The International Museum of Women, an online art gallery, which aims to foster dialogue and promote new educational directions for women and in relation to issues of women’s rights and opportunity, is hosting an exhibit called ‘Ecomomica‘, which explores the role women play in the evolving global economy.

The exhibit explores whether the global economic crisis has in fact created opportunities for women, the question of whether food is a basic human right and how scarcity affects women and what women do to counter it, whether women might be “paying for China’s economic prosperity with their bodies”, the dynamics of leadership and power, and how women may be changing the Arab and Islamic world.

The exhibit’s themes also touch on women’s access to capital, through traditional banking and more innovative micro-lending programs, the practice of linking credit to education and healthcare, which helps to create personal security and future opportunity, and the effect of debt inherited by women from family or deceased husbands and how banking failures in the west have affected communities.

Also of real importance is the response of women around the world to mounting economic pressures: in many communities across the world, women have begun to organize in order to help ensure their families or communities are protected against some of the more severe risks of a global marketplace for goods and services.

• Visit the exhibit at IMOW.org
• Or join our discussion on the Hot Spring Network

Superávit (surplus energy) is an exhibit to be organized and hosted in Barcelona, in 2009-2010 to feature painting, photography, books, short film, discussions, regarding ways in which the pace of prevailing lifestyles causes breakdown in our sense of cohesion, morally, economically, and in the visionary sense of one’s own purpose. We are at the focal point of a vast combining and stitching-together of resources and approaches, and the nature of life in the human world is, as a result, now constantly redefined.

There is a basic need to expend or dispose of excess energy, what is left over after the vital processes of the body, the mind, the work of survival, have played out. That energy, which can feed our creative or destructive capabilities —our imagination, our pathologies, our sense of urgency or principle or spiritual pursuit— is a burden which we must all learn to live with, to exploit, to approach without fear or remorse.

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Too often, we fall into the traps and perils related to this interplay of forces, without necessarily keeping balance in mind, without moving to take up the strategy of most prolonged harmony. The show will include ecological analysis, information, discussions related to society’s general approach to dealing with what Georges Bataille called “the accursed share”, and artistic expressions of related subjects, problems, crisis situations, personal dramas and quickenings of the spirit.

THE LAST YAK, PANGOLIN’S TEATIME, PLEASANCE DOME
****

Pangolin’s Teatime are a young Edinburgh-based puppet theatre company, who in 2007 picked up a clutch of awards at the National Student Drama Festival for their previous work Haozkla. This year they return to the Fringe with a new original production, and have created a thoughtful, mature fairy tale about power, reality and the magic of belief. With lovingly handcrafted masks and puppets, some rod, some glove, and a flair for storytelling, this is a beautifully thought-through work that should appeal to adult and child alike.

As the audience file into the Kingdome studio, the company are backstage and in the wings, surrounding us with the sounds of the jungle – rasping crickets, whooping monkeys, whistling birds and more. A narrator booms out that “in the beginning”, the Tiger gave orders in the jungle, and went on a search for God by climbing the mountain, passing the search to other animals as he climbs higher, until, at the summit, the Yak is discovered. As there is no-one higher, the jungle adopt the Yak as their divinity. This sequence is told as an enchanting piece of shadow-puppetry, before the almost-life-size papier mache models enter. We are treated to the parallel tales of the power struggle within the jungle, as the Bears attempt to usurp the Tiger’s leadership role, and the human story of a brother and sister coming to terms with the loss of their father. Hinging the two stories is the puppet-child Dharla, who inhabits both realities at once. As the play unfolds, the two realities unfurl and ripple into each other, and by the conclusion it seems the frontier has come down altogether.

The jungle community is beautifully realised and performed, with the sardonic Crocodile providing comic relief during the weekly jungle meetings, and the scheming but delightfully charming Bears doing their best to spend every minute of the day eating. There are fantastical creatures here too – the Dzo, and the Mango Ferrets – and the workmanship and handling of the puppets are first rate. The human story, while not as strong, provides a useful dramatic counterpoint to the jungle world, and the performers are committed and engaged with their creation. Puppetry, in all its varied forms, is undergoing a welcome revival, and Pangolin’s Teatime deserve to be at the creative vanguard of the movement. A treat.

15.40, until August 25

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TALKING HEADS PLUS, GEMS OF MAZAL, THE MEADOWS
***

Alan Bennett is much admired and much performed, but his characters are currently being given voice in a more unusual setting than he is probably used to. Stop by the Sainsbury’s Local on the Meadows this Fringe at around 6pm, and you’re likely to be greeted by a group of twentysomethings milling about, a skateboard doing the rounds, chirpily singing songs, before one of them begins narrating an excerpt of what sounds like Roald Dahl in a heightened voice. As he starts his speech, the company sets off down Middle Meadow Walk into the greenery, trailing an audience behind them. This is Talking Heads Plus, combining Bennett’s much-loved pieces with works by other authors, and claiming to bring the monologue form to life as you’ve never seen before.

After a rhyming poem about Matilda, and a speech given from the top of an upturned electrical cable roller, a girl jumps on the skateboard and races down the way, soliloquising as she goes. Her words may get lost as the distance between her and the spectators grows, but we traipse after her in the wind and the chill to catch the end of her segment. We’re then treated to a fine performance of Bennett’s Soldiering On at the side of the path. With local dogs ambling into the action, and curious passers-by joining the growing crowd, actress Ruth Thompson captures the essence of Muriel’s stoical, chin-up tragedy, prompting laughs along the way. After a final monologue by a man in a camouflage jacket, the company break into a rendition of Arlen and Koehler’s Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, and skip off into the distance, leaving the audience to melt away.

It’s debatable whether the open-air setting helps or hinders the performers – it’s an ultra-naturalistic, stripped-down approach to presenting theatre, with no special costumes, no setting of scenes, and no programme to enlighten the audience as to what it is we’re watching at any one point. The shock tactic of ending the lengthy Bennett monologue with a segment of The Vagina Monologues gives a nice dramatic shift, as our attention is yanked to another part of the Meadows, but with no defined space in which to work, and the scattergun effect of the quickly-shifting vignettes, the actors are required to work that much harder to create focus for their particular scenes. On the whole, they rise to the challenge, and Talking Heads Plus provides a pleasant, intriguing hour of exploring the boundaries of what makes theatre, and how to present it.

18.00 and 20.00, until August 20

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SCARAMOUCHE JONES, GUY MASTERSON TTI, ASSEMBLY SUPPER ROOM
*****

Justin Butcher is a man of many talents. Not content with penning a sumptuous script, full of wonder, lyricism, evocative imagery and beautifully crafted turns of phrase, as a performer he also keeps the audience wrapped in his spell for an hour and a half, never slackening or flagging. It’s an extraordinary achievement, and Scaramouche Jones is as delightful, funny, moving and thoughtful a Fringe show as could be hoped for.

The ancient titular clown is on the cusp of his hundredth birthday, at the dawn of the 21st century, and tonight is to be the last of his life. For his swansong, he takes the audience with him on a recounting of his magical story, of his origins and his adventures through the twentieth century, from his birth to a gypsy whore in a fishmonger’s in Port of Spain, Trinidad, through Senegalese slave traders, North African snake charmers, Italian nobility and Romany travellers from Eastern Europe. The play takes a darker turn as Scaramouche is captured by the Nazis and imprisoned in a concentration camp in Split, before concluding with his arrival in post-war London to begin his career as a clown. As he says, “half a century to make the clown, half a century to perform the clown.”

Throughout his travels, he is the wide-eyed innocent with the unnaturally white face, recipient of action rather than agent, leaping (and being thrown) from one adventure to the next as Butcher leaps from side to side of the stage, now crouching behind ship ropes to peer at his mother receive her train of nightly customers, now straddling his writing desk as he rides a camel over the sands of Africa. As the show progresses, Butcher sheds his several layers of costume, red nose, wig, jacket, as Scaramouche comes closer to freeing himself of his history. The physicality of the performance combines with his rich delivery of the lines, themselves deliciously thick and heady, like a soup. Scaramouche conjures up for us the smells and sounds of Trinidad, North Africa, Somalia and Nuremburg, as his face becomes ever whiter and his destiny draws closer, against the backdrop of the first half of the twentieth century.

