THE SYMPOSIUM was  a special hybrid project presented in conjunction with the international exhibition project PR04 in San Juan, Puerto Rico. PR04, a bi-annual contemporary art event in Puerto Rico, includes installations, interactive projects, and is an important forum of exchange and dialogue of conteporary art. This year the subject of PR04 is the Olympiad, and projects developed as part of it address, to some extent, the Greek tradition of the Olympics.

SYMPOSIUM  was a hybrid product between  a traditional symposium and an actual performance of Plato’s symposium, as an updated reenactment by various prominent writers, artists, and critics. The objective was to utilize both the more relaxed discussion format of the symposium in the tropical setting of the Caribbean, and to transpose the philosophical debates about love, passion and desire to current issues in contemporary art. Participants were asked to present the points of views of their “characters” following the format of this famous dialogue, and to enter into a debate with participation from the attending public.

The project followed the general spirit of PR04 in that it reclaimed the classical cultural tradition of Greece as in the Olympics, and seek to also revive the nourishing nature of the public dialogue, making it more a matter of both spiritual and physical enjoyment than a dry academic affair.

The Symposium is one of the foundational documents of Western culture and arguably the most profound analysis and celebration of love in the history of philosophy. It is also the most lavishly literary of Plato’s dialogues–a virtuoso prose performance in which the author, like a playful maestro, shows off an entire repertoire of characters, ideas, contrasting viewpoints, and iridescent styles. A symposium is literally a “drinking together”–in other words a drinking party. In Athens, in Plato’s day, symposia were strictly stag affairs. As a rule, they consisted of a fairly lavish, semi-formal banquet followed by ceremonial toasts and bouts of drinking.

Symposia were usually held in private homes in specially designed dining and party areas. The guests (from as few as 3 or 4 to as many as 12 or 20) reclined on couches arranged in a circle. An entire service of ornamental cups, bowls, plates, and vases were set out for the occasion. After dinner, amid hearty servings of wine, the guests would converse, engage in song contests, enjoy the professional entertainment, or, as in the case of The Symposium, compose speeches or deliver mock orations.

A preliminary rehearsal was conducted on June 4^th, 2004 at the University of Camaguez, and the  public final performance was presented at the Olympic village of Rincón the following day, with food and drink being served throughout the entire duration of the event.

T H E    S Y M P O S I U M

By Plato

Written 360 B.C.

Reinterpreted by Pablo Helguera
Persons in the dialogue:

Xandra Eden as ARISTOPHANES

Nelson Rivera as PHAEDRUS

Ryan Hill as PAUSANIAS

Hamza Walker as ERYXIMACHUS
Pablo Helguera as AGATHON

Christine Hill as ALCIBIADES
James Elkins as SOCRATES

–

PABLO HELGUERA (Agathon) (Mexico City, 1971) is a visual artist living and working in New York.

HAMZA WALKER (Eryximachus) is the director of Education of the Renaissance Society in Chicago.
NELSON RIVERA (Phaedrus) is an artist, theater director, writer and composer living in San Juan, Puerto Rico
RYAN HILL(Pausanias) is a visual and performance artist living in New York.

XANDRA EDEN (Pausanias) is associate curator of the Power Plant in Toronto.
JAMES ELKINS (Socrates) is an art historian and critic based in Dublin. He is the author of many works, including “The Object Strikes Back” and “What Painting Is”
CHRISTINE HILL (Alcibiades) is an artist based in Brooklyn. Her ongoing project, Volksboutique, was featured in Documenta IX and many other international exhibitions.

SYMPOSIUM

Symposium

First part

PR04 Olympic Village, Rincón, Puerto Rico

June 5, 2004

Pablo Helguera

Ladies and gentlemen:  two thousand, two hundred and thirty four years ago, a certain banquet amongst notable Greeks took place, and that’s what became known as the Symposium. I am here to present to you the Symposium by Plato. My name is Agathon in the Symposium. In the symposium Agathon gathers a group, and as in any symposium people drink, sing, dance, do speeches. In Plato’s Symposium, the guests decide to do speeches about love, and thus here, we will talk about love.

But one thing I would like that you do with me first is to have a toast.

(the audience toasts)

What each one of us here will do is to take a role front the original characters of the Symposium. As we go into the discussion, we would like you to be part of it, asking questions or interrupting.

In the symposium the discussion starts with Phaedrus, who tells us his theory of love.

Phaedrus

In my speech I thought about using Phaedrus’ own words, but at the same time bring in the words of a lot of poets, not from Greece but from later years – including my own. So I included these and brought them together with whatever Phaedrus is talking about.

My text is Spanish and English, some of it is translated.

Gran dios es el amor

Love is a great god

Todos mis pensamientos hablan de amor

No tiene el amor genealogia conocida ni se la invento por nadie pueblo o poeta

Su origen no lo se pues no lo tiene, mas se que todo origen de ella viene aunque es de noche

O soleil c’est le temps de la raison ardente

Amor fin doble corazon son la misma cosa tal como dice el sabio en su cancion

Y asi no puede ser uno sin el otro como el alma sin la razon

You must sit down, says love and taste my milk

So I did sit

How fair you are, how all rapturous love

Here is your figure stately as a palm tree and your breasts are like clusters of fruit

I say let me climb the palm tree and take hold of your branches

Qué lindos se ven tus pies con sandalias

tus caderas torneadas son collares obra artesana de orfebre

tu ombligo una copa redonda que rebosa vino aromado

tu vientre montoncito de trigo adornado de azucenas

tus pechos igual que dos crías mellizas de gacela

quedeme y olvideme del rostro recliné sobre el amado

ceso todo y quedeme dejando un cuidado entre las azucenas olvidado

de vos será.

Her image had passed to his soul forever.

And no word had broken the holy silence of his ecstasy

Her eyes had coal and her soul had —

To live to her to hold, to triumph, to recreate life out of life.

To rage, to lust, to write, to commit, all these were product of the god of love

If you were to drop dead i would never stop loving you

Even though we could no longer screw

Solo a los amantes les viene de voluntar morir por otros

He who desires but acts not, breeds pestilence,

The most sublime act is to set another before you,

Solo el amor puede poner verguenza por lo feo

Respetuoso amor por lo bello, que sin amor y verguenza no hay manera

De que ni particular ni ciudad alguna lleven a cabo obras grandes y buenas

No picture is made to endure or to live with, but it is made to sell and sell quickly with usura sin against nature

Todo cuanto existe digno es de entrar en la obra de arte, porque goza de la inmanente dignidad de la existencia

El arte no distingue cosas sucia o inferior, la distincion de la cosa sucia podra venir del estómago, la cosa inferior del cerebro, el corazon no tiene nada que ver en estas diferenciaciones. Un gran dolor, un inmenso placer hacen olvidar lo sucio y lo inferior, liberando todo en emocion.

Love is worth it

Tal vez nos casemos este anio, amor mio,

Y tengamos una casita,

Y tal vez se publique mi libro

O nos vayamos los dos al extranjero

Tal vez caiga Somoza, amor mio

and yet you know, hatred, even of meanness, contorts the features,

Anger, even against injustice, makes the voice hoarse

Oh we who wanted to prepare the ground for friendliness

Could not be ourselves friendly

Y sin embargo sabiamos tambien que el odio contra la abadesa desfigura la cara

Tambien la ira contra la injusticia pone ronca la voz

Desgraciadamente nosotros que queríamos preparar el camino para la amabilidad

No pudimos ser amables.

Perdoname amor, si no te nombro,

Fuera de tu canción soy el asceta,

La muerte y yo dormimos conjuntamente

Cantarte a tí tan solo me despierta

Incapaz de acción politica, no denuncio a mi solitaria vocación de cultura

A mi empecinada busqueda ontológica

A los juegos de la imaginación en sus planos más vertiginosos

Pero todo esto  no mira ya en sí mismo y por sí mismo

No tienen ya nada que ver con el cómodo humanismo de los mandarines de occidente

Que lo mas gratuito que pueda yo escribir asomara siempre una voluntad de contacto con el presente histórico del hombre

Una participacion en su larga marcha a sí mismo como colectividad y humanidad

What thou lovest well is a true heritage

What thout lovest well shall not be taken from thee

Entonces todos los hombre de la tierra lo rodearon

Desvío el cadaver triste, emocionado, incorporose lentamente

Abrazó al primer hombre, y hechose a andar

Y en resumen tales son mis palabras

Que el amor es entre los dioses el más antiguo, el más venerable

El senor de los senores

Que en cuyas manos se encierra para los hombres vivos

Para los hombres toda posesión de virtud y bienaventuranza.

Pablo

As you have seen, Phaedrus has a very ideal notion of love- a poetic interpretation of love.  We can start to reflect what kinds of love we have.

Pausanias

One of the things that makes love ideal is to say that it is only one thing, and everything that isn’t that ideal is dishonorable. So what I am proposing is that there are two ideals of love: there is the older god of love, and there is one love whose nature is absorbed in ethereal desires: the common and the heavenly.

What is interesting in Pausanias is that he talks about the purpose of love.  What is animating this love?  Is it to not discriminate, to engage one’s lusts, one’s appetite, or is it more heavenly?  Is it more about the soul than the body?

The other idea is that love is goal oriented, [it has to have a noble goal] so for example the love would be not noble if you are only thinking about the orgasm, and not the spiritual side.

As I go through these ideas, what’s interesting to me is my reaction to them, because I wonder what’s going to make them relevant to my life, or what’s going to make it relevant to the time I am speaking in. I think it is interesting and sad that we don’t have a definition of what a soul is.

Pausanias also talks about rules for love, that there are rules for love, that there is good and bad love.

Agathon

What is bad love?

Pausanias

I don’t know…[however]  I’ve had a lot of bad love…

Alcibiades

Bad love could be publicly acknowledged [negative] sexual things like pedophilia. We [maybe also] are talking about masochistic love.

Pausanias

In psychology there is an idea that there is an unhealthy love for you.

Alcibiades

It could be a much more subtle evil, doesn’t have to be about drug abuse.

Pausanias

My experience is that even bad love brings wisdom. If I am going out with someone who is insane, then maybe it will make me a little less insane…

Eriximachus

I think the problem has to bring together bad and love. Part of the problem is that you can’t translate the term in a more subtle way, the way that  they are referring to love, as it refers to the state and citizens and being a good person so that “bad love” is still “love” all the same but its not in the sense of pederasty, bestiality, those things mentioned as value judgments as we do today,  such as adultery. Maybe [bad love] is more like ‘love that has to be conducted in secrecy”.

Pausanias

There are a lot of ideas here such as that love is more than about the body and beauty, and that once beauty its gone, the love is gone, and that a good love can endure the loss of beauty. What’s moving to me is this split that I see happens in contempoary culture, and that’s what makes more sense for me.

These speeches are not about love in how we relate [to each other], but on the idea of love and how we celebrate the spiritual love and how it is beneficial to society- because if one falls in love with someone who is good and you are trying to be good, there’s two people trying to be good, and this can only benefit society.

Alcibiades

This issue of honor and dishonor in the text speaks about on whether its honorable for you individually or whether if it is for the greater good. It talks about some sort of workmanship to love rather of love for its own sake, which is also interesting to go over the art context about whether we are actually contributing something in the greater sense.

Pausanias

I think this talks about the idea of working out love, this idea that love should be this manageable thing… What means to work on your love? It means to make your love an ideal that you can work towards. After that notion of the ideal becomes institutionalized, you’ve got a lot of underpaid workers there!  In art, seems to be same kind of thing, instead reverse: you can’t just love your art, you have to work at it

Agathon

So what does Pausanias says about relationships today?

Pausanias

That’s where [Pausanias’ speech] doesn’t work for me, because I think it is a mixture for me of both-  although I have to say in terms of , that the idea of healthy and unhealthy love seems to be something you see in a lot of talk shows, like Jerry Springer.  Is that about bad love or is it about good love? I can’t answer if it is good or bad, but what is interesting to me is that a good love is something that lasts over time, that once the beauty has faded, there is a deeper love that goes beyond the body.  That’s something that we talk about when we transfer it over to the state. Which is: Bill Clinton was the Daddy of America and suddenly became a national interest because how can he be a great leader of state if he can’t control his lower common self? This made American people very upset because they didn’t want to think about how perhaps this idea of a long term relationship would not work for everybody. So in this sense Lewinsky is perhaps an example of bad love, because of her interest in power, etc.

The other idea [ that I like] is that when you are truly in love you are of service to your partner. It could also be that because there is an understanding that their well-being is your well-being.

Erixymachus

I want to go back to the issues of ethics , good vs. bad love. I am deeply troubled by it, and in thinking of a structure of discussion, only once before have I been at a dinner when the topic of love came up in an informal setting and the idea of raising the dinner conversation to the level of theater. The conversation stopper of that evening, [which I will bring up] in the spirit of this of this symposium, was: could you sleep with an artist whose work you didn’t like?

At some point we had to agree whether we would have to say yes or no.  I would like to know by a show of hands, who would sleep with an artist whose work you didn’t like?

(some in the audience raise their hands)

Audience member:

How about sleeping with a curator whose work you didn’t like?

Socrates

Socrates’ favorite thing is to take notes on what everyone is saying that check off contradictions and things like that… but in relationship to this, I wonder the kind of thing Socrates might say is that you have to define “like”, because by definition you don’t like anyone’s work more than you like yours, because otherwise you would be doing that work.

