Education for Socially Engaged Art is the first “Materials and Techniques” book for the emerging field of social practice. Written with a pragmatic, hands-on approach for university-level readers and those interested in real-life application of the theories and ideas around socially engaged art. The book, emphasizing the use of pedagogical strategies to address issues around social practice, addresses topics such as documentation, community engagement, dialogue and conversation, amongst many others.

The book was published by Jorge Pinto Books in 2011 and can be acquired online.

An interview on the subject can be found here:

http://www.artpractical.com/feature/interview_with_pablo_helguera/

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“For too long Social Practice has been the notoriously flimsy flipside of market-based contemporary art: a world of hand-wringing practitioners easily satisfied with the feeling of ‘doing good’ in a community, and unaware that their quasi-activist, anti-formalist positions in fact have a long artistic heritage and can be critically dissected using the tools of art and theatre history. Helguera’s spunky primer promises to offer a much-needed critical compass for those adrift in the expanded social field.” -

—Claire Bishop, Professor of Contemporary Art and Exhibition History, CUNY, and author of Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship

“This is an extremely timely and thoughtful reference book. Drawn from empirical and extensive experience and research, it provides a curriculum and framework for thinking about the complexity of socially engaged practices. Locating the methodologies of this work in between disciplines, Helguera draws on histories of performance, pedagogy, sociology, ethnography, linguistics, community and public practices. Rather than propose a system he exposes the temporalities necessary to make these situations possible and resonant. This is a tool that will allow us to consider the difficulties of making socially engaged art and move closer to finding a language through which we can represent and discuss its impact.”

—Sally Tallant, Artistic Director, Liverpool Biennial

“Helguera has produced a highly readable book that absolutely needs to be in the back pocket of anyone interested in teaching or learning about socially engaged art”

—Tom Finkelpearl, Director of the Queens Museum, New York, and author of Dialogues in Public Art

Excerpt

[From the chapter 1., DEFINITIONS]

BETWEEN DISCIPLINES

The term “social practice” obscures the discipline from which socially engaged art has emerged (i.e., art). In this way it denotes the critical detachment from other forms of art-making (primarily centered and built on the personality of the artist) that is inherent to socially engaged art, which, almost by definition, is dependent of the involvement of others besides the instigator of the artwork. It also thus raises the question of whether such activity belongs to the field of art at all. This is an important query; art students attracted to this form of art-making often find themselves wondering whether it would be more useful to abandon art altogether and instead become professional community organizers, activists, politicians, ethnographers, or sociologists. Indeed, in addition to sitting uncomfortably between and across these disciplines and downplaying the role of the individual artist, socially engaged art is specifically at odds with the capitalist market infrastructure of the art world: it does not fit well in the traditional collecting practices of contemporary art, and the prevailing cult of the individual artist is problematic for those whose goal is to work with others, generally in collaborative projects with democratic ideals. Many artists look for ways to renounce not only object-making but authorship altogether, in the kind of “stealth” art practice that philosopher Stephen Wright argues for, in which the artist is a secret agent in the real world, with an artistic agenda.[2]

Yet the uncomfortable position of socially engaged art, identified as art yet located between more conventional art forms and the related disciplines of sociology, politics, and the like, is exactly the position it should inhabit. The practice’s direct links to and conflicts with both art and sociology must be overtly declared and the tension addressed, but not resolved. Socially engaged artists can and should challenge the art market in attempts to redefine the notion of authorship, but to do so they must accept and affirm their existence in the realm of art, as artists.  And the artist as social practitioner must also make peace with the common accusation that he or she is not an artist but an “amateur” anthropologist, sociologist, etc. Socially engaged art functions by attaching itself to subjects and problems that normally belong to other disciplines, moving them temporarily into a space of ambiguity. It is this temporary snatching away of subjects into the realm of art-making that brings new insights to a particular problem or condition and in turn makes it visible to other disciplines. For this reason, I believe that the best term for this kind of practice is what I have thus far been using as a generic descriptor —that is, “socially engaged art” (or SEA), a term that emerged in the mid-1970s, as it unambiguously acknowledges a connection to the practice of art.[3]

SYMBOLIC AND ACTUAL PRACTICE

To understand SEA, an important distinction must be made between two types of art practice: symbolic and actual. As I will show, SEA is an actual, not symbolic, practice.

A few examples:

Let’s say an artist or group of artists creates an “artist-run school,” proposing a radical new approach to teaching. The project is presented as an art project but also as a functioning school (a relevant example, given the recent emergence of similar projects). The “school,” however, in its course offerings, resembles a regular, if slightly unorthodox, city college. In content and format, the courses are not different in structure from most continuing education courses. Furthermore, the readings and course load encourage self-selectivity by virtue of the avenues through which it is promoted and by offering a sampling that is typical of a specific art world readership, to the point that the students taking the courses are not average adults but rather art students or art-world insiders. It is arguable, therefore, whether the project constitutes a radical approach to education; nor does it risk opening itself up to a public beyond the small sphere of the converted.

An artist organizes a political rally about a local issue. The project, which is supported by a local arts center in a medium-size city, fails to attract many local residents; only a couple dozen people show up, most of whom work at the arts center. The event is documented on video and presented as part of an exhibition. In truth, the artist can claim to have organized a rally?

These are two examples of works that are politically or socially motivated but act through the representation of ideas or issues. These are works that are designed to address social or political issues only in an allegorical, metaphorical, or symbolic level (for example, a painting about social issues is not very different than a public art project that claims to offer a social experience but only does so in a symbolic way such as the ones just described above). The work does not control a social situation in an instrumental and strategic way in order to achieve a specific end.

This distinction is partially based on Jurgen Habermas’s work The Theory of Communicative Action (1981). In it Habermas argues that social action (an act constructed by the relations between individuals) is more than a mere manipulation of circumstances by an individual to obtain a desired goal (that is, more than just the use of strategic and instrumental reason. He instead favors what he describes as communicative action, a type of social action geared to communication and understanding between individuals that can have a lasting effect on the spheres of politics and culture as a true emancipatory force.

Most artists who produce socially engaged works are interested in creating a kind of collective art that impacts the public sphere in a deep and  meaningful way, not in creating a representation—like a theatrical play—of a social issue. Certainly many SEA projects are in tune with the goals of deliberative democracy and discourse ethics, and most believe that art of any kind can’t avoid taking a position in current political and social affairs. (The counter-argument is that art is largely a symbolic practice, and as such the impact it has on a society can’t be measured directly; but then again, such hypothetical art, as symbolic, would not be considered socially engaged but rather would fall into the other familiar categories, such as installation, video, etc.) It is true that much SEA is composed of simple gestures and actions that may be perceived as symbolic. For example, Paul Ramirez-Jonas’s work Key to the City (2010) revolved around a symbolic act—giving a person a key as a symbol of the city. Yet although Ramirez-Jonas’s contains a symbolic act, it is not symbolic practice but rather communicative action (or “actual” practice)—that is, the symbolic act is part of a meaningful conceptual gesture. [4]

The difference between symbolic and actual practice is not hierarchical; rather, its importance lies in allowing a certain distinction to be made: it would be important, for example, to understand and identify the difference between a project in which I establish a health campaign for children in a war-torn country and a project in which I imagine a health campaign and fabricate documentation of it in Photoshop. Such a fabrication might result in a fascinating work, but it would be a symbolic action, relying on literary and public relations mechanisms to attain verisimilitude and credibility.

To summarize: social interaction occupies a central and inextricable part of any socially engaged artwork. SEA is a hybrid, multi-disciplinary activity that exists somewhere between art and non-art, and its state may be permanently unresolved. SEA depends on actual—not imagined or hypothetical—social action.

[2]. See “Por un arte clandestino,” the author’s conversation with Stephen Wright in 2006,  http://pablohelguera.net/2006/04/por-un-arte-clandestino-conversacion-con-stephen-wright-2006/. Wright later wrote a text based on this exchange, http://www.entrepreneur.com/tradejournals/article/153624936_2.html.

[3]. From this point forward I will use this term to refer to the type of artwork that is the subject of this book.

[4] Paul Ramirez Jonas’ project, produced by Creative Time, took place in New York City in the Summer of 2010.

The Estheticist is a free ongoing service of art consultation around practical, philosophical and ethical issues around the visual arts profession. To ask a question, email estheticist@aol.com. Participants accept that their questions may be used for a printed publication that will serve as a professional development tool for emerging professionals in the arts. Please specify if you want to remain anonymous in your request.

QUESTIONS TO THE ESTHETICIST

July 2010

Dear Estheticist,

As a an educator, should I be encouraging my students to make what I think is truly challenging work or work that will be easily consumed and integrated within a professional or academic market? Where does the greater responsibility lie, to each student and their livelihoods or to my future hopes for society?

please don’t answer “both”

Encouraging Educator,  San Juan, Puerto Rico

Dear Encouraging Educator,

You are making that assumption that by encouraging your students to make truly challenging work you will negatively impact your students livelihoods, which I am not certain is the case. But let’s set aside financial considerations for a minute and think about a few comparisons: Should a law professor teach his students to be efficient crooks so that they can quickly ascend to become the next corrupt government or should he teach them to fight to defend social and civil values? Should a medical student rather learn boy scout first aid techniques or how to do heart surgery?

As an arts professional, you are entrusted with the education of young people who are easily impressionable.

At a first glance, making commercial work may seem to them a more viable career opportunity; in reality, it only turns them into mediocre individuals who will never know any better. As their professor, it is your duty to show them that commercial success in art is a possible byproduct but by no means the sole goal, and that success in art lies beyond making money. You should teach them to be the best artists they can possibly be, as if you were teaching yourself. If that entails making challenging work, and questioning art to its roots, that’s then how it should be.  Teach them what you with you would  have been taught as a young student. Make them better artists than you. If they so choose, later on, to descend into commercial mediocrity, that will be their choice.

Sincerely,

The Estheticist

Dear Estheticist,

I recently curated a group show at an alternative space and an important review was written for a major weekly publication. The critic missed a lot of key points about specific artworks, (i.e. omitting names of collaborators, misquoting artists) and also seemed to misunderstand the participating artists and my approach to the medium at hand. I’d like to set the record straight. Is there any way to try and correct the misconceptions or do I just let the critic lie?

Sincerely yours,

Curators Anonymous

Dear Curators Anonymous,

No one can do anything about a critic’s opinion, but if the critic misquoted, gave misinformation or mischaracterized any other factual aspects of the show, by all means you must respond to correct that situation. This should be done in the traditional way of writing a letter to the editor. You may also try to do it in other ways, clarifying those points in an open letter for instance. This second option has its consequences, as you risk indirectly drawing more attention to this critic’s opinion more than it should. At any rate, however, you should stick with debating the factual aspects of this critic’s review, and not on the more subjective take on, say, your curatorial angle.

Sincerely,

The Estheticist

Dear Estheticist,

How do I ask for credit to an ex-boyfriend with which I have done long and intensive collaboration, which includes a video in which I perform and a costume if he uses the footage in all situations?  How do go about explaining that a collaboration in nature is with two and more people and that it is actually helpful to credit each other?  Since I am more involved in the art world it’s a little hard to explain these things to another person who has less experience but it’s very important to me that I have the credit for the work I did as I credit people I work with as an obvious automatic response.

Thank you,

Genevieve

Dear Genevieve,

Thank you for your interesting question.  Based on how you present the problem, you are right: you should receive some sort of credit for this piece. The way

you receive the credit would depend on how it was originated: if both of you came up with the idea, then it is a collaboration; if it was his idea and you helped, you should still receive some credit, eg. he should be credited with the concept and you with the costume, performance, execution, etc. In any case, yours is not a unique situation; many people who  work together (and sometimes ARE together) in what appears very spontaneous situations later on argue about issues of authorship such as this one.  It depends how far you want to take this, but one benevolent way to handle this is that you should share with your ex-boyfriend other examples of similar collaborations where both artists get credited (say, Christo and Jean-Claude, Claes and Kosje Oldenburg, Diller and Scoffidio, etc). Technically, you are legally entitled to sue your ex-boyfriend for using your image without authorization (assuming that no release form was signed). But you may not want to take your case that far, nor would it serve you much purpose. The best is to move on, let that be what it was, and learn from the example when you engage in future collaborations.

Sincerely

The Estheticist

Dear Estheticist,

How many viewers are enough?

Paul Ramirez Jonas

Dear Paul,

They will never appear to be enough.  But you will know they are too many when you lose sight of yourself.

Sincerely,

The Estheticist

Dear Estheticist,

Should I move to Detroit? It seems so…open. I like my fun part time adjunct jobs here in Chicago but feel like this could drag on forever (showing in friends apartments, teaching part time, renting.) Will things be different in the “D”?

Laura, Chicago, IL

Dear Laura,

Thank you so much for your question.

There are two main reasons why one moves to another city: because career opportunities are better, or because your personal situation will improve (quality of life, love interest, etc). You should ask yourself on whether either of those two areas will improve if you are to go to the big D. At a first glance, unemployment is really high in Detroit, so employment-wise it would be a challenge. It is true, however, that Detroit offers a very interesting and inspiring emerging art scene that, while smaller than Chicago, lies at the epicenter of social and cultural environment that is prone for the creation of very interesting art. But the main issue is, if you want change, why not real change? Move to Berlin? Los Angeles? New York? Buenos Aires?  They all have vibrant art scenes. The West Coast is very open (space-wise). Amsterdam is open too (mind -wise).  You are right: staying in Chicago will take you nowhere career-wise, but staying in the Midwest won’t change it either.

Best

The Estheticist

Dear Estheticist:

Too often my viewers think my works of visual fiction are actually factual.

What is the most effective way to signal irony?

Beauvais, Knoxville, TN

Dear Beauvais,

Thank you for your question. The question for you is, why would you want your viewers to know the truth? Ignorance, in this case, is aesthetic bliss.  Think about the conundrum that every parent faces about when to tell their children that Santa Claus doesn’t exist- they eventually will come to the age to realize the truth, but  when parents break the news prematurely they cruelly and abruptly destroy a child’s world of magic and fantasy. As artist, you give your viewers the gift of a possible reality, and it is not your job to undo it for them. Let them figure it out on their own- most eventually will, and they will feel rewarded —even if they are infuriated by having been temporarily fooled, they will be delighted with themselves for having figured it out. And if for some reason they never do figure it out, they never deserved to know the truth in the first place.

Sincerely,

The Estheticist

Dear Estheticist,

What should I wear for the opening of my solo show? Does the same dress code applies when I’m part of a group show?

Ramón

Dear Ramón,

Dress code at an opening is extremely important. What you are wearing often says more about your work than the work itself, because, let’s face it, no one looks at the work on the day of the opening, but everyone checks out what you are wearing.  For a solo show, it is common to overdo it (like wearing Prada), which would make you look like an amateur “solo show artist”. The best is to take your cue from the dealer, or curator- always dress a bit less flashy than them so they feel that they are the stars of the night (in the end, they don’t have the creative outlet of making art, so let them have their little moment of fame). But don’t overdo it: to dress too casually is very 90s and it is too used by middle-aged artists, which you don’t want to do.  For a group show, you need to take the cues from your fellow exhibiting artists: they will hate you if you try to outdo them in wardrobe, plus you will look like you are desperate for attention. For that, it is best to dress as if you were just attending the show as a guest.

Sincerely,

The Estheticist

Dear Estheticist,

Halfway on the process of making an art piece I discover that another artist has already made a project so similar to mine that it will make my work seem like plagiarism.  Please consider that this is the only piece I’m producing specifically for a group show that opens in a few weeks.  There might not be enough time to abandon the idea and start something new.  My name is already printed in the invitations and catalogues.  What should I do?

Ramón

Panama City

Dear Ramón,

Thanks for your question. Here are a few considerations for you to ponder: 1. Would the trajectory of your work logically evolve into a piece such as the one you are producing?  If this is the case, you should not be afraid to make a piece that resembles another. Many works look alike, but the intentions, the context, and the reasons for which they are produced vary widely. Think about white on white paintings. It is more important that your piece has a natural connection with the work you have done in the past than whether it looks like someone else’s. One possibility would be to include a device (a handout, for example) that would help explain how you arrived to this particular solution.