This is a first rate piece of storytelling theatre, brilliantly written and performed, and well-supported by excellent direction, set and lighting design. Made famous by Pete Postlethwaite’s performances in 2001, Justin Butcher here reclaims his own work, and stamps his authority all over it. A must see.

12.20, until August 25

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TITUS ANDRONICUS, ACTION TO THE WORD, C VENUE
***

Fringe productions of Shakespeare are usually best approached with caution. Everyone wants to have a go and show their mettle, and the temptation to add their own mark to the works by offering a “reinterpretation” often begs for disaster – Hamlet in space, perhaps, or The Tempest re-enacted as a Marxist parable of the evils of modern society. Occasionally it’s a spectacular success, as with the Midsummer-Night’s-Dream-in-a-roller-disco of The Donkey Show, a recent Edinburgh Fringe smash hit that went on to a run in London’s West End and from there to New York. The list of equally spectacular failures stretches on into the middle distance. Cambridge University-born company Action to the Word’s version of Titus Andronicus falls squarely between these two stools, passing the test with, if not a distinction, then enough merit to be shared round the sizeable cast, without ever really breaking any new ground.

Their particular “twist” on the piece is to frame it in a gothic urban setting. In modern dress and squeezed into a running time of 75 minutes, this is an accessible, fast-forwarded highlights package of the epic play. Titus Andronicus, Roman hero and general, returns from a successful campaign against the Goths, bringing as prisoners the Goth queen Tamora and her children. His first task is to settle the dispute between two brothers over who should become the next Emperor of Rome. He chooses Saturnine, who then immediately frees Tamora and makes her his Empress. Titus and his family are made to pay a series of increasingly heavy prices for his harsh treatment of the former Goth prisoners, before the play’s sensationally over-the-top finale.

The company of trained performers make good use of the space, and there are no discernible weak links in the acting, although Tamora is occasionally difficult to hear. In an inventive approach to the rape of Titus’s daughter Lavinia, movement and music are used before she is slung over a shoulder and bundled offstage, later to reappear, naked and trembling, in a shopping trolley. The short running time keeps the production from flagging, the pace always lightning fast. There are some questionable aesthetic uses of the “gothic” motif, with some unnecessarily misogynistic sequences of scantily-clad girls gyrating and grinding, for no particular reason, but on the whole Action to the Word treat the play with respect and no small amount of technical skill. Simple but effective lighting, and a soundtrack featuring Placebo, Billy Corgan, and an unexpected use of Madness’s Driving in My Car, help move things along. This is a good, solid take on Titus Andronicus, allowing the text to come to the fore and do its work, and would make an excellent introduction for those who’ve not yet been acquainted with Shakespeare’s bloodiest early tragedy.

23.00, until 25 August

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The New Yorker magazine has chosen for its cover cartoon for the 21 July 2008 edition a caricature showing Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) dressed in traditional Muslim garb, his wife with a large afro and an AK-47, bumping fists, with an American flag burning in the fireplace and a portrait of Osama Bin Laden on the wall. The cartoon has caused widespread offense, and both candidates’ campaigns have said the cartoon is tasteless and offensive. Subscribers have reportedly begun canceling their subscriptions.

The magazine defends the cartoon as a satire of those who have fabricated smears and lies about the Illinois senator. And some commentators have said that satire is meant to be the kind of humor where if you are informed, you understand it as funny and if you are not, you do not. The problem is that this is not the case with this graphic: it is precisely the people who understand the references, who are most informed, who are taking serious offense and fail to see the humor in the drawing.

It is also perhaps likely that the people who are least informed, who are unaware that these smears are actually lies, or who do not understand why there are genuinely racist overtones to the content of the cartoon, will be incapable of understanding that this is meant to mock them, and not portray a reality to be considered legitimate. The defense that satire is for the informed turns the magazine’s attitude on its head and reveals the failure of imagination inherent in this gaffe: one satirizes by demonstrating the flimsy underpinnings of what is being mocked, not by carrying out the aesthetic mission of those attacking the subject of your portrayal.

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Some may see conspiracy in this and claim it is a veiled attempt to attack Sen. Obama, and in all likelihood, it will not do him serious harm. It may, as have other baldly tasteless attacks, elevate him, if he responds with the same characteristic poise and “grace under fire” which have been cited multiple times today by TV commentators. I see a failure of imagination and a puerile, desperate adolescent attempt to achieve satire, an art apparently beyond the intellectual scope of those involved in creating and publishing this image.

There may be a critical misunderstanding of public acts of humor, like satire, inherent in the way the current crop of editors approach the issue of such a cartoon: Wikipedia defines sadism as “the derivation of pleasure as a result of the suffering of others”, which appears to be more akin to the intent of the self-described “humor” attempted in this case. It is not necessarily the case that there was any malicious intent, and it is most likely the editors are sincere in their claims of satire as the motivation, and that they believed they were satirizing smear-mongers and those who fabricate the smears.

But deep down, this was a satire that can speak only of those responsible for the act. It illustrates the flimsy underpinnings of their approach to humor, their misunderstanding of semantic direction and of basic predication, in the grammatical sense. A subject carries out an act and that act takes effect on an object of that act: in satire, the act would be an intellectual assault on the smear-mongers; in The New Yorker’s new cover, the magazine takes an action that is designed to stir up bad feelings, as if that were somehow a means of intellectually deconstructing the smear-mongers. It is not.

The object of their attack is Barack Obama, and along with him, those elements of our national character that take for granted the basic openness of the American mind and culture. This “satire” was an act which takes fringe lunatics and puts them in the heart of our national political dialogue. That is an act against both Sen. Obama’s ongoing efforts to elevate our national political discourse and against our interest as an electorate with an opportunity to see two devoted public servants go head to head on issues, with depth of argument and detail of understanding as their weapons.

There is something that smacks of bandwagoneering in the esteemed magazine’s slip-up. “The Politics of Fear” is the title of the caricature: the politics of fear is the weapon of terrorists and bigots, and has plagued the nation’s security policy for nearly 7 years now. The New Yorker is coming to the issue very late in the game, and they have done so in a fashion which would appear to suggest their cartoonists couldn’t come up with a good representation of that ugly politics until several years of racist attacks congealed into an unfathomable wave of email forwards aimed at convincing Americans to abandon their sense of reality.

Is it satire to play with the idea that a range of ideas are on their own and when combined, absurd? No. That is commentary, not satire. The absurd is the crafting of a situation (theater of the absurd works best) in which inherently meaningless statements or actions take on profound existential comment, by way of their distance from reality. This cartoon does not do that. It cannot approach satire by way of the absurd.

Satire is self-evident, in its intent and its meaning. As many have said today, across the Internet and on television, if you have to explain it, it’s not effective satire. Satire is meant to be based on some facet of the actual reality being examined: this cover is disqualified from being satire by its dealing only with lies about the subject of the cartoon. The intent is clearly not to smear Obama, but the effect is to give a forum to vicious lies designed to spread fear and hatred.

Maybe the magazine has taken a great risk to do a public service to the nation. Maybe it will suffer a decline in subscriptions or a temporary boycott. Maybe it will win unprecedented sales. Maybe we will mature as a nation as we examine the nature of these rumors and the failure of so many to “discover” the truth that contradicts them. Maybe this is just another sign of the confusion that takes over when we are not serious enough about our political discourse or the meaning of our public policy. Maybe…

But whatever the result, The New Yorker’s editors took a stab in the dark, and they stabbed wildly, knowing there would be injury. While satire is meant to do some artful harm to specific targets, this was a messy attempt at best, and a total failure of the art at worst. Our free press is a vital defense for all our liberties and we cannot sanction such subjective attempts at comment, except to deconstruct them or to qualify their level of taste or effectiveness. But the great magazine’s editors have a responsibility to its history and its reputation, to its place in our culture, to reconsider their approach to satire.

The historic and landscape canvases of J.M.W. Turner have invaded the Metropolitan Museum of Art with a bath of vibrant color and the artist’s characteristic ability to paint the energy of forces converging in space and time. The exhibit is more than a mere retrospective; it will deliver to many visitors their first real taste of the pioneering British painter’s ambitious experiments with light, scale and texture, and it illustrates how his work informs many of the innovations that would later come in imrpessionist and avant-garde movements.

Turner’s early work looked to history and to dramatic natural scenes. With “Fall of the Reichenbach, in the Valley of the Oberhusli, Switzerland”, we find a powerful examination of the scale of nature and its meaning for the frail hope of humanity amidst its immense power. We see in deft combination the permanent masque of rock, the deep forgiving sky, the haunted intimacy of mist, a fervent beaming light, the impenetrability of nature’s organization at this place, the mystery of such providence, a vital softness that equates all beings facing the combination of forces, in sum, at the falls.

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We read that the artist has sought to convey the following:

philosopher Edmund Burke’s notion of the Sublime as the terror humans experience before the overpowering force of nature. The steep, rocky landscape —dominated by the 2,000-foot waterfall— towers over the shepherd and his flock.

And he has. It was Turner’s unique ability to perform these feats of historic ingenuity, of philosophical reflection, of commentary on the vast uncertainty of the fate of humanity, that made it possible for him to move so ably between depictions of daunting natural landscapes and crucial historic encounters, structures, or of monuments that mark the landscape of history. Turner was a translation, somewhat knowing, somewhat lonesome and unwitting, of the romantic movements, bold and garish, caught up with heroic resonance, into the impressionist, able to see without seeing, to envision the act of encountering light, shape and meaning in once complex interplay of phenomena.

In the painting “Temple of Jupiter Panhellenius, Restored”, Turner tempts us to share in a study of plenty, refinement, restoration, beauty. It is a song for the replenishment of the hungry soul, Bacchic festival, a ritual exploration of the romance of Narcissus, the elegance of natural light, architecture in its ancient aspiration and its nowaday claim to continuing. There is a question about the origin and the repetition, which means precisely that dewy elegance of the mind working on the environment, taking stock and shaping new directions, informed by experience.

It would be simple to say the painter could not be thinking these things as he worked to copy from his imagination the qualities of a now ruined ancient structure, but the restoration as presented is a sign of what is lacking and aspired to in a new modern age, a comment on the golden and the greener ages, the “aspirations of memory”, the hope of what a future of dreamscapes might be, if realized. What Turner does so well, thematically, is nest these questions in the visual landscape: what amount of courage is involved in recreating what once was emblematic of excellence? How to do it in a way that speaks today’s language?

“The Battle of Trafalgar”, the artist’s largest canvas, was painted from memory, from sketches, from other works, 14 years after the fact, under George IV. It is, for this reason, both heavily criticized on grounds of inaccuracy and heavily lauded for capturing the spirit of a moment that shocked the British world, jolted it with electric urges, and yet had become more mythology than history just a few years later. [continued below...]

In Turner’s rendition of the maritime battle, we find humanity falling out of the rigging, falling out of the human-built structures of intrigue, nation, contest, combat, value, propriety… humanly falling to the flaming tide… nature threatening to prove it is more vast, more patient, than so much bloodlust and gallantry. The battle is structured as if it were a whipping of plasmic amorphous agglomerations of human pretense and vehemence, a merengue of pale fire and clean light in which the fog of war and the mists of legend combine to tell of gain and loss together.

In this massive canvas and in his depiction of the event from the base of the mizen-mast on Nelson’s ship, we see Trafalgar is a pyrrhic victory: the loss of the heroic leader, the end of something and the edge of chaos, all telling a story about the years to come, at least as much as of the years preceding. There is a conception of what combat means, the failure of the human world to govern itself, to make sense of relations, attitudes, cravings… Turner’s approach to combat is simultaneously moralistic, Spartan and Baroque, insofar as this is possible.

In Turner’s depiction of combat, humanity crashes against itself with the violence of great tides and celestial fire, a storm of natural energy that breaks in a definitive way the everyday order of the human world: victory is loss, death is emergence, the aftermath is the manifestation of a tragic foreboding that ruled the preceding history, the vertigo of a great falls, the roaring isolation of that place of destiny where the falling river cascades into the mist of its own pools, the accretion of uncontainable irreconcilable forces, the explosion of sunlight coming through cloudscape.

Turner’s lyric “The Decline of the Carthaginian Empire” ventures into classical themes, historic-event landscapes, the old model of decorative masterworks, palatable from countless disciplines, and aims to bring to this art, now reshaped by techniques of the romantic movement, strains of perfect light, perfect atmosphere, the yellow glinting of departure, of ongoing, of the meaning of transition, surpassing, cycle and the setting sun. [continued below...]

As with the sun rising pale and hopeful in “Dido Building Carthage” (above), here we savor riches seen, unseen and expended, empire falling away before the brash caresses of sunlight. There are delicate precise lines and turbulent luminous mists, telling equal truths, at odds and in kinship with each other, alternating between the placid and the awesome. Turner’s narrative is housed in a passion for the expressive quality of the visible brush-stroke, the texture of the optical experience, dimension raised to the eye as against the predetermined meaning with which a place would have been invested by ambition, fortune and failure.

“The Tower of London” gives us a glimpse of how, for Turner, watercolor is more the art of seeing than is oil. This is because the colors must work together on a single plane of light and shadow. A color cannot be blended and reworked, kneaded obliquely into the desired hue. It is, or it isn’t, and when it isn’t, it’s already too late. Light is thinness; shade is density.

The piece tells us that landscape, for Turner, is not about what is seen, but about how it might be seen. It is not about perspective as much as it is about the layering of light, the problem of intervening shadows, the glazing and distortions presented by fog and weather. In “Approach to Venice”, the artist offers a palette of unabashed luminous spaces, gaseous parameters of world-making, and the sleek densities of the human hand, each working to reveal the muted auspices of a social urge, coming near to shore, the beginning of a day of trade, or a visit to foreign shores.

“Europa and the Bull” is an unfinished work, which is congruent with the origin myth. Europa is ravaged by the bull in which Apollo has manifest himself. The piece swims with Hindu and Hellenic underpinnings, that make the Christian narrative a weighty comment on the future evolution of Europe as a civilization, steeped in conflict, hoping for something more pure, more liberal, somehow free of the weight of its origins, free of the weight of its dark history, ready to engage the entire world in open dialogue.

Unfinished, the work speaks less plainly than it could of the artist’s intent. It is, in some ways, no more than a teasing of one of the lost origin myths, a study of social pretensions, a wishing in action… but there is room for speaking about the unfinished work as a new representation of Turner’s approach to light, as a comment on light itself: “Sunrise with Sea Monsters” is not only unfinished, its title is apocryphal, and relates only to what the posthumous viewer may think is the subject of the work.

This unfinished canvas opens onto the “role of the reader”, gives us a vision of light, water and life, a snapshot of multidimensional kinetic energy. Caught up in a lemon-ivory wash, a whirl of density at the center of the work was misread by the 20th century fascination with arbitrary harbingers of the unconscious, where life and motion, intent and accident become dark, monstrous hints of an unseen world. So the painting acquired its speculative moniker of “sunrise with sea monsters”.

Leaving the exhibit, I am overstimulated, have seen too much, have seen a ravishing exhibit that was just beginning to be born to this audience of the moment, to this New York phase in the life of the artist. I can safely say, anyone paying attention to what is on show here, will find their perception enriched, focused, and put on course to see deeper into the mythology of our moment and our collective comment on the art of perception. This, I think, was part of what Turner himself was working for all along.

Recién inaugurada en el Palais de Tokyo, en París, Francia, ‘Superdome’ explora el sufrimiento humano vinculado con situaciones donde el desastre se sigue con transformaciones socio-económicas de escala casi incomprensible. La exposición concentra su atención temática en la situación que encontraron los habitantes de Nueva Orleans, cuando el huracán “Katrina” y su consecuente desintegración cívica los desplazaron hacia un caos tormentoso, su entorno físico devastado, forzados a llevar el peso extraño de ver cómo se borró la geografía económica de su ciudad para ser reemplazada por algo desconocido.

