local & global art contexts

HEO PELMUS
I will try to consider myself as a Canadian and not as a Romanian. Once one becomes part of a different culture one loses the one in which one was born. With my performance practice I am anchored to the contemporary art discourse through my interest in linguistics and perception of transformation of materials. I do not know if we can talk anymore today about an international and national context. The distances between different social and political spaces of manifestation in arts have shrunk. This is the reason why I do not believe anymore in Identify conformed to your roots. I think, today we borrow identities in an empathetic process. This is due to the globalization phenomenon. I think that Local/ International contexts are conventions that can not be anymore comprehensive, that don't really say anything about an artist place in the contemporary art. The most important thing is to be alive and have something to say and afterwards the contextualization of someone art is made
on-consensual

NEW(BE)COMERS
There are several examples of similar projects both internationally and on a local level, for example La LLeca, a project based on a practice with prisoners in Mexico City, and the Brazilian group Frente 3 de Fevereiro. We would like to point out the theoretical background that we share.

Paulo Freire’s landmark book Pedagogy of the Oppressed has provided us with a critique on conventional education, a critical pedagogy and, most importantly, with an example of practice of equality. In this book he proposes not only a different kind of education, but also different forms of relations which are possible when a teacher is willing to listen, reflect and be informed by what the students have to say and vice-versa. Jaques Rencière, in his not so famous book The Ignorant School Master deals with the question of equality by reflecting on the work of Joseph Jacotot, a French schoolmaster. Jacotot, in his pedagogical experiments, had rejected the role of the teacher as an explicator, which he claimed worked against the learning process of any individual.

In his reflection on Jacotot’s achievements Rencière imagines a “community of equals”. He writes: We can thus dream of a society of the emancipated that would be a society of artists. …Such people would know that no one is born with more intelligence that his neighbor, that the superiority that someone might manifest is only the fruit of as tenacious an application to working with words as another might show to working with tools; that the inferiority of someone else is the consequence of circumstances that did not compel him to seek harder. In short, they would know that the perfection someone directs to toward his own art is no more than the particular application of the power common to all reasonable beings” (Renciére, p. 71)

We share this notion and we are aware of it in our artistic practice. We have found Freire’s and Renciere’s notion of equality reflected in Martin Heiddegger’s What Is a Thing, in which he suggests that genuine learning takes place when an individual “takes what s/he already has”. Heidegger writes: “Teaching is a giving, an offering; but what is offered in teaching is not the learnable, for the student is merely instructed to take for himself what he already has. If the student only takes over something which is offered he does not learn. He comes to learn only when he experiences what he takes as something he himself already has. True learning only occurs when the taking of what one already has is a self-giving and is experienced as such. Teaching therefore, does not mean anything else than to let the others learn, i.e., to bring one another to learning... The genuine teacher differs from the pupil only in that he can learn better and that he more genuinely wants to learn. In all teaching, the teacher learns the most.” (Heidegger, p. 73)

We frame our practice in this spirit of hope and will to learn, as an artistic process and as a verification of equality. The authors cited above do not provide us with specific methodologies to follow, but with important ideas and notions that we share and keep in mind in our practice. We identify the important role of creativity and creation which art is made of and attempt to challenge and transform vertical social relations.

Works cited:
Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970). Heidegger, Martin. What is a thing? (1958)
Ranciere, Jacques. The Ignorant Schoolmaster: Five Lessons in Intellectual (1991)

ALEXANDRA GELIS
En tiempos de velocidad, fugacidad y mezcla, utilizo el documental para destacar el valor del individuo. Donde exploro el cuerpo y espacios con una mirada en primerísimo primer plano para llegar a sus historias y memorias mas intimas.

Technically, I am always compelled to draw parallel usage of different disciplines. Unquestionably new technologies for the production and exhibition of photography using video are more accessible to artist, creating a visual explosion in the use of moving images in the arts.

My interest has evolved to assembling high-resolution photography as sequences to be printed or animated using video and using a conceptual approach to the documentation of space, individuals, or self-portraits. This enactive approach of using sequential narrative or loops as symbols imply the mental ability to grasp something as an invariant under a diversity of aspects and perspectives.

JORGE LOZANO
Off site and trans-self-reflective

AMBEREEN SIDDIQUI
I work primarily with documentation, and references to a particular space, person or history usually become points of reference. I work with archives, and my research, by default, is often localized. Ideas of working with existing archives, and of creating new ones are approached by many artists all over the world.