Erixymachus

I would object to that idea, because if you were to reverse that question… I mean to say…if it is an artist whose work I like and I slept with him, then it’s the word “like” problematized?

Socrates

Socrates doesn’t know what the word “problematized” is.

(laughs)

Erixymachus

If you saw it and you like the work, the idea of a virtuous person who you admire and you like the work and turns you on?

Pausanias

A great artist is not necessarily a virtuous person. I think there are certain kinds of artists out there who don’t think of themselves first, but there are great artists whose social, human part is not working that well…

Aristophanes

Also I want to say that in relation to the idea of sleeping with someone whose work you don’t like-  you can see it in two ways: first as taking advantage of them by having a love of the flesh while you have a distaste for whatever they are trying to express through their work; or you can look at it as being very generous because maybe there are other things about their personality – the way they look, etc-  that actually you  are willing to overlook, and are willing to love somebody despite their imperfections.

Pausanias

This brings interesting questions, because if art is the only thing that is important to you, then what is your artwork about? Then, concerning this idea of tying philosophy to judgement,  on whether something is good or bad… I am not the kind of person that believes in that kind of philosophy.  I like to be confused, because when I am confused I am free, and there are not these kinds of categories, there are no categories that have to be broken all the time. There are a lot of things that I am thinking in terms of that duality.

Agathon

Perhaps what you mean is that you don’t want to be ruled by permanent paradigms, but you don’t want either to be confused all the time?

Socrates

Nobody in this dialogue says that they are confused, but in any case if anyone would say that, it would be Socrates himself…

Pausanias

The arguments presented in this Platonic dialogue are made in a way to support Socrates’ final comment, who solves the “problem” by breaking it down by categories. And [back to the realm of art] when you look at the art of the 60s and 70s, you can see that there are these artists who are trying to do that [deconstructing the essence of art]. Then look at the marketplace, where [art is objectified and] objects are bought and sold. Because there is money there, perhaps that’s bad love. And good love is when art can be experienced with no way to be bought and sold. So, what is the role of the market in this discussion? Maybe you should tell everyone about Andrea Fraser.

Agathon

Andrea Fraser is an artist who is very involved with institutional critique. Most recently she did a piece that consisted in having sex with the collector- as part of the piece.

Alcibiades

A word that we haven’t used in discussed honorable and dishonorable is ‘whoring” its not only marketplace, it’s about dirtiness… Andrea Fraser is asking “who owns who” in this experiment. Are they in power? Is someone more or less dignified for taking money for their work?

Audience member:

There is a difference between selling and selling out. She’s doing what she is doing in her own terms and she has created a context in which to do it; what she’s done is to maintain control of the context.

Socrates

A lot of this is apart from the dialogue, but I am thinking what Socrates would say about this whole discussion about corruption…and he might say that money is not good nor bad- that stuff we are talking about in here is not in the dialogue, but one of the reasons it is not, aside from that its not related to art, is that it would be considered utilitarian, completely detachable, so it wouldn’t even matter what ends you were looking with your art.

(…)

For the sake of this conversation you can say that [the relationship between art and money] there is hypocrisy here, but is this hypocrisy relevant?

(…)

I don’t think Socrates would have been interested in any of this, so the question is what has happened in the 2000 years prior to this dialogue? Somehow we have figured that there is some sort of connection between these things, and we all sort of believe it but can’t really say how, and especially not in terms of this dialogue.

[We turn into ERYXIMACHUS speech]

Eryximachus

[quoting from Eryximachus’ speech from the Symposium]:

…but one has to deal with the effect upon human beings of rhythm and harmony by a process  known as composition or the right use of melodies and verse forms in what is called education difficult as it occur,  which demand skillful artists we come back to the old notion that is the love felt by virtuous men which should be gratified and preserved, with the objective of making those virtuous who are as yet less so. This is the noble, the heavenly love, which is associated with the heavenly muse, Urania; but there is also a vulgar or common love associated with Polyhimnia, and anyone who employs this must exercise great caution in its choice of people upon whom to employ.

Love is in the air.

[Eryximachus puts on the radio and starts changing stations. The audience listens to various songs of love in different styles: salsa, bolero, religious songs, rap, Paulina Rubio, etc]

Its such a dirty old shame when you gotta take the blame for a love song, because the best love song is written with a broken heart. Now the tears in my eyes are ever blinding;  the future that lies before me I cannot see.  Although tomorrow I know the sun is rising lighting up the world but not for me.

Example B (little Kim)

I know a dude, his name is Jimmy

Used to run up imme

Night time, pissy drunk, off the hainy grainy

I didn’t mind it when he fucked me from behind

It felt fine

Specially we used to grind it

He was a trip when I sucked his dick

He used to pass me brick, credit cards and shit

Something to sleep, I took the keys to the jeep

Tell em I’ll be back

Don’t fuck some other cats

Flirting, getting numbers, in the Summer

Ho hop raw top you know mans drop

Then theres homy Jimmy hes screamy gimme

Lean in my back busting nuts in all in me

After 10 times we fucked

I think I bust twice

It was nice

Kept my neck full of ice

Put me in chanels, kept me on ice

Cold sucking his dick rocking the mike

There was something about this dude I couldn’t stand

Something that could have made his ass, really

Something I want, but I never was pushy

The motherfucker just never ate my pussy.

I don’t want dick tonight. Eat my pussy, right?

Oh oh oh

Li’l Kim  L’il Kim

Bring it to me now

I know it dude

Push a cue

On Flatbush and Avenue U

Had a weak spot

Used to pump african black

Used to seal his bags

So his work was woodn cap

I used to see him in the tunnel

With fuckers at dawn

Whispered in my ear

You wanna get this fuck on

I dug him

So I fucked ‘im

He wasn’t nut

He wanted me to suck im

But I didn’t

I aint from

Sex was Wack

I jumped on his dick

Brought his ass to sleep

He called next week

Asking why I didn’t meet him

I thought your ass was still sleeping

He laughed

Told me he bought it pack

Could he come over right could he come over right fast

And fuck my pretty ass

I’ll pass nigger

I think we’re stretched

If sex was record sales

You would be double plat

The only way you are seein’ me

Is if you are eating me

Downtown taste my love

Like forest brown

Try to impress me

With your five g-stones

I can be ten g’s nigger

If you leave me alone,

Screaming

The moral of the story is this,

You ain’t licking this

You ain’t sticking this

And I’ve got witnesses

Ask any nigger I’ve been with

They ain’t eat shit

Til they stick their toungue in this.

I aint with that front shit

I got my own bends

I got my own ends

Immediate friends

Me and my girls rock worlds

Some big niggers fuck for car keys

And double digit figures

Good dick I cherish

I could be blunt

I treat it like its precious

I ain t gonna front

For lectic niggers that front that they really

Suck my pussy

Till they kill me.

You feel me?

Example C: James Brown

Ha! I don’t care

About your past

I just want a love to last deep

I don’t care darlin about your faults

I just want to satisfy your pulse.

[inhales helium]

When you kiss me

When you miss me

Hold my hand

Make you understand

…

In a cold sweat

Ho ho ho

I don’t care about the wants

I just want HA to tell you about the do’s and don’ts

I don’t care about the way you treat me darling

I just want you to understand me, darlin’

[inhales helium]

When you kiss me

And you miss me

Hold me tight

Makes everything all right

Put it put it

Where is at now

Miss io miss io

Let me have it.

That owes its thanks to Eryximachus, Little Kim, James Brown, John Corbett, Terry Kapsalis, John Cage’s speech. Thank you.

Symposium- Second part

Aristophanes

I will present something related to Aristophanes’s myth- the classic story that usually starts like a tagline of a film, something along the lines of “they were all alone in the world until they found each other” this is and old story, and everybody knows it, it’s the one about the search for the soul mate – so-called your other half but the belief that the romantic relationship between two people form some type of fullness is suspect these days. In the age of internet dating the intellectual part, the very basis of romantic love, concept that the personal fulfillment, the love for another, is often considered to be an embarrassing illusion, and the illusion that two form one is started by Aristophanes in Plato’s symposium. He proposes the idea that originally there were three sexes: a man, a woman, and a man-woman, and these humans had four arms and four legs; they had two legs looking the opposite ways, they walked upward but they often rolled over and over again on their hands and feet very very quickly, that way over large territories, and they were very powerful and strong, and actually threatened the gods. So Zeus decided to cut them into two, and when he divided they were very much saddened and clung to each other, so Apollo decided that he would rearrange their sexual parts in the direction of their faces so that when they embraced each other they would be able to have sex with each other and get some satisfaction from their embrace, and that would be true also of all the female and male humans. So that is how the idea of “looking for the other half”, and it has survived for thousands of years, and also has rationalized the idea of family and other needs in one person. So our notion of love, I think partially the idea of financial independence of women, along with advances in science, that make it possible for women to be artificially inseminated and have a child of their own, and even the idea that we can clone ourselves, and make another human out of one, so we are creating independence in countries that are technologically advanced and affluent. But love is still such an intense fascination … we seem inundated with the topic. I can’t think of any other topic, there are so many ruminations on the idea of love and manifestations and symbols of love in mass media, on the internet sites like love live, friendster and other offer many opportunities to hook up with individuals and the reality shows where people try to get the perfect match, and even the music industry, which since its earliest beginnings has been relying on the love song, sexual lyrics, of such explicitness that they verge on the comical- so we all seem desperate for a little amore but all these forms (television, internet, music industry) are really commodifying the idea of love, its not really about love at all, but about selling the idea of love. Were are in a society that emphasizes the self, and self preservation, and internet relationships tend to tell great risk- I think there is a certain disillusionment with love as this perfect oneness, that has to do with the internet – the idea of socializing from the isolation of the computer screen also we are living in a time when its increasingly open culture and part of this isolation could be that people are confused about what people’s sexual preferences are, and it is hard where to stand, or how to go about courtship, and there is still a very high divorce rate, that shows us how fragile relationship are, and  that relationships cause a lot of emotional stress. I got a very sad talk! So this is the side that is shown in mass culture, mass media, but at the same time there is another thing going on- last summer I did studio visits with many studio artist and many were doing work that dealt with the subject of intimacy and desire, and love- although they would never say that this was what the work was dealing with. Also I think that some people, at least in Toronto,  sort of expressed it through a camaraderie and openness that was very inspiring and there is this day, August 14^th, the great blackout, when the whole city of Toronto, and new York, and many cities we experienced this very peaceful night that brought strangers together, this wonderful feeling in the air that you know its there, but you just need the time to experience it an enjoy it. And so I organized this exhibition showing this young artists entitled “the republic of love”  and I  basically wanted to give the audience an opportunity not only to see the work but also to reflect upon what the conceptions of love were in that context versus popular media. I won’t describe what was in the show, but I think it is something that is important, this idea of self-realization through love is perhaps not seen as something as a possiblity and I think love — where I grew up most people were encouraged, said you have to happen this yourself before you can see it happen it to someone else. Anyway that’s my stance on the subject of love and want to propose that if they misbehaved  and perhaps that’s whats happened to us now instead of looking for another half we could be looking for three other quarters– that’s why there is interest in non-monogamous relationships and also growing population of people that define themselves as bi-sexual, searching experiences in more than one person.

Pausanias

Brings the idea of gender and asexual gender, and trasgender. This idea of self-definition instead of being defined by gender they are defined by themselves. Its almost a way to take these two halves and making them whole again but in a new way, people reinventing categories in order to have a greater sense of themselves. Maybe it is three fourths that are together. How can a marriage survive that?

Eryximachus

I think what makes it sound fresh from the gender perspective contemporary parlance of contemporary gender politics that gender has this essentialist notion relates to identity is gender is something like means to an end I think. Wholeness is the issue, not gender.  When you think about gender it’s a charged issue, but I think the issue of love in a broader, holistic sense, love and socialization, love and its relationship to medicine, as the foundation of other things, as opposed to “now we can’t talk about love unless we talk about the institution of marriage”, the issue of marriage does not even come into this conversation.

Aristophanes

The idea of romantic love and marriage is very new- with the rise of the bourgeoisie, that is something that we are supposed to seek out, a mate that you are in love with and get married to, instead of an arranged marriage or marry for money or for family reasons.

Eryximachus

But when we use the idea of modern love, what time does that entail? Renaissance or..?

Socrates

There is a book by Dennis Cuchebrand [ sp?] called “love in the Western world” its all about the origins of modern romantic love that is rooted in the Trobadours in the XIIth century, and so brings up things like Tristan and Isolde and other romantic periods, that would like be an anti-Platonic reading: marriage, love, fall, separation…

Pausanias

One of the things that interests me about Aristophanes story is that it’s not a Hollywood plot, – a man and a woman getting together- it’s about all these different kinds of ways that these relationships can happen. But aside from that, I think its not about finding wholeness, but about getting rid of loneliness. I mean, when I read that all I thought was the desire to completely not feel alone in the world, and the desire to unify with someone else was didn’t matter who it was, just finding that other half

Socrates

This question would be an out of character in the dialogue, but why would you say that none of the characters in the dialogue talk about loneliness?

Eryximachus

I think that the tone Aristophanes’ story, which is quite fantastic and somehow has a sort of “are you serious” quality, eliminates a certain human set of motivations- such as loneliness. The tale has something of an Eastern influence…

Aristophanes

I just want to mention that homosexuality in Plato’s time is very common and accepted, and also that Aristophanes claims that the union between the male beast divided into two is the purest type of love, which I think is largely due to the fact that is a very male-dominated society, and also that the perfect union man-man, they are longing to be with each other but they cannot say why is it that they need to be with each other and that is why Aristophanes makes this story up.