El tema de conversación que se escuchaba con frecuencia en la boca de los invitados en la noche del estreno era si se pudiera averiguar cualquier hilo unificador entre los 5 distintos espacios que formaban parte de la exposición. Un elefante equilibrándose sobre su trompa, un cañón de aire que tira botellas de cerveza a 600 km/hora, una sala llena de los escombros de un desastre, relojes antiguos de péndulo, una exploración del “Lado Oscuro”, un puzzle gris de alfombra que significa o inclusión o exclusión, la familiaridad o la diferencia.

En la elocuente explicación de la literatura acompañante de la exposición, “Paradójica, el Superdome construye un puente entre el mayor entretenimiento y la mayor angustia.” Las 5 exposiciones, de hecho, “vacilan entre el entretenimiento y la desolación, los decibelios y los rezos, la alta tecnología y el caos”, y se consideran expresiones artísticas individuales, unidas sólo en sentido temático, no en contenido ni estilo.

Würsa, el elefante apoyado sobre su trompa “a 18.000 km de altitud”, atrajo admiradores y fascinación. La gente se acercaba y se maravillaba, y el texto acompañante explica que el artista, Daniel Firman, fundó la escultura —la piel la acabó un taxidermista de renombre— sobre la ciencia de la exploración espacial y la física del fenómeno de la “cero-gravedad” que se encuentra a altitudes extremas en órbita alrededor de la Tierra.

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La escultura en sí, ya es un logro de ingeniería, un desafío impactante para cualquiera que no sea el diseñador más paciente, pero su idea básica, más que complejidad o paciencia, parece ser el contraste entre la levedad y el peso. La experiencia desorbitada de enfrentarse con los dos en la naturaleza de un mismo momento: la presión aplastante de enfrentar la fragilidad de lo que valoramos, la inconsecuencia elegante de lo que construimos y que apoya nuestras creencias.

El elefante en el centro de la sala se apoya sobre su trompa, porque increíblemente ha viajado hasta una órbita de 18.000 km sobre la superficie de la Tierra, y en esta circunstancia surrealista e inesperada, encontramos que la levedad y el peso se yuxtaponen, en una desintegración de su equilibrio aceptado. Las fuerzas que intervienen pueden volcar la realidad que conocemos, cambiar las leyes físicas de nuestro entorno dado, socavar la materia de nuestras presunciones metafísicas sobre qué es posible.

Al lado del espacio de Würsa, “Afasia 1″ es una construcción de cilindros de aire comprimido, amontonados y conectados a un cañón de aire, dentro de una jaula de alambre en malla. Una columna vertical de botellas de cerveza vacías, organizadas como si fueran misiles de mortero, esperan para ser disparados a 600 km/hora contra una pared al otro extremo de la jaula, donde se estrellan en un sonido súbito y aterrador. La mitad de la jaula donde se estrellan las botellas tiene una capa interior de plástico protector, para que no corran ningún peligro los visitantes.

La pieza fue diseñada para chocar violentamente a los que estuvieran cerca, con un sonido tremendo, inesperado. Los disparos ocurren a intervalos demasiado espaciados para permitir que se hagan rutinarios. Con cada segundo disparo, de la multitud sale o un suspiro colectivo cortado, el aire saliendo de repente de pulmones asustados, o una manada de gritos y aullidos descontrolados. El efecto queda claro: lo inesperado, en forma de una acción increíblemente violenta y cerradamente apuntada, choca el sistema, el cuerpo queda agredido, el espíritu rehuye.

La sección con la cola más extendida, donde el personal de seguridad sólo permitía que entraran unos cuantos visitantes a la vez, era “Last Manoeuvres in the Dark” —Las últimas maniobras en la oscuridad—, de Fabien Giraud y Raphaël Siboni. La pieza es “un ejército de 300 Darth Vader intentando producir la ‘bomba’ musical insuperable de la oscuridad”. Giraud explicó en su entrevista con PALAIS / Magazine que “Darth Vader es el Mickey Mouse de nuestra generación. Una figura aún más importante que Mickey Mouse.”

Siboni explica que esta importancia no se debe tanto a que sea una representación icónico del Mal, sino al hecho de que el ícono que lleva esa energía es una pista instantánea para las masas, un símbolo universal y reconocible, un “objeto cero” sobre el que se pueden construir mensajes más complejos. Giraud dice que la exposición funciona más “en la lógica de sobrepuja que de denuncia”, intentando enmarcar el asunto de la oscuridad y la malicia de una manera que active “el cerebro reptiliano”, sugiriendo que el contenido de la oscuridad es una experiencia instintiva, mensaje que pueda quitarles el poder a los que la impongan.

A new exhibit at the Palais de Tokyo, in Paris, France, examines the human suffering inherent in situations where disaster is followed by economic transformation of nearly incomprehensible proportions. ‘Superdome’ focuses its thematic attention on the situation encountered by citizens of New Orleans, displaced into chaos by the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the devastation of their physical environment followed by the strange burden of seeing the economic geography of their city wiped away and replaced by something unknown to them.

The topic of conversation that seemed most present on visitors’ lips upon first seeing the exhibit was whether there was any continuity, any unifying thread to the distinct spaces that formed part of the exhibit. An elephant balanced on its trunk, an air-gun firing empty beer-bottles at a wall at 600 km/hr, a room full of hurricane refuse, antique clocks, an exploration of “the Dark Side”, a grey floor-covering puzzle that can be rearranged to suggest exclusion or inclusion, familiarity or difference.

As the exhibit literature eloquently explains, “Paradoxical, the Superdome builds a bridge between the greatest entertainment and the greatest anguish.” The five exhibits are in fact “balancing between entertainment and desolation, decibels and prayers, high-tech and chaos”, and are considered to be individual artistic expressions, joined only thematically, not in content or style.

Würsa, the elephant balanced on its trunk “at 18,000 km altitude”, was one of the more eye-catching pieces. People gathered and marveled, and the accompanying text explains that the artist, Daniel Firman, based the sculpture (the skin finished by an acclaimed taxidermist) on the science of space exploration and the physics of zero-gravity at extreme altitudes in Earth orbit.

In itself, the sculpture is a feat of engineering, complicated to work out for any but the most patient designer, but the idea conveyed is perhaps not so much patience or complexity, but rather the contrast between lightness and weight. The disorienting experience of engaging both in the nature of one moment: the shoulder-slumping pressures of facing the fragility of what we value, the elegant inconsequence of what we build and believe in.

The elephant in the middle of the room balances on its trunk, because incredibly it has traveled to an orbit at 18,000 km above the surface of the Earth, and in this surreal and unexpected circumstance, we find that levity and weight are thrown out of balance and juxtaposed. Interfering forces can upend reality as we know it, alter the physical laws of our given environment, undermine our metaphysical assumptions about what is possible.

Adjacent to Würsa, in a wire-maille cage, “Afasia 1″ consists of a stack of compressed air cylinders connected to an air-cannon, with a stack of empty beer-bottles, arrayed as if they were mortar shells one atop the other, poised to be fired against a wall at the other end of the cage. The half of the enclosure where the bottles shatter against the wall at 600 km/hr includes a layer of protective plastic, so spectators are not in danger from the projectiles or their fragments.

The piece is designed to shock those near it, as the sound is tremendous, unexpected, and the shots come at intervals too far apart to become routine. With every other round, the crowd will give either a collective gasp, air running out of startled lungs, or a handful of uncontrolled shrieks and howls. The effect is clear: the unexpected, in the form of an incredibly violent yet targeted action, shocks the system, the body is jolted, the spirit recoils.

The section with the longest queue, where security personnel allowed only a few visitors at a time to enter, was “Last Manoeuvres in the Dark”, by Fabien Giraud and Raphaël Siboni, described as “an army of 300 Darth Vaders attempting to produce the out-and-out musical ‘hit’ of darkness”. Giraud told PALAIS / Magazine that “Darth Vader is our generation’s Mickey Mouse. An even more important figure than Mickey Mouse.”