2. Is the artist whose piece was made before of a previous generation? If so, you should dedicate the piece to that artist or make a Dan Flavin-esque reference to him/her (like “to Dan Graham, who is crazy but interesting”).  If the artist is a contemporary of yours, and furthermore, if his piece is in the same show, this would not be a good idea. At any rate, it is preferable to accept the coincidence frontally and honestly than pretending to be surprised about it.

If, on another hand, this work is not logically connected to what you have done in the past, and this other artist exists in competition with you, I suggest that you just pretend that you intentionally made this piece just to fuck around with him.

Sincerely,

The Estheticist

Dear Estheticist,

Are artist residencies really the only answer?

If so, why did Smack Mellon reject me?

Jin

Dear Jin,

Artists residencies are no solution to having an art career, if that is what you mean. They are a bit like drugs- they are addictive, they make you feel good and productive, and on a limited dose they do help, but soon you can become a residency junkie, floating from one residency to another, like those people in universities who like the idea of being a student forever. As a result, those artists who are constantly in search of residencies to get a career forget to get a life. And the problem is, if you don’t have a life, you don’t have a subject to make art about, and your work will start looking like  bland, flavorless and generic residency art.  In this sense, it is healthy that we don’t get accepted into every single residency we apply to.

Sincerely

The Estheticist

Dear Estheticist,

Here’s my question- what is a good way for a curator to sustain meaningful relationships with artists over time AFTER exhibiting their work? Sometimes it feels like the exhibition planning stage is an intense period of collaboration and then once it’s over we move on to the next project and part ways.

Best,

Julie, Chicago, IL

Dear Julie,

Thank you so much for your question.  The answer is simple: most artists want to stay in touch with curators after doing a project and most do. However, artists are strange specimens who can often display little generosity in their interactions with people who they don’t see as immediately being able to further their career, and this is why you may feel that after working with an artist this artist may feel that you are a “been there, done that.” The best thing is to be direct with them: tell them that you want to have an ongoing dialogue, that you are interested in their work, and that you hope that you two may share a career-long professional dialogue.  Most experienced artists understand this perfectly and will respond gratefully; the young ones who are getting started and still feel they are the hottest thing in the universe will eventually come around and understand the dynamic, but it is for the curator to set the ground rules, so that not every time that you ask information for a project it will mean that you will give them a show.

And in the case of those who may ignore your reaching out for a deeper dialogue or demand a completely utilitarian relationship, the question then for you would be: why bother?

Sincerely,

The Estheticist

Dear Estheticist,

How can a curator answer every single email to every single artist who drops an email to her/his inbox? Is it ok not to answer?

How can a curator raise money possibly for every artist that she/she wants to work with or in need?

How can a curator make sure that the money s/he raises in a museum that that money goes to for what it is raised for?

Can curators monopolize access to the part of the world that they are thoroughly informed about? Whose information is that anyway?

How can a curator get out of his/her “connector” mode and share his/her resources with other professionals locally and internationally without losing his/her “edge” and knowledge pool?

How can a curator deal with professionals in parts of the world that immediately steal/mimic his/her models, his/her “artists” or content or prior modes of knowledge production?

How can a curator rise professionally without aligning herself with power structures, power artists or author-ship driven curators?

How can a curator rise professionally without being power obsessed, being an ass whole, or being a bitch?

Can there be curator-angels? Are there prior examples?

How can a curator embrace both the Antiquity and Contemporary Art World?

Is it ok for a curator to be nice to her/his assistants interns yet appropriate their work?

Thank you very much.

Istanbul curator

Dear Istanbul curator,

Thanks for writing. You really had a lot of questions. Here are your answers.

How can a curator answer every single email to every single artist who drops an email to her/his inbox? Is it ok not to answer?

It is not ok to not answer. Ignoring an artist’s legitimate inquiry via email is a sign of arrogance and pretentiousness. Best practice, if unable to answer each email individually, is to have a series of readymade responses, such as, “thank you for making me aware of this material, I will take a look at it but as you may know I receive many requests every day and may not be able to give you a full response.” In the case however, of annoying artists who pester you every day, you are not obliged to answer every time, and it is perfectly fine to let them know that your inbox cannot sustain a thousand exhibition announcements from them. Goes without saying of spam- just block them on your email list.

How can a curator raise money possibly for every artist that she/she wants to work with or in need?

You can’t- you have to pick and choose your funding battles. As curator you should make a short list of those projects that you are willing to spend your political capital on. That said, you are not responsible to find funding for every artist- you are their supporter, not their mother.

How can a curator make sure that the money s/he raises in a museum that that money goes to for what it is raised for?

You can’t, unless if you are the director. In that case, you need to fundraise from the outside- that is, work with a foundation that will give the money directly to the artist instead of the institution (many private and government foundations work that way).

Can curators monopolize access to the part of the world that they are thoroughly informed about? Whose information is that anyway?

It is not cool, nor possible, for curators to colonize thematic or geographic areas of the world. To think you can do it is delusional. Information belongs to no one. Being territorial, furthermore, is a sign of insecurity, not only in curatorial but in every field, and it does not go unnoticed when a curator is protective of a particular area or subject.

How can a curator get out of his/her “connector” mode and share his/her resources with other professionals locally and internationally without losing his/her “edge” and knowledge pool?

You have no obligation to do your fellow curator’s homework. But you can always provide raw material to them, inasmuch as they will also reciprocate with you. In general, generosity breeds generosity.  It is also perfectly fine in some circumstances, when someone seems particularly needy, to suggest a consultant fee for your advise.

How can a curator deal with professionals in parts of the world that immediately steal/mimic his/her models, his/her “artists” or content or prior modes of knowledge production?

Documentation, documentation, documentation. There is nothing you can do if a curator replicates exactly the same show that you did a year ago. But you can let everyone know that you were there first. And then, if you did your job, everyone will know who is the plagiarist.

How can a curator rise professionally without aligning herself with power structures, power artists or author-ship driven curators?

If by “rising professionally” you mean becoming one of those on top of power structures, or an author-curator, you will have to engage with those structures. But you can create rules of engagement that will preserve your integrity and do not devolve into professional prostitution. To achieve that will prove your true talent as curator, and as social mediator.

How can a curator rise professionally without being power obsessed, being an ass whole, or being a bitch?

There is the misperception that all powerful curators are all those things, and it is not true. The truth is, many factors – such as luck, which you will need- are out of your control, and regardless of how hard you try most wont make it to the top. But if you make it to the top by being an asshole, you don’t deserve to be there anyway— you don’t even deserve to exist. This has again to do with what you mean by “rising professionally”. In my view, and I bet in the long view of history, the curators that will matter are not the ones on top of the most famous institutions, but the ones who curate the best exhibitions. So, please do not sell your soul to the devil.

Can there be curator-angels? Are there prior examples?

But of course there are. Paulo Herkenhoff in Brazil is a teddy bear, also perhaps the most influential curator right now in Latin America. Elizabeth Smith, now chief curator of the Art Gallery of Ontario, is a wonderful person and great curator. Stacy Switzer, director of Grand Arts in Kansas City, is the sweetest person and incredibly talented, independent and intelligent.  They are around- don’t think that curators need to be bad people. Only mediocre ones are.

How can a curator embrace both the Antiquity and Contemporary Art World?

It can be done, but the art world is not ready for them, because most in the art world are culturally illiterate about anything that happened before Duchamp.

Is it ok for a curator to be nice to her/his assistants interns yet appropriate their work?

No.  There is no replacement for giving credit where credit is due. If the assistant did the research, that’s exactly how you credit them. If the assistant produced the installation, you say so. And if your assistant curated the show, he/she should be listed as the curator, and you as the assistant.

Sincerely,

The Estheticist

Dear Estheticist,

What should my artist statement look like for grad school applications? Should it be limited to one page?

Rachael

Dear Rachael,

Keep it short and concise, one page.  Be honest, but please avoid commonplace statements. Do not copy fancy words that you don’t understand from books, nor do try to play the game of  ”I am going to write what I think they want me to tell them” because there is no way you will win it. Reviewers usually have read a million artists statements before yours and can detect a contrived statement from a mile away (I know I can).

Do the following exercise: write three art statements. One of them should be the one that truly describes who you are and what you believe in. The other two you should write it imagining that you were someone else (a friend, colleague, etc). As you write the three statements, think about what makes them different from each other. Then show the three statements to other people to look at and ask them which one best describes who you are. If they all point to the one that you wrote imagining yourself, then you are good to go. If not you have to go to the drawing board.

Sincerely

The Estheticist

Dear Estheticist,

If an artwork is in a crate in a storage facility in Long Island City, is it

still an artwork?

Put away,

Paul

Dear Paul,

You ask very interesting but complex questions, so here we will have to get a

bit more philosophical. According to Bishop Berkeley, one of the great English

Empiricists, nothing exists unless it is being perceived by someone. Then,

Ortega y Gasset, on the other hand, said that  our behavior is constructed under

assumptions that we have regarding the existence of things. For example, when I

wake up in the morning and prepare myself to go out to start my day, it is

Because I am assuming that the world is still the same than when I went to bed

the day before, that when I open the door the street will be there, etc.  So: if

we follow these ideas, what matters is not on whether the work still exists

physically, because it does exist in our minds, and continues influencing our

behavior. Let’s say the caves of Altamira are an artwork. Most of us haven’t

been to Altamira to corroborate they exist or are still there, yet one can say

they continue exerting their influence.  And even when they vanish, due to

accident or duration, they are still artworks in people’s mind.  If a

performance piece is stored away in our memory, isn’t it the same than when a

physical art work is on a storage facility?

Sincerely

Estheticist

Dear Estheticist,

Thanks, that was very helpful, but it leads me to the inevitable question:

If a tree falls in a Museum, is it an artwork?

Yours

Paul

Dear Paul,

Trees provoke two kinds of noises by falling. One, which is less important, is the actual noise of falling. Second, more important, is who yelled (if anything) “tree falling” before or after the fall. (“tree falling” meaning “this is art”). Then you have three possibilities:

1. When no one yells anything after the fall, then the fall is invisible and inaudible to everyone. The tree vanishes.

2. If the museum was the one who yelled “tree falling” (before or after, it doesn’t matter) many people will hear it. It will be an artwork (whether its good or not it doesn’t matter: the noise is there to stay and the reaction it will provoke is unavoidable). Yet, the next generation who wasn’t there to hear the first or second sounds may never know it happened in the first place unless the second part of #3 happens (see below).

3. If the one who yelled wasn’t sanctioned by the museum, the falling will be an artwork, but very few people may hear him/her, so few people will see. It will barely exist. But it may crawl here and there in someone’s memory. If lucky, the tree will take root and grow on enough people’s minds. If it cannot be uprooted from them, it is likely that one day it will be planted, as a monument, in the museum.

Sincerely

The Estheticist

Dear Estheticist,

I often find it hard to write my own artist statement.  Could you advice on how to make this easier.  Is there some sort of template that I can follow?

Ramón

Dear Ramón,

Don’t follow templates- there is nothing more horrid than reading the typical statement using the same words and unpronounceable terms.

Here are a few ideas though:

- Ask three people who know your work best to describe your work in one paragraph. Use those paragraphs as a guide to discuss your work

- Write three statements- one of an artist you truly admire, one of an artist you truly abhor, then write yours. In writing your statement, think

about how your work differs from the other two.

-have a curator or artist friend interview you about your work. tape that interview. transcribe the parts that you liked onto the paper.

My favorite recommendation is , however: contest the notion of  artist statements. They are a terrible idea anyway. Do you think that Marina Abramovic or Gerhard Richter ever had to write artist statements? Come up with your own format: interview, short story, cooking recipes. Something that represents your work better

than the typical bureaucratic text, something that makes it more compelling to read. The whole reason why unimaginatively people request artist statements is because they need a way to know what the artist thinks of his/her work. If you do that without using that format, it shows you are a creative and thinking being.

sincerely

The Estheticist

Dear Estheticist,

I want to be famous, and I am open about it. What do you think I should do:

Which of these is the best way  to get fast recognition, wealth, and fame? and

if possible, to feel good about myself and what I do.

a. contemporary art (Star)

b. pop singer

c. actor

d. (super)model

my skills are very limited but I have good ideas.

I have no previous experience in any of these fields

thanks,

Anonymous (I havent decided on my stage name yet)

Dear Anonymous,

You are amongst the minority. Who wants to be famous anymore? Be chased by paparazzi and tabloids, die of an overdose while still young,

be immersed in legal battles with the many ex-spouses who will fight to take over your estate, being debated publicly over the kind of

Liposuction or plastic surgery you have conducted on yourself.  In any case, your avenues depend, as you may have guessed, on your abilities:

if you have a great body, supermodel is the solution; if you know how to fake feelings, you are an actor, if you can sing and move at least decently onstage,

you are a pop singer. If you can’t do any of these things, – that is, if you are not that attractive, you can’t really act, sing or move- then you are stuck with trying to become a contemporary artist, as that is the field where all the fame-starved and slightly untalented people go. The bad news: fame in the art world is so easy to get that it hardly counts as true fame. Like Maurizio Cattelan said, being famous in the art world is too easy for everyone because the art world is like, 2000 people. The good part: because art stars are second-rate celebrities, they are not so famous that are pestered with paparazzi, tabloids, ex-spouses, etc.

Sincerely,

The Estheticist.

Dear Estheticist,

What happens to the contestants on work of art after they get voted off? Are they still allowed to produce art?

Sincerely,

A concerned pop culture addict

Dear  Concerned Pop culture Addict,

Regardless of being winners or losers, basically all contestants, critics, self-appointed experts,  and any other people who are associated with the TV program should not  be allowed to be part of the Art World anymore. As they have clearly displayed their transparent obsession with fame and power over their interest in art, the appropriate thing for them to do (and for any of us to do to them) is to move to Las Vegas and work at a third-rate casino variety show, which is where they belong.

sincerely,

The Estheticist

Dear Estheticist,

I am an artist who has recently graduated from an MFA program in a medium sized American city. My schooling has given me the impression that in order to be a real, viable artist I now need to spend years of my life jumping around from residency to residency, if I am lucky enough to be invited to do so, in a state of constant mobility. This global nomadic life style is not my dream. I believe in knowing people and places for a long, long time. I would like to maintain a sense of home. I accept that it is important to build a wide web of relationships within the art world if one wants to succeed as a professional artist. But how do I do that without sacrificing the depth of relationship I have been building with the people and place where I live?

Sincerely,

Ariana Jacob

Dear Ariana:

Thank you for your question. You are absolutely right in not wanting to sacrifice your immediate surroundings and the people who are closest to you in exchange of your career. And by no means you should or need to sacrifice them. However, the artist profession does imply certain negotiations with your immediate realm.

The globe-trotting phenomenon in contemporary art is fairly recent. Back in the 60s, artists didn’t transport themselves that much— they mainly stay put. Then in the 70s, 80s, and specially the 90s, artists became biennialists, cultural tourists. While this movement has been criticized in the sense that many artists make banal art about whichever locality they are in,  there are wonderful things about this unprecedented mobility: your work will be influenced by many and rich new ideas and cultures. To stay in the same place forever, unless you are Emily Dickinson (who rarely left her house), will likely isolate you and make your work self-absorbed. Today, it is important to get out of the house. Another thing you should be aware about is that the international network of the artworld is here to stay-  you will realize that wherever you go you will start finding familiar faces. So it is possible- and necessary, to find people of your generation (artists, curators) who live in different cities and maintain an artistic, and friendship, dialogue with them. Those relationships will also last forever.   And then, as an artist, you will become a citizen of the world. You will arrive to Venice and the Rialto Bridge and cafe Florian will feel like coming back home; you may go over the years to Mexico City and enjoy hanging out at the Covadonga where most artists meet. It will be a new kind of familiarity.