Socrates

Just want to mention that in the literature on the Symposium people make a lot of that,  and they make it into this whole story of the enigma of the story of love, that one passage, which is a very brief passage- becomes the whole —– that Aristophanes is really aiming at, that he loves to talk about but you don’t know why, that’s another kind of romantic projection, of romantic love back into the past .

Agathon

Here is where Agathon has to weigh in- as he comes after Aristophanes in this speech- and he is into is to understand what this whole idea of wholeness is about, and he questions Aristophanes in what the is forgetting about this kind of higher power which is God, and the love to God is what is truly important.

So what I thought would do would be to first explain what Agathon says, and then how this translates into the notion of how art, which is a product of love, (according to Agathon) how art makes us whole.

He says first: love is blessedest of gods, he also is the youngest, because he did not exist in the early years, when the gods were at war.

The things that were done before love were done out of necessity only unlike other things in humankind. So love is young and dwells in soft places, in hearts and souls.

Love is all flexibility and grace, and like any natural thing, it cannot do or suffer wrong.

Men and women serve the god of love out of their own free will, and where there is love there is obedience, and where there is love there is justice. However, love is the ruler of desires, and love can conquer war… etc.” and he goes on and on. But I will try to break it down a little bit and tell you what he would actually say about art:

Love is the fairest and blessedest and the best of gods, it is also the youngest, because the love was not invented out of not necessity, like other things in humankind.

Art is also invented out love, not out of necessity; There is something youthful about making art; Art does not become important for being useful

Love is always young and dwells in soft places, like the hearts and souls of people.

Art that only exists in people’s brains is not real art; art that you don’t feel something for is not real art.

Love is all flexibility and grace, and like any natural thing, it cannot do or suffer wrong.

If art is the product of love, and if love is all flexibility and grace, then there is nothing such as bad art. Meaning, Art is only what it is,  because it could not be either good or bard, so it should not be treated as something wrong.

Men and women serve the god of love out of their own free will, and where there is love there is obedience, and where there is love there is justice.

Art is a disinterested activity- which makes me think that political art or commercial art don’t really exist or are not real art.

However, love is the ruler of desires, and love can conquer war.

Art can help us do things that can help us would improve the world. And Art can defeat politicians

Love is the author of poetry and generates poetry in others

Art generates art in others

Love is the core of creation, as we are all the product of an act of love,

Art is the core of its own creation, because we create art once we see art and learn the language of art;

Love makes humans to be of one mind at a banquet

Art is a language that we all share and make us a universal community;

Love fills us with affection and empties us out of disaffection

We recognize each other through this language, and can fall in love with each other;

The pilot, helper, defender, saviour of men, in whose footsteps every man follows is love.

Which I think in equal portion it can be that

Art can take us to safe places where we can better deal with this world,

Art is a savior of our tormented minds,

Art, as a product of love, can make us grow,

Making Art is a different way of making love,

The best art we have made in our lives contains all our love,

We love art because it makes us strong,

Because it makes us richer, because if makes us better than who we are,

Even if everything ends, if the world disappears, if we have to live in wholes

We can thing about things and think about them as art,

The limits of art is only the limit of our imagination and it does keep us, if not necessarily young, it does keep me alive.

I want to make a toast to our love, for art.

Socrates

That was really interesting, because I did something very similar to that, but also different, because what you did was to take the word “love” and substituted it with “art”; what I did was to go through the dialogue and substituted the word “love” with “love of art”; its an important kind of difference, because what you were doing was changing the subject, in a sense  – which is not to say you didn’t get truths out of that- whereas my notion was if every time they say “love” they “say love of art” then you know they are taking the subset as an example, seeing if the doctrine applies, so this is what I was toying with. And I got this idea from that book on painting by Derrida, in which he says at the beginning that the subject is the shape of the desire for truth, in what it pertains to painting; and so there would be other shapes for the desire of truth. So in this case there would be love and there would be shapes of love when it pertains of art- it would be like a special case.  But, while this has been going on, Socrates has been making a list of all the things that would have baffled him, and then things that he would have disagreed with.

Among the things that would have baffled him would have been what Ryan (Pausanias) said about the embrace of ambiguity- because the shape of his dialogues for the classicists that study that- is that they (called aporiatic dialogues) lead to a state where the person arguing with Socrates is reduced to a baffling idiot, the aporia is the person who has no idea what they are claiming anymore and this happens a couple of times in this dialogue, like in this bit where Socrates questions Agathon. Then there is a thing called “elenchus, or elenctic dialogues” when you demonstrate, through this immeasurable series of horrifying annoying questions, that the person actually holds the opposite to what they were claiming minutes before. So the reason why I think what we have been doing would have baffled Socrates,  is that I think we don’t have anything against that, if any of us could actually sum up that kind of rhetoric we would be happy to have someone say “okay, I have no idea what I am saying”, but then we would enjoy that, so that ambiguity is, as the art historian  —- would say, a use of power for us- a lot of contemporary art is based on trying to find ambiguity- we love the kind of darkness and obscurity and the difficulty- but in these dialogues that would truly baffle Socrates, because if we ever reach the point in our conversations where we would know what to do, Socrates would say: “okay, now what? Let’s not be there anymore”.

Pausanias

I think that these dialogues are about trying to created order. But I would say now that people are more interested in embracing chaos. That may be the difference – now what is interesting to me is to look back and see how order was important to these people, and now I start to see how there may be a need in our culture for search for some kind of a balance…

Agathon

Well, in a way that was the origin of this whole discussion. Usually the discussions that take place nowadays feel so unstructured that I really wanted to know what would happen if you really try to follow some sort of structure.

Socrates

There are a couple of books that have come out on beauty and the search for clarity and balance, so this is in the air…

Pausanias

Just to add, in our political time, which is so conservative, this interest in balance is in fashion. As soon as you got this isolated point of view, and you are out doing stuff in the world… you have to allow chaos…

Socrates

I think that is completely true and some of these people who are writing stuff about beauty and truth, they are seriously conservative and old-fashioned.

You would ask yourself on whether there is any artist who wants to make something that is not ambiguous. At the Art Institute in Chicago we have these Koreans who are educated in a very conservative art setting, and they really don’t like ambiguity. One of my students brought a picture of a fish, a happy fish with smiley face and eyelashes, and said that it was a self-portrait. I said that couldn’t be because no one is that happy, and she said ‘I am’.

The next thing that would have baffled Socrates, was [the notion] that values are essential. This comes up a number of times. Communities believe that an artwork of like Rembrandt is good because many believe so- this would be what we would call “re-response criticism” in other words, that Moby Dick can mean anything if your class decides what it means.  That is really different from these dialogues, where goodness is beauty, inherently, is not because the majority voted for it, but because these are eternal facts.

The third thing I think that would baffle Socrates would be called “pscyhologisms”, which is is values or judgements of psychological origin or best explained through psychology, for example self-esteem, destructive relationships, relating, and loneliness particularly.

Then in terms of “love of art”, that it has a moral character or a virtue, like a moral purpose. Second that “love of art” entails moderation or temperance, which is an idea that is completely out since the Renaissance, basically- noboby is trying to moderate anything- nobody is trying to de decorous and balanced. Also, love for art is “tough, and shriveled, and homeless,” which sounds too much like the [romantic struggling] artist idea. There is also this thing about immortality, that “love of art” “wants reproduction, or immortality in birth and beauty”, “love of art neither comes to be nor passes away”, “love of art is not anywhere in any other thing, but itself, by itself, with itself”- that is the moment in which Plato supposedly enters the dialogue. I think there is a huge gulf there between our attitudes and Socrates’ attitudes. First of all, we don’t believe in that we are making stuff for the ages in the sense that Michaelangelo was, and then there’s this whole thing about creativity here, which is close to old clichés of creativity and depends on the equation of art and beauty so it’s a real pre-modernist idea- you could hold to it, but you would have to be someone like Odd Nerdrum in order to believe anything like that. Then there’s this question that love of art that love of art could really be known through the kind of discussions that we are holding, and here I think the misunderstanding would be mutual: because to Plato, there would be way too many digressions, we are not sticking to the point, we just like to chat – “chat” is not a Greek word, I guess-  and the incomprehension would be mutual- there is a lot of great literature about how awful person Socrates was, there’s great stuff that Nietzsche’s written about how he was the “disease” that was produced by the decadence of the Greek society, that he was the gadfly, famously, but mostly, that he was this annoying person, which was a source of truth but also of breaking the illusion- so there would be  a mutual mistrust: Plato would mistrust our dialogue as much as we distrust his. There is a fair amount of scholarship about how this is not really philosophy, and not really a dialogue, and not really a narrative, but a mixture of all rest of them,  the way that it comes on the fourth, fifth, sixth hand, that someone remembers that he told someone else then told it wrong so he retells to him again, and this exercise makes a lot of people these days ask why it had this form, why there are speeches that didn’t have the final truth- so that problems we have with that would be reciprocated- there would be problems if we tried to insert this conversation there.

Erixymachus

Would it be perhaps that the theatrical form helped to make a clearer story and really convey the point more strongly?

Socrates

One kind of answer is that back then they only had a limited set of categories for the kinds of dialogues, and all that was in what we now call poetry, but they conceptualized them in different ways,  but the other kind of answer is that the truths that happen in the dialogue are the kind of truths that pertain to concepts that are so widely held in life that they are entangled with many other concepts- that is why its so easy for Socrates to set these trip wires for everybody, because you can’t have consistent set of beliefs unless they are fenced off, so the point therefore of having a dialogue like the Symposium, which is not just a doctrine, but which actually takes the people through the steps of humiliation, by Socrates’ hand- the point is that because these things have so far-reaching connections, therefore every reader has to rediscover in the answers of the hapless people what their answers would be, so it has to be enacted.  But then there’s still an enigma which I still don’t see anyone giving an answer to- which is when Plato starts speaking in his voice, which is what happens when the simply writes his doctrine- then how does Plato want people to think about that in relation to what he wrote before, because how come there is other kind of truth that doesn’t require that kind of dialogue?

In terms of what we would agree on, is that the love of art has to do with seduction. This whole rhetorical business of the dialogue is about seduction, and that becomes obvious at the end, when Alcibiades comes to Socrates and says “all what you say has no truth or content, all you wanted to do is to seduce me”. That is a way of twisting the whole thing, so I thought point of contact is that artworks are about seduction. There’s all kinds of parallels between the language of talking about liking art and the language of love, and the rhetoric of seduction and the way of speaking in studios. Sometimes when students are fiddling in their studios, getting them ready for the critique, it’s a lot like being in front of the mirror, with makeup and things like that, although its not you who wants to do the seducing but it’s the work. This infamous word, “interesting” , its like a post-modern stand-in for whatever statements that are not being made; but for this context it’s also infuriating because it shows that the seduction is not going well!

The second one has to do with Aristophanes’ doctrine of doubles and all that. But the idea of ‘complement’ is similar to a word used by Derrida uses, which is “simplelong” which is the thing that matches you from you which you were divided before history began, which you don’t necessarily recognize but which you need,  so I am not continuing your critique but I think you can really use this, because if for love you substitute “love of art” then the doctrine is really nice, because then it would mean that art is the simplelong, it is the thing that complements you, but you can’t ever reattach yourself to it, ever.

Aristophanes

There is also this nonverbal way, where it gives but it remains a mystery.

Agathon

In fact art is in a better position, as it can always remain mysterious, whereas love normally fails to be mysterious forever.

Socrates

There is a passage from Daniel Halpern, who teaches at MIT, who says about this idea that Eros (love) “springs from a sense of lack or limitation, it pursues a fullness of being that forever moves in and in the course of that continuous struggle establishes a tenuous whole on existence or presence”.  Which is something that sounds reasonable to me?

Then there is this thing where, in this infamous passage, there is a lot written about how this dialogue anticipates Judeo-Christian, Christian love (agape) but apparently both Saint Agustine and Jerome both say that the Symposium contains a lot of Judeo-Christian values, and apparently there was a lot of backlash against that, and now people are returning to this idea that there is genuinely an expansion of the idea of love past the limits of the Greek language, and this special kind of love, which is similar to the Christian idea of love. One example is Kierkegaard, who asks “what is “love thy neighbor?”” and the answer is “he who I love as my neighbor is not the object defining love but the nature of love that defines the object”. And St. Augustine in the “City of God” there is a passage where he is talking about different kinds of love and says “there is a love which is itself to be loved, there is a love which is not to be loved, and there is the “agape”, the human virtue which is the right order, free… unimposed of human love by human love itself”. That’s the expand of Christian “agape”. So in a sense this love for art would be this whole consuming kind of thing; we wouldn’t be able to theorize it in the rest of the dialogue.

Then there is this notion that you could use the Symposium to prove that art is interpretation, and it would go this way: Diotima treats “interpretation” itself as an erotic enterprise; Diotima tells Socrates that Eros serves as “an interpreter between gods and men, filling and bridging the gap between beings who otherwise would never meet”, and so the whole art of love and also the prophetic interpretation depends on Eros, so interpretation itself (or, in this case, the love of art itself) would be  a form of interpretation.