Siboni explains that this importance is not so much the iconic representation of evil, but rather that the icon carrying that energy is an instant cue for the masses, a universal and recognizable symbol, and “object zero” on which more complex messages can be structured. Giraud says the exhibit works “more in terms of outbidding than denouncing”, attempting to reframe the issue of darkness and malice in a way that taps into “the reptilian brain”, explains the content of darkness as an instinctual experience, perhaps robbing those who enforce it of their power.

The piece with the most direct tie to the exhibit’s title is Christoph Büchel’s “Dump”, a massive, sloping, pile of refuse representing the daily activities of the survivors of the Superdome experience in the dark aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The space is a curved room, receding away from the spectators, bending around an interior wall, taking us simultaneously deeper into the (meaning of) chaos and further away from the distant experience of those who lived it.

As the unifying idea is the sense of desperation and upheaval that can so unrepentantly invade the everyday, PALAIS / Magazine featured excerpts from Naomi Klein’s new book, ‘The Shock Doctrine’. The text is especially useful for grappling with the problem of living between chaos and normalcy, seeing one’s reality taken apart not only by tragedy, but by the disturbing manipulations that come in the aftermath.

The shock doctrine refers to an idea of controversial Chicago economist Milton Friedman. Friedman posited that “only a crisis —actual or perceived— produces real change”, suggesting that in the wake of major disasters, when chaos seeps into or replaces the routine of a functioning society, planners must take swift action to impose irreversible change.

Klein speaks of the impact of Friedman’s ideas on Pinochet’s takeover of Chile, in the 1970s, Argentina’s regime of the same period, in which 30,000 people were “disappeared”, and post-Saddam Iraq, which underwent “radical economic shock therapy… mass privatization, complete free trade, a 15 percent flat tax, a dramatically downsized government.” Iraq’s interim trade minister complained that these “experiments” were an unnecessary “shock therapy”.

Klein links the use of military force to the sort of radical economic reconfiguration of a place hit by a major disaster. In her analysis, it is not as surprising as it is to the majority of observers, that post-Katrina New Orleans was so heavily occupied by military forces. She cites mention of “‘clean sheets’ and exciting opportunities” at the time, and alleges some politicians planned to use the “[moment] of collective trauma to engage in radical social and economic engineering.”

Klein also takes us to Sri Lanka, after the 2004 Asian tsunami, the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, Boris Yeltsin’s 1993 deployment of tanks to the Russian parliament, NATO’s bombing of Belgrade in 1999 and the 1982 Falklands war, where in each case, she notes that the aftermath was an environment permitting massive, rapid privatization, and the dislocation of social and economic standards of the places in question.

The shock doctrine gives us a clue as to how the theme of chaos and darkness as a pressure on the human experience in today’s world, comes to be a unifying theme at Superdome. The last piece is Jonathan Monk’s “Time Between Spaces”, an “exhibit in stereo” shown simultaneously at the Palais de Tokyo and at the Musée d’art moderne de la ville de Paris, part of the same complex.

In Superdome, we find “The Inside of Something”, a grey floor-covering jigsaw puzzle with no flat edges, while “The Outside of Something” is found in the half of Monk’s exhibit absent from the Palais de Tokyo. “The Odd Couple” is a pair of pendulum clocks slightly off in their measure of time, meaning that as time progresses their difference is enhanced, though it will eventually meet at some point.

The dual format for Monk’s exhibit is touted as an offering that “outlines the idea that ubiquity would allow us to thwart the linea progression of time”. The exhibit endures, because over the same course of time, it is doubled. Similarly, we find that the human instinct to retrieve what was previously known from the aftermath of a destructive or menacing experience is a basic human effort to reconnect the not always harmonious senses of time and space.

La desconfianza no es un estado de ánimo, no es una reacción a la desdicha; es una doctrina, y existe una secta dispersa que la difunde. Esta secta consta de una gente que apuesta abiertamente por la desconfianza, como cosmología o plan de vida, una lógica venenosa contra la que poco se puede hacer, porque su fuerza radica en la decisión total de sus congregantes de vivir en la desconfianza, confiados hasta la última en que no puede haber otra forma de vida más inteligente.

Esta falacia se utiliza, entonces, para dos fines claves: 1) reducir el valor de las situaciones donde la confianza parece traer fuerza, bienestar y una resistencia sana; 2) justificar comportamientos que no se pueden justificar dentro de una ética coherente. La desconfianza doctrinal, por lo tanto, se aprovecha, como arma, de la posibilidad de utilizar los desengaños ya existentes para los demás para no entrar en ninguna responsabilidad —ni en la consciencia de la responsabilidad— por los desengaños ocasionados por la misma desconfianza como trato interpersonal.

La parte más delicada de cualquier contacto con los febriles y celosos seguidores de la desconfianza suele ser el tener que evitar, a todo coste, ponerle en evidencia al desconfiado. Este requisito resulta del hecho de que aunque sea al nivel del subconsciente, todos reconocemos que hay cierta calidad de vida deseable que sólo se peude lograr a través de relaciones de confianza. Al desconfiado devoto, por lo tanto, le conviene una paranoia habitual, y se espanta cuando se da a conocer de qué religión se confiesa realmente.

Revelar la desconfianza muchas veces es la chispa que prende fuego a cualquier trato sensato o entregado que se haya tenido con el desconfiado, reduciéndolo a cenizas, porque se encuentra a la defensiva, y se pone a luchar por la verdad eterna de su fe, con una ceguera sangrienta.

La desconfianza también se vincula íntimamente con los cambios radicales de estado de ánimo. Cualquiera puede pasar por este proceso, pero el desconfiado fiel y convencido cede a estas mutaciones casi viciosamente, porque su doctrina requiere vivir en la presión extrema de la sospecha constante y universal.

La máscara más aprovechada por el desconfiado devoto es la idea de que las cosas radicales son poco frecuentes: la verdad es que la doctrina de la desconfianza requiere un fundamentalismo tan extremo que descarta por absurdos todos los demás puntos de vista.

Ahora, el desconfiado rápidamente aprende a disimular su totalitarismo —por no querer despertar en los demás las mismas armas “defensivas” que despliega contra ellos—, encubriendo sus meditaciones en un forro de lógica y “realismo”. Todo es evidente, y el mismo místico de la desconfianza dirá que tiene pruebas, por muy imprecisas o sutiles que sean. A veces te hablará de mensajeros, individuos o eventos que han señalado definitivamente que no queda otra opción que dedicarse de por vida a una desconfianza misántropa y hasta misionera.

Pero el tremendo mito del que te hable con ganas y energía de su propia desconfianza autoconvencida, es que tenga algo que ver con aceptar que haya desengaño y sufrimiento en la vida. No es así, sino todo lo opuesto. La religión de la desconfianza realmente se basa en el miedo al desengaño y el rechazo perjudicado de todo aquello que tenga la posibilidad de traerlo.

Se trata de una armadura pesada y cara de llevar puesta, que enmudece los sentidos y la percepción y subasta la imaginación a las obsesiones más pueriles y pasajeros. Y eso es parte de su hechizo, que distrae al devoto de sus penas, ayudándolo a convencerse de que las incidencias y los ejemplos más triviales son de una importancia casi universal, le dejan construir un mundo hecho según esta visión enfermiza. Y ese esfuerzo perversamente “constructivo” es lo que más hay que temer en el contacto con un verdadero desconfiado devoto, porque su fundamentalismo le obliga a intentar hacerte parte de su gran engaño.

THE ‘TEXT’ OF LIVED EXPERIENCE PAINTED IN VIVID COLOR WITH A NARRAIVE EDGE

Marco is a painter and graphic artist from Mexico, with a talent for rich, vivid color and evocative texturing. His works have been featured in shows on both sides of the Atlantic, as well as on the covers of and the interior of books by both classical and modern authors. He participated in the Café Sentido exhibit ‘La Isla Flotante‘ in February and March of 2007, in Barcelona, Spain, and is now painting a new collection, in Mexico. [Artist Page]

Intimidad que brilla, método secreto del punzopintor: El artista vive no un vuelo por otros mundos, no un éxtasis arrasador que funda naciones, no un ciclo sinfónico de soles derritiéndose. El artista vive la vida de este mundo, el artificio de las construcciones humanas y la autenticidad de lo que duelen o fascinan sus límites. Vive un océano de contactos y acercamientos… [Texto completo]

April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,
And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.
Bin gar keine Russin, stamm’ aus Litauen, echt deutsch.
And when we were children, staying at the archduke’s,
My cousin’s, he took me out on a sled,
And I was frightened. He said, Marie,
Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.
In the mountains, there you feel free.
I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.