Furthermore, the years that follow your MFA are very important for you to be active. This is the time when you need to be out there exploring the world; that will change in 10 years. After that decade, artists usually become a bit more sedentary. So my recommendation is that you make yourself a clear plan of “travel action”. You don’t have to be a nomad- then you would become a residence addict, which is not productive or useful either. Pick and choose your residencies; if you go away, go far away, not to the next town.  Shoot for significant experiences that may help your development: go to the venice biennial, to sao paulo, new york. Go also to places that few in the art world go to: Zagreb,  Beirut, Bogota. You will find incredible artists communities there.

One last word: as long as you are aware what is your home base, you shouldn’t worry. But you should be prepared to leave it every now and again. Remember that the main reason we leave a place is to rediscover it.

sincerely,

The Estheticist.

Dear Estheticist,

Is it ethical for an artist either to offer a work of art as a gift to a curator (for example, after the decision for inclusion in a show, or after the show ends), or offer a reduced sale price for a work of art to a curator?

Artist donor,

Dear Artist donor,

While many do it, it is unethical to give any gift to any curator as a quid pro quo for any favor.  In the long run, an artist (and curators, for that matter) gain respect amongst their peers for their integrity not only as professionals but as individuals. To favor such practices only decreases the perception that others may have of you and will counterbalance any short-term benefits that you may derive from engaging in such sleazy arrangements. Similarly, you should also think twice about curators – or even dealers- who expect to get a work of yours in exchange of including you in a show. Not only is that completely unacceptable, but likely those are not very professional curators nor people one should aspire to work with.

There can be, however, instances where, if you have a sincere friendship or dialogue with a curator (or dealer, etc.) that has developed over time, that you may want to give a work of yours as a gift, and it may be entirely appropriate. But as with any gift, one should never give with the ulterior purpose to receive something in exchange.

Sincerely,

The Estheticist.

Dear Estheticist,

I’m a choreographer. Recently I’ve noticed that some artists who’s work is

basically choreography have had large scale shows and sold pieces to major

museums for a lot of money. How can I transition into this situation. Or is this

trend already over?

Thanks,

Melinda

Dear Melinda,

Thank you for your question. Your observation is correct: many choreographers indeed have made work that goes into the visual art world and thus is purchased and collected as if they were paintings.

Unfortunately, there is no set “strategy” to make a choreography work enter into the visual arts market. What you see happening is essentially that some artists are working in ways that speak to issues that are directly connected with the visual arts realm, through theoretical angles (eg. issues around sculpture for example) or political/gender issues. Because these particular works speak to other artists in that discourse, and /or because they have been influential to other artists and periods of visual art, ( and many of those artists have presented their work in the context of museums or galleries in the past) these pieces are deemed as belonging to the narratives in contemporary art museums. To simply plant a choreography in a museum wouldn’t do the trick, as you would need to first insert the piece in that dialogue, or, like Tino Sehgal, take elements of choreography and turn them into a conceptual art product.

sincerely,

The Estheticist.

Dear Estheticist,

I am writing with an ethical/aesthetic question about collaboration.  have collaborated for many years with a more famous artist than myself and I feel that I’m not being credited properly for my contributions to our shared work. Is it appropriate for me to ask that we get equal billing? How would you recommend I broach this issue?

Do you think it’s tacky to have to ask?

Signed,

Better half of a collaboration

Dear Better Half of a Collaboration,

You are right that these days the role of a curator falls into a gray area when the curator enters into production or collaborative roles with an artist. It is also true that in many collaborative situations the curator enters into this role in an unexpected way, sometimes having to do much more than what was originally expected. But by far the root of the problem lies in the little communication that exists between artists and curators regarding credit, and the shyness by many curators to always defer to the artist in these matters.  In these situations, it is absolutely correct to specify the kind of credit that you expect to receive from a collaborative project, but this should be stipulated before the project begins. If things change over the course of the project, then you should point to the artist how the project has evolved in a way in which you feel that now its a collaboration in which you are doing more than the usual curatorial duty. Also, regardless of how famous the artist is, you should not “ask”: you should hold your ground and stipulate how you expect to be credited before you proceed with the collaboration.

Sincerely,

The Estheticist

book cover

“Helguera knows the lecture form inside-out, in all its frailties and anachronisms, and he cares for it. But expect the Professor-Doctor of its terminal condition to be doing stand-up at the funeral.”

Dominic Willsdon, The Leanne and George Roberts Curator of Education and Public Programs, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

Published by Jorge Pinto Books, New York

Trade paperback: 6” x 9”; ISBN: 978-1-934978-16-0; $19.95

Launch date: September 2009

Available at Amazon

Theatrum Anatomicum (and Other Performance Lectures) brings together a number of  performance scripts that blend the dramatic elements of theater with the format of the academic presentation,  and bring into dialogue topics as disparate as the Latin American soap opera, the origins of the Kindergarten, the history of the Shakers, the US/Mexico war and the social dynamics of the art world.  In these series of experimental works, the voices of real and fictional characters come together in a critical exploration of history, politics, and art.

BOOK EXCERPT

INTRODUCTION 

[...]

Over the last few years, the performance lecture has become a rather ubiquitous genre on the stages of highbrow museums and Brooklyn stand-up bars. Yet, as I realized while putting this collection of texts together, there is not a great deal of writing that discusses the nature and structure of the genre. This absence of a theoretical framework is somewhat liberating, because once something is theorized, it starts to get trapped in philosophical premises. But for this book I feel I have to define for myself, even if tentatively, what a performance lecture is—a task that has not yet been imposed upon me, despite the fact that I have doing such lectures since that evening in Chicago in 1993.

The easy definition of a performance lecture is that it is a live presentation imparted by an artist who takes advantage of his or her artistic license and of the conventions of academic pedagogy to create a work that straddles fiction and reality. Irony and sometimes satire are central to the event: those who attend a performance lecture generally expect an irreverent take on academicism—a trait that explains this genre’s natural connection to institutional critique. Like other hybrid art genres, its very name illustrates the awkward juxtaposition of two modes of speaking that never entirely blend, much as prose poetry draws on the qualities of two different modes of writing without being entirely one or the other. Yet beyond these few points, performance lectures don’t follow many rules, and like performance, the genre is in a constant process of self-definition, sometimes delving into stand-up comedy, poetic presentations, recitals, speeches, etc.

My work in museum education, begun in 1992 and continuing to this day, has required me to reflect constantly on the relationship between performativity and pedagogy that is inherent to performance lectures. Because of my involvement with performance and theater, I gravitated toward the public-programs area of museums—an area that for many years has been in serious need of revitalization. The lecture format, a seemingly necessary medium of communication and a vital staple of academia, is constantly reviled and declared dead today, and for good reasons. Ever since the publication of Donald A. Bligh’s What’s The Use of Lectures? in 1971, there was been a general awareness of the limitations of this educational format and yet very little done to innovate on it. Through the work of Bligh and others, we have repeatedly received  prove that the lecture format is ineffective as a discussion method for promoting thought and that at best it is just as effective as other formats to transmit information, yet we continue to use this presentation formats that comes to us from the eighteenth century, a time when pedagogy consisted entirely of exposition and memorization.  The limitations of this method become clearest with the practice of a “read paper”—usually consisting of a poorly delivered, hard-to-assimilate piece of writing that is best read at home by oneself. Academics who attend art conferences deride even their own presentations as boring and excessively long but continue to perpetuate these archaic models. However, I believe that this  exasperation toward the traditional lecture format has finally reached the inner depths of the academic world, and in blogs and magazines, the lecture as we know it has been declared dead. A new type of lecture, the metalecture or lecture 2.0, must take its place.

In my role as programmer, I have frequently been frustrated by the low or nonexistent public-speaking skills of those who lecture and participate in academic discussions. While featured speakers usually have something relevant to say (which is what prompts an invitation to speak), very few of them are skilled public speakers or comfortable in a public forum, which translates into stiffness and social awkwardness, insincerity, and a general reluctance to open up toward an audience. Because most lectures are based on a written text, their unfolding is slow and their language excessively formal and heavy for a live reading. Wouldn’t it be great, I thought, if panels were like theater works, where drama has its hand in conveying the message? I thought, why aren’t there be dramaturges for art lecturers?—and I set out to become one.

Starting in about 1998 I started scripting stand-alone performance lectures. This eventually led to the incorporation of actors in symposia and panel discussions, which I first attempted in 2003 in collaboration with artist Ilana Boltvinik with The Congress of Urban Purification in Mexico City, and then again in 2004 at The First Imaginary Forum of Mental Sculpture at the Sculpture Center in Long Island City, Queens—both texts are included in this book. Not revealing the fact that actors were “interpreting” the papers and debates was key to maintaining the audience’s engagement without triggering the dismissal of the piece as yet another performance work. We All Are Streeter (2006), also included here, employed a similar theatrical strategy.

Another trait of the traditional lecture format that interests me is the narrowness of thematic focus that often results from the demands of scholarship. While extremely specialized topics are the logical result of academic-type research, their presentation in the shape of a lecture before a general audience can be alienating and, even if comprehensible, it leaves the general spectator questioning the larger relevance of the subject at hand. This issue becomes more and more aggravated because while the lecture remains set in its traditional presentation style, twenty-first-century auditoriums are filled with a new generation of viewers whose brains are wired for multichannel experiences and are capable of processing and making sense of the daily deluge of information that technology now provides. Symposia and panel discussions are better opportunities for comparing perspectives on a given subject, but the patience and focus needed to sit through, say, a six-hour symposium, can only be mastered by diehards, in the same way that only an opera aficionado would sit through the entire Götterdämmerung. The slowness of the traditional academic lecture became even more apparent as the Internet and the digital revolution took hold. In this era of pingbacks and multichannel viewing and processing, it is normal that the most animated discussions take place online instead of in actual physical spaces. This was the motivation for works like Theatrum Anatomicum (P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, New York, 2002) where I experimented with multichannel, “dueling” lectures about topics that were at first sight completely unrelated (such as twentieth-century Mexican telenovelas and seventeenth-century Dutch anatomical theaters) in order to shed light on both subjects and onto a larger umbrella topic.

[...]

Included texts in this anthology:

Theatrum Anatomicum (or How to Dissect a Melodrama) (2002)

First Mexico City Congress of Urban Purification (2003)

Parallel Lives (2003)

First Imaginary Forum of Mental Sculpture (2004)

The Foreign Legion (2005)

We All Are Streeter (2006)

Manifest Destiny (2008-09)

Artoons is a series of books of cartoons about the artworld (Volume I – January 2009; Volume II- October 2009). The cartoons have been published in many art publications internationally from Ireland to Brazil and new ones continue to appear on a regular basis in a number of web and print publications.  They were first developed for Artworldsalon.com, where they continue to appear on a regular basis.

http://www.pintobooks.com/illustratedbooks10Helguera.html.

“An artist, museum educator, and man about town (specifically, New York City), Helguera is an amateur anthropologist of the art world. (…) [Helguera’s] cartoons really do capture the foibles, ironies, and occasional stupidity of the art world with a clarity and economy that only a simple pen drawing and a short piece of text can achieve. They fill an important gap. Cartooning is rarely done in the art world (…) Maybe the problem isn’t the humor, but the truth. It may take years of sleuthing for Helguera, the anthropologist, to figure out why this is so. In the meantime, Pablo’s Artoons can do the talking for us.”

—From the foreword by Adrás Szántó

Everything in Between / The Boy Inside the Letter (2007) is a site-specific project made for the Queens Museum exhibition “Generation 1.5”

.

The project consists in two components: one, a multi-media installation showcasing diaries and artworks made between the ages of 17 to 21 (1988-1992), which cover a crucial transition from Mexico to the U.S. as well as art school years in Chicago and Barcelona. A recording narrates, in twenty sections, various of these entries.

The second component of the project is a short novel incorporating some of these diary entries, and written in the style of the Künstlerroman (or novel of artistic education). The book’s title is The Boy Inside the Letter and was published in 2008  by Jorge Pinto Books in New York.

The years documented in this project (1988-1992) were key to my development as an artist. My threefold quest for adulthood, national and artistic identity took place during those years, and much of my experiences then cemented a good part of my outlook on art and culture. I left Mexico City as a teenager wanting to be a muralist, and toward the end of this four-year period I was making conceptual art, questioning nationalism and most of the ideas about art that I had started with in the first place. The best way, in my mind, to present this complex period was to show some of the actual artworks and writings that I produced at that time. Artists often do not show their student or early work, due to understandable concerns as to its raw character and yet-to-be developed technique and ideas. But I felt it would be helpful to lift the curtain in this case, in order to showcase the complex web of ideals, infatuations, dilemmas and uncertainties that are somewhat true of every adolescence, and which perhaps acquire a heightened quality in the experiences of an immigrant teenager who is trying to become an artist.

(excerpts of the book below)

Interview on the project

Information on Queens Museum Exhibition

 Title  at Jorge Pinto Books

Three excerpts from The Boy Inside the Letter

ORO NO SONORO

Once again You are back, but this time in order to open that box down in the basement, sealed nearly twenty years ago, with Your name on it, waiting for this day.

The first thing is this sense of space, that open space that every springtime is spitefully cold but also enormously liberating, allowing one to deeply breathe the cold air from the bottom of one’s lungs, a total relief from the urban claustrophobia of where You are coming from. And yet, despite the Midwestern amplitude of this city everything nonetheless seems a little simpler and innocent, too naïvely clean, with carefully arranged flowerpots, like the setting for a children’s tale. Welcome to Chicago’s Midway Airport, Richard M. Daley, Mayor. On the moving walkway, You go past Harry Carray’s Seventh Inning airport Bar and think about that kind of local histories that never travel well. You still picture Your smiling dad at the passenger exit, next to the escalators with his puffy blue navy jacket and the car keys in his hand, still honoring the waning family tradition of awaiting each other at airports. That is just the introductory image of this city plagued by all the ghostly mirages and talking paintings that You know so well. The second thing is getting coffee at a Dunkin Donuts, because it reminds You that it was the only place open downtown during those student times of all-nighter performance rehearsals. And then it is essential to take this elevated train ride, so that You can slowly start acclimating to the city again and slowly take in again those years. Off You go on the car where everyone is asleep or bored, deeply imbedded in the blur of their daily office routine while You, in contrast, are highly aware of everything that is going on and look at the familiar gray and brown brick buildings go by along with the pre-recorded CTA announcements doors open on the left side at Ashland. Each subway stop is like a repository of anecdotes and sensations and feelings that are so rooted on such absurdly circumstantial events and moments that You wonder just how the most trivial experience can come to define our entire feeling about a whole era of our lives. At Halsted You think of the Mexican neighborhood of Pilsen and your many breakfasts at Cuernavaca restaurant with Encarnación, then Congress Avenue and the parties at the Hot House and Buddy Guy’s Legends. You see the old brownish brick Chicago buildings and think of Louis Sullivan around Adams and Wabash, where the true flooding of memories hit as if you were being chased the running of the Bulls: sitting with Bob Loescher at Miller’s Pub and looking at the jovial Greek mafia sitting at the bar, the luxurious lobby of the Palmer House where El Poeta once stayed and the echoey clanking of the dishes and the screeching of the wooden chairs against the floor of the now defunct Berghoff, which always felt like the counterpart of Prendes in downtown Mexico City; the Ryerson Library of the Art Institute, the humid summers and the varnish smell of the museum’s hallways, the Joseph Cornell boxes with their inner light and strange dolls and nostalgic views of imaginary hotels, a Chinese scroll in that museum that tells a story defying beginning, end or perspective, the years of office life and the turpentine smell of the painting classrooms, a first job at a sleepy student affairs office, the upper floor architecture studio and the memory of making out with Krystal amidst the drafting tables. Madison and Wabash is next. You see inside the offices of the buildings that pass by as if those were the ones in motion and not this elevated train, and remember when the faded 1980s blue and pink colors of the State of Illinois Building didn’t look like 80s colors but like a bold and dynamic architectural statement that could either become the epitome of style or a total blunder of taste, and now looks like the latter; at Merchandise Mart everything is really starting to come back and You pass the steel bridge and the river and the Al Capone touristy restaurants and start to imagine what if this were once again Your daily commute; and You remember those efforts that took a good chunk of Your life and yet appeared to be directed nowhere: a brief job at an arts campaign in an empty room answering a phone that never rang even once, writing articles in Spanish for a local newspaper that nobody read; producing art spots for a Spanish-language evangelical Moody Bible radio program that no one ever listened to, and of course, the first experience of nervously bringing slides to a River North gallery which were immediately rejected. At Belmont You can always spot the diner where the breakup with Krystal happened, even though it wasn’t even clear if there was anything to break up about in the first place, while on the other side sits the Vic theater, and the Red Sea Ethiopian restaurant and the Berlin, and then Southport where everyone used to get off to go to The Music Box movie theater and there is the ghost of that very long summer of 1992 and the various, failed attempts of writing a novel; but it is Damen which holds the image of smoking from that large Turkish pipe with Ginger and that levitating feeling while you two spoke about the compatibility of souls. As You are arriving where You used to live you see Lincoln Avenue, the very first stretch of Old Route 66, which now is truly in the middle of nowhere but still contains some of those all-American route 66 motels from the fifties like the Apache Motel, the Diplomat, the O-MI, all featuring “color TVs” and yet they always inexplicably full all the time (even if they were just for sex, why are the cars parked all day?), and there is the Daily Grill, and the image of being with Joe having chocolate martinis with the background of Benny Moré and Esquivel. Fred and The Jar Fly antiques bookstore are now gone, who knows since when, leaving just one more unanswered question. And finally Your stop, Western Station, and You recall that first winter and the feeling of always slipping on the ice out of weather inexperience, and the beat-up green 1981 Beetle your family drove from Mexico City to Chicago and which heroically survived all those years. Western station still looks exactly the same as it was nearly twenty years ago and even longer, like the Chicago Brauhaus, with its 1950s Bavarian orange interior, its perpetual Oktoberfest décor and its fading tourist pictures; the bar around the corner of the house that Nacho used to hit when he visited because it reminded him to Homer Simpson’s Moe’s. All the thrift stores and The Greek guys’ car repair shops and Delisi’s pizzeria and the pharmacies and Korean Karaoke joints around it look also identical, even though they try to disguise the passage of time with new signs and names and owners, but they don’t fool You because You know all too well that this is a city where change is permanent but it actually doesn’t change anything, and while all these places contain all these thoughts, they still feel as if they were nowhere places, places that always tried to become something but they never really became anything, the most irritatingly pointless locations where one would leave one’s most important pieces of one’

s life. When You see them you think about the naïve hopes one places in specific sites and the way we are sucked into them as black holes, and even when we extricate ourselves from them, the memories will stay there, stubbornly waiting for us for the day we come back, and so everything here in fact has remained somehow frozen in time since you left this city more than ten years ago, when You were still, perhaps, He.

But this one time is different. This is the last time that You will ever make this trip, because Your mother will finally move out of the apartment where You, your father and she lived together for all those years and now it is time to finally empty everything out, with all the things that you all once brought from Mexico and anachronistically placed here in West Rodgers Park, such as Your grandparents’ turn-of-the century living room set and the old books and the tapestries and the china, which always made the house look as a XIXth Century Euro-Mexican bazaar and the latter shipments of Your brother and Your aunt’s apartments, joining the collection of books and objects and endless items recently landed from Mexico and which serve as an intricate, baroque museum memorial collection to those who are gone. And your mother and your sisters and You agree that it is impossible to keep it all, but the family has always had the impulse of holding onto everything, maybe because of that too common immigrant feeling that history is always slipping away from one’s hands, and that if You trash things You may be dishonoring the one bridge that somehow still connects You to the dead. So they are all still there, in varying symbolic forms from the 1940s glass fruit bowls to your father’s metallic shoehorn inside the cabinet’s drawer with the inscribed legend “Zapaterías El Borceguí, Bolívar 5, Centro”

and you can see all of their faces in that room where your mother puts all the photos of the weddings of all generations, from the turn of the century to the present, silently smiling in black and white, inquisitively looking at You since You can remember.

And now it is Your turn to go to the basement and empty it out. It’s always dark in there, like a Midwestern catacomb. You pass through the giant fermented beer containers of Mr. Boehm, the German landlord, and the many piles of antlers from his hunting forays in Wyoming. There is always the pervasive smell of raw bratwurst. Miraculously, the old super-eight film projector is still there. You find the old easel, from the times of painting landscapes in Gompers Park. Way at the back of the humid basement, behind the wooden door in the corner, there they are, a number of boxes and one in particular that You are very familiar with, which has a faded name on it, FENIX ABRAXAS, and which later Your sister Maruca marked on top as PAPELES PABLO when she reorganized the basement a decade ago or so. You undergo indescribable feelings as You start digging through Your very own small biographical Tutankhamen tomb, unwrapping that bristly, moss-covered brown paper that envelops some of those remote artifacts that You both awaited and dreaded to open one day: diaries, letters, drawings and notes, postcards, tickets to the opera, rail maps, foreign currency coins, old erasers, a glue stick, all of which feel as if they had been made or owned by another person and yet who is way too familiar for You to set apart from Yourself. Most important are the diaries, which, even before You open them You already know that they are filled by that handwriting tilted to the right that is so precise that it makes You realize that you have been writing on a computer for so long that you aren’t capable to handwrite legibly anymore, and You know very well that those diaries are addressed specifically to You, to Yourself living in Your present, to Yourself who at the time when the diaries were written didn’t exist yet, another version of You who paradoxically was younger than You are now but at the same time was also older since He lived in earlier times than the ones You are living. He had the hope that You would open these diaries and read them, with the anxiety of that age that made Him feel in the deepest isolation and solitude, feeling misunderstood by everyone, and that strange decision of His that the only person who would understand Him, the only one who could possibly translate Him to others, who could be sympathetic to His ordeal without judging Him would be His own, supposedly mature self, when You could become the judge of His adolescent experiences. You admit that You are embarrassed about Him and had chosen to keep Him in the back of your mind, enclosed in that basement, like most people do with their younger selves, glad that He has almost vanished completely in the tunnel of oblivion. You always had nothing but derision toward those who try to relive their youthful moments through high school reunions, and to those who arrive at a mid-life crisis stereotypically searching on the internet for their old classmates at the wee hours of the night. You would like to be like any other of those artists who eventually destroy the creative attempts of their youth, as if they wanted to ensure that no one may know that they were once young and naïve and clueless about the world. But You could never do that—

who knows why; maybe due to sentimental attachment or to Your preternatural, congenital obsession with the past, or because You want to prove to Yourself that those years had some coherent meaning after all, or maybe because You know you would not be honest with Him nor with Yourself nor with all of Us, because some remnants of who We were at that point persist in Us, like stubborn traits that refuse to leave Us altogether. In looking at those drawings You think that adolescence may prepare us for adulthood, but nothing truly prepares us for adolescence because childhood is a playground of its own, and You admit that He deserves the benefit of the doubt and the second chance to speak that He requested You to facilitate, because at the end of the day You are indebted to the fact that He suffered so that You could go on to become whoever You became, for better or for worse. He never asked anything of You other than making sure He would be listened to one day, and there is no doubt that that day is now. As You are sitting at that dark basement in this West Rodgers Park house where He once lived, You start reading with skepticism, but gradually develop empathy, and this strange and somehow silly responsibility, but responsibility nonetheless, that starts becoming more and more tangible as You traverse through those hundreds of pages. You decide that You will write about what He lived, but also allow those diary entries to be read exactly as they were written, and You will only change a few names of some of the persons described in those pages so that they, wherever they may they be now in the world, may be spared from any embarrassment should they happen to read these pages. Predictably, the writing is clumsy and shamelessly romantic, but We all knew that, including Him, and You hope that those who read this may understand. Slowly, as in those family movie night sessions, when you would dim the lights and set the projector in motion, the clicking engine starts its evocative sound speeding up, the projected light falls onto the screen and the clock-like wipe of the decreasing numbers on the screen, the smells and the colors subtly turn back on in Your mind, the subtle internal circuits in Your brain are triggered by those small madeleine crumbles of thoughts and events that He described each day with great precision on thick humid summer days and bleak winter nights, obedient to the single rule that He had imposed to Himself, and never broke, that whatever the circumstances He would always write without scratching a single line and telling things exactly as they were happening and crossing in His head, without any embarrassment, sending fear, modesty and humility to hell, because only by writing truthfully could He aspire to be truthfully absolved:

–

Por el pasadizo del tiempo diré lo que soy y lo que he sido, dos contrarios, dos presencias de luces que no se van jamás, las luces del jardín que iluminaron las noches de la infancia, nuestras reuniones secretas: eran la reminiscencia de la fiesta, de la primera fiesta que quise hacer un día y cuando mi padre me llevó una tarde gris, sin luz pero hermosa por sus claroscuros a la ferretería para comprar los focos de colores que colgarían para siempre en la enredadera, como un enorme árbol de navidad, en los que yo me quería esconder en el rincón para perderme entre las ramas, el musgo y las esferas, en donde cada luz era la puerta de un nuevo mundo de rincones, destellos y secretos, y quería colgar de una rama, desaparecer, o vivir siempre como una luz, siempre presente, siempre como testimonio de algo que nunca supe lo que era pero que era importante que existiera; el final de una fiesta, cuando ya nadie salía del patio y todo había quedado allá afuera, iluminado sin que nadie lo viera y que por eso, al salir yo de niño, me parecía mágico y triste, porque de alguna manera intuía que estaba en un lugar que nadie veía y que era como si no existiera, y que estaba yo, pero a veces yo tampoco estaba, no me consideraba espectador ni testigo ni nada en especial, mientras que otras veces sí me daba cuenta que yo era el único que sí estaba ahí y que era el único que podia salvar esa visión al mundo y eso me hacía sentirme importante, y desde entonces el jardín fue un lugar a donde siempre iba en momentos especiales; varias noches sentía que debía de ir al jardín después de cenar y salía a la terraza donde estaba el enchufe oxidado y mohosos que Papá había instalado hacía varios años y siempre me sorprendía que sí servía y que las luces de colores del jardín aparecían de entre su escondite de la enredadera, como si hubieran estado esperando ese momendo desde antes, pero siempre escondidas para aparecer de nuevo la siguiente vez, y allí llevé a mis amigos y los hice sentarse en el jardín para hablar de lo que creíamos eran los temas más profundos de la vida, pero nunca les expliqué que había decidido hacer nuestras reuniones secretas en el jardín porque ahí estaban esas luces que habían presenciado las cosas de mi vida; luego fui adolescente y sufrí como un tonto, enamorándome decididamente de alguien que nunca me quiso ni escuchar, pero eso es otra historia—

sin embargo yo me afectaba a mí mismo, y en una mezcla de orgullo por mi creencia que el ser romático es una situación artística favorable y el dolor deseoso del mismo enamoramiento ávido, me consumía a mí mismo en pensamientos, sufría días enteros frente al teléfono, pero más que nada iba al jardín, y a pesar de ser tan cursi jamás hablé solo ni con las cosas, sino que mi conversación en el jardín era una caminata en círculos cuando regresaba de la escuela y aún había sol proyectado en el pasto; conforme avanzaba el día, la sombra del techo se iba comiendo al sol hasta que de pronto solo quedaban unas manchas en la enredadera y luego nada, pero después de comer corría al jardín porque tenía que llegar en el momento en el que aún había sol porque eso me recordaba al momento de la salida de la escuela , cuando el patio estaba bañado de sol y en los que yo desesperaba de nervios, proque todos los días sin excepción yo me juraba que finalmente le iba a hablar a la niña que me gustaba, pero nunca lo hacía y además del dolor de estómago causado por el nerviosismo sentía no frustración pero sí una especie de tristeza profunda por mí mismo, una autocompasión que a veces me irritaba pero que nunca pude abandonar del todo, y a la salida, cuando ella ya se había ido, y mis amigos también, y quedaban los patios vacíos, llenos de sol que yo también recorría, y que como el jardín me parecían como la página donde se había escrito una historia pero que de pronto se había borrado y había quedado luminosamente en blanco, solo con la reminiscencia de mi memoria y en las fotografías de los anuarios de la escuela, y luego, cuando regresaba en el coche que me recogía con el calor infernal de los tránsitos de México, pensaba cómo todo desaparecería, hasta mi compasión por esos momentos perdidos, que en realidad era lo único que era más o menos tangible, y al llegar a la casa el jardín era el único lugar a donde podía ir para sentirme más cercano a ella, y a veces buscaba en los anuarios de la escuela, los sábados por la mañana, para encontrar las fotos en las que ella estaba, y luego acababa viendo las fotos de mis hermanos de los años setenta y me daba cuenta de cómo en ellos estaban los mismos patios soleados, presentes sólo en esas fotografías que si yo hubiese sido pequeño me habría preguntado si no emanaban luz; pero lo veía todo perdido, y me asustaba cuando ellos decían que habían odiado la escuela y que estaban felices que todo eso hubiera acabado para siempre, y me preguntaba y me decía que yo no podia traicionar ese pasado, que se perdería para siempre si yo no hiciera algo por recuperarlo, porque no podia creer que esos patios soleados que el jardín soleado pudieran desaperecer con todo lo que había pasado en ellos, pero luego terminé la escuela, se vendió mi casa y nos mudamos a un departamento, y mi Mamá me convenció de dejar las luces oxidadas en la enredadera diciendo que ya no servían para nada y que me iba a electrocutar, sin comprender mi fijación por ellas, y yo tuve que ceder porque después de todo no sabía bien ni qué era lo que significaban para mí ni qué haría con ellas, de manera que el señor que compró la casa las ha de haber arrancado, porque aunque nunca regresé al jardín supe que habían pavimentado ahí y que todo había cambiado, y sentí como si se hubiera muerto un amigo lejano, y luego partí de México y pasaron muchos años sin que yo regresara, y es hasta posible que no regrese nunca; y ahora vivo en una ciudad donde los jardines son hermosos pero no son nada privados sino todos expuestos, sin chiste, detestables, y a veces veo una lámpara que ilumina los arbustos del jardín y pienso en las luces de la enredadera, y entonces me acerco a ese lugar y trato de esperar a que pase algo pero nunca pasa nada y pienso que no será mi luz de todos modos o que yo ya he olvidado cómo guardar secretos en los jardines

(1992)

—

“We’ll take him with Pancho”.
Pancho Eppens was a short, bald man, of Swiss and Potosino descent, with big ears and intense blue eyes behind thick glasses, extremely gentle, and shy. He was 73, but he looked twenty years older. He was one of the last surviving muralists from Siqueiros’ generation. Toward the fifties he had become an ‘official artist’

, making countless mural commissions for government buildings and many of the works that played on the revolutionary rhetoric, with bare-chested, muscular women carrying rifles and worker symbols.

My dad took me to see him with the hopes that the old muralist would take me, a 14 year-old kid, as his painting student. He had his studio in sunny Colonia del Valle, a place covered by his giant oil paintings. He smoked permanently. Every time he coughed it sounded like he was going to die. He told us that he didn’t teach—

nor had he never taught anyone. He recommended instead to a white-bearded friend of his, named Zapata, who had a small art school at home.

My classes with Zapata were short-lived. On the first class, there was live figure drawing, and we had to draw a spectacular-looking nude model. I was in heaven, but my father disapproved and went back to Pancho, begging him this time to take me. In the end, Pancho reluctantly agreed.

I would get there every Saturday. He would sit in his large armchair, right behind where I was working, which made me incredibly nervous as I felt he was inspecting every brushstroke I would make. On the first day, he said: “vamos a pintar unos magueyes”

. I obviously must not have known how to paint a maguey, because after my first attempt he took me across the street to look at some live specimens of this cactus plant.

I would paint all day, surrounded by his huge canvasses, which didn’

t take long to influence me. Apparently, he had not ever been too concerned with aesthetic questionings: he had happily embraced forever the nationalist Mexican imagery of the 1930s, painting Zapatistas, eagles, serpents, and other staples of the nationalist movement.

Pancho was a man of very few words, which made him a strange instructor. Nor did he have too much interest in artistic individuality: he basically taught me to draw like him. One time he tried to show me something about human anatomy. He pulled out an ancient, yellowish disintegrating anatomy book from the 1920s (which obviously he used himself as a student) to show me how to draw biceps.