Another that love of art could be understood as an obligation. That would be from a notion that Derrida has that art is an unasked-for gift, that when you walk into a gallery and you see something it’s a gift to see it but you didn’t ask for it; the gift is on a form that you didn’t quite anticipate, as the experience is unique and surprising, so it instills in you this sense of obligation that you have to return, but because it is an artwork, you can’t return it, there is nothing to give back. Then Derrida goes into all different kinds of ways in which people try to return it: by becoming curators, or becoming art historians and try to tell the “truth” of it, or becoming conservators and trying to physically change it…

Agathon

Why would that be seen as a return of a gift, as opposed to the claiming of ownership of it?

Socrates

Because it can’t; because it is a gift of truth, because you return the truth; but in the wider sense of “gift” there is no really giving back.

So what strikes me about that is that after a lifetime of looking at art you’ve got a very complex sense of unfulfilled obligations…

And the last thing: it struck me that talking about how we love art as we are doing here, has maybe in a way of hiding from actually loving art; this occurred to me because I am reading this book by George Perec, his biography entitled “W”, where every other chapter is about this childhood, and there is a chapter of a story that he wrote when he was thirteen or fourteen about a mythical island off Tierra del Fuego, where everybody plays a sport, and then what happens as you read about the island in excruciating detail, things start go to terribly wrong, judgment is arbitrary, and women are kept sequestered until the age of fourteen, so it is a story of a place that tried to keep the world at bay but that fantasy keeps getting more and more horrific; so it occurs to me that there’s a way of arguing that the whole dialogue – and our discussion- is a way to keep at bay what is going on in art, and there are ways to support this by looking at the text. Halpern says “to fix one’s case on a literary object (and I would substitute here with “art”) which is to say in the prospect of someone else’s neurotic activity is a perversion of direct desire”; which is to say that the Symposium is fundamentally perverse, because it is about someone else’s desire, and what you should do is to stop the conversation and just love the art.

Alcibiades

Alcibiades comes all the way in the end, drunk. I am not drunk, but I will summarize a bit about Alcibiades’ position that I align myself with… he is overwhelmed and obsessively in love with Socrates, and is completely unafraid to embarrass himself,  ready to speak the truth. And Socrates has basically summed up Symposium. From the position of Alcibiades, we talk about replacing love with art, and the question of sleeping with someone whose work you didn’t like, from his perspective the point is the experience, that its all about the position- Alcibiades has this interesting, introverted perception created by being inebriated and open, in a way he is talking about it all is an issue of perception. And I think that in that case, being able to grasp what the real situation is depends on how one sees it. And definitely within my own practice, once we are acting one role out, I don’t want to be pretending to be something, but I want to be “something”. I think Alcibiades’ idolatry of Socrates is mythological. The position that I identify with is having a completely uncynical, possibly naïve, yet completely genuine belief that one is doing is large and effectual and that is the core of  what one wants. There is a book entitled “Against Love” by Laura Kipnis, and it is polemic because she speaks intentionally against love, it’s about being confronted against love. Her ostensible argument is that Western American, monogamous love, is a completely archaic form- in other words, what she is arguing, is that monogamy is dead, and we should accept it, and society will favor a long-term monogamous relationship over a happy one. But what her argument ends ups being – and she goes into a really long list  and diatribe of things you can’t do with monogamy-  its actually creating your own circumstances. And this is what Alcibiades does- he decides what he wants and goes for it. And in art too, there is so much art history that asks are you a techno artist, a conceptualists, neo conceptualists, all these fake point of application – and I think the underlying thing that you have to be cognescent of is that it is “my life” and that you have to construct it yourself. And love, like art, is one’s own construct. I am talking about a  life-long investment that becomes one’s own legacy that we leave behind.

*****

El proyecto de la conferencia combinatoria consistió en la presentación de 16 ponencias que conceptualmente y formalmente se integran gradualmente dentro de una sola, a manera de una fuga a 16 voces en cuatro tiempos. El evento duró aproximadamente media hora con cuatro breves pausas.  La jornada comenzó con 16 conferencistas haciendo presentaciones simultáneas en secciones distintas del museo de una duración de 8 minutos.  En la segunda ronda, los conferencistas se unen en pares, realizando 16 ponencias que integraron los temas que trataron en la primera ronda, pero manteniendo la misma duración de 8 minutos. En la tercera ronda los ponentes se unieron en grupos de cuatro, realizando una ponencia de la misma extensión que integró los cuatro temas anteriores, resultando en una ronda de ocho ponencias. En la cuarta ronda el grupos de dieciseis ponentes realizaron una ponencia colectiva, uniendo como antes todos los temas tratados. En cada fase, la integración de conceptos fue total.

The Combinatory Conference consisted in the presentation of 16 lectures that both formally and conceptually start to merge with each other, forming a fugue of 16 voices in four movements. The project started with 16 lecturers making simultaneous presentations in different sections of the museum, each lecture lasting 8 minutes. In the second round, the lecturers gathered in pairs with the goal to merge the content of their original corresponding lectures, but maintaining their merged lecture at 8 minutes (the topic of the resulting, “merged” lecture would need to be different from the original two, but would also need to incorporate them both). In the third round the presenters gathered in groups of four, presenting a lecture of the same extension that merged the four preivous topics, resulting in a round of eight simultaneous lectures. In the fourth round, the 16 lecturers made a collective lecture, unifiying as before all the previous topics. in each of the phases the integration of ideas and subjects was total.

Este proyecto surge la necesidad de cuestionar los modos en que la información the transmite como conocimiento en la era digital.  Hoy en día, gracias al internet, la información nos es accesible libremente de forma casi infinita, generando el problema de la carencia de filtros o métodos organizativos para resignificar esta información a manera de conocimiento o reflexión.  De la misma manera, los procesos cognitivos de hoy en día funcionan a nivel de multi-canal, como resultado del deficit de atención que se genera por estar bombardeado constantemente por información de todo tipo. Como resultado de estos fenómenos, estamos acostumbrados a vivenciar el mundo como una yuxtaposición de incongruencias y aún así darle sentido a nuestra realidad. Este proyecto busca reestructurar el formato pedagógico de la conferencia utilizando los principios combinatorios de las fugas barrocas de Johann Sebastián Bach, transponiendo el lenguaje musical a un lenguaje verbal y realizando una estructuras compositiva equivalente a las obras escritas para múltiples voces.

The project emerges from the need to question the forms in which information is transmitted as knowledge in today’s digital age. Today, thanks to the web, information is freely accessible, creating the problem of lack of filters or organizational principles to resignify this information into useful knowledge or reflecting. At the same time, our cognitive rewiring has made us used to work in multi-channel formats, thus giving meaning to our reality this way. This project seeks to restructure the pedagogical format of the lecture using the combinatory preinciples of Bach’s fugues, trasposing the musical language to  verbal communication and seeking an equivalent compositional structure for multiple voices.

La conferencia se presentó en el Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporáneo (MUAC) el 11 de abril del 2010, como parte de la exposición Jardín de Academus.Los participantes de la conferencia combinatoria fueron Pedro  Castillo, Dante  Barrios Avila, Pamela Zúñiga, Bernardo Sánchez, Emiliano Ortega, Marisol Maza, Elizabeth Frisas, Miriam Rodríguez, Santiago Espinosa de los Monteros, Gustavo Hernández, Maribel Escobar, Mercedes hinojosa, Violeta Solís Horcasitas y Andrea Santiago.

The lecture was presented at the Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporáneo (MUAC) on April 11,  2010, as part of the exhibition Jardín de Academus. The participating lecturers were  Pedro  Castillo, Dante  Barrios Avila, Pamela Zúñiga, Bernardo Sánchez, Emiliano Ortega, Marisol Maza, Elizabeth Frisas, Miriam Rodríguez, Santiago Espinosa de los Monteros, Gustavo Hernández, Maribel Escobar, Mercedes hinojosa, Violeta Solís Horcasitas and  Andrea Santiago.

Formato de las conferencias / Lecture format:

1.1.

Lo importante es tambien lo de afuera (o sobre las envolturas de regalos)

Violeta Solís Horcasitas

1.2

Encuentros: Fuerzas y Cuerpos

Andrea Santiago Páramo

1.3 El Hombre como animal simbólico

Mercedes Hinojosa

1.4 Cuando las imágenes se multiplican: el arte en la era digital

Elizabet G. Frias

1.5 La natación como posibilidad para la expansion del cuerpo humano

Marisol Maza

1.6 El perfil del Asesino Serial: el arte de matar

Pamela Zúñiga

1.7 Aspectos importantes en la nutricion de la vida diaria

Dante Barrios Ávila

1.8 La ciudad perfecta

Gustavo E. Hernandez

1.9 Inventar el espacio del agradecimiento: los ex-votos en México

Maribel Escobar

1.10 Curaduría y gestión cultural (o las artes visuales en búsqueda de su libertad condicional)

Santiago espinosa de los monteros

1.11 Ciencia ficcion y conflicto: frontera y colonialismo

Emiliano Ortega

1.12 Au’jourd hui: el París de hoy y siempre

Pedro Castillo

1.13 El baño: obsolescencia planificada y la estetica del desperdicio

Yaoci pardo

1.14 Sinsentidos de una prohibicion arbitraria: legalizacion de la marihuana

Bernardo sanchez

1.15 El por qué somos pura memoria

Miriam Rodriguez

SEGUNDA RONDA

2.1

El asesino como devorador de nutrientes ajenos

Pamela Zúñiga

Dante Barrios

2.2

Paris Oculto:

Capital de la gran caca

Pedro Castillo

Yaoci Pardo

2.3

La memoria de la prohibicion

Bernardo Sanchez /Miriam Rodriguez

2.4

Gestión y Conflicto

Emiliano Ortega Rousset

Santiago Espinosa de los Monteros

2.5

Navegar el oceano digital:

La publicidad del cuerpo y la imagen

Elizabeth Frisas y

Marisol Maza

2.6

El cuerpo como envoltura

Violeta Solís Horcasitas

Andrea Santiago

2.7

La apropiacion simbólica del espacio

Mercedes Hinojosa

Maribel Escobar Varillas

Gustavo Emmanuel Hernández Peña

TERCERA RONDA

3.1

El asesino es la idea

Yaoci Pardo

Pedro  Castillo

Dante  Barrios Avila

Pamela Zúñiga

3.2

Gestión de la memoria múltiple:

Iconografía navegable

Bernardo Sánchez

Emiliano Ortega

Marisol Maza

Elizabeth Frisas

Miriam Rodríguez

Santiago Espinosa de los Monteros

3.3

El cuerpo como espacio simbólico

Gustavo Hernández

Maribel Escobar

Mercedes hinojosa

Violeta Solís Horcasitas

Andrea Santiago

4.1

Ficcionator: La multiple ficcionalizacion de la individualidad y sus consecuencias

(una conferencia combinatoria)

[Variations on an Audience was a work designed to be performed only once, in the context of the launch of the book Theatrum Anatomicum (and Other Performance Lectures) at the Bruce High Quality Foundation University on October 22, 2009, inaugurating the performance lecture series Edifying, curated by Beatrice Gross. The work is an experiment on what in sociolinguistic theory has been described as Audience Design and Style-Shifting, which involves the way in which speakers adjust their modes of speaking in relation to their audience.]

Ladies and Gentlemen:

Audiences are endangered species.

They are slowly vanishing in this world showered with limelight, where 15 minutes of fame has now a cacophony of 24/7 programming.

We all speak at the same time, and no one listens. When everyone is an artist, no one can be in the audience. We only sit offstage because we are waiting for our turn in the lectern.

What we call audiences today, like the one here tonight, is nothing more than a collection of highly individualized minds. You all are authors, we all produce things: you take pictures, you write blogs, you all own creative real-state. You all here tonight are so different. How can me, or anyone, talk to you in a comprehensive manner so that you all can feel engaged?

Unfortunately, most people who lecture have failed to recognize this simple fact. They still speak to audiences as if they existed as one whole, as if this hypothetical and amorphous mass was a homogenous group of listeners, nor a heterogenous entity of speakers. They talk to this hypothetical audience as if they thought and felt exactly like them.

Let’s take, for instance, Slavoj Zizek.

Slavoj Zizek talks to everyone as if we all were Slavoj Zizek. A scholar assumes we all are scholars interested in long bibliographies and in the reference to that 1974 book where the footnote of the footnote clarifies what the footnote of the footnote of the 1973 version didn’t clarify.

Artists, when they are invited to speak, usually think that their audience wants the artist to act as if they didn’t care about them, but of course artists care, and their audiences- well, their audiences as usually are other artists who are respectful enough but what they really want is not to be an audience but to be the artist who is speaking.

So it is very painful for me to say this, but the truth is that in this post-post-modern world we all are confused about when to speak and when to listen. As a result of this, we are both unprofessional speakers and unprofessional audiences.

This spells slight doom, the temporary boredom we all have to live through every time we attend a lecture. We don’t even know why we do it. But it shouldn’t be that way.

Lectures could be like sex. They could be like the seduction of love, like the erotic dance or the magic act or the psychic séance or the hypnotic session. All it takes is for the speaker to find a way to talk to each one of the persons in the room as if it were a one-to-one conversation, an audience whisperer.

So by all means then let’s then do variations on an audience, or rather, on this non-audience. I will talk not to all of you, but to each of you. For this exercise I will assume that, amongst the group here there is at least one person of the following sort:

1. Theorists. That is public intellectuals, post-structuralist scholars, downtown east village, readers of October magazine.

2. Chelseaspeakers. Uber-professional art speakers, curators, consultants, critics.

3. Grant-writers and administrators working for non-profit organizations and the U.S. government and the Department of Education or School Board.

4. ‘Show-me-the-money’ speakers, no-nonsense, uncomplicated, like when we talk about art late at an afterparty after a few drinks.

Now that we have established the four audiences that I will be addressing, I will now repeat my introduction in audience 1 style:

The construct of the spectator as redefined today by

post-technological networks reunites a number of given implications that, upon close examination,

reveal society

– and its involutionary transformation-

as a product of a demystified late capitalist model without centers and reformulated contents.

The involution of cultural communication into a system of seemingly

original producers of knowledge as opposed to receivers creates a different

activity universe that contrasts with the deflection of speech, a seemingly anti-political task of horizontal results.

Where one searches for the hidden receiver finds itself the manifested materialization of parallel mimetic producers. It is the fabrication of the plot of the content,

the substance of normative principles of inclusion of concepts, that varies only in stylistic practices of scientific postmodernity,

usually not self-identified as such but actively embracing a regiment of exclusionary concept definitions

within a well-founded domain of references visible only to a reduced agents of the operation.

Audience 2 form:

The notion of audience has been redefined today by post-technological networks.

Cultural producers today produce works that critique western notions of collective spectatorship and propose new critical models.

Notions of performance are incorporated in this new critique, resulting in innovative explorations that operate in the realm of conceptual art in various formats.

The viewer becomes an active participant in the work, which explores notions of viewers becoming active participants.

The work becomes an active participant in the viewer, which is an exploration of notions of viewers.

These works are conceptual narratives that question a variety of concepts, including the way in which spectators receive information in a post-modern world. These practices thus become explorations of conceptual information of notions of participants that participate in notions of information of conceptual explorations.

In other words, in audience 3 form:

Audiences in our global world today face the challenges and the opportunities that come along with the emerging forms of expression.

In this multi-cultural and multi-disciplinary society there are multiple voices which reflect our diverse culture and that are important to support. In some cases, these voices will challenge the viewer to reflect on important issues we all face, but they all reflect the feelings and thoughts of others and are representative of the diversity of original community voices that we all should strive to support. We only face as a society the challenge to expand our long-term partnerships and advisory support to those who have an important message to convey to their constituents, building enduring foundations for community partnerships with real solutions. By acting together, we can overcome the obstacles that for too long have prevented real change on the critical issues that audiences face in art and life, fulfilling the long objective of change , creativity and achievement for the generations to come.

Audience 4 form

I mean its like sometimes because you are online so much and you get to like get to do all this like blogs and photoshop and movies and stuff its like today everything is so easy to do so why do we need anyone else doing it but us, like today things maybe have become decadent or something when you really think about it its really amazing like everything can mean anything because anyone can do whatever. I mean like today the world and like, culture has become a place where we all talk about ourselves and then it like makes everything look the same because no one seems to be listening or something. I mean that’s cool, but it’s like if I am talking and you are talking and he is talking and then if we just talk in different ways that doesn’t mean we are saying different things if you know what I am saying. Its like that is how its done today when we just say what we have to say and we know why we say it and we know what you or are going to say so what’s the point of even saying it, but the point that there is no point is maybe the point.

And now, to merge these styles, we will arrive to patch together the choir of art world voices. You can call it an audience fugue.

The construct of the spectator as redefined today by post-technological networks reunites a number of given implications that, upon close examination, I mean its like sometimes because you are online so much and you get to like get to do all this like, audiences in our global world today face the challenges and the opportunities that come along with the emerging forms of expression. The notion of audience has been redefined today by post-technological networks – and its involutionary transformation- as a product of a demystified late capitalist model without centers and reformulated contents. The involution of cultural communication into a system of seemingly original producers of knowledge its like today everything is so easy to do so why do we need anyone else doing it but us, In this multi-cultural and multi-disciplinary society Cultural producers today produce works that critique western notions of collective spectatorship as opposed to receivers creates a different activity universe that contrasts with the deflection of speech, blogs and photoshop and movies and stuff, like there are multiple voices which reflect our diverse culture and that are important to support, today things maybe have become decadent or something when you really think about it its really amazing like a seemingly anti-political task of horizontal results. In some cases, these voices will challenge the viewer to reflect on important issues we all face, where one searches for the hidden receiver finds itself the manifested materialization of parallel mimetic producers but they all reflect the feelings and thoughts of others and are representative of the diversity of original community voices that we all should strive to support, I mean everything can mean anything because anyone can do whatever. It is the fabrication of the plot of the content, I mean like today the world and like, the substance of normative principles of inclusion of concepts, that we only face as a society the challenge to expand our long-term partnerships and advisory support to those who have an important message to convey to their constituents, These works are conceptual narratives that question a variety of concepts, where we all talk about ourselves and then it like makes everything look the same because no one seems to be listening or something. By acting together, we can overcome the obstacles that for too long have prevented real change on the critical issues that audiences face in art and life, only in stylistic practices of scientific postmodernity, I mean that’s cool, but it’s like if I am talking and you are talking and he is talking and then if we just talk in different ways that doesn’t mean we are saying different things, like These practices thus become explorations of conceptual information of notions of participants, building enduring foundations for community partnerships with real solutions, usually not self-identified as such but actively embracing a regiment of exclusionary definitions that participate in notions of information of conceptual explorations, if you know what I am saying, including the way in which spectators receive information in a post-modern world, and we know why we say it and we know what you or are going to say so what’s the point of even saying it, within a well-founded domain of references visible only to a reduced agents of the operation, fulfilling the long objective of change , creativity and achievement for the generations to come, an exploration of notions of viewers, Its like that is how its done today when we just say what we have to say but the point that there is no point is maybe, like, the point.

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)

Texto palindrómico del performance presentado en el Museo Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, el 18 de junio del 2009.

El performance incluyó la interpretación de obras para piano, tocadas al derecho y a la inversa, de Josef Matthias Hauer (1883-1959), Robert Starer (1924-2001), y Witold Lutoslawski (1913-1994), interpretadas por Beatriz Helguera-Snow.

Palindromic Text from the performance “Revolver” performed at the Museo Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, on June 18, 2009. The performance included a selection of pieces, played normally as well as backwards, by Josef Matthias Hauer (1883-1959), Robert Starer (1924-2001), and Witold Lutoslawski (1913-1994), played by Beatriz Helguera-Snow.

REVOLVER

Acuda caro: hallé hoyos. Ya hay nata, paré tesoro: mi visión, oh celoso, lo cortó. Eres oro, malcriada para mí, rala es la cosa. Oso, Roma, amé ópera, horror… ora, con él así, solos, yo soy ése loco. Podar tele sé; ese día me asomé. Va Lada, le habla, aséase. Poeta. Ah, cala, tala, rapo, no ceso. Ya, por oval, seno bajó— dale cetro. Ser odioso, idos acá. Sé amar dominó, pero lavadora, le sé arar aro. Haré una mora, dí a canal. ¿Yo leí “crac”? Esa oda rato lo coló. La oda basada crea, con ropa, loseta suave. Átame, mala. ¿Viola parir o morí? De podar no hora es. A papaya de ida, nana, loro ese oído, o lo yerro colado a la rapada y da timada casa. O lama la tipa casaca—red Nevada— y osó matar tío. Oré, ni da elogio, ni te lama. Oir a idea cayó, sé: vamos a avatar: rese cera, pala o Kaiser. El carro para. Hará cara, parece plato. Tocan. Ése adulas, sané. “Pásele.” Papá ata mesa y odas a pasado das, a pasado. La mata: cae la bolsa, sea, era dar o daré: La USA caer, ser ir o morir es. O dará  Tebas o cocaina y eso veo: capo agotado. Oir Aro: helada arte les erro: cartel asa, amo la ruda oda, era rato, sé: no son Sadam: a ese llanero allí toca para allá velo: sor toro da tamales. A esa otra hoy oro dí, vemos ayer. Ara, dan allá. Mirad: Europa colosal a alud a rosa muere, sé a vida, asaré somera, Hoy es ese dia para el arte, les oyó, arte  les (se) hará modernos. Da de desamar, ese sal Obama, ese país nadará a la deriva,  y…

A ir el agotar teratoma, sal, batalla anuda, le temo: Irak ario sé así: mar árabe bese a Cairo. Memoria caése beba, rara misa es o Irak a río mete la duna.  Allá tables a mota retrato, galeria. Ya viré. Dala, arad, ansia pese, ama bolas ese. Rama, sed, edad, son redomará Hesse letra oyó, se, letra lea, rapa a id ese sé yo, haremos eras a diva. Ese reuma sor, adula Alá solo capo rueda, rima llana dará. Rey, asomé  vid oro yo, harto aseas. El a matador otros olé, valla ara, pacotilla o renal le sé amadas, no sones o tarareado. A dura loma asa letra, corre, sé letra, dale horario o da toga, opaco Evo sé. Ya  ni a coco sabe, tarado. Ser ir o morir es, rea casual era dorada, rea es. As, loba, le acata mal. Odas a pasado das, a pasado.Ya se mata a papeles. Apenas saluda ese naco total. Pecera para cara. ¿Hará porra? Cleresía koala parece ser. Rata va, asoma, ¿ves? O ya cae diario, a maletín oígole. A dinero oí, tratamos. O ya da vender a casa, capital a malo. Asa cada mitad. Ya da para la oda, lo corre; yo lo odio. Ése oro, lana nadie da ya, Papá.  Sé aro honrado: pedir o morir a palo. IVA lame, mata. Eva usa té sola por no caer cada sábado a lo loco —lo tarado—a secar cielo y lana caída. Roma, nuera, hora rara es. El aro da valor epónimo, drama es acaso dios oído.  Resorte celado jabón es. Lavo ropa, yo seco, no para la talacha. Ateo pesa. Esa alba helada la vemos a Ema. Id. Ese, ése letrado poco le sé, yo soy solo si sale no caro. Rorro, haré poema amoroso. Aso cal, sea la rima rapada. Ir clamor o seré otro coloso lechón. Oí, sí ví moros, éter a patán ya hay. Soy, oh ella, hora caduca.

THE ENNEATYPE CONFERENCE

The Enneatype Conference was a performance presented on May 9, 2009, at Lisa Ruyter’s studio in  Vienna, Austria, per invitation of Parabol Magazine and  curators Jasper Sharp and Elsy Lahner. The days of May 8th and May 9th I spent the time in Café Sperl, conducting “art personality assessment tests” using a system of my own making although inspired in the Enneagram Personality theory.  Participants would respond to a questionnaire about their personal relationship to art, after which I would provide a diagnosis of their artistic personality type using enneagram categories.

While the enneagram test in fact turned out very accurate assessments of each individual’s attitude towards art, I wanted to stress the  fallibility of any system that claims to provide “answers” about an individual’s personal situation. Thus the system, which at first was presented to all participants as an authentic scientific method developed in Vienna, was later unveiled as a complete fabrication.

PH conducting art personality tests at Cafe Sperl, Vienna, May 8, 2009

Sample of one of the art enneatype tests

The culminating event of the project was the performance, in the form of an academic lecture, that explained the various componens of the Art Personality Enneagram. What follows is the abbreviated text from that presentation.

Characters:

Rupert Steiner

Pablo Helguera

Steiner

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Welcome to the closing event of The Enneatype Conference, a unique occasion to celebrate the launch of The Enneagram of Vienna and celebrate the new issue of Parabol Magazine. My name is Rupert Steiner and I am the director of the Psychological Association of Art Therapists here in Vienna. Our mission is to study the ways in which art can reveal the potentiality of the individual. And, as such, it is an immense honor to me to present to you the work of Pablo Helguera, a Mexican artist and educator whose work has centered for many years on the very subject of the artistic personality. Helguera is the director of the Helguera Center for Artworld Studies, which has as its mission to understand the sociology of art and to propose the emergence of a new field of study, which he has described as artworld studies, using elements from social anthropology, biometrics, personology, economics, culinary theory, and of course psychology.

First we should explain what is an enneagram. The Enneagram is a nine-pointed figure inscribed in a circle. The meaning of the symbol itself, together with the personality types organized around the nine points, shows a system of knowledge about nine distinct but interrelated personality types, or nine ways of seeing and experiencing the world. The Enneagram of Personality is generally presented as a psychospiritual system for mapping and understanding nine possible personality types. Each personality type associated with the Enneagram represents a map of traits that highlights patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving.

The notion of the artistic personality enneagram emerges from the work of Dr. Ingrid Lipsky. Dr. Lipsky was a student of Theodor Meynert at the psychiatric clinic of the university of Vienna, alongside with Sigmund Freud and other eminent psychiatrists and neuropathologists. She was also involved in hypnotism and spirituality, which led her to research the enneagram.

Dr Lipsky died at age 52 in 1910, in a safari accident in Africa, just before she got to publish her research. It was shortly after that one of her students, Eberhard Klopstock, who inherited her research papers, took her theories and attempted to develop them.

He tragically burned her original works in order to claim them as his own, then publishing a book in 1935 inspired on her ideas, titled “The Enneagram and the Artist’s Mind”.

Unfortunately, the book did not do well, and it was never reprinted. There are no known surviving copies.

It was thanks to Pablo Helguera, who while doing research in the museum of Modern Art in New York, found a letter from Klopstock to the then director, Alfred Barr, mentioning his research on this subject. Helguera has researched this information to update the original ideas of Ingrid Lipsky and thus bring the Enneagram of Vienna back to life.

He is here to tell us about the various categories of the Enneagram and share with us a system that studies and analyses the artistic personality of the contemporary art world. Please help me in welcoming Pablo Helguera.

[PH arrives onstage]

Pablo, we are enormously grateful to have you amongst us tonight.

PH

Thank you, so am I. I am delighted that we can share the knowledge of the enneagram tonight.

Steiner

Can you please tell us how you developed the enneagram?

PH

Well, I had to work from very initial information that was left from the notes of notable enneagramists, including Dr. Lipsky, as well as other psychologists and psychiatrists that have focused on the typology of the artist, not excluding Carl Jung and Hermann Rorscharch, who was very much interested in art as revealing issues of consciousness.

Steiner

So what is the difference between the personality enneagram and the artistic enneagram?

PH

The personality enneagram is something that was developed by many new age psychologists to explain the kinds of personalities in the world. The artistic enneagram focuses on figuring out specifically the kind of artistic sensibility that one has, and it is a very helpful way to understand one’s own relationship with art, your potential, and also to address your shortcomings as an arts professional. I believe that once you go through the process of learning your enneatype you will be able to become a much more successful individual in the art world.

Steiner

And I understand that you will now do a demonstration?

PH

Indeed. I now illustrate the way in which the enneagram works.

First I will conduct an act of group hypnotism which is desired to attain collective attention to a given subject, particularly when one is giving a boring lecture.

You all will look at my hand, moving like a pendulum. You all will fall in a state of deep sleep and peace, of full attention of everything I will say from now on.

Good, we are ready to go now.

I first would like you to consider a question, and choose the  answer that most accurately reflect your way of feeling about art. After you have made your choices, you should remember the letter and we shall find out what each of your art personality types are.

When you see an artwork at a contemporary art gallery, list the impulse that is most likely to come to you first:

a) Thinking about how this artwork makes you feel

b) Asking to yourself what is right or wrong with this artwork

c) Trying to evaluate the artwork as good or bad

d) Wanting to know who the artist is

e) Wanting to know how this artwork was made

f) Wanting to know the back story of that art work

g) Wanting to know what the idea behind the work is

h) Remembering other pieces similar to that one

i) Non thinking, simply experiencing the work.

When you see a contemporary artist or arts professional of your same age and background receive a certain recognition that you could technically be in the same position to receive, your most likely reaction is:

a) Happiness for this person

b) Envy, wondering why you did not receive such recognition yourself

c) Thinking on what kind of friendships and professional contacts you need to make in the future to receive that same recognition yourself

d) Indifference

e) Thinking of what kind of work you need to make to receive such recognition in the future

f) Wanting to know the reasons for such recognition

g) Figuring out an innovative way to attain similar attention

h) Depression

i) Simple admiration for this person

Following you will hear about the different kinds of art personality types. If you chose, for instance, “h”,

you are

TYPE 1: THE NOSTALGIST

Nostalgists are in touch with their feelings, are sensitive, and highly perceptive of their environment. The nostalgist is inquisitive and likes to attain a lot of knowledge about an artwork. They can become very erudite and knowledgeable about a subject.

On average, they tend to emphasize too much the notion of biography, the context in which something was made, they draw lots of historical connections.

When they are unhealthy they can be depressive, self-destructive, obsessed with being up to date with the latest news of the art world, overromanticize everything, they can become delusive.

Examples: Many famous art historians are nostalgists. Janet Cardiff (on the photo), Matthew Buckingham, Mark Dion, Janet Cardiff, Sophie Calle, Christian Boltanski, Yinka Shonibare

if you chose “g” you are,

TYPE 2: THE CONCEPTUALIST

As its name indicates, conceptualists are abstract thinkers, capable of powerful synthesis, focused, and able to quickly grasp and advance the art discourse.

On average, they overemphasize theory, cause and effect, and argumentation in a work. They cannot fully enjoy a work unless they have clarified in their mind the main issues that the work addresses.

Bad conceptualists become out of touch with their feelings and have a difficulty sharing their emotions, are introverted, are desensitized toward art which arises emotions, can become aggressive and pretentious.

Examples: Joseph Kosuth, Allan Kaprow, Jacques Rancière, Daniel Birnbaum, Rosalind Krauss, Luis Camnitzer, Roberta Smith, Richard Serra, John Baldessari, Lawrence Weiner, Martin Creed

TYPE 3: THE TALKER

At their best, Talkers are able to translate the visual into words, becoming eloquent and able to put things in perspective. Gregarious and friendly, talkers have an ability to bring people together and become important spokespersons for large interest groups and gain access to important positions in the art world. Many performers and architects are talkers.

On average, Talkers can come off as superficial, saying a lot but without great substance, emphasizing hyperbole and syntax instead of content, can draw exaggerated relationships, and feel that they always have to say something even if it is unnecessary.

When they are unhealthy, they have a burning desire to protagonize everywhere, taking other ideas as one’s own, gossip too much, exaggerate reality to the point of becoming a storyteller, becoming a bit of a clown.

Examples: Hans Ulrich Obrist, Jerry Saltz, Marina Abramovic, William Kentridge, Robert Hughes, Maurizio Cattelan, Kirk Varnedoe

(e) is

TYPE 4: THE FORMALIST

Formalists are highly visual people, design-oriented, perfection-driven, with a great appreciation for craftsmanship and neatness. Organized, they are punctual, keep their word, and generally maintain a good balance of art and life.

On average, Formalists can be anal retentive, extremely demanding to others and to themselves, to the point of paralysis, it can take them time to make decisions and have anxiety in unresolved situations; they have no tolerance for ambiguity.

When they are unhealthy, they can be manipulative, easily irritated, dismissive of anything which may not be clear-cut, conservative, and materialistic.

Examples: Rachel Whiteread, Sol Lewitt, Donald Judd, Hannah Darboven, Michael Snow, Walead Beshty, John Cage, Gabriel Orozco

TYPE 5: THE BOHEMIAN

Bohemians are those capable to enjoy the art experience to its fullest degree; they are relaxed, open individuals who are highly receptive to other’s art and ideas and are contagious in their pleasure and enthusiasm, sharing their innovative thinking. They are friendly and accessible and can be very inspiring.

On average, They are abstract thinkers who can sometimes get too ambiguous and contradictory in their actions; they may lack personal drive to do things; can take them a long time to do a project, can be noncommittal.

However, if they are unhealthy, they Can be lazy, or falsely modest, boring, inattentive to detail and poor executors of projects.

Examples: Rirkit Tiravanija, Basquiat, Pippilotti Rist, Vito Acconci, Helio Oiticica, and others.

TYPE 6: THE SHAKER

Now, Shakers are very perceptive of social contexts and can influence social structures to their advantage. They are brilliant, highly diplomatic, alert, shrewd, and reliable. They excel in organizing and administration, as well as in making interesting connections and bringing people together. They can orchestrate large projects and usually are good with money. Many museum directors are shakers.

On average, Shakers can be social climbers and careerists; they can put the carriage before their horse and do things entirely out of self-interest. They can be a powerful ally and supporter but can also be a dangerous enemy.

At their worst, they can be Egotistical, with a problem with authority, extremely proud and manipulative, delusional and self-aggrandizing.

Examples: Thomas Krens, Olafur Eliasson, Christo, Jeffrey Deitch, Larry Gagosian, Okwui Enwenzor, Francesco Bonami, Mary Boone

TYPE 7: THE CONTRARIAN

Contrarians are the ones who usually open a debate. They have an innate ability to detect and question the status quo, and activating spaces of discussion and experience for others. They have sharp minds with complex perspectives and inspiring thoughts.

Generally, contrarians can be dogmatic, self-centered, and have a difficulty to relate to others who don’t share their views. Narcissistic, they are well-grounded, independent, and strong, although they resent not being given their due credit and always act as if they have a chip on their shoulder.

When unhealthy, beware: they can be extremely aggressive, dismissive of others, overly negative, insensitive to others, power-hungry, and snob.

Examples: Hans Haacke, Andrea Fraser, Martin Kippenberger, Terence Koh, Jens Hoffmann, The Guerrilla Girls, Barbara Kruger, Richard Prince, Donald Kuspit.

TYPE 8: THE SPIRITUALIST

Spiritualists are self-fulfilled people who can extract the best of every art experience and bring it to a higher realm. They are people in peace with themselves, who think with clarity and lucidity, and for whom art is a vehicle to attain illumination.

Spiritualists usually see beyond what the normal viewer seees, thus can be treated as delusional (and may actually be); can be sentimental and new-agey. They can act as shamans or evangelists.

If they are unhealthy, however, they can be naïve, delusional in believing that they are the new Buddha, condescending, passive-aggressive, resentful and insecure.

Examples: Bill Viola, Agnes Martin, Barnett Newman, Dan Flavin, Joseph Beuys, Eva Hesse, James Turrell

TYPE 9: THE ADMIRER

Admirers are centered individuals who can look at art in a balanced way and appreciate its strengths and weaknesses without falling prey to their emotions. At their best they are intelligent, self-effacing, extremely reliable as supporters, collaborators or allies.

Admirers can be calculating, materialistic, acquisitive, constantly amusing themselves with new things and experiences. They have a need to be loved.

When unhealthy, they are Impulsive and infantile in what they want. Can become offensive and abusive. They act on impulses rather than dealing with their own anxieties or depressions, so they can end up spent and despondent.

Examples: Charles Saatchi, Peter Norton, the Rubells

To finalize, I will show a few graphs that exemplify demographic research of the artworld using enneagramatic types.

Here is a sample of an unhealthy enneagramic art community, with an excess of Bohemians and talkers, and yet few admirers (which translates on scant collecting) and too few conceptualists.

In this other sample, one can appreciate the behavioral trends amongst art types who are inclined to switch galleries after being selected into the Venice Biennial. Shakers and Formalists are more likely to switch galleries given their acute sense of opportunity and order, respectively; contrarians will switch only because they like to switch, nostalgists are too attached to the past, and bohemians are not able to switch because they don’t have galleries in the first place.

so as you can see, there is a lot to be learned from this system, which can be mastered with enough study and analysis.

Any questions?

Steiner

Pablo, I  do have a few comments.

PH

Go ahead.

Steiner

I have been listening to your presentation, and I am realizing that none of these statements have any scientific basis. Looks like you made them up.

PH

I think you are confused.

Steiner

I am starting to suspect that you fooled me and that actually Dr. Lipsky never existed. If you look closely at that photo of Dr. Lipsky that you gave me to show for the presentation, that looks like an old photo that you found in a thrift shop. And the guy that you showed in that picture is not Eberhard Klopstock. He looked too familiar to me. He actually is the singer Richard Tauber.

PH

You are wrong, Rupert.

Steiner

I think that your whole theory is bullshit. It is like all that new age philosophy that gives you a false sense of worth, that gives you false hopes, making you believe that there are powerful spiritual forces that will make you succeed. But the truth is that when we try to hard to search for that success we loose the sense of who we are and what we believe in. You have played with our feelings. Shame on you.

PH

I am sorry you feel this way. OK, something has gone wrong here. Maybe it is time to end this demonstration.

You may remember that you all are under hypnotic trance. So when I snap my fingers, you will not remember any of this conversation. The Enneagram of Vienna will completely vanish from your memory, the same way it came, it will vanish from everyone’s memory the same way it was gone before— it will never have existed. We will not think of who we are but only go about our lives, and our art, withholding judgment. We will simply try to survive, and be at times tortured and at times happy, not entirely sure why, and let our identities, and our relationship with art, remain a mystery, where it belongs.

[making another hypnotic gesture]

Nine, Eight, seven, six, four, three… two… one… welcome back. And thank you.

[they exit]

A sketch in one act

Pablo Helguera

Loving Chicago is like loving a woman with a broken nose.
Nelson Algren

Characters:

Pablo Helguera, a lecturer
Encarnacion Teruel, the moderator
Scott Vehill, art critic from Peoria
Sharon Stein, a Peoria artist and arts administrator

We All are Streeter was first performed at the Hyde Park Art Center on April 2006, in celebration of the opening of the new facilities of this art center. The program was presented as a real panel discussion to the public.

Time: Chicago, Illinois, April 2006
(all panelists and lecturer arrive. Pablo will lecture from a podium, opposite from the panel table, and will be showing slides throughout. The panelists sit at a table. They will not acknowledge Pablo’s presence nor will they look at him throughout the piece)

Encarnación Teruel
Ladies and Gentlemen: Thank you for coming to this discussion, presented in celebration of the Hyde Park Art Center’s reopening. My name is Encarnacion Teruel and I am Director of Performing Arts at the Illinois Arts Council.

Pablo Helguera
Good evening, and thank you for coming to this program this evening. We will speak tonight about an obscure chapter about Chicago’s history that hopefully will shed some light about the link between the  geography of a place and the idiosyncrasies it inspires.

Encarnacion
For this particular event, and in order to illuminate the Chicago audience a bit on the arts in Illinois, we thought we would present a debate around the subject: “How Do You Define the Spirit of Peorian art?”

Pablo Helguera
Oprah said once: “When in 1983 I set foot in this city, and just walking down the street, it was like roots, like the motherland. I knew I belonged here.”

Encarnacion
Peoria is home to great and diverse creativity. Our objective here in this panel is to talk about their common links and what defines Peorian art.