What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

Frisch weht der Wind
Der Heimat zu.
Mein Irisch Kind,
Wo weilest du?

‘You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;
‘They called me the hyacinth girl.’
—Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden,
Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not
Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither
Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,
Looking into the heart of light, the silence.
Od’ und leer das Meer…

MEDITACIONES DE UN POETA NORTEAMERICANO SOBRE EL SURREALISTA TRANSNACIONAL, UN DOMINGO DE DICIEMBRE EN BARCELONA

La exposición comienza con un texto que sitúa la obra de Tanguy en “una especie de matriz original donde mar y madre son una misma cosa”, y al entrar nos encontramos de manera chocante con todo lo opuesto: los juegos de un niño caprichoso carente de toda paciencia artística —se puede decir que no es culpa del artista, todos tenemos derecho a un proceso de aprendizaje, a la experimentación y a los caprichos del artesano, o tal vez no eran para exhibirse estas obras—, y señala algo importante en la obra de Tanguy: la prisa por terminar, la impaciencia ante la idea de una obra posible.

Es también típico del surrealismo esta dificultad, la de un artista de talento impactado por una idea, convencido de su importancia y que pierde el tacto apurándose por plasmar una idea que al final, tampoco será nada revolucionaria. Es la batalla de la mente humana y de una sociedad también, por lograr pensar bien las cosas y plasmarlas mientras, defender una idea y explorarla a la vez, extenderla a un plano más universal, aunque sea un envase demasiado frágil para hacer el trayecto, o sea, arriesgarse apostando por una idea —la de un cuadro cualquiera— que al final no conlleva tanto poder ni expresivo ni morfosociológico. <!–more–>Tanto nos parecemos capaces de realizar perfecciones triviales que no nos damos cuenta de que vamos más rápidos que la perfección y que el problema de la trivialidad no desaparece sólo porque hemos llegado a sentirnos más o menos convencidos de que desaparece.

En la obra expuesta que se hizo hasta el año 1924, se ve una experimentación importante con el dibujo y una expresión de trazos elegantes, pero mayoritariamente obras incompletas, ideas semipensadas. ¿Padece el artista un infantilismo orgánico? o la expresión da esta impresión o deliberado o equivocadamente? Lo que se ve no contesta esta duda para el espectador.

Según los textos murales que guían al espectador, “Breton se convierte [...] en su padre, en sustitución del tempranamente desaparecido.” El padre de Tanguy murió cuando era joven. Lo que es la moda actual de autoautentificarse como crítico o historiador elaborando hipótesis socio-psicológicas declaradas en forma de hecho comprobado es una licencia presumida que nos damos con demasiada facilidad. Puede que haya influenciado el plano de la exposición, o no. Otra vez, el tono declarativo de la presentación no lo deja claro. ¿Era así, o quieren los organizadores que así fuese o que se viese así?

Juzgar así la vida íntima del pintor puede ser útil, instructivo, iluminador, pero no puede ser la historia definitiva. Un observador apto podría decirse: Breton era más vasto como talento, más preciso en su capacidad visionaria, y era más elocuente, por lo tanto, más que padre, es oráculo, tanto para el pintor como para el público —del momento y venidero—, y ese análisis tendría valor de no disminuir —que hoy en día se mal entiende como si fuera ‘explicar’— la obra del artista para crear comentarios lúcidos.

Vemos entonces un surrealismo naciente, formas que para el ojo no iniciado parecen más gengibres semi-peludos que sufren pretensiones místicos y bailan ciegos en terrenos artificialmente vaciados de contenido. Por eso, Breton avisa que no hay que buscar ninguna referencia mundano-pictórica en el surrealismo profundo de Tanguy. Con estas masas incómodas, está comenzando a expermientar con la realización de un vocabulario visual informal, en el que tales masas anónimas representan a un mismo tiempo las exageraciones de la ambición que conlleva una figura humana y la aglomeración de códigos y preferencias, deseos indefinidos que como conjunto formulan una masa que no tiene cómoda referencia formal ni en la física ni en la experiencia de los cinco sentidos. Pero sigue exhibiendo como artista una impaciencia que quita coherencia visual y técnica a muchos de los intentos de esta época del pintor.

“Acabo lo que he comenzado” muestra el problema: el cuadro en sí da la impresión de querer explorar esa afirmación, o con ironía o no, el espectador tiene cierta libertad de elección en ese punto, pero de no haber sido acabado. En una misma obra se mezclan arbitrariamente figuras y espacios con tres dimensiones, con dos y de uno solo, dejando en algunos puntos vacíos de contenido que resultan menos expresivos que reveladores. Tenemos que pensar si el pintor quería decir algo, solapando así figuras dotadas de más y menos dimensiones, o si por impaciencia dejó el cuadro así, dejando al lado el criterio visual, o si en un momento dado, vio lo que había y se dijo con satisfacción, así me gusta.

Está avanzando hacia los “dibujos automáticos”, o sea, obras accidentales, lo cual permite algo de libertad para decirnos que Tanguy comienza a interesarse por el valor de la casualidad en su obra. Suelen aparecer en este surrealismo inicial manchas sin color ni profundidad y objetos que parecen cortados antes de haber podido llegar a su madurez.

Un artista no hace sólo lo que su talento le dicte ni sólo aquéllo que se le ocurra en el momento. Recurre a pozos invisibles de meditación y divergencia, momentos anteriores en los que, sin dar puebas ni evidencias de un primer intento, se logró algún avance (conceptual) o en la expansión de su territorio como artista o en el enfoque de su visión como artesano.

Si “Acabo lo que he comenzado” parece señalar una impaciencia y una tendencia de no acabar de lograr lo insinuado, podemos también considerar que Tanguy en sus comienzos como surrealista se está alejando de las reglas, y sin necesariamente sentirse mucho más cómodo en la práctica que el público en el encuentro con tales novedades, se encuentra algo lejos de un conceptualismo comprensible, en la frontera de lo desconocido. Y puede ser que en esas circunstancias, que un artista no tenga la fuerza, o que no vea la necesidad, de acabar de hacer lo que está intentando, porque ya de por sí está lejos de la práctica antes desarrollada.

El conflicto espacial es central: es como si el artista llegara a un terreno remoto en el espacio artístico donde ya no se siente poseedor de ese espacio. Cede. La formalidad se deja al lado y los “intentos” del artista muestran una mezcla de elementos, más y menos acabados. Y es doblemente importante, porque en otro nivel, la posesión del espacio es lo que decide qué se comunica con esta exposición. La selección de las obras, el montaje, los colores usados para ambientar y la iluminación confieren al artista o mayor o menor propiedad en el lugar donde lo encontramos.

La visita guiada por auriculares puede intervenir en este asunto. Los visitantes que siguen estas visitas guiadas suelen comportarse, sin querer, como dueños del espacio de la exposición. Por intuición, sospecho que es porque la experiencia de sentir una voz que habla sólo a tu oído sugiere una red invisible pero perfectamente programada en la que todos se encuentran donde tienen que estar, según esa misma narración del contenido, en el momento adecuado. Por lo tanto, se sienten liberados del problema de moverse dentro de una multitud. Todos deberían estar en su sitio, así que los demás ya no existen en el espacio propio del que sigue la voz narradora y el cuadro enumerado del momento.

Deberíamos tener cuidad ahí también como observadores y portavoces del signficado, hablando de los críticos, los teóricos, los creativos, lectores y ‘usuarios’ del espacio exponente… no es necesariamente verdad que podamos escaparnos del bullicio de las posibles explicaciones del trabajo del artista, sólo porque una explicación convincente nos haga sentirnos dueños del espacio de su obra. Ese momento de posesión de la obra, de su significado, es siempre momentáneo. Y será en el contexto de estas dudas que Tanguy nos puede enseñar mucho.

Mientras vaya evolucionando su paciencia pictórica dentro del contexto de sus proyecto de interrogación, como surrealista, el pintor explora maneras no de plasmar ideas ni de expresarlas, sino de alcanzarlas. O sea, se puede decir que Tanguy logra meterse entre la pléiade de grandes surrealistas porque aprende a hacer lo más importante del surrealismo: tocar posibles innovaciones teóricas y pensantes que él mismo no ha puesto sustancialmente en la obra. Por trabajar en el límite de la legibilidad de la experiencia humana, un surrealista como Tanguy insinúa, sugiere, plantea, y también evade: alcanza más de lo que puede decir porque evita arriesgarse en hacer afirmaciones tal vez coherentes, pero inútiles.

Se adapta a lo desconocido, al lenguaje de lo apropiadamente inédito, y se atreve a seguir. En “Mamá, Papá está herido”, muestra una interrogación temprana sobre el decaimiento de la forma, de la estructura social —imaginamos ‘familia’ como ente social aquí, por el título, pero lo expresado, o más bien, lo alcanzado, por el cuadro, no se limita a un círculo tan reducido—, incluso parece lamentar la desintegración de la experiencia de una pérdida como pasividad sagrada, preocupante erosión del valor del luto, como lenguaje.

El método de Tanguy se concreta más, juega menos en varias dimensiones a la vez, comienza a superar la estética del descuido, se madura, y el artista logra sugerir un espacio aparentemente imposible pero con fuerza emotiva donde comunicarse es perderse en una lejanía sin resolución, donde decir es explotar los mecanismos que permiten que algo se diga o se escuche. El vacío viene a ser un personaje en la narrativa indecisa, ya narrada con fervor y seguridad.

Vemos una experimentación aforme con las masas amorfes, bultos impensables que suscitan casi revulsión por su parecer de piedras deformes con piel humana… son, si hablamos con generosidad, geologías pensantes, o almacenadoras de impresiones todavía no pensadas, o sea, una especie de organismo que es, por bien o por mal, una aglomeración de significados, que en su conjunto respiran, laten, ansían, tiritan, se buscan, buscan, y nos dicen, o intentan decirnos, quiénes somos. Masas amorfes de la identidad, o de la añoranza incómoda de acudir a una…

Si uno no pone imaginación, y con entusiasmos es fácil chocar con la idea de que es realmente incómodo pensar que todo esto es una buena representación de lo que tratamos de ser, o lo que somos involuntariamente y a pesar de nuestros deseos. El mismo artista podría decir que no debería tomarse como nada tan personal. Pero así es el baile que hacemos los espectadores con la intención de un buen pintor del surrealismo bien logrado: queremos aplicar nuestros gustos y prejuicios, y queremos superarlos, y el pintor quiere pintar esa experiencia, la problemática de la frontera que nos hace vacilar en tales momentos.

En la exposición, el público se amontona ante las fotografías, se aferra a esta muestra de la ‘realidad’, como solemos afirmar que es, algo que suscita recuerdos espaciales y formales programados por los cinco sentidos. Es como si tuvieran sed de ver la realidad, que es a su vez la fantasía más consoladora: forma, luz, dimensión, lugar, el ser como se nos ha presentado, una y otra vez, una referencia, que es de alguna manera lo que Tanguy quiere evitar.

Es para finales de los años 30 cuando el pintor llega al estado maduro de su visión surrealista. Algunos critican esta época, tachándolo de ser demasiado “parecido a Dalí o a Miró”, pero el surrealismo aceptaba cierta gramática visual, y dentro de esa gramática espacial y evasiva, Tanguy hace con agilidad algo propio, un tono íntimo que permite que algunos de los cuadros más deshumanizados tengan algo del ser humano vulnerable y equívoco.

La exposición y seminario “El mundo escrito”, capítulo más reciente de Café Sentido, culminó en la mesa redonda sobre los miles de idiomas en vías de extinción. La charla siguió la política y las metas del proyecto de forma excepcional: una mesa redonda, diálogo informal, puntos de vista apasionados, y la oportunidad de aprender, el uno del otro. No hubo discurso impuesto.

La mesa redonda era realmente así: no un panel de expertos dando lecciones a una reducida multitud de estudiosos y aficionados que quieren competir con ellos en las ideas, sino un grupo de gente interesada, alrededor de una sola mesa, capacitada para meter sus ideas en la tertulia. Una conversación sin fronteras entre los partícipes era la idea central, y de ahí llegar a comprender cómo funciona el lenguaje, y qué patrón cada uno le da, en el foro íntimo del intelecto.

Todos participan como socios y todas las ideas pueden encontrar su ímpetu y su poder de resistencia. Poco a poco, tras una breve introducción, se iba concretando el asunto, partiendo del dato de que de los 6,809 idiomas que se hablan actualmente, un 50% como mínimo parece destinado a desaparecer antes del año 2100.

Exploramos el problema de cómo lograr una solución a la creciente reducción de parlantes para tales idiomas, sin que parezca una solución impuesta sobre algo tan íntimo como el lenguaje. La desaparición de un idioma es una reducción de la libertad del individuo, en términos concretos, pero cada individuo podrá evaluar esa pérdida a su manera, y habrá que se sienten más liberados y más capacitados de comunicarse con el mundo, no por la desaparición en sí, sino como parte del mundo que queda después.

Una solución política significa no sólo subvenciones y apoyo, sino leyes y reglamentos en cuanto al habla. Para proteger un lenguaje, un idioma entero, para fomentar la libre expresión dentro de esa estructura, habría que imponer normativas lingüísticas que tendrían el resultado paradójico de limitar la libertad de expresión para aumentar las posibles opciones para poder expresar la experiencia humana en su íntima peculiaridad o en su generalidad cósmica.

Enfrentamos el problema de que una cosa tan íntima como es un idioma no puede dejarse difundir principalmente por una política estatal; tiene que vivir en la mente y en la práctica cotidiana de la gente. Hay casos donde siglos de persecución no acaban con esa vitalidad, y otros casos donde todo el esfuerzo de un estado no logra prevenir la desintegración de un tejido social ancestral.

Debido a la enorme competencia de los idiomas más extendidos en el negocio y en la cultura globalizados, los idiomas que muchas veces disfrutan de un apoyo oficial son idiomas que ya gozan de millones de parlantes y que están en buen estado de salud. Esto no está mal, pero sí señala un problema clave: que los idiomas realmente marginales, que tienen menos de cien mil o incluso menos de mil parlantes, pueden llegar a ser asumidos por otros idiomas más conocidos.

En Estados Unidos, de los cientos de idiomas indígenas que se hablaban hace 500 años, sólo 154 han perdurado en la práctica hasta hoy, y entre ellos, muchos están en peligro de extinción. Parte de la reducción de idiomas es la tendencia de idiomas indígenas más extendidos de reemplazar los más marginales, hasta que el idioma marginal sólo deja huellas sueltas en el otro idioma, enriqueciendo silenciosamente una cultura que tal vez no lo haya reconocido nunca.

En Chile, el mapuche es cada vez más un punto de encuentro para intentos de recuperar una historia precolombina y hacerlo llegar hasta hoy en día. En julio 2006, se publicó en Chile, por primera vez en mapuche La Araucana, como Ta Awkan Mapu Mew, poema épica relacionada con los indígenas Araucos, o araucanos, y los mapuche.

En Paraguay, el intento de resuscitar el guaraní, un idioma que como el mapuche o el aymara todavía es vital y goza de una cultura actual, ha logrado extender a la población una consciencia de que esa cultura es parte de la clave necesaria para comprender la vida cotidiana en un país afectado durante tanto tiempo por sus conceptos y tendencias.

Y sólo 6 días antes de la charla que presenciamos en Café Sentido, en el Barrio Gótico de Barcelona, habíamos participado también en un evento sobre la poética, vista desde el acercamiento de varios poetas con su trasfondo cultural variado… Agnes Agboton, de Benín, leyó poesía que escribió en un idioma que hasta ella carece de literatura escrita. La lectura conmocionó a los partícipes, inspirando varios comentarios sobre la belleza que se tenía que concretar y rescatar, formulando una literatura y una gramática escritas.