Most of the times he would just sit there all day, silently, in his large armchair, smoking and coughing, shrouded by the cigarette smoke and the high sunlight beams coming from his studio windows, as if he was some sort of Pre-Columbian idol. But every now and then he would break the silence make a comment, startling me every time he started speaking. Most of them were like autobiographical footnotes, as if he had been reviewing his own life in silence and would only tell me the “by the way” sections. Almost always they were fascinating memories from his artistic youth. He had been very good friends with Enrique González Camarena, another major muralist. Both had gotten involved in the muralist movement in its heyday (Pancho’s first murals were made in the early 30s). He worked alongside Rivera and Siqueiros in creating murals for the University of Mexico in the 1950s, and he had redesigned the national coat of arms of the Mexican flag in the 60s, when president Diaz Ordaz had requested a more aggressive image of the eagle. He had incredible anecdotes about Diego Rivera and Dr. Atl. Mostly, he admired Diego’s working stamina. “he would sit there, painting the murals for days and days, and he would never take a break”. It was during those days of weekly eyewitness accounts of Mexican art history that I became curious about the own education of the muralist generation and I started reading Olivier Debroise’

s biography of Diego when he was a student in Paris, Diego de Montparnasse. The book was somewhat of a revelation to me. I knew that if I wanted to be an artist I would have to leave.

I went every Saturday to Pancho’s house for almost three years. One day, he told me: “I am going to give you a vacation”

.

I never returned from that vacation. A few months later Pancho passed away.

Endingness

Prolegomena  for a New Art of Memory

There may be a deep connection between that conceptual field [of perspective] and the way that perspective has continually presented itself to me in terms of the philosophic and historical concept of proof (the demonstration) , the unruly gestures of artistic application (the play) and the intricacies of perspectival methods themselves (the arcanum).

James Elkins, The Poetics of Perspective

Sitiado en mi epidermis por un dios inasible que me ahoga

José Gorostiza, Muerte sin fin

For my father, Luis Ignacio Helguera Soiné

Introduction

On a daily basis, we are aware of things that come to an end, ranging from the holiday seasons to species in extinction, the lives of others around us, and our very own life. Yet, for all we understand and even praise the notion of change in the world we live in, we are generally reluctant to embrace the definite ending of things. We work hard to defy the aging process, we maintain written memories and historical documentation of every sort, and we create a rhythm and a routine in our lives that allow us to feel that we live in a continuum, and not in an ever-ending sequence of events.

This book deals with a phenomenon that, as I will put forth in the next few pages, results from an introspective state in our mind. It can be shared collectively and become the basis of a cultural language. And, its use and manipulation is usually a key basis for creativity.

A work that deals mostly with the notion of endings and conclusions would perhaps beg the question:  why not rather focus on the beginning of things? A focus on endings would appear to be unnecessarily bleak and pessimistic to most readers. My response would be that it is precisely the uneasiness that we have regarding endings that is worthy of a close examination. We are not ever as conflicted about the beginning of something as we are about its ending – most concretely, when we speak about things like human life: a birth is a cause for celebration, while death is a cause for mourning. Because of this very discomfort, and the complex array of reflections and feelings that accompany our experience of endings, it is important to understand just what is that causes those responses. As I will try to show on these pages, the answer is related to our sense of identity provided by our memory. Most importantly, it is this unusual compression of emotions that take place when we respond to the ending of something that feed our creativity and help us summarize and affirm our current relationship with our world,  because they let us, as we commonly say, “see things in perspective”. In a world where the excess of information and the relativization of every fact have made thinking with clarity ever more difficult, it is at least worth the effort to examine the cognitive process by which we assimilate and interpret that information that becomes most definitive and conclusive in our minds: the ending of things.

No theory on endings should start without addressing the very concept of the end of things, contained in the universal, unavoidable, and yet very problematic, term “death”. It is not possible, nor pertinent to the purpose of this book, to engage in a philosophical overview of the concept of death. It should suffice by establishing three aspects about our relationship with death that are relevant to the particular phenomenon we are analyzing.

The first one, which may be self-evident, is that death normally connotes the opposition of life. Yet, we can say that our prospect of death, not its actuality, is what dominates our lives. At a personal level, the actualization of death that we perceive on a daily basis in the world serves as a reminder that we, too, shall die sometime. This actualization, as some Existentialist philosophers would agree, is what defines our lives. The concept of death is thus contained not solely on the act of dying in it of itself but in all the processes that take us to it, including our witnessing of the deaths of others.

Secondly, the concept of death manifests itself in a myriad of metaphorical ways in our every day life. We usually speak of “the death of art” or “the death of utopias” in an abstract sense, denoting the extinction of concepts, or even things: “my computer died”.  Death is thus embedded in actual life as a common expression that references the ending of all kinds of circumstances and things.

The third idea is that death paradoxically affirms continuity. Because of its certainty, we are given a clear picture of the world- it is the only one thing that we can be absolutely certain will happen.  We don’t know if we will continue to live, but we can be certain that we will all continue to die. The notion of life as a succession of deaths was a constant metaphor in poetry every since the Renaissance. Francisco de Quevedo, the XVIIth Century Spanish poet, may have best put it in a famous poem:

Ayer se fue; mañana no ha llegado;
hoy se está yendo sin parar un punto:
soy un fue, y un será, y un es cansado.

En el hoy y mañana y ayer, junto
pañales y mortaja, y he quedado

Presentes sucesiones de difunto.

Yesterday is gone, tomorrow is not here yet

Today is fading away, unstoppable:

I am a “was”, and a “will be”, and a tired “ is”.

Between the today and the tomorrow

Diapers and mortuary cloth, I am left

As present successions of a dead man.

This sense of continuity that death provides, as well as the heightened awareness that it provokes about reality when it happens is what concerns us here.

This work borrows ideas from perspectivism, cognitive psychology, phenomenology, evolutionist theory, neuroscience, art history, religion, and cultural studies to propose the use of a consciousness level in the mind that, with the aid of the ancient art of memory, can be systematized for the purpose of artistic practice- one that constitutes an integrated practice of philosophical and artistic responses to the world we experience.

To construct my argument, I have adopted James Elkins’ three-way division on the idea of perspectivist practices: demonstration, play, and arcanum, as explained on chapter 2. Entering into the theoretical realm of a perspectival art of perspective is like entering into a hall of mirrors, where by definition the explanation is the artwork and the artwork is the reflection of that explanation. This book is thus necessarily treated like an art work within the presentation of an exhibition on the subject of endingness, entitled Swan Song- which also included the presentation of a musical piece, a documentary on memory, and other self-reflective and self-referential works on finitude.

The reader may now be forewarned that this doesn’t aspire to be, nor should try to ever be, an academic essay on psychology, philosophy, or even art criticism. Instead, it hopes to bring to light ideas that are usually not addressed by other conventional academic formats. Through rather unorthodox associations and arbitrary methods that honor the Arcana component of the perspectivist tradition, I have attempted to articulate a suspicion that I have had since I can remember: the connection that I believe to exist between that feeling described by those who see their lives going by before their minds when they have the certainty of death, and the emotional response that we have when we see the ending of a moving film.  Ultimately, this book is not about death, but about birth- the mystery of regeneration of emotions that are inspired by the encounter with something that departs.

I. Demonstration

1. On Swan Songs

“When feeling life departing, the swan lifts high its head, and breaking into a long, melodious chant–a heart-rending song of death–the noble bird sends heavenward a melodious protest, a plaint that moves to tears man and beast, and thrills through the hearts of those who hear it.” [i]

The belief that swans sing an achingly beautiful song before they die goes back to ancient times.

Plato, Aristotle, Euripides, Philostratus, Cicero, Seneca, and Martial believed in this as a fact,

while Pliny, Aelian, and Athenaeus, among the ancients, and Sir Thomas More among the moderns, treated this opinion as a

vulgar error. The reference can even be found in Shakespeare:

If you do love me, you will find me out.

Let music sound, while he doth make his choice:

Then, if he lose, he makes a swan-like end,

Fading in music.[ii]

It is not clear when the idea of the singing swan originates. One Greek legend has it that the soul of Apollo, the god of music passed into a swan, hence a Pythagorean fable that the souls of all good poets passed into swans.[iii] The Aberdeen manuscript, a medieval bestiary from the XIIth Century, says the following about the swan: “The swan is called Cygnus, from its singing; it pours forth the sweetness of song in a melodious voice. They say that the swan sings so sweetly because it has a long, curved neck; inevitably, a voice forcing its way through a long, flexible passage produces a variety of tones. They say, moreover, that in the far north, when bards are singing to their lyres, large numbers of swans are summoned by the sound and sing in harmony with them.”[iv] Despite the fact that, in contrast to other impossible to prove myths, there have always been plenty of swans around to test to refute this belief, and yet the conviction of the singing swan managed to survive well into the Nineteenth Century.

For some mythologists, the story of the swan may not qualify exactly as a myth: in general terms, myths are supposed to explain natural phenomena or relate to the creation.   But if we were favor Levi-Strauss’ interpretation, who thought that a myth is a way for societies to explain an otherwise irresolvable contradiction, the swan song could be then interpreted as a myth that stands as the metaphor of something more complex.

The power of the swan song legend lies, I believe, in two things: one is the powerful contrast of a beautiful and pure being touched by death – an idea that is prevalent in a wide variety of Western stories and poems using similar characters (dead princesses, children, etc.).  So, In Levi-Strauss terms, the contradiction that this story may be reinforcing would be the one of untimely or unfair death, or perhaps, the early corruption of that which is yet uncorrupted and innocent. The second aspect of this belief is that the drama of the being’s death is further heightened by its ability to sing a beautiful song before it departs forever. This second aspect of the belief is far more complex an open to interpretation than the first one. Why would a beautiful song may arise from the facing of death? According to one of Aesop’s fables, the unfairly caught swan sings a farewell to life:

A Swan Sings To Save Her Life

A wealthy man once kept a goose
And swan together at his house,
The goose to be a feast some day,
The swan, to sing songs for his spouse.

One moonless night he sent the cook
To catch the goose and dinner make,
But in the dark the cook misjudged,

And brought the swan in by mistake.

That swan soon realized her fate
And let her broken heart be known

“Goodbye, sweet earth! Goodbye, sweet friends!”
She sang: one long despairing tone.

Stop! cried the cook, My heart is broke!

This poor swan’s song my soul doth wring!
I’ll get that other bird for food,

And let this swan live on to sing!

So swan lived on for years and years
Enjoying tasty meals and snacks,
And sang her sad and lovely song –
Whenever they brought out the ax.

In Aesop’s fable, the music sung by the swan before it dies symbolically saves it from vanishing definitely. Although the moral of the story falls more within the area of “sharing your feelings may save you”, the idea of singing as a defense to dying goes in accord to the old convention of what great art does: it becomes a symbolic antidote to mortality. According to this idea, we will all vanish at some point, but those artistic creations that we make may ultimately save us from oblivion. (ars longa, vita brevis).

I would thus like to propose that the swan song symbol is not the casual result of an old legend, or just another commonplace phrase that is used in many aspects of contemporary lexicon, but rather a revealing metaphor that we all relate to but that we don’t know how to fully explain. It describes our attitude about one of the most mysterious intersections: creativity and death.  And it is this very intersection that concerns us here.

2. With the End in Sight

Death is naturally one of the most ubiquitous subjects in art; it is present in every period and in every genre. Given that such a vast territory would be practically impossible to address in a single essay, what I will focus on in this text will not be on those countless visual representations of death itself but rather in one of the basic metaphorical representations of finitude, or, in other words, integrated philosophical and visual representation of “that which ends”. Within the context of the modern Western tradition, this logical departure point to me and what historically could be argued as the basic metaphorical visual representation of the end is the vanishing point in Renaissance perspective.

We well know that the notion of perspective in the visual arts, which was arguably the greatest contribution of the Renaissance, was originally conceived by Brunnelleschi and other Italian artists as an aiding tool to create a more correct-looking visual representation, generating in a variety of forms and methods. Nevertheless, from its very inception, the use of perspective in the Renaissance also came to symbolize a variety of subjects, such as infinity, death, corruption and melancholy. [v] Soon the idea of perspective, as well as its actual application, become two separate, or maybe correlated, things that have been analyzed by art historians, philosophers, and cultural theorists.

Hubert Damisch, in his book L’origine de la Perspective, provides the most comprehensive argument about the inextricable relation between the visual representation of perspective in the Renaissance and Western thought. He relates perspective to the theories of thinkers of the likes of Edmund Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Claude Levi-Strauss and Lacan.

The relationship between visual perspective and philosophy is a complex subject that gets particularly difficult as the literal and metaphorical use of perspective vary widely in interpretation and across the ages.  In this area I found great guidance in James Elkins’ The Poetics of Perspective, perhaps the most thorough study on the history of perspectival theory and the metaphorical dimensions of perspective. In this work, Elkins studies the relationship between the techné of perspective and its metaphorical uses in philosophy.  The obscure theorizing of this art is referenced by Elkins as the arcanum while its application is known as the play. The philosophical use of it, on the other hand, (the demonstration), is generally used as a metaphor (like in Heidegger and the existentialists) or as a symbol of a cultural worldview (Panofsky).

These models of perspectivism usually depart form existing visual applications of perspectival methods, and the subsequent metaphorization of those methods into the fields of philosophy, cultural theory, psychology, etc.  We all are familiar with perspectival metaphors as indicators of thinking, and use them on an everyday basis: “in my view”; “now that we have some perspective on the facts”, etc.

It is not surprising that perspective would become a way for us to map ideas. In the same way that perspective became a way to “rationalize sight” (as termed by William Ivins in an influential 1939 essay), we needed to find a way to “rationalize the sight” of our own mind as we entered into highly abstract territories.  And, in a similar way to the uses of early perspective in the Renaissance and beyond, perspectival visualization of ideas can be helpful to render thought with greater clarity, but it can also distort it.

These two parallel evolutions of the practice of perspective –philosophically as a model to map ideas, and artistically as a method to represent space – really become separate matters practically from the invention of perspective. In painting, perspective continued to be used as a spatial drawing method, but its use as a metaphor could only be found perhaps in rarified works with allegorical meanings. In the XXth Century, the use of perspective in the visual arts constitutes just one more standard strategy of representation, -or distortion of reality- but hardly anything that goes beyond themes of visual perception. As they broke with the conventional notions of the picture-plane, the artists of modernity couldn’t see any place for Renaissance perspective in the work- with the exception of those who remained true to figurativism. But even then, perspective had long stopped being a source for metaphorical representation.

The development of the second practice, which is the idea of perspective as an intellectual metaphor- perhaps we can call it conceptual perspective- has a longer story and practice in contemporary thinking, including the everyday usage that we give to it.  It could be argued that, beginning with Duchamp, visual arts abandon the traditional notions of perspective in order to rather employ a sort of conceptual perspective- the artwork looking at itself, and affirming its own reality, instead of simply creating a visual approximation in the two-dimensional surface of how we see the world. Most of the art originated after conceptualism is art that acquires a certain self-awareness of its condition of artwork.

Whenever we talk about “the end of art” today, we could say that have arrived at a point of exhaustion with “conceptual” perspective- a point that seems very similar to the way in which the interest in visual perspective also arrived to at the end of the XIXth Century.  This exhaustion would follow the reasoning that if we have exhausted the visual representations of art and then exhausted the ideas around it, we have little left to explore.

A way to address this problem may lie, I believe, in a thorough review on the interrelation of conceptual and visual perspectivist theories.  Elkins’ essay, toward the end, lists the ways in which we himself divides the perspectival practices: “some thoughts (the demonstrations) appear logical, scientific, or historical, and others (the play) seem to pertain to rhetoric or poetry, or else (the arcanum) to the obscurities to what I called the intellectual backwaters”.

If, as Elkins implies in the quote at the beginning of his book, the three aspects of perspective are related, a unified application whose practice is rooted on a philosophical and practical grounds would constitute, if not a more complete representation of our reality, certainly a new way to integrate ideas and images together. Conceptual art proposed a framework in which an idea would precede, and sometimes override, the visual representation of an object.

