awarded the Golden Lion in its last two editions for national pavilions based on this discipline (Anne Imhof in Germany in 2017 and Lina Lapelyte, Vaiva Grainyte and Rugile Barzdziukaite in Lithuania in 2019) .
And the Guggenheim in New York recently opened Re / Projections, an exhibition that interacts with the architecture of the building designed by
Frank Lloyd Wright
.
The work entitled “Untitled (Go-go dancing platform)” dated 1991, is one of the pieces that can be seen at the MACBA during the retrospective of the Cuban-American artist Félix González-Torres.Marta Perez / EFE
Given the relevance that in recent times
performance
is gaining
and its greater permeability with performing arts such as dance or theater, the English term
live art
has been extended
, which when translated into Spanish as “living arts” acquires different connotations.
But in reality,
performance
and art as action have been around for a long time.
In the second decade of the 20th century, the Zurich Dadaists, for example, brought their eccentric actions to the stage of the Cabaret Voltaire.
In the sixties and seventies these practices reached a boom related to the spirit of the moment - counterculture,
hippy
movement
, May 68 - that dematerialized art to react against its commercialization, while seeking a more intense experience of the aesthetic experience.
The American Allan Kaprow was one of the pioneers (he developed the term
happening
which refers to a
multidisciplinary artistic manifestation), together with Joseph Beuys, Niki de Saint Phalle or Yoko Ono.
In our country, groups such as Zaj or the Cooperativa de Producción Artística y Artesana (CPAA) stood out.
In the same way, choreographers such as Merce Cunningham or Paul Taylor have conceived pieces that interacted with the work of visual artists, and the artist Robert Rauschenberg collaborated with both, designing lights, scenery and costumes.
Performances occupy a growing space in museums and galleries.
In the image, the work 'E gira tutto intorno alla stanza' by Bernat Daviu, 'performance' held at Caixa Forum (Madrid) at the end of 2019. E gira tutto intorno alla Stanza in Caixa Forum
Today the story continues.
For example, the Madrid gallery NF / Nieves Fernández decided a few months ago to complement its exhibition offer with live actions.
Thus came
Camping
, an initiative conceived as a meeting point between creators and the public camped in its space, among works of art.
The project has been developed in six hands by the gallery owners Nerea and Idoia Fernández and the lawyer specialized in copyright Blanca Cortés, all of whom are fond of the performing arts in general and dance in particular.
Nerea Fernández believes that these practices are especially important in current times: “Perhaps the pandemic has accentuated its need, because we are scared to death and the body has had to isolate itself, we cannot let it flow.
Dance makes you understand, among other things, the weight of the body ”.
At the moment there have been three events that have been organized under the Camping brand: two dance pieces by Julián Lazzaro and Natalia Fernandes, and the
performance
Anatomy and Strategy
, by Carlos Maté and Elena Urucatu.
The next one will take place in June, and will be a joint work by the plastic artist Pipo Hernández and the choreographer Poliana Lima.
"A good example of this crossing of disciplines, which will also have the participation of the public," announces the gallery owner.
To attend the
Camping
sessions, it
is necessary to register through the gallery's website and pay the five euros for the entrance fee.
The proceeds go entirely to the artist, so the gallery does not obtain financial benefits.
"Our purpose is also activist," explains Fernández.
“We wanted to support these creators.
And in the same way that we invite performing artists to our gallery, we would like it to happen the other way around.
I long for the days of
the Bauhaus
, whose creators made works for theater or ballet.
I wish that would also happen thanks to
Camping
”.
Presentation of 'El Amor Projects', in the Royal Botanical Garden of Madrid Botanical Prologue in the Villanueva del Botánico Pavilion
Already last September, thanks to an agreement with the Teatros del Canal promoted by NF, there was a live arts program in the Apertura spaces, the opening event of the season in Madrid galleries.
The intervention of the company of Begoña Quiñones and Verónica Garzón in the José de la Mano gallery, in front of an imposing textile sculpture by Aurèlia Muñoz, was pointed out as one of the best moments of that pandemic opening.
And that is not always easy to link dance and visual arts.
There is a risk of incurring the arbitrary, if not directly in the
kistch
.
"It's a very fragile issue," admits Eduardo Rivero, executive producer and founder of the cultural production company El Amor Projects.
"It may be pure poetry, but other times it is difficult to digest."
Among the activities of El Amor Projects, dance and the living arts in general have a fundamental weight.
They have organized
dance
performances
in places like the Royal Botanical Garden of Madrid or the Prado Museum.
After a forced stoppage due to the pandemic, they are now working on several projects at the same time.
For after the summer they are scheduled to release a film about a piece they made last December with the choreographer Antonio Ruz.
Later this year or early 2022 they will present
Vortex Exchange
, a performance program that was originally planned as a circuit through art galleries, but which they have now decided to give a broader scope that they are still shaping.
'El Amor Projects' plans to release a film after the summer about a piece they made last December with the choreographer Antonio Ruz.
Botanical Prologue in the Villanueva del Botánico Pavilion
Rivero believes that the current interest of the artistic world in the performing arts has to do above all with the fact that, in times when traveling becomes more complicated, the focus is on the more local scene: “Not attending international fairs or exhibitions It makes you more attentive to the actions and artists around you, including those belonging to other disciplines.