Sin poder concluir legítimamente que basta con el esfuerzo de un solo ser humano, el debate en la mesa redonda del 9 de mayo sí pareció llegar a proponer, desde varios puntos de vista, que el asunto tiene que ver con la voluntad del individuo, en sociedad. El misterio de cómo resolver el problema de los idiomas que están a punto de perderse para siempre, tiene que ver con la necesidad de que sea algo que funcione al nivel de la voluntad de un conjunto de individuos que apuestan por vivir dentro de una estructura mental y un tejido de referencias útiles para vivir sus vidas.

LA MITAD DE LOS IDIOMAS ACTUALMENTE HABLADOS DESAPARECERÁN DENTRO DE 100 AÑOS
Si las tendencias actuales se realizan, en menos de un siglo, más de 3.500, la mitad de todos los idiomas actualmente hablados, desaparecerán. La civilización humana está enfrentando el momento de mayor peligro para las culturas más locales y periféricas, y será necesario tomar en cuenta lo que se va a perder en este proceso de purgación involuntaria y extinción.

El chauvinismo de las grandes culturas puede ser un accidente histórico más que chauvinismo, pero su peso es innegable, y hemos de comparar lo que pueden ser las luchas históricas que ocurren en lugares como Catalunya, donde un idioma con más de 10 millones de parlantes nativos se ha visto en ciertos momentos amenazado por la ignorancia y la persecución. Es necesario pensar qué es lo que busca una cultura en la debilidad de otra, por qué no puedcn coexistir muchos idiomas no sólo en una sola persona, sino en un lugar y en un momento, solapados y sanos.

Exploraremos unos mitos: Estados Unidos tiene fama de ser un país donde la mayoría habla un solo idioma, aunque entre 300 millones, ya 40 millones hablan castellano, y en la vida cotidiana, se hablan en total, según el censo del 2000, 329 idiomas. Europa, que tiene mayor población y se conoce más que nada por su política multilingüe y el talento de mucha gente por navegar varios idiomas a la vez, resulta ser la región con la menor diversidad lingüística per cápita en todo el mundo.

Las monoculturas: Turquía solía no reconocer la cultura de los kurdos; imponía la monocultura turca. Francia, con fama de ser el país ilustrado, abierto, democrático, por excelencia y por principio, también tiene una política oficial de cultura única: el francés que conocemos como ‘el francés’ es sólo uno de más de 30 idiomas indígenas de la Francia actual, por no mencionar la alta tasa de ciudadanos e inmigrantes que también hablan o vietnamita o árabe.

¿Qué busca un radical derechista del Congreso de Estados Unidos cuando propone declarar un idioma oficial? ¿Es consciente ese hombre, o el mundo de fuera, que en ese país tal ley sería ilegal, una violación de la provisión constitucional de que el Congreso no puede poner ninguna ley que limitara la libertad de expresión? ¿No es más sano un plurilingüismo vasto y felizmente carente de ideología, como el que ya domina entre esos 300 millones de personas que han venido de todo el mundo para explorar una convivencia sin precedentes?

Son en muchos casos unos cuantos estudiosos que realmente protegen y rehabilitan los idiomas en vías de extinción.

El artista vive no un vuelo por otros mundos, no un éxtasis arrasador que funda naciones, no un ciclo sinfónico de soles derritiéndose. El artista vive la vida de este mundo, el artificio de las construcciones humanas y la autenticidad de lo que duelen o fascinan sus límites. Vive un océano de contactos y acercamientos, pero como con cualquiera, esos roces y tributos no se alejan más de la distancia de la mano, de los sentidos, y del fenómeno de un individuo que enfrenta el hecho de estar presente, deshilachando el tejido del todavía no.

Marco, en su serie de ‘Ohmenaje, a ellos los cercanos cotidianos’, reconoce que en nuestras vidas el fulgor y el amparo suelen venir desde un conjunto de albores plásticos, destellos de trivialidad en lo íntimo, que no fallan en grabar algo propio y algo sustancial, por mucho que se repitan tras el baile de las horas. Esta colección de cuadros no es sólo un homenaje juguetón a los lugares comunes de la condición humana; es una línea que traza la curva de lo que ponemos los seres humanos para que vibren y nos reconozcan a su vez esos seres íntimos que tantas veces se prestan a nuestros caprichos, tanto alegres como sublimes…

[ texto, Joseph Robertson, BCN, 8 diciembre 2006 ]

:: Marco Hdez., punzopintor mexicano, Casavaria homepage
:: Ohmenaje 2, exposición en el Sortidor, Barcelona
:: Ohmenaje: a ellos los cercanos cotidianos, Ràdio Ohm, Barcelona

THE RICHARD AVEDON RETROSPECTIVE EXHIBITION AT THE MET

It was the last night of the year, and we were visiting the belly of the whale: old shimmering Menäting, the Island Place. We sought the center of a culture of collective insight, a distillation of plunder and purchase, lend and lease, ache and expansion. The Metropolitan Museum of Art: temporary exhibit: Richard Avedon, Portraits (in black and white): floating above Fifth Avenue: visions out of time: an artful pillage of posture and concealment. It was a display of selfhood in multiple manifestation… an array of recorded vessels of suffering, suffrage, denial, awareness, harbors for history.

We saw Oppenheimer’s stilted surprise, maybe nuanced by a gesture of feigned regret, maybe sincere, seeing the brilliance of terror, a halo of mortification over the head of the pilot who delivered O’s devastation to Hiroshima. In the pilot’s eyes we saw the unbearable draw of hundreds of thousands dead at the flip of a switch, the knowledge of an incomparable crime which no one had the courage to stop. We saw the utter failure of all human systems outside the basest urge to annihilate… the moral fabric of history’s long anguished striving torn on two sides and splitting… then three sides, then four… we saw the glistening of a tear that said six million, one million more, then twelve, then thirty!

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We saw the face of a man born into slavery and the grave and ravenous turmoil within him even eighty years hence, how he spoke with eyes of lucid interrogation about the worst weaknesses that posed as strength in our perverse history… an antecedent realm of madness, mayhem and moral vacuity, where devils were honored, revered and given sway, and angels were trodden underfoot, cooked and devoured, to feed an addiction.

We saw two walls of defiance, two covens of law-breakers, face to face in a struggle to define democracy, define humanity, write the epilogue to a culture’s sense of the Good… on the north wall the silk-dressed, close-cropped, wrinkled sodden directors of a war; opposite, looking into them from the southern wall of the gallery, seven conscientious objectors, eyes filled with hope, disappointment, vision, bodies poised for civil disobedience, faces overburdened with natural growth, not with a napalm-consciousness… the Directors use the law to violate its own principles of the sanctity of individual liberty and of life itself; the Objectors use individual liberty, and their lives’ sacred sprawl, to violate civic regulations and to speak for peace, to speak for the voiceless, to remake the discourse in a broader mold.

Avedon’s work itself seems to be structured around a fundamental ‘island place’ of individual being. The subject is starkly portrayed, in silence and asymmetry, against the abstraction of a white background. The whole of an individual’s life experience seems visible through the features into which he or she has developed by way of that experience. Eyes, flesh, posture, each speak of the impression of the living world into life itself, and of the reverse. Each image seems to speak of a convergence of forces and futilities in the conscious life of the individual self.

It is this act that makes Avedon’s work miraculous, and allows for a sweeping commentary on the human condition to emerge from each of his portraits, from each face looking out from the walls in this room, on the last day of the calendar year, in the belly of the whale. As philosopher Emmanuel Levinas explains, that moment of contact with selfhood is not just the key to unlocking what is individual, within the individual, it is the key to tapping into what is transcendent in being and developing selfhood. The universal glows from within the particular.

Avedon’s best work is the highest expression of this complex truth. In his keen examination of the particular, the angular features of a face, the way experience has imprinted itself in the gaze or the complexion of an individual, he locates and transmits universal human experiences. He translates the specific into the shared, the tragic into the beautiful, the vulnerable into the noble and the time-tested, so that the nature of human experience is more apparent, more fully within reach, more available.