Elkins states in his book the conflicts that arise by creating a theory of perspective:

When Panofsky writes about Greek perspective as if it were the expression of the subjective world and Renaissance perspective as if it were the record of an objective world, he is recalling the inherent paradox of philosophic perspectivism (that it cannot choose between the world as an objective whole and views as subjective fragments) and reapplying it to its original source, artistic perspective. It is that cycling involvement that should warn us that perspective cannot even see itself: it is blind- that is, no perspective from which we can see perspective.

The paragraph well illustrates the ongoing frustration with theory by constructing an accurate, scientific representation of reality.  But what happens when art making, by virtue of becoming both the theory itself as the artwork as well as the byproduct of its theory? Since art is not ruled by scientific method, can it be more successful at providing a more accurate representation of experience?  Furthermore, what process would allow us to encounter a full integration of ideas and images?

What we will consider here is the possibility of thinking just in that way, in an artistic sense, thinking about artworks that are, at the same time, a visual and conceptual metaphor of perspective, a perspectival method for self-representation in time both conceptually and visually, and a philosophical meditation on our existential location in the world – a perspectivizational vehicle- for any viewer.

In other words, an art of memory that is able to provide, in their own introspection, a perspective of perspective itself.

3. The Art of Memory and the Dream of Total Vision

We often think about the production of images and the production of ideas as two separate things. This has been so prevalent in contemporary thought that, during the rise of Conceptual art, the dominance of the idea consumed the value of the image to an extent that more often than not it made the latter dependent, if not secondary, on the idea behind it – or, rather, the ideas that we could take from it.

In the previous chapter, we discussed the disjunction between philosophical and artistic perspectivism.  While one collapses in the construction of an objective basis for truth, the other recedes as an obsolete method to portray the world. Both suffer from what has been described as the rigidity of perspectivism- the fact that perspectives necessarily impose one single point of view, and have a hard time adapting to an ever-evolving process of constant reinterpretation, recreation and readaptation.  Additionally to this rigidity, there is the problem of how ideas can bring us to sensible pictures of the world, and vice versa- which is the ever-present divide between theory and practice.

There is, however, an ancient technique based on natural cognitive processes that naturally brought together ideas and images. It originated around 500 B.C. with Simonides of Ceos, a Greek poet. According to the legend, Simonides was one day attending a party with many guests. At some point he stepped out of the house, and it so happened that the ceiling of the room fell at that moment, crushing all the guests under it. All the guests were defaced beyond recognition, but Simonides was able to identify each and every one of them by virtue of knowing where each one of them was sitting. It thus occurred to him that his ability to remember lied on being able to visualize the placement of the person in his mind.  Based on this realization, Simonides founded the art of memory upon a premise that became the core principle of every memory method down the ages: “constat igitur artificiosa memoria ex locis et imaginibus” (artificial memory is established by the conjunction of places and images). This phrase, first found in the earliest surviving memory treatise Ad Herennium, was later developed by Cicero and Quintillian in Roman times, with the purpose of memorizing long texts and developing oratorial skills.

The basis for the art of memory would consist in that the speaker would imagine an architectural space with several rooms where he would place different associative images related to the different parts of the text that he had to memorize.

Ad Herennium’s characterization of the process of imagination and retrieval and the language of symbols to be used – some based on visual systems like the zodiac – became the basis for further Western models of mnemonic systems.

The art of memory was indeed a learning method, but one that was directly related to natural processes that we all employ to remember. However, while it was in vogue, this system was not only limited to recalling information. It was used also by mystics, philosophers and Hermetists to construct complex systems of knowledge that would be condusive to revealing divine truths. Hermetic practitioners of the art of memory like Giulio Cammillo, Raymundo Lull, and later on Robert Fludd, and most importantly Giordano Bruno, shared the cabalistic view that creation is a combinatory act (ars combinatoria), a process of multiplication by endless permutation of the revealed, divine attributes of the Sephiroth. In this view the universe is nothing but a construction of structural analogies and correspondences that follows the laws of logic and harmonic proportions. Combinatory charts and diagrams included universal subjects,  absolute principles, and various sort of pointers that were direct conduits to God. Geometric relationships were central in the diagrams of the mnemonists, and the kind of imagery that emerged from memory systems, treatises, and spiritual texts tended to be highly extravagant and imaginative in construction.

The art of memory, along with the Hermetic tradition, would not fare very well after the Reinassance. Cartesianism, as well as other philosophical trends that praised objective observation and logical thinking, soon dismissed these ways of thinking about the world as obscure and outmoded, and belonging to a medieval mentality. Whenever referenced in scholarly texts, the art of memory would be generally regarded with condescendence.

The art of memory did continue its existence, however, as part of the Hermetic tradition, mostly through individual practitioners well into the end of the XVIIth century. Hermetism gathered force again towards the middle of the XIXth Century in the works of artist like William Blake and later in other occult  practices like Theosophy. Hermetism is amongst the foundational roots of our modern philosophies of living that we usually term as New Age, trying to find secret correlations between the mind, the body and the spirit.

Perhaps because of this eccentric genealogy, it has been traditionally hard to regard the art of memory as a serious practice. And indeed as one reviews the history of the art of memory, it becomes clear why its original purposes of memorization and knowledge of the occult are certainly not of much interest to us today as scientific practices, other than as curiosity items. Nevertheless, when the art of memory receded into obscurity at the dawn of the modern age, we lost sight of a key tradition of image fabrication that only intuitively was recovered by contemporary art and that,  has hardly been recognized again as a fertile artistic ground.

While the occult became disconnected from science many centuries ago, art making never lost that link, nor have we been able to fully discredit the notion that art has the cabbalistic- like qualities to communicate hidden things. Despite the conceptualist revolution, and the very demystification, dematerialization, and deconstruction of the object, art remains mysterious to us as we were never able to eliminate the unquantifiable value of subjectivity.  As much as we will always know the value of 5, art will never retain the same value or definition, because that is dependent on personal interpretation.

Alchemical relationships had always been a fascination to XXth Century artists, including the Surrealists, Duchamp, and even Joseph Beuys[vi]. Matthew Barney’s Cremaster Cycle is another example of artwork that replicates similar systems of hidden relationships between themes and elements that is so common of Hermetic thought.

In what directly concerns the art of memory, certainly lots of art have been made about remembrance, memory, and commemoration. Nevertheless, it is only now when the relevance of this practice as a method of visualization is being rediscovered.

Fluxus artist Dick Higgins made significant inroads when he edited Giordano Bruno’s On the Composition of Images, Signs & Ideas[vii]. Higgins, a true multi-disciplinary artist and art theorist, was fascinated by Bruno’s all-encompassing thought, as noted in his introduction to this book: “Bruno argues for the unity of all the arts in a way that suggests 19th Century ideas about synesthesia or 20th Century ones about intermedia. . . the convergence of poetry, prose and visual art, is of interest today also, and it is noteworthy that Bruno provides a historic paradigm for this.”[viii] Bruno was also rediscovered as a predecessor to modern semiotics, by writing phrases such as  “images do not receive their names from the explanations of the things they signify, but rather from the condition of those things that do the signifying”

Bruno’s thoughts which have been studied for semiotics and for inter-disciplinarity, have nevertheless their greater root in his memory systems- a result perhaps of his training as a Renaissance rhetorician, of which he said: “In them finally are all that can be said, known, imagined; here are all arts, languages, works, and signs”.

An example of the relevance of the art of memory in our contemporary way of visualizing lies in the work of Giulio Camillo Delminio. Camillo, known during his lifetime as one of the most important thinkers, had devised a memory theater where all the human and divine knowledge could be attained by an average human being, including the various revelations of the kabala, Jewish mysticism, the Bible and the classical world. The secret of how it worked would be revealed only to the king of France. Camillo had based his utopian structure of knowledge on a memory system, by which 49 main images would contain the totality of knowledge.  Camillo’s theater was never built due to lack of funding, but the idea of his project survived with a text written by him, L’idea del Teatro.  The remarkable aspect of Camillo’s theater were not the intricacies of his incredibly complicated and esoteric  mnemonic system, but his attempt to construct what we could term today as a virtual interface for all the databases of knowledge available – a problem that only became relevant again in the information age[ix].  After many centuries of remaining in the obscurity, Camillo has reemerged in the contemporary era and is today hailed by many as the first person to conceive the internet.

By this point, one could rightly ask: do these Renaissance ideas only happen to resonate with the zeitgeist of contemporary life, or do they reveal more profound affinities between the intellectual crisis of our age and the dawn of modern thought?  On another essay one could perhaps argue that the state of confusion created by the information age, and the relativism caused by our inability to grasp the complexities of our contemporary era, and our consumption of personality cult of celebrities and relate to others through reality shows and the lives of movie stars bring us back to a similar moment to the one of the mid 1500s, where the human being became a microcosm of the world.

The great scholar Frances Yates summarized the way in which Giordano Bruno and Giulio Camillo reflected the mind of the Renaissance: “the memory systems of Camillo and Bruno […] exhibit a profound conviction that man, the image of the greater world, can grasp, hold and understand the greater world through the power of his imagination”[x].  Yates also adds: “From a lower power which may be used in memory as a concession to weak man who may use corporeal similitudes because only so he can retain his spiritual intentions towards the intelligible world beyond appearances through laying hold of significant images”[xi].

Whether or not there may be a parallelism between us and Bruno and Camillo’s time, I believe there is much to recover from the artistic arena from Hermetic thought. And, although we would not necessarily have to condone the obscure -and perhaps naïve- practices of occult philosophy that once fueled the art of memory, there is one fundamental principle in its foundation that still rings true today: the potential power of the human imagination. Like Bruno wrote in his Corpus Hermeticum:

“Make yourself grow to a greatness beyond measure, by a bound free yourself from the body; raise yourself above all the time, become eternity […] believe that nothing is impossible to you, think yourself immortal and capable of understanding all, all arts, all sciences, the nature of every being […] if you embrace in your thought all things at once, times place substances, qualities, quantities, you may understand God”.[xii]

Bruno was certainly ambitious in his desire to know it all- although this was a common trait at the time. Today, we may not aspire to obtain the entire knowledge of the universe- we have enough by trying to understand ourselves, and yet while this still seems to prove to be extremely difficult, few could deny that the overwhelming nature of the modern world drives most of us today to hold on to the immediate- the most immediate being the personal, the most personal being our memories, and the most intense of those experiences, those connected to death.

4. The Heideggerian Consciousness

Martin Heidegger thought that civilization had suffered a gradual “forgetting of being”.[xiii] Remembering this relationship for Heidegger meant to rediscover the true nature of who we were (our “beingness”), and the only way to do this would be to face the one unavoidable factor in our existence, which is the prospect of death.  Heidegger’s efforts were based on Edmund Husserl’s project of finding a “philosophy of absolute being”, one that would be able to find a universal human consciousness.

Throughout the XXth Century, the idea of a universal human consciousness (in Jung’s terms, the “collective unconscious”) has been largely discredited, and existentialist thought was highly criticized by post-structuralism as too vague to construct solid understandings of reality.  Certainly, for the purposes of understanding the world- a quest of an absolute consciousness- would be a challenging task.  Yet, the implications of Heidegger’s ideas as we reflect about how we make and experience art, are very useful.

When we are moved by a film, and cry, we don’t fully rationalize the reasons why the film does that to us- and sometimes we even never reflect why it does. Soap operas, a basic commercial genre, profit from the knowledge that basic dramatic patterns will generate an emotional response from the viewers as long as they stick to uncomplicated common denominators in the plots and in the characters.

This is because something happens in our mind that we recognize at an intuitional level. We can be told how to best appreciate a work of art, and the more we know about it can generate a certain emotional attachment to it; yet, our emotional responses to an artwork exist largely outside of any cold rationalizations, and what is more, emotive reactions come to us much faster and naturally than our thinking (we see a work and almost immediately can say whether we like it or not; and then our rationalization takes over as to explain why we like it or dislike it).  In contemporary art practice today, however, we have trained ourselves to largely distrust our instinctive emotional responses and usually give way to the rational- usually authoritative- interpretation of it. But in a world where the authoritative interpretation of a work of art overrides any sort of personal response to it, we usually fall into the assumption that it is better to defer to the collective rationalization of a given interpretation of an artwork than to the personal response to it.  This results in a philosophical position that favors analysis over experience and deconstruction over dialogue (a debate that, in the realm of philosophy, could be regarded as the battle between deconstruction and hermeneutics, best exemplified in the Derrida-Gadamer debate). In museum practice, it tends to become the gap that exists between the curator (the deconstructor) and the educator (the hermeneutic).

The viewer response in art, for the most part in recent years, has been hijacked by post-structuralism, which mostly tell us what we should think about the art we see by “what it is”, instead of trying to understand our internal process for connecting- or not- to a work of art at an emotional level.  Feelings in contemporary art making are mostly acceptable as premeditated or pre-established forms of communication, but to be entirely driven by instinct is a highly risky endeavor for an artist in the contemporary art world. In those instances, even the most “unconscious” (e.g. self-taught, naïve, young) artists soon are appropriated by knowledgeable curators who are able to contextualize their work properly.

This overemphasis in deconstruction and interpretation, while it may serve well the field of art criticism, does not serve well the realm of art making or personal experiencing of art.  It is necessary both in the artistic process, and in the personal process of experience of art, to strongly reaffirm the intuitive responses to reality instead of quickly giving way to the interpretive rationalizations of it. It is a process of reaffirmation of the individual.

It is thus necessary to find strong basis for this individual grounding on experience- which was a deep concern, again, to Heidegger. The greatest -and perhaps utopian- aspect of Heidegger’s philosophy, I believe, is his conviction that we can arrive to a sense of wholeness by understanding what “being” is.  Heidegger brings to our attention the ultimate perspective we can have on our life- our own death- and the world of references that we construct around it, built by our memory.  It is a world that can be suggested, but not administered by the outside, it is our own personal, intimate world, and while it may be founded on an entirely false basis, it still constitutes our personal reality, the one we recognize and live from. We can only hope that we will be the best persons as we follow our personal ideal of what good is, instead of the values imposed by others. After all, it may be bad to live and act by our imperfect vision of reality, but isn’t it worse to live and act by the distorted vision of others? In a world where there are few certainties left, this is the one that we have to hold on to when everything else is drifting away in confusion.

II. Arcanum

5. Endingness

The term “Endingness” does not refer to endings per se. It is what is triggered in the mind by the ending of something, or more precisely, the level of consciousness that we acquire of a certain reality just in the moment when this reality is about to extinguish. It would be, as it were, the instinctual perspectivization of a phenomenon that our mind enacts.

Endingness serves as a constant link between the past and the present. It is another temporal mode, similar to the after-image that we see after we are blinded by a powerful light. It is the past in the present, still both in the past and in the present. Endingness for the mind is similar to the horizon line that we see in the landscape, which does not exist in the physical but in an optical sense.

Following are a number of premises that attempt to provide an approximation of the role of Endingness in memory and creativity.

a. Memory is a biological process by which we recall previous incidents or events. Memory is by nature selective; it can never be the exact replica of an event.

Memory follows a selective process determined by the personality of the individual, his/her convictions, obsessions, favorable or negative associations and past experiences. In its very onset on storing an experience as a memory, the individual is placing specific importance to a whole group of factors associated with an object, event, or series of events.

We know that the human mind is a highly inaccurate process.  According to contemporary psychological theory, this is because human recall was not originally designed for verbatim reproduction, bur rather to facilitate action.

According to Art Glenberg, professor of Psychology at the University of Wisconsin, memory exists to help us walk, talk, run, drive a car, answer the phone, and all of the myriad tasks of getting along in the world. Glenberg’s theory would be consistent with one of the basis of education: that hands-on and interactive activities are the most effective learning method, as they reaffirm knowledge in the mind. [xiv]

What would be an exception of this rule would be Eidetic memory, commonly known as “photographic memory”. Eidetic memory has been defined as "the ability to retain an accurate, detailed visual image of a complex scene or pattern... or see an image that is an exact copy of the original sensory experience" [xv]  However, while many individuals clearly have an exceptional ability to recall things and experiences accurately, Scientists who study memory phenomena generally believe that eidetic memory does not exist. Early experiments on eidetic memory were intriguing, but could not be replicated.[xvi]

b. Memory’s selective process is a creative one.