PATRICIO DAVILA (AUTOTELIC)
I sometimes work with local groups and create projects that respond specifically to their concerns (technology, media, cultural history, etc.)

PAOLO PEDERCINI
I have no idea, I guess it's the contemporary art system that localize my work autonomously.

ULYSSES CASTELLANOS
I try to not localize my work, but I pay attention to a certain production value. If it is an object, the quality of fabrication should be good. Artists are manufacturers thanks to globalization. I want to create a good product for public consumption. my performances are about process and chaos for the most part, so they don't need to be too polished.  I want to be and do so many different things so well that people will be flabbergasted. my motto is "I cover the world with art"

here & there

HEO PELMUS
I try to identify more with Romanian clichés and I discovered that being Romanian means a revolution, the death of Ceausescu, orphans, prostitution, Dracula, EU, euro, and superstar artists.

NEW(BE)COMERS
When you think about potential audiences in the process of conceptualizing a piece, how does your place of origin and the place you live currently in play a role in this reflection.

We feel that our own background of immigration is helpful when working with youth at-risk and newcomer youth. Yet in considering the audience for our work, the place of origin (the countries we were born in) is just one of the possible connections we may be able to develop with a group of individuals (our audience). In fact, what we aim for is to find connections with our public. We have not so much a method but an attitude towards working with people: with every group we reconfigure the project and create new connections.

ALEXANDRA GELIS
Mis obras son documentales experimentales que surgen a partir de encuentros y vivencias diarias en diferentes espacios, paises y al acercamiento con variados tipo de personas y culturas.

Cuando trabajo autorretratos e intimo-performances o retratos de diferentes individuos, las memorias particulares, dadas especialmente por lugar de origen, son la herramienta de conexión y entendimiento para con la realidad. Me interesa que la audiencia se conecte con su propia memoria y valor particular a través de las historias del individuo documentado.

JORGE LOZANO
My place of origin has given me my internal rhythms, my aesthetic, philosophical and political perception of reality.  My place of living has given me different internal rhythms, aesthetic, philosophical and political perception of reality. I have become hybrid with two countries: a "developed" dominating egocentric country and an "underdeveloped" dominated and self-divided country my alliances are with independent and on-the margin self...who do art beyond the self.

ELENE TREMBLAY
I speak from my body to other bodies and minds.

AMBEREEN SIDDIQUI
I think that audiences for your work aren’t restricted by space and time, especially if your work is available online. For “Big Stories, Little India” I enjoyed the fact that the work was specific to a location. For two weeks in the summer of 2007 the street became our gallery and thus reflected the importance of the point of origin for the work. Since then the work is online and the audience has grown exponentially, even though it wasn’t the audience I had thought of when conceptualizing the piece. I think that the idea of a fluid
audience is exciting for the many interpretations that a work can have.

ATRICIO DAVILA (AUTOTELIC)
In solo projects the barriers between place of origin and the current place of residence tend to be reinforced and used as a creative
tension in the work. In group projects this distinction becomes more of a negotiation through the entire creative process and with the other collaborators.

PAOLO PEDERCINI
When I think about audience I generally consider the Internet crowd composed by students, teenagers, bored secretaries and white collars, nerds and occasional surfers from all over the world. But in the process of making the games the context is fundamental. I always try to connect my work with some ongoing struggles that are happening in the place I live.

ULYSSES CASTELLANOS
I never think about potential audiences. If I did, I would get nothing done, or worse, I would have hanged myself years ago. I focus on the work. I listen to what it wants to do and become. Does it want to be shocking? does it want to be insightful or clever? is it angry? is it whimsical? It could be as tender as Bambi, or as brutal as an icepick protruding from your skull. One never knows.  The truth is, I have no control over it, so if the audience loves it, that's wonderful, and if they hate it, that is something that hopefully I can live with. I find that the works that were most hated by audiences turn out to be the best and most insightful works. Stanislavsky said that a good play is the one that you leave completely content and satisfied with, but is quickly forgotten;  and a great play is the one that makes you angry, the one you don't understand, the one that you just hate, but you're still thinking about it a week, a month and several years later. That's the kind of art I want to make.

I am a lateral thinker. I make connections between concepts and sources that are light years apart, but I can put them together well. THere is a Salvadorean spice called "Relajo", this translates loosely as "a mess". That is at the center of my Canadian and Salvadorean backgrounds, and I think this "mess" comes through in the work, through osmosis.