I do see a small emergence of all this, as if the body were in fashion, but I think it is related to this return to the local ”.
The truth is that we are increasingly used to finding
performances
in the art centers of our country.
Or in the streets.
There is, for example, the case of the platform performance arts festival in Santiago de Compostela, whose second edition is held this year between May 26 and June 5, which includes artists such as Pilar Albarracín (which will close with a
performance
its current exhibition at CGAC), La Ribot (artist who in his work embodies the fusion between dance and visual arts), Carlos Garaicoa or Vasco Araújo.
And we must also cite recent exhibitions such as
Action.
A provisional history of the 90s
and
Fina Miralles.
I am all those who have been
at MACBA,
Collection XIX.
Performance
at CA2M or those of María Teresa Hincapié at gallery 1 Mira Madrid, Dora García at Juana de Aizpuru and Miss Beige at Ponce + Robles.
In March,
We Dance, You Mean
, a collective about the movement of the body began at Cerquone Gallery Madrid.
And another gallery, The Ryder, stands out for the attention that its entire program has paid to
performance
since its opening in Madrid a year and a half ago.
Geumhyung Jeong's inaugural exhibition was in this representative of his later career.
In January another closed with work by William Mackrell whose central axis was a
live
musical performance, and the current show (
Noli me tangere
) is a collective one in which almost all the works have a greater or lesser performative element: especially the photos and the video by Miguel Benlloch (promoter of the Andalusian Homosexual Liberation Front) in which he offers his vision on identity beyond sexual binarism, or some textile pieces by Anna Perach conceived to be activated as - according to the artist's definition -
wearable sculptures
.
In April he will inaugurate another exhibition by Antoni Hervás, with drawings, sculptures and video, all of a scenographic and performative nature.
The Ryder project stands out for the attention that its entire program has paid to performance since its opening in Madrid a year and a half ago.
In the image, a project by William Mackrell presented in the gallery space at ARCO 2018. Agnese Sanvito
The owner of The Ryder, Patricia Lara, also cites militant motivations for this support of an artistic practice that is generally little known, and that in the current situation is more vulnerable.
"The moment we are living now is when we have to support these artists the most," he says.
“I do not expose
performance
to sell it, but for the love of art.
But if you think that as a gallery owner it makes no sense to do this because there are only costs and no income, I can say that in the first two editions of ARCO that I participated, we presented two
performances
, one by William Mackrell and the other by Andrea Galvani, and both years I sold the whole stand ”.
So, defying the idealistic principles of those authors of half a century ago, the market has been able to turn performance into an object of sale.
In this way, its artists can obtain an economic return beyond the here and now of the moment of representation.
Thus, The Ryder herself recently sold
Babá Baroque
to CA2M in Móstoles
,
a performance by the artist Nora Barón - whose personality is not revealed in public and is hidden behind her interpreters - in which different characters camouflaged among the public perform slightly strange actions during an inauguration, generating a climate of confusion among the attendees.
“In this case we deliver to the museum a script with instructions to represent it, plus a photographic documentation of the representation in our gallery and the clothing that the characters must wear, in addition to a series of pieces that can be shown as part of the representation, or as part of separately ”, explains Patricia Lara.
The Ryder recently sold to CA2M in Móstoles a 'performance' by the artist Nora Barón in which different characters camouflaged among the public perform slightly strange actions during an inauguration.
In the image, 'Babá Baroque' (2020) in The Ryder, MadridCA2M
The Dos de Mayo Art Center (CA2M, Móstoles, Madrid) is another institution that has been characterized by its support for this discipline.
It is an element that appears on a recurring basis in its programming, starting with the aforementioned
Collection XIX
, shows with
performance
works
from the CA2M and Fundación ARCO collections.
Specific workshops, the Picnic Sessions on your terrace or the activities of the Autoplacer festival have also participated in this spirit.
He has recently inaugurated an exhibition on Javier Utray ("architect, writer, painter, plastic artist, musician and composer, performer and, essentially, a cultural agitator of the first order", the program defines him), which includes the reconstruction of the
Penta-Marcelian Pantheon,
a work that the artist himself destroyed during a
performance
on its opening day, in 1977.
On this, Manuel Segade, director of the museum, makes a declaration of intent: “A museum like ours is not directed to the eye, but to the entire body of the visitor.
And it is not that CA2M has a special interest in
performance
, but that performativity, the involvement of the whole body, is in the nature of contemporary art, which was born in the change of mentalities of the mid-1960s that coincided with revolutions. social class (May 68), gender (Stonewall) and ethnicity (the end of the European colonial empires).
Now there is an emergence of multiple movements for equality and parity of genders, social classes and ethnicities, which necessarily puts the body at the center, as a space for social battle.
The first rebellion occurs in the body, as the first battle front is always the cultural ”.
In April 2020, on the occasion of International Dance Day, the Prado Museum hosted 'Equilibrio', a work produced by ELAMOR and performed by eight dancers from the National Dance Company (INAEM) who develop a choreography by Mar Aguiló. at the Museo Nacional Del Prado