Elizabeth Loftus, author of the 1980 seminal book Memory, and an authority on the subject, writes: “A flimsy curtain separates memory from imagination. Suggestions, strong and subtle, can make people believe that they had experiences in childhood that they almost certainly did not have […] Memory is creative. There, I’ve said it all.”[xvii]

The root of creativity lies in the interpretation and articulation of reality in a new form. Creative individuals establish unusual connections between different aspects of reality that normally would not be established in a conventional way. Memory naturally functions creatively. When we recall a particular experience, our mind “fills in the blanks” of specific experiences sometimes adding information (visual, contextual, etc.) about anecdotes that perhaps is a bit different from the actual facts that took place. Sometimes we merge a number of incidents together in one single memory, and sometimes we change the characters that partake on that one memory.  Furthermore, the information that our memory accumulates stays stored in our mind for it so subconsciously establish relationships, such as when we dream.  Whether we consciously use this characteristic of memory toward a creative endeavor or not, all human beings are born with the subconscious quality of their “defective” memory.

c. Memory is a force in constant evolution, departing from the conjunction of a consciousness or a set of consciousness and an event or series of events, in the world.

The event, from the moment when it happens, triggers a cognitive response from the one or various consciousness that experience it. Thus memory evolves in a cumulative, yet fading manner. It generally follows a line towards a certain climax that normally we recognize as nostalgia, which is parallel to what we consider a scientific, factual interpretation of that event. Thus the birth date of a well known person is a scientific factual data in the sense that it can be corroborated factually. But it is a nostalgic fact when we dramatize it in film, literature or other creative way.  Memory is more than the simple series of synapses that take place in our individual brain. It constitutes all the articulations of those synapses that we create when we communicate those memories and it is in that process of articulation when we fall into the ambiguous identity of memory as a general idea. Yet we know that our experiences of those events are real, and our responses to those events- whether they are simple reminiscences of the past or whether they turn into an actual scientific historical work, or a documentary or an artwork- are concrete, real expressions of those ambiguous sets of experiences and feelings. These concrete expressions, when referencing an event that many of us may be familiar with, trigger new memories, revisions of existing memories, and creation of new memories amongst those who didn’t live the original experiences.

d. A response to reality can never be articulated without memory.

As understood by the empiricists like Berkeley, reality is the actual world, the actual things in the world – but the actual things and actual events cannot say anything about themselves. They need a consciousness next to them to acknowledge their existence and furthermore, say something about them. Even if the object is still there, we are still expanding its reality from the memory of the object or event we have experienced.

f. The end of our memory constitutes the end our consciousness.

For Husserl and Heidegger, memory would come to be as one of the many acts of consciousness. The reality that we are in touch with is constituted by the representations in our mind of that consciousness-  i. e. the mental images of it.  Thus, reality becomes present in us through perception and memory. It is then in the activity of these two fundamental actions in our mind where our understanding of reality resides, and finally where the crisis of reality takes place.

g. When memory is missing details, myth comes to aide as a replacement process.

Myth comes into play when memories have vanished, when there are no records and when that original reality has faded away.

h. The endingness of memory is the link between the ambiguous, biological memory and the articulation of it, because it is the very impulse to articulate that memory that is fed by our recognition of that endingness and our impulse to bring it “back into the world”.

We normally don’t state the obvious. When I am sitting on a chair I normally don’t say “I am sitting on a chair” to others, unless if they do not see us sitting on a chair. We only state those things that we feel need to be stated because they would not be perceived otherwise, and because we consider important at that moment to state them to give them reality. We say “we have a problem” when we feel that the fact that there is a problem has not yet been acknowledged in the world. Similarly, we generally recall a memory once we acquire consciousness of it being one, and when we feel it is important to recall it into our conscious realm. Our very act of recalling that event is the very first step to introduce a memory item into the world. For example: “yesterday was a wonderful day in my life.”

This begins the endingness process, which is the process of mythologizing reality via memory and imagination.

i. Endingness is a state of consciousness composed by both artificial and natural  memory.

Artificial memory generally is understood as the conscious process by which we store information. Natural memory is the process by which the mind retains and invents, distorts, or embellishes original information resulting in thoughts or memories that do not relate to the original or actual events. It may be impossible to systematic establish a clear division between artificial and natural memory, because personal memories can hardly be evaluated on scientific terms. At a theater performance, a group of people quizzed afterward to recall the aspects of it would never arrive to the same description of what happened: some would recall details that others wouldn’t and vice versa. Memory functions on a selective basis.  Memory thus establishes its own definition of reality, whether individual or collective, as a result of the integration of artificial and natural modes of remembering.

j. Endingness takes place in a metatemporal space.

j.1 Endingness does not need of actual events to exist.

The consciousness of Endingness can take place even before the actual event can take place: “I think today will be an unforgettable day”, we say. We precondition ourselves to regard certain moments, either personal or collective, of our lives as certainly relevant even before they happen. Weddings, Birthdays, holiday celebrations, national holidays, new year’s day, centennials,  memorial celebrations- all those are pre-arranged moments that by virtue of the collective importance that we ascribe to them they automatically are conceived to become memory markers of our lives. We know that we may never forget the day of our wedding, our first date, or our last day at work.  This is because Endingness does not take place necessarily after the event but also afterward.  Similarly, Endingness can be enacted after the event, – for example, when we acquire awareness that a certain past moment was of significance, but at the time it was not acknowledged as such. Endingness can be activated even during the event that is referencing, for example when we announce that we are commemorating that very moment (“I know that I will never forget this moment for as long as I live”). So, while our sets of experiences necessarily exist within the confines of a particular time and place, the perspective of Endingness is ever-changing and is not confined to any particular time or place. It is possible for Endingness even to exist in a fictional set of events that may have never taken place. Endingness can be composed, for example of nostalgia (longing for something that may have never have happened) or for artistic fiction (the catharsis provoked in film, for example).

k. Endingness is the primal response that we have when an event or experience triggers a memory or set of memories. It is the intermediary motivation between our memory of the world and our creative act.

l. Because applications of perspectivism in science are always limited, it is art where the intuitional and rational (natural and artificial) relationship between perspective and memory can be best enacted. Endingness is the ultimate perspective of a set of individual or collective experiences, as recalled by memory.

The systematization of memory, like the systematization of perspective, assumes specific parameters that tend to also be rigid readings of reality. An encyclopedic museum provides an artificial historical perspective, as comprehensive as it may be. In the same way, Piero Della Francesca’s perspective methods are mathematical measurements of the two-dimensional space. In the end, systematization of perspective and of memory can never be entirely accurate because the mere act of transposing the information from the mind or the eye into another realm – be it the two-dimensional surface or language- is already and alteration of the original material, a traduttore/tradittore type of problem in representation.

In this way, memory operates in the same way than perspective, both in a metaphorical, mathematical, and architectural sense.

m. Endingness embodies the cathartic qualities of drama. Endingness brings psychological and emotional catharsis, followed by relief.

Endingness is the ultimate element of drama. Its power is distinct because it is able to contain the totality of experiences (or at least, the semblance of such totality). It is often the climax and the resolution of a given issue in film, in novels, in music, and in any sequential work. In Hollywood films, the ending is generally the great test on whether a film can be valued upon, as well as the key to its resolution- we usually hate it when someone in describing the story of a film tells us “how it ends”, because that information usually takes away our experiential journey toward the climax of resolution of the story.

It is well known that people with near-death or death and back-to-life experiences often remark on how their entire life passes through their eyes. Endingness is the energy that consolidates the totality of our life- a proustian trigger that contains all the feelings, all the moments, and all the emotions, and it is the one thing that makes us feel most alive, more than love, more than sex, more than anything that we can possibly feel. It is an illusion, – it would be impossible to remember at any given time our entire set of memories, experiences and feelings. Nevertheless, Endingness provides us with an illusion that we are seeing it all- while at least what we are seeing or remembering are a selective set of relevant experiences that are most present in our minds.

It has always been interesting for me to see how when a prominent person dies, immediately there is a wave of press, commentary, and nostalgic remembrance-  pure endingness- a desire to recover that person, a collective review of this persons’ life and reality.  Endingness operates collectively as a cathartic experience. It brings to aide the process of mourning and loss.  Once again, Endingness is not a momentary thing- it is something that can exist before, during, and after the event.

Endingness is to memory what orgasm is to sex. It is the climax of experiences; it is the ultimate, unquestionable summary of it all. It is an ecstasy of cognitive elements put together, and in the best of cases, it helps us to gain greater understanding of their significance. In the worst of cases, it pushes us to live in the past, feeding our mind with ghosts. Like sex, or like a drug, it provides an experience that can be so intense that could be painful, as well as an ecstatic moment that we know is precious because we know it is so ephemeral.

There has always been a critical view on the primal impulse to commemorate death and regard ending as the reflective microcosm of the totality of life. The Greek philosopher Teognis de Megara wrote: “foolish men who cry on the sight of death, and not to the flower of youth that slowly fades away”.

“Don’t ask how he died, but how he lived” is a more modern moralist expression that arguably was articulated precisely because of the extreme importance that we give to how things end, and not how they were in a more panoramic perspective. And, similarly, as dramatism is almost an inextricable aspect of endings, so much so that we can’t conceive a quiet ending to something vast. T.S. Eliot reflects on this when he writes in The Waste Land:

This is how the world ends,

This is how the world ends,

This is how the world ends,

Not with a bang but with a whimper.

This brings us to a central question on the nature of Endingness. If Endingness is defined by the accumulation of emotion and memory of experiences, can there be a non-dramatic form of Endingness? The answer would be no, because there is an intricate connection between emotional response and memory. A basic tenet of memorization is that memories are significant inasmuch as there is a deep connection between us and them, and the deepest connections are emotional. Thus this is how when we recall the most important moments of our lives we usually think about the ones that are linked to the most powerful emotions- happiest moments, moments of greatest sadness, fear, passion, etc.

6. Endingness and the Architectural Space

In order for Endingness to take place, it requires a particular location in the mind to exist and be recalled at any given moment.  I have previously mentioned that Endingness necessarily takes place in a meta-temporal space (j). The next question would be on whether it is possible to physically construct an endingnessial space as it would play out in an artistic practice, and what kinds of attributes it would have.

n. The endingnessial architectural space should not be limited by an unmovable perspective be it visual or conceptual.

Modernism was largely ruled by the notion that a particular set of ideas or credos would be imperative in the creation of a new artistic language. In contemporary art today, no dominating language exists. Individual artists have been freed from the monolingual tendencies of artistic vocabularies and it is necessary to be open to the fact that we experience today not one, but an indefinite number of perspectives. Thus an ideal experiential space needs to be open to that multiplicity of different and complementary perspectives.

o. The ideal endingnessial architectural space should be an ever-changing integration of all collective, yet singular, perspectives in a dialogic environment. It should also never intend to be read in any explicit way.

When I mean a full integration of perspectives it may sound the same than saying that we need to create all-inclusive democratic spaces. It is important here to make a distinction between a homogenized space and a space that allows contradictions and discrepancies. A homogenized space, such as the American suburbs, is not a dialogic reunion of perspectives, but instead the equalization of a set of values that are agreed upon a priori and that forcefully coexist, if usually going against each other, and specially contradicting each other.

Much of late XXth century architecture –particularly memorials- try to use perspective as a metaphor of death. Daniel Liebeskind’s Jewish Museum in Berlin is a good example of a building structure physically seeking to replicate the magnitude of a collective experience– the Holocaust. Yet, the building functions by pre-ordained symbolic routes that are not based on other than the architect’s interpretation of what should communicate things like death, confusion, and finitude. We walk through the “axis of memory”, and while we are invited to reflect on the horror of the tragedies of others, the implicit hope of the architectural structure is that the physical space will somehow communicate to us, in an abstract or metaphysical sense, the magnitude of the event it remembers. The problem with such a model is the presumption that the physical/allegorical/architectural representation of an event (whose form is decided upon by the artist himself) will necessarily take us the closest to experience it. In reality- and this is perhaps the unsolvable problem with public art, museums, and architecture- original experience can only be approximated, but never recreated. Art will always generate deep responses and experiences, but it can almost never succeed in pre-establishing what kind of experience we should have towards it. The ideal endingnessial space is the one that gives room for those self-reflective experiences without ascribing a definite physical shape to them- a reason for which it should be ever-changing. Therefore, the endingnessial space should not only be ever-changing, but also it should never aspire to convey any definite reading.

p. A space that transmits the full experience of reality has to be constituted by the rational and the intuitional interpretation of memory.

By rational interpretation I mean the philosophical and textual tradition, and by the intuitional interpretation I mean the one transmitted by the non-verbal arts. Endingness is an instance where both intuition and rationalization come together. In the implementation of a new art of memory using this logic, the interpretation about the artwork and the art work itself are one and the same thing at all times. Thus instead of becoming the dialogic result of the idea/image relationship, art instead will become the perspective of its own perspective.

q. The architectural Endingnessial space, constituted both by artificial and natural memory, has to be built out of the foundational structure of a “perspectivist memory brick”.

A “memory brick” is the equivalent to the behavior of a string of neurological synapses. But as it happens in the mind, these trends are never exactly the same: memories are ever-evolving and ever changing.  Thus the memory brick, while it should be consistent in its form from other bricks, has to have a fungible quality- i. e. it should stay firm, but at the same time it must be modifiable. Similarly, the “memory brick” has to be infinitely exchangeable by others. The interchangeability of the “memory brick” is a natural phenomenon in human memory.

r. The architectural Endingnessial space should be an ever-changing, and most importantly, a contradictory space.

This is a necessity due to the need of a multi-perspectival, experiential space. In order to really respond to our current reality, art can no longer be a creation derived from a single perspective. Art has to provide all the perspectives simultaneously, be self-referential and external, and be both affirmative and negative.

Endingness and the Musical Space

Music is the one art form where endingness can find the best conjunction of intuitive and logical realities. In contrast to architecture and literature, music originates a space that is the most open to our personal insertion of imagery and experience- and, due to its emotional connection; it is a natural site for us to place our most significant memories. Music is often the trigger of memories, triggering not only concrete scenes in our life but also entire periods of our lives. We can be conditioned by music to laugh, cry, or reflect, based on the cognitive associations that we have developed with it, and we can see images in melodies. More than architecture, music has that natural ability to reconform and regroup. Different musical interpretations of the same context become new containers for experiences.

s. Musical space, like Endingness, obeys a multi-layered structure.

Musical compositions, on the other hand, are the best example of the way in which Endingnessial consciousness does not function in one single line, but often in a combination of juxtaposed experiences.

This characteristic is best exemplified by the form of the fugue, which is considered the most sophisticated expression of Western polyphony, and which was brought it to its highest development by Bach. A fugue is a polyphonic procedure in which a motive (subject) is exposed in an initial tonic/dominant relationship, and then developed by contrapuntal means. (Counterpoint being the art of combining melodies each of which is independent through forming part of a homogeneous texture).

Originally of a choral nature, Fugues generally consist of a series of expositions and developments of melodies or “voices” with no fixed number of either. At its simplest, a fugue might consist of one exposition followed by optional development. A more complex fugue might follow the exposition with a series of developments, or another exposition followed by one or more developments.

The main elements of the fugue are: a theme or subject, stated first in one and then in all voices; continuation of a voice after the subject, accompanying the subject statements in other voices and passages built upon a motif, a short phrase derived from the subject or countersubject.

In memory, like in the fugue, there are a variety of multiple voices, instead of a single melodic line. Like memory, there is a natural rewriting of versions of a single theme in a variety of forms – which we can call “memory voices”, that can be considered polyphonic when they become fabricated memories (adulterated or embellished memories) and cacophonic when they become mixed in the subconscious in an illogical manner (dreaming).[xviii] The memories in the mind are like melodic lines that repeat themselves and connect next to each other in a coherent whole. It could be said that our memories are the musical repertoires that we unconsciously play in our dreams.

