Spiraling Time: Leandro Katz

On March 15 and 16, 2013, the Arts Research Center at UC Berkeley will present Spiraling Time: Intermedial Conversations in Latin American Arts, part of its yearlong Time Zones series examining time-based arts in an international context. To jump-start the conversation in advance of the event, symposium participants have been invited to share here some brief reflections on what interests them about time and temporality. This posting is by the Argentine artist Leandro Katz.

A Sequence of Photographs

A work consisting of photograph taken through an analytical process that concentrates on the same sight, recording the passing of natural events in their relation to historical ones.    

 The work is thought as

1) Nature as an analogue of history and against the classical idea of nature as renewal, but of dominated nature: nature as ruins.

2) Photography equated to the hunting of images, and, in this case, the growing and cultivation of images. Superimposing as the storing of major and minor events in synthetic modes (freezing).

3) Memory as propensity, inclination or habit of the mind in relation to the current of events which appear and disappear in a series of separate but constant moments in perpetual state of change.

4) Images seen as images of the past: the idea that a picture of the world which we behold represents the condition of things happening at the moment when it appears to us, is here held as doubtful. 
     

5) From the perspective of art in which –appropriated from the objectivity of technological standards– each photograph is subjected to optical and chemical treatments outside manufacturer’s recommendations.

6) Living as waiting.

Leandro Katz. Notes for 12 Moons and 365 Sunsets (1976-77)

Suggested reading: Thesis on the Philosophy of History, Walter Benjamin

Spiraling Time: Nuno Ramos

On March 15 and 16, 2013, the Arts Research Center at UC Berkeley will present Spiraling Time: Intermedial Conversations in Latin American Arts, part of its yearlong Time Zones series examining time-based arts in an international context. To jump-start the conversation in advance of the event, symposium participants have been invited to share here some brief reflections on what interests them about time and temporality. This posting is by the Brazilian artist and poet Nuno Ramos.

In my country, Brazil, the issue of time is an odd one. It’s clear that we live in a sort of perpetual disconnect between the past and the future, in the sense that we assimilate little of what the present has to offer. The present moment seems to commit joyful suicide at every instant. And yet this euphoric feeling of nowness, as if we did not in fact come from no place and were forever headed nowhere, also exists side by side with the opposite feeling – that things never truly change and that we remain in the same absurdly unequal and unjust place as always. I believe that my work seeks to work with this in some form, transferring this ambivalence with regard to time onto the evanescent, unstable presence of Matter. Perhaps that’s why I work with materials as fragile as Vaseline, sand, lime, and powder – to test the now, bringing it to the verge of collapse.

Spiraling Time: Andre Lepecki

On March 15 and 16, 2013, the Arts Research Center at UC Berkeley will present Spiraling Time: Intermedial Conversations in Latin American Arts, part of its yearlong Time Zones series examining time-based arts in an international context. To jump-start the conversation in advance of the event, symposium participants have been invited to share here some brief reflections on what interests them about time and temporality. This posting is by André Lepecki, Associate Professor of Performance Studies at New York University, who will deliver a keynote address on Transtemporal transcreation: action, object, dance and time in the works of Hélio Oiticica and Lygia Pape.

In my talk, I will analyze how some choreographic-sculptural propositions by Brazilian artists Hélio Oiticia and Lygia Pape, in the late 1950s and early 1960s, not only blur the line between action and object, body and image, but also disrupt the "time-zone" of historical narratives about the relations between visual arts and dance. Following Didi-Huberman's assertion that art history is constantly re-beginning with every new work, I am interested in inflecting his insight with the specificity of Brazil in its particular geo-political context. The point is to consider the particularities of objecthood and embodiment in Oiticia’s and Pape’s choreographic, sculptural and performance works, and to understand how their proposals scramble historical time and offer alternative concepts to critically approach performance practices today. 

Spiraling Time: Andrea Giunta

On March 15 and 16, 2013, the Arts Research Center at UC Berkeley will present Spiraling Time: Intermedial Conversations in Latin American Arts, part of its yearlong Time Zones series examining time-based arts in an international context. To jump-start the conversation in advance of the event, symposium participants have been invited to share here some brief reflections on what interests them about time and temporality. This posting is by Andrea Giunta, Professor of Latin American Art History and Criticism and Director of the Center for Latin American Visual Studies at the University of Texas, Austin, who will deliver the opening keynote address, Feeling the Past.