Pablo Helguera
But I am not here to speak about Oprah. I am here to speak to you about a person who is almost forgotten in the city’s history, and yet, whose life would very much define Chicago’s urban landscape. He has been ridiculed and criticized as a plain eccentric, but he should be regarded as a visionary.

The history of Chicago changed forever on an unusually stormy day on July 10, 1886. An old boat crashed against the sandbar of the shores of Lake Michigan 450 feet from Superior Street. Little did people know that this incident would define the future of the city.

The man in charge of this boat was Captain George Wellington Streeter, born in Flint, Michigan, in 1837. Captain Streeter was quite an adventurer. He made the Great Lakes his working environment. He worked as a logger and trapper in Canada, as Ice-cutter in Saginaw Bay, and a iron and copper miner. He joined the civil war on the side of the Union Army, and was later discharged as a captain. When he retired from the army, his wife Minnie convinced him to start a circus, and he did so. However, Streeter was not such an accomplished showman, and his enterprise collapsed into bankruptcy in two years. His wife left him with all the remaining money, and Streeter had to start all over again. He remarried with Maria Mulholland. We don’t know how, but the endless enterprising Streeter managed eventually to buy and repair an old boat, which he named the Reutan, and which we presume it was used for logging and transportation.

After his accidental landing in Chicago’s shore, Captain Streeter didn’t have many options. He decided to stay there, however, since it was impossible to move the boat and he didn’t have any money to pay rent.

Streeter landed in Chicago at a momentous time of the city’s reconstruction after the great Chicago fire. He realized that building developers we looking for a place to dump debris, and he convinced them to do this near his boat for a fee.

In the meantime, the New York millionaire that owned the land where Streeter had landed started trying to get rid of him.  His name was Kellogg Fairbank. Fairbank had at the beginning left Streeter stay where he was, as he seemed a harmless presence, but then things started getting more complicated.

Encarnacion
With me is Sharon Stein, a Peoria artist who lives and works in Peoria. She is the director of We Are Peoria, an organization that promotes the arts in Peoria. We have also invited the international art critic Scott Vehill, also from Peoria, who is the editor of New Art Peoria. Scott has devoted many years to the study of artistic psychology and behavior, and who will hopefully shed some light on the idiosyncrasy of Peorian artists. Scott has contributed to Artforum and is very active in the curatorial circles in the U.S. and abroad.

Perhaps we can start by asking you Sharon about the work of your organization and what kinds of programs you do.

Sharon
Thanks Encarnacion. I am very happy to be here. We Are Peoria is a not-for profit organization that was founded in 1977, with the purpose to set the record straight regarding Peorian art and give it the importance it deserves. It supports Peorian artists and Peorian art institutions. We seek to prove that art made in Peoria is equal or superior to any art made in the US today.

Scott ( smiling, to Sharon)
You know I am planning to contest that statement.

Sharon
Oh, I bet you will…

Encarnacion
Well, we will discuss that later. So, how is Peorian art better? I mean, how do you quantify this?

Sharon
Well, it’s very simple. Peorian artists are not dominated by the pressures of the market like in Chicago, nor are they prone to careerism and fashion like Chicago artists, and they also are not overshadowed by politics or rivalries like in Chicago.  We focus on the work, not on the talk, or the glamour. We at Go Peoria seek to prove that the art of Peoria is actually the most balanced, original, and independent, at the level or greater to the art of any big city.

Encarnacion
What kind of programs do you do?

Sharon
We have a lot of programs. We have the Peoria Only Art initiative, which is an initiative that gives substantial grants to museums that collect only Peorian art. It is a very competitive grant.

Encarnacion
What do you need to do to apply?

Sharon
Basically the grant requires institutions to stop collecting art from other places than Peoria. We also have a grant for Peorian artists to make art about Peoria, titled About Peoria Grant Initiative.

Encarnacion
Do you fund anything outside of Peoria?

Sharon
Well, we do have a grant named Make Me Peorian, which is directed to non-Peorian artists who may consider moving to Peoria and make art there. The grant supports you for five years, during which you are not allowed to exhibit outside of Peoria.

Encarnacion
And do you really reinforce this rule?

Sharon
Oh yes, of course we do. Last year an artist that we had funded participated in a group show in the community library of Decatur. We took away the grant immediately. He claimed that he thought, “It was just a very informal show”. But for us this lies at the core of the mission of the organization. We are serious about this. We can’t allow artists to serve other publics than those that we intend to serve. We need to show the city and the state that we are serious about nurturing out arts community.

Encarnación
I saw in the news recently that there were some debates regarding how some people define South versus Northern Peorian art… could you talk a bit about that?

Sharon [reluctant]
Well… it is really not such an interesting issue, really.

Encarnacion:
Could you talk about them? I think it would be useful…

Scott
Basically, its that some committee members in their organization have been pushing for a South Peoria initiative, where South Peorian artists can be funded only to make artwork about South Peoria.

Sharon
Scott— it’s not like that, like you described it. It’s not a real initiative. They are in the minority and they are totally disorganized and under funded. It’s not even worth talking about.

Scott
But why not mentioning it? I think it’s a very telling fact.
Of course this has not sit well with the North Peoria artists, nor with the East Peoria artists, some of which have already proposed the East Peoria Artists Council. And now, a group of West Peoria artists have formed the West Peorian Association of Chicano-Asian –or is it the Latino-Asian?—the Chicano-Asian American Women Sculptors, that’s it—  and are searching funds from Springfield to build a museum by and for West Peorian, Latino-Asian American Women Sculptors.

Sharon
That’s not  a serious proposal in the least! I don’t know why you even bring it up.

Encarnación
Ok, going back to your grant initiatives: don’t you think that Peoria artists who exhibit internationally can give a good name to the city?

Sharon
It doesn’t work that way, you see. Artists who exhibit outside forget about Peoria the moment they leave. We experience a serious talent exodus problem, which originates when local artists start showing outside. This in turn, makes them want to move out.  Artists who are talented think that by leaving Peoria to places like Chicago they will have a better shot at success. The same goes for galleries. But that is not true. Peoria galleries who move out to Chicago inevitably fail.

Encarnación
What do you do when a Peorian artist leaves Peoria for good?

Sharon (showing it is a very painful subject)
Oh yes, them. To be honest, I don’t give much thought to them. It’s their loss, really. Simply, my thinking is— out of sight, out of mind. They don’t exist for me, really. (fake smile). Yeah, really, its’ their loss.

Pablo
As the shore grew from the debris and the natural erosion process, Captain Streeter declared that the land where his boat stood “’twas a separate commonwealth, under the direct jurisdiction of the United States government”.  He declared it “the independent district of Lake Michigan”. Streeter then started renting this land to whoever wanted to live there, which mostly were prostitutes and lowlifes. Soon it became a shantytown, and the rich people who lived around there started complaining about the smell and the fact that these shacks were lowering the value of the area.

Encarnacion
Well, I would like to focus now on the subject of our discussion. How would you characterize Peorian art? how do you define the sensibility that produces it? Scott, perhaps you can shed some light on the subject for us?

Scott
Hopefully. I have done some research on this subject in a lecture I recently gave in Austria,  and in fact published an article on the American Association of Art Critics journal this year that touches on the character of the Peorian artist, as part of a paper about artists who live in cultural regions that are similar to Peoria. There is not enough time to present all the ideas on that paper, but I will try to provide a summary.

It is very difficult to arrive to a unified theory of the Peorian artist mind. There has been a lot written about it. Psychologists have been interested in it since the times of Hermann Rorschach, who in his early studies did research on art and madness, and one of his subjects was a patient precisely from Peoria.

Freudian psychologists believe that the creativity of Peorian artists is fundamentally rooted on a sentiment of abandonment or lack of external attention, very similar, that is, to the psychology of an orphan, something like a sense of inferiority in regards to people in other urban areas.

Sharon (visibly insulted)
That is just so absurd…

Scott
I am sorry- we can discuss this idea later, but If you let me finish…

Encarnacion
I’m sorry Sharon, if you could…

Sharon
How can you possibly base a theory like that based only on an insane guy who lived in the 1920s!

Scott
I just need that you let me finish presenting this idea and we can talk about it.

Encarnacion
Ok.

Pablo
Streeter’s legal argument was that the state of Illinois had no jurisdiction in giving shore owners title to the land.  This was based on the 1821 survey of the Chicago area authorized by Congress as part of a treaty with the Indians.  Rather than giving “the shore of Lake Michigan” as a general eastern boundary, the surveyor John Wall minutely described the shoreline.  Thus, when Robert Kinzie acquired a 103.27-acre tract north of the Chicago River, it had definite eastern boundary.  Over the years, the courts had consistently ruled that the heirs of the Kinzie grant could never claim more than a total of 103.27 acres, and here lay the strength of Streeter’s case.

Regardless, however, a series of battles to evict Streeter followed. The first one was in 1889, when five police officers tried to evacuate Streeter. They, however, were faced by rifles and chased away. The second battle was until 1899, when five police officers again managed to grab the captain, but his wife Maria attacked them with boiling water; Streeter managed to get a hold of his rifle then and chased them away.  The Independent State of Lake Michigan was not going to give up its fight so easily.

Scott
As I am saying, we depart from a study of city rivalries. Chicago is to Peoria what New York is to Chicago, what Istanbul is to Ankara, Berlin is to Munich, Paris is to Lyon, and so on. So  if we study how an artist here develops professionally, according to this theory, we see artists exhibit a series of attitudes that people have come to associate largely with Peorian art.  One of them is known as “compensation for invisibility”. As the artist feels that he or she is not visible enough in the art world, he or she tries to compensate by making work that is quantifiably different, either by size, erudition, or extravagance- but these traits are clearly intentional and have the objective to make the work more visible and emphasize its different character from the centralized mainstream. Examples are Bill Johnson’s “million egg march” installation- he placed one million eggs on the floor, that is, and claimed it was a demonstration to defend the rights of caged chickens in an egg farm near Peoria. He thought if you place one million its has greater impact than if you place, say, a hundred- although someone told me the other day that they actually were like a nine hundred, but who would spend the time to count them, really. The other is the work of Archie Phillips, who is known for his famous performance referencing the fact that Caterpillar trucks are manufactured in Peoria. The piece was entitled “Explaining pictures to a dead Caterpillar”.

Sharon
I think it is a very poignant piece.

Pablo
In the meantime, Fairbanks had sued Streeter for illegal occupation in 1893 and had won, which meant that Streeter needed to get out legally. However, he decided to stay. Streeter continued creating schemes to prove that the land belonged to him. He even produced a document that he claimed that was signed by president Grover Cleveland. While he never managed to get legal acknowledgement that he owned any land, Streeter continued to sell plots to other people, and the community started to grow. It went from Oak Street to St. Clair.

Chicago was changing furiously at the time, the fastest growing city in America. Another Chicago millionaire, Potter Palmer, realized that if they built a road on the sides of this land, they could make a lot of money selling it back from the city. He started building this road, which would be later named Lake Shore Drive, but he encountered the infamous Captain Streeter on his way, who opposed the building of this road in “his” land. Palmer died in 1902, without finishing his project, and the legal battles continued between the Chicago millionaires and the poor captain.

Scott
Anyway, my point is that living in the cultural and economic periphery leads to make work that affirms peripheral sensibility, and thus the eccentricity that sometimes is talked about when one deals with Peorian art. This connects with something I call the “intense introspection” trait, rooted in romanticism, which seeks to dwell in the personal psychology and in the strangest obsessions. Another trait is known as the “negation of the outside” which is when one is self-convinced that nothing outside of one’s immediate surrounding really exists.

But my contention, actually, is that Peorian art doesn’t really exist. When it is self-proclaimed a regional movement, then it becomes a political strategy not an artistic one. Art is art, period. Regionalism is an expression of psychological weakness.

Sharon [visibly irritated]
Oh my god. O-kay, I really have to interject here. I had never heard so much baloney in a panel, really.  I don’t know how many more psychological definitions you have in there Scott,  but I find these incredibly offensive to Peorian art and artists. First of all, Peorian artists don’t suffer from those introspection sicknesses you describe. And it’s just not true that Peorian artists are obsessed with Chicago or any other city.  We simply don’t care about it. In fact, we at We Are Peoria have an initiative entitled Boycott Chicago. As part of it, we prevent Peoria artists to exhibit in Chicago or any other city, and do all we can to prevent non-Peorian artists to exhibit in Peoria, be as they may be from Chicago or Kazakstan.

Encarnacion
But don’t these policies seem a bit extreme?

Sharon
Not in the least, if you consider that Peorian art has been so misrepresented by important Chicago museums over the years, and that the Chicago Tribune had the nerve to write, when Richard Pryor, a Peoria native, recently died, that the best thing that ever happened to him was getting out of Peoria. How dare they?

Encarnación
Scott,  don’t you think that what is peripheral and what isn’t is a very subjective discussion?

Scott
Excuse me, Encarnacion— Sharon, if I may—and I am still not done- what you are saying all but proves my point in question,  since you are confirming to us that Chicago art is such a sore subject in the Peorian art scene.

Sharon
No—you are presenting this as an inferiority complex, which I find completely insulting to Peorian art. Why do we always have to make everything be about Chicago, why?

Scott
But if you have an initiative that is specifically about boycotting Chicago!

Sharon
Well we have no recourse, do we? Specially if there are people out there like you, saying that we feel inferior to Chicago or whatever. I think that your way of thinking just reveals your own personal inferiority complex. You of all people, Scott!

Scott
(sarcastically laughing at her)
What do you mean “I, of all people”?. I am sorry, but you are the one with the inferiority complex, not me. You are the one who doesn’t want to acknowledge the outside just because the outside doesn’t acknowledge you.

Sharon
Well, if that is true, how more pathetic is it to be like you, who is totally ignored by the outside and then disregards his own city as a revenge. Last time you contributed to Artforum was in 1981, and you pretend you have an international critic career? Give me a break!

Scott
You are just jealous…

Sharon
I don’t sit around pontificating about other people’s psychologies, pretending that I am above the rest. I only value what I have. You have a disregard for what is yours, and that is pitiful.

Scott
How do you know that I disregard what I have?

Sharon
When you are critical of everyone, when you think that everyone else is pathetic, when nothing is good enough for you, doesn’t that say something about the psychology of that person? I mean, ever since we co-curated the Peoria Invitational in 1987…

Scott
I can’t believe you are going to bring that up again…

Sharon
Scott: at that event you brought this awful German artist or whatever, who was the worst of the whole show, and you pushed and pushed to give him the first prize just because you wanted to look international and because no one understood the work. And the caterpillar piece by Archie Phillips did not even get an award because of you…

Scott
Well yes, I thought it was a very derivative piece! And I still do. Even if Archie won’t talk to me again since that day.

Encarnacion
I think we need to backtrack here…

Scott (to Sharon)
You know, I can’t believe you are telling me this. You know nothing about conceptual art! You can’t lock yourself in a room. There is a world out there. People were furious that he won just because he was not from Peoria.

Sharon
Well, you may know a lot, but are in total denial about yourself.
How many shows have you curated internationally in the last ten years?

Scott (who has no answer)
I think this is just ludicrous… that is no way to judge what I do…

Sharon
And yet, who is the person who bashes Peorian art more than anyone, and who at the same time, every time there is an opportunity for someone to talk about Peorian art, there you are, first in line. Look at yourself, you are sitting right here. The expert on Peorian art psychology telling us that Peorian art sucks, who hates Peorians and himself.

Pablo
But then, Streeter’s audacity reached a high point. He started claiming land that was already owned by the Palmers as his own, So things finally escalated to a point where it was critical to evict the Captain and his people. Streeter raised a small army to defend the Independent District of Lake Michigan.  500 policemen from the city of Chicago surrounded the district and attacked the army. And the great battle for the independence of the State of Lake Michigan took place.  15 people died in total. Streeter was captured and finally evicted.  But he would continue fighting for his land in the courts until the day of his death.

The opening of the Michigan Avenue Bridge in 1920 catapulted Streeterville into the most prime real estate in Chicago.  Having been kept relatively vacant for decades because of the constant litigation, the land was still under dispute when the construction boom began.

Sharon
(after a brief silence, in a more reflective and melancholic mood)
I have a dream of an artworld that truly belongs to Peoria and makes it special.  I feel that meaning is always stripped away from us, from what we actually own and are rightfully connected to. When I walk down the streets of downtown Peoria, I often think about this. Why do we have to exist in a world where someone else tells you how much what you have is worth? Peoria is our place, and even if it is not paradise, we need to make art about that place.

Scott
Just for the record Sharon, at that 1987 invitational— I know that German artist wasn’t necessarily that good. But I wanted to set an example, I wanted to show that we can be international too.  It has been frustrating to me that we always have to remain local. I am a Peorian too, and I also want to claim something of my own that I can be proud of. I also wanted Peoria to be the center of the world.

Sharon (Who did not even pay attention to Scott and is turning confessional, in tears almost)
I am from Ohio, actually. I went to art school in Cleveland. I always wanted to move to Chicago. And I did, when I was nineteen. It was an awful experience, living in a horrible neighborhood in a rickety apartment with mice. It was not welcoming at all. I hated Chicago ever since. Peoria was not in the plan, but one day I landed here, I got a job here after that and never left. Maybe there is something about this place that makes us never wanting to leave. If you excuse me.
(leaves)

Pablo
Streeter moved to a houseboat on the Calumet River in  East Chicago, Indiana with his third and last wife, Emma Lockwood.

Before he died, rumor has it that he wrote a cryptic letter to his “subjects of the Independent State of Lake Michigan”. According to some of these accounts, that must not be trusted, the letter said: “Fellow citizens of our State: I shall soon leave your company, as the infirmities of age catch up with me. I sorely regret not being able to return your land to your rightful hands. God knows that I fought to the best of my abilities for our land rights. But regardless how many people try to strip us away from our lawful possession, and how many buildings may be imposed, the spirit of that site will always be ours, and the land shall carry our name, and our mark, for the ages to come”.

George Wellington Streeter died on January 24, 1921.  His body was sent back to Chicago and hundreds of people went to pay his respects to him.

Streeter’s land ran from Oak Street to the Chicago River, and extends from Pine Street to Lake Michigan, and is the place where Navy Pier, the Hancock building, the Magnificent mile and the Drake Hotel now stand. Who would know that the heart of this city would have been founded by this eccentric man, that it was once claimed as a separate state, and that the name of this neighborhood would end up coming after the illegal squatterer and not after the legal owner?

You may think that Streeter was insane, but maybe he was vindicated by his claims of ownership, of place. The place that he once claimed as his own, is now named after him, –Streeterville—
and not after those who had purchased the land.

Identity lies in between where we happen to be and where we want to be in our minds. We create mental places out of the physical places.  We divide our territory in parts, we plant whatever we like in it. We also can put a fence around it and claim it as our own. Sometimes it doesn’t really belong to us, but we seek for ownership anyway, because ownership means identity. It is natural to claim something as your own. It helps you affirm who you are. But you need to remember that no piece of land is truly yours. And that legacy is entirely in your mind, and maybe carried along in the minds of others.

Encarnacion
Thank you so much for joining us. Next week we will address the subject of  “What is the spirit of Chicago art”.
(leaves)

Pablo
Which makes me think, it is our stubborn embracing of a reality as our own that eventually will make us transcend who we are.
We all are Streeter, because when we arrive to life we have no set place in it, and it is up for us to accept the place where we are, which is a combination perhaps of a place in the world, and a place in our minds. And like Streeter, like an artist, the place that once existed in his mind became the place that now exists in our lives.
(leaves)

Scott (last one sitting at the table, slowly picking up his papers, meditative. He stands up and prepares to leave. He stops mid-way, looking back at the room)
I really thought his work was good. You know, that German artist. I thought he was so much better than the caterpillar.
(pause)
I guess the caterpillar was OK too.
(exits)

La Jornada Newspaper, Mexico City, July 13, 2003

The Primer congreso de purificación cultural urbana de la ciudad de México (First Congress of Urban Purification of Mexico City) was a collaborative project by Ilana Boltvinik and Pablo Helguera made in response to the increasingly conservative climate of government-run cultural policy—or lack thereof— in Mexico.  The project took form of an actual conference in the Hotel de la Ciudad de Mexico in downtown Mexico City in May of 2003.  The project was never advertised as an art project but as a real conference with a call of papers that insidiously claimed that “culture, like the environment, is polluted”, and invited submissions as to how to “purify” it. Many submissions were received from as far as Colombia,  and 6 were selected for the conference, while 6 others were written as scripts and read by actors, unbeknownst to the audience. The 6 “scripted” submissions were in a sense a response to the 6 “real” submissions, formulating statements or points of view that are rarely expressed in academic or public forums.  The following two scripted papers here include the one read by the Mexican curator Marco Barrera Bassols,  calling for the complete elimination of national arts funding —arguing that most of that funding goes to support a bureaucratic apparatus and too little to actual art making. At the time, Rudolf Giuliani had been hired by the Mexico City government to be a security advisor.  The  paper read by performance artist Ryan Hill, who was introduced as director of a pro-Giuliani organization, proposed a US-run cultural policy program for Mexico inspired in Giuliani’s own conservative view of culture (not to long ago Giuliani, while New York City mayor, had sought to take away funding from the Brooklyn Museum for the display of Chris Ofili’s painting).
This last paper generated a media blitz and outrage over the notion of an US-led cultural policy, published by the papers La Jornada, Reforma, Universal, Milenio and others, which in turn led to a public debate on cultural policy as originally intended.

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(exerpt from the performace script:
Ryan Hill’s paper)

Thank you for coming today to this event. As assistant director of the department of cultural services  and assigned representative of the Rudolph Giuliani Commission for this congress, I would like to start my presentation by speaking about our current positions and our projects related to our improvement of the cultural life of Mexico City. After that, I will get into th specifics of our cultural program, known as PROLICU.

As you may or may not know,  the Commission is an independent, not-for profit, organism of philantropic nature, which focuses its energies in solving the current problems experienced in Mexico City in what culture is concerned. The Culture Department, which was created at the beginning of 2002, with the intention to increment the range of action of the Commission, is based on the same theorical principles, that is to say, to “condemt and do everything that could be done to abolish all and every one of the abuses towards life and humanity”, followed by various accords such as “ bringing  to light and clean all the physically hazardous practices to mental health, and preserving such cleanliness”. Of course, it is of utmost importance to consider cultural practices as part of mental health.

From its very beginnings, the members of the commission have made an uninterupted stand against the brutal treatments and criminal practices and abuses against social  and cultural human hygiene, following as its main principle the emphasis of moral renovation implemented by Rudolf W. Giuliani as major of the City of New York. The Commission has become a really effective force in the promotion of changes in this area.

Our program known as PROLICU is dedicated to the research and identification of any violations to cultural hygiene, both in the psychiatric and physical sense. Although it is a relatively young organization, it has already accomplished a profound cultural study with the help of many national and international experts in order to present, in the most complete way possible, the action plan that we plan to follow to implement the cultural cleaning of this city.

I will now describe the Program of Cultural Cleanup (PROLICU) in its first stages and Characteristics.

Program of Cultural Purification (PROLICU)

The international program for the cultural purification of Mexico City, better known as PROLICU, was launched in 2002 by the Commission. The project, carefully developed with the objective of completely reforming the life of Mexico City through a thorough cultural cleanup, consists in a series of key steps that need yet to be implemented.

First  Phase: Case Study and Cultural Evaluation
The general comission of PROLICU, composed by those members of the government who may consider themselves  knowledgeable in the field of arts, will carefully analize the cultural program of each one of the city’s museums, houses of culture, universities, schools, galleries, and activity centers open to the public, identifying where they can, those instances in which the activities may be considered immoral — which is not the case of every institution, although it is estimated that 78% of cultural centers in Mexico City have such condition to some extent and need of profound renovation in this aspect.

Second Phase: Cleanup and Renovation
All the directors, curators, museum administrators, and employees of government-run galleries, cultural centers and community centers whose cultural discipline and challenge to authority will be immediately dismissed, without any previous notification.

Third Phase: Reprogramming, Regulation, and Quotas

After the selection of the new group of directors from all cultural spaces in Mexico, a new Organization will be announced, known as the Comission of Morality and Public Decency (CoMoDePu), a principal organ of PROLICU,  which will be in charge of supervising all the cultural entities in Mexico City, ranging from public dependencies to private ones, with the objective to approve any artistic proyect on the basis of its civic decency. Every exhibition project, concert, publication, or expression that shall be transmitted to a public larger than 8 people should be presented  to the authorities of the CoMoDePu and meet the following requirements:
1)    To promote a positive image of Mexico City;
2)    Completely lack any reference to sexual acts or attack to morality,
3)    Not use bad words,
4)    Not utter the name of God or Mexico in vain, nor in a profane way under any circumstance;
5)    Not use foreign words unless to announce commercial products; local indigenous languages also excepted

Those cultural producers and/or administrators who would participate in works supposedly of an “artistic” nature that would not follow the previous rules, will be immediately subject to fines and quotas of up to $10,000.00 U.S. dlls. Additionally, any other work that would be considered to make reference, either directly or metaphorically, to any slanderous  attack of political, social, religious or economic nature will be confiscated and examined by the CoMoDePu until deemed appropriate or not for public viewing. Exempted from this rule are all the artists and creators who may have received lifelong scholarships by CONACULTA.

Fourth Phase: Education and Progress
The Commission will simultaneously establish a renovation program in the artistic curriculum  in Mexico City schools, in collaboration with the Ministry of Education.
In this program, ellaborated by experts, the lacks in the current educational system will be addressed and there will be special classes given for the training of future artists.

Fifth Phase: Unforseen Changes
The Commission will take on the task of replacing any directive whenever necessary, without making any explanations for the reasons of his or her dismissal. Possible reasons for such dismissal may include:

1)    Expressing aesthetic points of view which may differ from the preestablished guidelines for the artistic advancement of the city,
2)    Unnanounced activities,
3)    Collaborations with international institutions that are not sanctioned  by the government.

Sixth Phase: Social function of Museums  and Others
The commission will establish a special calendar of availability of all the cultural centers in the city, wether public or private. Under the instructions of CONACULTA, these spaces will make their locations available to realize, in strict order of priority:
1)    government-related and official events,
2)    official exhibitions and events organized by CONACULTA,
3)    exhibitions, lectures, and events by government-approved artists.

These few steps, which are only the first ones to accomplish a true renovation of the management of culture in Mexico City, will no doubt bring an immediate benefit to all the audiences and the people who appreciate art in the city, and will also provide a more efficient mechanism for the development of the cultural program in the city. ****