This notion of multiple voices is not far from what physiologically occurs in our brain. In electroencephalograms, the visual record is a picture of brain waves made by the process of electroencephalography. The electrical activity or each brain cell or neuron is recorded by placing small electrodes on the scalp; activity is magnified 1 million times and recorded as brain waves. There are generally four main kinds of waves in the brain. What electroencephalograms prove is that brain activity is composed of a multiplicity of electronic signals, and not in a single, continuous flow of information.

III. Play

[music score]

IV. Finis

7. Endingness and Amnesia

This work, inevitably a self-reflection of itself, would not have been written without my belief that not only we experience Endingness on an everyday basis, but in that I believe we live in a time of Endingness as well, where self-referentiality (often referenced as ‘meta’), as well as a number of strange collective obsessions with reality and fiction reveal a particularly important state in our minds that should be explored inside and outside the realm of art.

Reality is quickly disappearing from our every day life.  This doesn’t mean, of course, that objects are vanishing before our eyes- on the contrary, one could argue that nowadays we see more than ever before. It is rather precisely due to the overload of information that those things which we see come to mean less and less, as a result of our crisis of consciousness.

In places where there is little self-consciousness, no memory, or weakness of perception, there is a weak relationship to reality. When it comes to talking about contemporary urban centers detached from reality, we can find places that are entire simulations of perception (Las Vegas), archaeological simulations of their own past (Detroit), and illustrations of themselves as touristy havens (Miami).  The corporate world, which is based in the clonation of identical forms of business, architecture, and experience, is the fastest propagator of unreality in the world. Paradoxically, third-world countries have higher levels of reality than developed countries.  Reality in places like these becomes not the physical immediacy of something, but the concretion of “somethingness” that is contained in certain things or circumstances.  If what we see and feel is derived from things or ideas that already exist or existed elsewhere, this environment looses reality inasmuch as it reproduces that original something.

In a constructed environment where everything is a simulation of something else, all that is left is what Baudrillard understood as nostalgia- wanting to be something that you can never be. And the unattainability of that something, the very impossibility to have something that we have conditioned ourselves to want- makes us unhappy individuals.

Following this reasoning, pragmatic thought is based on existing things, on immediacy- but it is not able to distinguish derived realities from original realities. Utopian thinking, on the other hand, rests on imagining impossibilities- things that we know for certain that they don’t exist, but we want them to exist sometime in the future. Paradoxically, this utopian awareness brings us closer to reality than our purported pragmatism, because we know that we try to construct something unattainable- as opposed, like the pragmatists, that we are already constructing on something solid when we may be constructing over thin air.

Endingness, as I tried to articulate in this text as an initial approximation, is perhaps an utopian nostalgia for the reality that we are missing in our life. It manifests itself in a spontaneous level in our consumerist behavior, in our collective obsessions and cathartic reactions in talk shows and reality TV, in what we like and don’t like in our most primary level. It is similar to the Platonic idea of learning- recognition of something that we already knew from the moment we were born, but that we had forgotten.

Endingness makes us, at the most basic level, to consume in order to find a sense of completion. In its most sophisticated level, it becomes a condition of the mind that naturally brings both rational and intuitional aspects in the viewer – something that Panofsky, while referring to perspective, divided between the mathematical aspect of perspective and the psycho physiological aspects of it. We put things in perspective in a logical sense, and we see them in perspective as we review our memories. Like the story of the singing swan, myth sometimes takes the form of a collective endingness, and endingness mythologizes the real through art.

One can think of Endingness as only a personal process, but one which is also is enacted whenever we sense extinction, whether of social values, of cultural legacy, or intellectual curiosity.  Being aware of these aspects of “social endingness” is important, and although I am not able to discuss it in this essay, I believe it is the foundation of the control of our memory loss by others, and –taking here the risk to sound like a self-help manual- the beginning of self-empowerment. Those who remember are in a better position to challenge those who are in power, and it is the power of remembrance that can allow us not to go back to the undesirable historical moments where we once were.

In religion, the notion of the apocalypse and the last judgment is a form to implement the power of endingness at the service of a moral purpose- a rather manipulative strategy. The notion of the “last judgment” is the ultimate endingness situation for all souls, where all is put into perspective and a final resolution is made on our eternal fate. It is a dramatic ending, and we need to be prepared for it.

But as the feeling of endingness is awaken in us to look back and reflect upon the good or bad we had done in life, the manipulative strategy of endingness is not only utilized by organized religion. Endingness is a powerful social tool that also translates into fear and intimidation.  In a conservative society where change means not the improvement of life but rather the end of a comfortable stage, the feeling of endingness can easily be evoked. We fear the loss of our security, our jobs, our standard of living, and ultimately, our lives and the ones around us. If there were no sense of endingness, there would be no fear.

Thus understanding the process by which endingness dominates our fears thus can be a liberating process. It frees the mind to understand that the end exists regardless of what we think of it, and will happen also regardless.

Endingness is a creative force. Like abstract energy, it can be manipulated, it can be channeled, and it also can be used in harmful ways. It should logically follow then that understanding its characteristics and the ways by which we are influenced by it can make us free.

[ii] William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, Act III

[iii] Brewers Book of Myth and Legend

[iv] The Aberdeen Bestiary, Aberdeen University (f58v) see http://www.clues.abdn.ac.uk8080/bestiary_old

[v] James Elkins, The Poetics of Perspective, p.

[vi] See Alexander Roob, Alchemy and Mysticism, Taschen, 1997 pp 701- 2

[vii] Giordano Bruno, On the Composition of Images, Signs & Ideas, translated by Charles Doria, edited and annotated by Dick Higgins  (New York: Willis, Locker & Owens, 1991),

[viii] Bruno, Op. cit., introduction

[ix] For a more detailed analysis of Camillo’s Theater and its relationship to virtual interface see Pablo Helguera, Artificiosa Memoria: Mnemonic Utopia and Museums, Karl Ernst Osthaus Museum, Hagen, 2002.

[x] Frances Yates, The Art of Memory, p. 230

[xi] Yates, ibid, p.230

[xii] Giordano Bruno, Corpus Hermeticum XI, Ch. II

[xiii] Paul Strathern, Heidegger, p.30

[xiv] See Glenberg, A. M., & Kaschak, M. P. (2003).  The body’s contribution to language.  In B. Ross (Ed.), The Psychology of Learning and Motivation, V43 (pp. 93-126).  New York: Academic Press; and Borghi, A. M., Glenberg, A. M., & Kaschak, M. P. (in press). Putting words in perspective. Memory & Cognition.

[xv] For a study of eidetic imagery see Gray, C.R., and Gummerman, K.  (1975).  The enigmatic eidetic image: A critical examination of methods, data, and theories. Psychological Bulletin 82, 383-407. 

[xvi] What is the basis behind a photographic memory? Article by Michael Freed, Aerospace Human Factors, NASA Ames Research Center,  www.massci.org; MadSci Network, Washington University Medical School, 1997

[xvii] Elizabeth F. Loftus & William H. Calvin, “Memory’s Future,” in Psychology Today 34(2):55ff (March-April, 2001).

[xviii] For an example of a visual/conceptual literalization of the polyphonic form of the fugue see Pablo Helguera, Parallel Lives, 2003.

Rodolfo Limonini es mi heterónimo más temprano. Nació hacia 1985 y sus poemas han aparecido de forma esporádica a lo largo de los años, con un incremento de producción entre los años 1994 y 2001.

A continuación va su biografía y algunas obras.

RODOLFO LIMONINI
(1962- ?)

Rodolfo Limonini, nacido en Uruguay en 1962, creció en Lagos de Moreno,
Jalisco, hasta los quince años, edad en la que se convirtió en el líder
absoluto del Movimiento Ant-Cristero y Anti-Todo, el cual duró tres días y
medio. Limonini se trasladó a Ciudad Victoria, donde inauguró la revista
Algodones, así como un teatro de ópera y tres salones de fiestas
infantiles. Estudió ingeniería hidroeléctrica en la universidad de las
Américas, sociología medieval en la universidad de  Albuquerque y técnicas
militares en la universidad de Tanzania. Se ha casado trece veces. Ha
publicado catorce libros, entre ellos: “el turbán de Allen Ginsberg” y
“llamas que llaman”. Es ahora gerente general de una fábrica de biberones en
Dayton, Ohio. Escribe para los periódicos Il Corriere de la Sera y el
Washington Post.  Este nuevo libro de poesía (Malvaviscos Rostizados) reúne
sus poemas de su etapa borracha.

El Coco ( I )

Anduve en ascuas,
coloreando exquisitos corn flakes con Miguel Angel,
sin saber que la regla dorada no había sido
sino una triste mentira de mi tío abuelo cuando fue a Beliorrusia.
Desde el día en que el perro periodista me lo dijo
al ver mis engalanadas décimas visuales,
supe que las escaleras del futuro estaban todas embadurnadas
de un aceite viscoso invisible, indecible, burlón.
Cual malvavisco de azúcar que tocas y se hace duro,
(oh nubes bestiales
de armas atómicas y deseos felices)
mis ganas de nadar se fueron al pozo
y mi canción de mayo entró al repertorio del organillero.
Y ahora, eso sí, uso gorros de colores
porque esos sí se venden en las tiendas,
y aunque uno tenga que masticar tabaco en los puertos franceses
no cabe duda que tragar uvas a fin de año sirve,
o al menos nos ayuda a creer que estamos en pos de algo.

Tropicalia (I )

Era el final de la temporada de los colorines
y por eso ya no nos los podíamos retacar en la nariz.
Me encantaban todas las casas veraniegas del pueblo
pero no podía ni comprar un twinky, le dije con horror a la avestruz.
Ella no entendió para nada lo que le dije;
en realidad nunca había entendido nada, a pesar de que yo creía
que la coca-cola sabe igual en todos los países.
Pero no: ni yo había leído cuidadosamente a Schopenhauer
ni ella podía lavar en una semana inglesa
los tinacos eternos
de una telenovela azteca que aún definía mi vida.
Ni modo, vayamos a bailar, quizá a jugar canicas,
podemos comer algunas croquetas también,
pero olvida para siempre la idea de que compremos un zipper
para reparar los hoyos de la cama.
Cada que pasa un trailer de mudanzas o de plantas tropicales
presiento que tenía razón,
pero en el fondo se me hace que estaba equivocado:
¿qué tal si en vez de tinaco
hubiese conseguido un sifón sencillo?

Sello de agua

Según la posteridad
-que siempre se equivoca-
lloré quinientos setenta y cuatro días,
con trece horas y veintiún gatos,
sólo porque ese era el récord
para los enfermos crónicos de malaria
a quienes se les quemó el bisquet en la mañana
de sus vidas absurdas.
Pero no lo hice por vanidad, como repetí inutilmente
ante las cámaras universales y locales:
uno llora por que hay que llorar,
porque los bolsillos duelen, por que las ventanas
nos entristecen con sus pésimos paisajes,
o porque se nos murió nuestro camaleón mascota.
Eso sí me duele.
¿De qué me sirve lamentarme por un cuarteto de cuerdas
que no llega a la estación adecuada en sus vidas,
o porque una camiseta regalada
de repente tenga manchas de chile chipotle?
Lo peor es lo que realmente
nunca pude ver.

ARTSY PARTSY

a G.P.

Odio y amo. No me pregunteís por qué, pero así es. Y sufro.
—Catulo

Que gélida es la manivela
cuando la leche se rescalda en estas fiestas.
Y luego cuando todos se exaltan
surgen ilusiones imprevistas.
A lo dicho, pecho.
Checar qué importa,
si al bollo no se le hace torta.
Aspartame, señorita, no es la solución:
ni adelgaza una como palote con un piropo
ni con quesón ni requesón.
Qué fachoso y cómo vino, oye,
secretean las chicas millonarias.
Se rumora que los sonetos que escribo
tienen fachada de quesadilla
Y que vivo de biberones
al borde del acantilado.
Lento gravito hacia el rincón de la fiesta
a ver las estrellas con las que tanto me asocian,
y no siento nada, sino más bien
un vago deseo de apretar
varios senos semi-revelados que pasan.
Pero mi pobre letanía de gran señor
Y mis rimas e himnos de amor
no riman con mis lonjas:
son sueños quiméricos de algodones hiperbólicos
y mis castillos se caen al aire
al ver mis jeans con manchas de mostaza.
Mejor sería, en estos momentos,
trabajar como talador de miel
o como ladrón de joyas
o gigolo de ojos bellos
y ladrar como los otros ladran.
Vienen ahora como ideas usadas
a leguas de mí y de mi constancia.
Y sin embargo, como dice el romano,
inexplicablemente,
Odio y amo los flamingos que me ignoran.
Y aunque por momentos les gusten
los arrieros con sucios arneses,
coloniales  al fin somos, con leyes reveladas,
y la bulla, si bien a ratos divertida,
no acaba concordando conmigo,
porque al fin, el vino se les pasa
y con él, la dolce speranza.

NADIR

Hubo, en su tiempo, un café
al que llegamos cuarenta y siete cocineros
para preparar huevos acorralados en fa.
Sólo tú y yo sabíamos
que nunca se cocina nomás por nomás,
y sabíamos
como buenos acróbatas empedernidos
que la cuenta llegaría, tarde o temprano,
con o sin sonrisa.
Pero el tournedós nos sabía demasiado a fuentes romanas
como para dejar nuestras carreras
soñadas desde edades barrocas.
Sucedió lo siguiente:
llegó un chino vendedor de albercas,
vinieron los de la telefónica con sus latas e hilos,
como los que se amarran a los carros
en historias que bien acaban, tú lo sabías,
y realmente no había manera alguna
de que yo dejara la cuerda floja
y aún menos con la charola de merengues en mi mano.
Tampoco se podía, como querías,
hacer de trenzas corazón
y lanzar juegos pirotécnicos
con la cara de Morelos y Pavón.
Malabareábamos lágrimas ,
tomamos taxis infinitos de un extremo a otro,
agotamos las gomas de borrar del pueblo
tratando de borrar nuestros errores
y ponerlo todo en claro, pero fue inútil:
las arañas se nos trepaban por las gargantas,
la crema facial, antes ebúrnea rosa,
en grasa zapatesca se volvió.
Por infantilismo metí tu ropa negra a la secadora
y ante mis dolorido ojos desapareció, burlona.
Aunque ya había expirado el yogurt
y no había más espuma en la alcantarilla
necio traje el equipo de buceo,
y hasta la máquina de recitación.
Pero ni las velas, ni las tarjetas navideñas
podían regresarnos
al chino con las albercas,
ni los edificios coloridos de los art decó treintas,
ni las camas hechas con teléfonos públicos,
ni los rusos blancos en la penumbra,
ni al vendedor de croquetas eternas
ni al danzante de rap
ni las conversaciones en la catedral
ni los pimientos rellenos en el hospital
ni a nosotros mismos en la cuerda floja.
Era parte del menú de comida corrida,
y que su precio jamás concuerda con la realidad.
Hastiado, y a la vez, hambriento,
no quiero seguir comiendo ni quiero dejar de comer,
no quiero seguir cocinando ni quiero dejar la cocina,
ni pienso decirte ya nunca, como planeaba,
que nunca he tenido sentido del gusto
y que en mi caso,
comer un filete o un trapo es lo mismo.
pero eso sí: no me digas nunca
que abriste tu propio restorán chino
con una alberca.

Cleptomanía

Soy cleptómano de sueños de embarazo,
de eternos pirulís italianos sin brazos robustos,
supe que podía tragar rieles sin romperme la aorta,
sin temer los marcapasos subí nubes y bajé rosas.
Hice llorar a muchas mariposas, algunas
incluso prefirieron dejar de ser mis experimentos de Roscharch
y se cerraron para siempre. Sus madres me culpan, diciendo
que yo, el fundador del club de los robadores de lámparas rojas
merezco la guillotina. Quizá, pero solo en un mundo bueno,
no en este charco de tripas con alcohol,
de promesas que se regalan en los clubes sociales.
Y además qué le voy a hacer: estoy enfermo,
de aquello que no es enfermedad, sino manía,
aquello que no es excusable por ser obra de Dios,
sino por obra de todos. Aún así, yo no inventé los malvaviscos
ni la lavadora de ratas.
Existo: ése es mi problema.