The past haunts us. It drives our need to recover archives; to activate fragments of a time lived before (by one or by others) into a new experience. Memory is one of the most recurrent themes in contemporary art. It is considered to be characteristic of Latin American art, but it is not. European cities (particularly Berlin) as well as those of Latin America (especially Buenos Aires) have become huge memorials. Centotaph cities. They are full of sites, museums, plaques, monuments and urban routes marked to delineate the return of different experiences of violence from the twentieth century: the Holocaust, the disappeared. States of terror. The opposite of this culture of terror is the culture of memory. The question is how to remember. How can the relationship between aesthetics and effectiveness be activated? What should be remembered? How do we conceptualize the art of memory? To what extent are these representations performing the past, turning it into a new experience that transforms our original records? I intend to analyze images and spaces that are programmatically conceived of in order to make us to feel the past, those that condense the experience of past violence into another experience. I will examine experiences that search to process memory from the meditative power of images this time, instead of from pain and fear. I will analyze the visual culture of memory as it has come about in Latin America during and after the dictatorships that marked the second half of the twentieth century. In this regard, I will consider some examples of art produced during the dictatorships which proposed to develop codes of resistance and denunciation from the opacity of language. Secondly, I will consider more recent cases related to the art of memory. I will analyze in what ways these images are linked to activism and to what extent they can be considered inter-related with reparation policies. I will focus on notions like liex de memoire (Pierre Nora), Present Past (Andreas Huyssen), acting out (Dominick LaCapra) or post-memory (Marianne Hirsch) to evaluate their applicability to the field of art production connected with the latest dictatorships in Latin America (particularly Chile, Argentina, Brazil and Peru). Finally, I will analyze the relationships I see between the art of memory –recently promoted by different State policies—and contemporary democracies. Memory, in this case, is not so much the ability to bring a particular aspect of history to mind, but a program of transformation for individual consciousness, that of a particular viewer that contemplation might mutate into another hypothetical one: a citizen capable of opposing human rights violations.

Re-cap: Stan Lai Residency

Stan Lai speaks at UC Berkeley.

The Arts Research Center saw a whirlwind of activity in recent weeks, when Taiwanese playwright/director extraordinaire (and UC Berkeley alum) Stan Lai came to campus as an ARC artist-in-residence and Avenali Resident Fellow January 28 through February 8, 2013.  A photo album capturing some of his activities can now be viewed on the ARC Facebook page.

Lai's residency kicked off with a public conversation at the Institute of East Asian Studies titled Theatrical Engagement. An online video of Lai's exchange with the distinguished historian Wen-Hsin Yeh, Director of IEAS, is now available.

Choreographer nunu kong (left) of Shanghai and SanSan Kwan of UC Berkeley at the Temporal Shifts symposium.

Later that same week, Lai spoke at a screening of his film Peach Blossom Land at the Pacific Film Archive, then delivered a keynote address on the future of creativity at ARC's symposium Temporal Shifts: Time Across Contemporary Chinese and Taiwanese Art Practices.  The artists and scholars at this daylong event captivated the audience with their accounts of cutting-edge practices in sound art, film, dance and performance art, painting and installation, as well as theater.  A recurring theme was the challenges that face innovative artists in the rapidly changing political, economic, and cultural landscapes of China and Taiwan. More photos of the symposium can be seen on the ARC Facebook page and video highlights will be posted soon on the Arts Research Center website.

Professor Xu Weixin discusses his paintings of the Cultural Revolution at the Temporal Shifts symposium.

The following week, Stan Lai participated in one last public program: a conversation with Asian American playwright Philip Kan Gotanda, currently a visiting faculty member in the Department of Theater, Dance and Performance Studies.  Gotanda invited Lai to reflect on how his cultural identity and personal history--including his time at UC Berkeley--shaped his artistic development.  Video of this event will be posted soon on the Arts Research Center website.

Philip Kan Gotanda and Stan Lai.

In addition to all these events, Lai was a guest speaker in classes on directing and playwriting, and participated in a series of meetings with UC Berkeley faculty, administrators, and alumni to discuss the potential for ongoing artistic exchange between Berkeley, China and Taiwan. Lai is a hugely influential cultural figure in both China and Taiwan, and he is keenly interested in using his influence to benefit the arts in East Asia--and at his alma mater UC Berkeley. Some very exciting partnerships are under consideration--watch this space for further updates!   

Stan Lai with (left to right) UC Berkeley faculty members and ARC Affiliates Sophie Volpp, Julia Bryan-Wilson, and Shannon Jackson.

A big thank you goes out to all the partners that made this residency and the associated programs possible: the Townsend Center for the Humanities, the Institute of International Studies, the Center for Chinese Studies, the Richard & Rhoda Goldman Fund, the Institute of East Asian Studies, the Pacific Film Archive, and the Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies.