Spiraling Time: Reflections on Nuno Ramos and Sergio Delgado

On March 15 and 16, 2013, the Arts Research Center at UC Berkeley presented the symposium Spiraling Time: Intermedial Conversations in Latin American Arts. In the audience were students from Professor Julia Bryan-Wilson's History of Art course Latin American Art Since 1920. We are grateful to them for sharing with us their reflections on some of the lectures and conversations they heard.  This post is from student Kelly Leilani Main.

Nuno Ramos and Sergio Delgado in conversation at Spiraling Time.

As Nuno Ramos, Brazilian sculptor and author stated, “In Sao Paulo, there is an intense sense of urgency—life wants you, and life asks you to do everything...you are required every minute...you are necessary.” This sense of urgency and immediacy is reflected directly in his work, which embodies the very humanistic quality of the work being dead after its work is done, of being finished at its conclusion. Despite this, there is a tremendous amount of conversational vibration that surrounds the ambiguities in his work, a direct reflection of the ambiguousness of life in Brazil, where social configurations and a colorful history are intertwined like thread. The capriciousness of “the almost,” the poetic moment of falling but not having yet fallen, echoes in the way that Brazil's present history echoes with its past, from cannibalism to colonialism to anthropophagic dictations and autocratic dictators. Ramos’s work, which includes monumental sculptures of soap and sand, has recurring themes of breaking, of earthiness, and of the fleeting moment.

            In conversation with Ramos was Sergio Delgado, who brought attention to deeply driven themes of transversal materiality and conscious materials in both the work of Nuno Ramos and Brazilian artist Lygia Clark, known famously for her declassification of objects and the stripping of meanings from the banal in everyday life. By doing so, she, in Delgado's words, emphasized that “all consciousness is consciousness of something,” that there is little separation between the subject and their environment, the self and the world because of inherited meanings and values. In her work, such as her bichas, Clark aimed to give the work its own answers—the bicha had inherent meaning within itself that the viewer had to explore through direct subjection to movement. In this way, the handler was forced to surrender to the will of the object—this theme of surrender reappeared constantly in her therapeutic work, which aimed to give agency to the senses as theoreticians in themselves. Delgado also brought to attention the words of Karl Marx, who asserted that in the production of private property, man becomes the object as an embodiment of his material power, that man is a social being through his possessions.

            The conversation between Ramos and Delgado brought to my attention the true fragility of objects in a moment. Sculpture and objects serve as a material connection between the viewer and art, and sculpture provides in many ways, a breaking of the bonds between the expectation of the viewer and the object of their view. In Ramos’s work, some of which are characterized by the fluidity of mediums such as Vaseline and water, draw attention to the fleeting qualities of our visual experience. Pieces such as his Ai, They Seemed Eternal, intentionally shock the viewer out of their expectations in order to emphasize the moment which looms so presently in his daily life in Brazil. Clark, in this same way, used her therapeutic techniques of surrender to place the body beside the object that gave sole proprietorship of the experience to all of the senses, and not just to the eyes. As many people rely heavily on sight for their memorial experiences and their collection of daily life, to both force change and destruction upon the sight of the viewer, as both artists do, and then to remove sight altogether, as Clark did in some of her therapeutic work, seeks to provide an alternative measurement of temporal shifts to the viewer.

Spiraling Time: Reflections on Leda Martins

On March 15 and 16, 2013, the Arts Research Center at UC Berkeley presented the symposium Spiraling Time: Intermedial Conversations in Latin American Arts. In the audience were students from Professor Julia Bryan-Wilson's History of Art course Latin American Art Since 1920. We are grateful to them for sharing with us their reflections on some of the lectures and conversations they heard.  This post is from student Samuel Parks.

Leda Martins delivers a keynote lecture at Spiraling Time.

In her address, Leda Martins asked us to consider the varying aspects of time in Brazilian performance art.  Her lecture was different than most I have ever attended in its degree of participation.  Leda focused on experience rather than recounting events.  She did not just tell us about these great dances, she showed them, had us sing along, and even utilized three different performers throughout her lecture to draw us into the realm as the original viewer and not a listener of a secondhand account. 

            After the first dancer performed for us, Leda drew our attention to an important aspect of the dance that I personally had failed to pick up on: the spin.  She showed us over and over how central this element is to African-Brazilian art and explained how by spinning they are able to break the linearity of their own movement but more importantly of time.  This new conception of time stems from a strong ancestral connection, one that does not particularly coincide with the Western archetype of ancestral kinship.  In this dance the ancestors are present: present in the way that the dancers themselves and their future children are both present.  This concept was initially hard for me to wrap my head around, undoubtedly due to my own cultural bias, as I had never questioned escaping time in the way that Leda was now asking us to do. 

            Elaborating on the concept of time and ancestry Leda traced many aspects of this dance back to roots within Africa, where many Brazilians have ancestors.  The relevancy of these traditions from another continent became much clearer after Leda showed us how this culture deconstructs the time between them and their ancestors.  In fact when Leda showed us videos on her computer of many of these dances we could see the children, some of whom looked like they were barely old enough to walk let alone dance, performing complex dances in costume right alongside their elders.  In this way we were able to see how ingrained this concept of ancestry is; these children appeared to have a collective or communal memory.  That is, while they are fundamentally changed, as all things change, from their ancestors, there remains a vestigial cultural component that lives on inside of them.  In fact many aspects of this dance seemed to hold certain philosophical or religious places in their communities.  

            In regards to the religious aspect of these dances Leda made clear that these dances were concerned not with the church, but the sacred.  Her use of the two words seems to suggest that the latter was more pure, ingrained, and natural than the hierarchical and Western church that was imported from Europe and not completely free of corruption.  In fact Leda was adamant that this dance was not just a means of artistic expression either.  The dancing is merely a manifestation of a life philosophy, powerful enough to stop time and gentle enough to cultivate a beautiful dance. 

Spiraling Time: Reflections on Leandro Katz and Paola Santoscoy

On March 15 and 16, 2013, the Arts Research Center at UC Berkeley presented the symposium Spiraling Time: Intermedial Conversations in Latin American Arts. In the audience were students from Professor Julia Bryan-Wilson's History of Art course Latin American Art Since 1920. We are grateful to them for sharing with us their reflections on some of the lectures and conversations they heard.  This post is from student Aine Stuart.

Leandro Katz and Paola Santoscoy in conversation at Spiraling Time.

After Jeffery Skoller introduced Leandro Katz and Paola Santoscoy to the audience, he explained his interest in bridging the gaps between intergenerational perspectives with conversation in conjunction with the artistic themes and approaches that have transformed over time. Paola and Leandro are both interested in photography’s translation of time and place. Each are especially interested in the fantastic and surreal. I really enjoyed hearing each speak about pushing the boundaries of film in order to produce something new.

 I really enjoyed listening to Paola and Leandro speak because their talk’s complemented each other. Paola introduced ideas about modernism, surrealism and the other world. She made interesting points about the perspective of the camera. I never thought about changing the format of the film from oblique to horizontal. The turn of the camera would make appropriations beyond the context of the film and contribute to the counter visuality of the other world.

Paola’s speech was short but a theme she described was questioning the idea of a place in itself. She ended her speech with the description of Matthias Delgates’s Modern museum in Mexico. Tying in this structure with the experimental, mythical and other worldly space she described at first tied into Leandro’s ideas about time and history. It was very touching when Katz said he was proud of Paola after her speech.

Leandro Katz introduced his speech in terms of capturing the nature of time. The title of the presentation was “In Memory of My Camera.” I really liked his point of not being a hunter of images. He instead decided to become a gardener of images. He described his gardening as gathering specific kinds of images for the project at hand.

He described his process of photographing waterfalls as recording major and minor changes in his sequential images. He would set up his camera and take pictures of the same waterfall over and over. I thought the juxtaposition of his waterfall photos into a question mark shape was very clever. I also though his usage of a spy camera from a James Bond movie was very clever.

 He outlined different projects like his 365 Sunsets and his moon-writing alphabet. In the sunset project he photographed from the southeastern corner of his studio in sequences just like his waterfalls. In his moon project Katz created an alphabet connecting letters with various images of the moon at different times. His projects centered on nature images were followed by a more realistic approach to photography. I recall a haunting image of two children looking at corpses from the end of his speech. Each were trying to identify their parents. This shift in subject matter was unexpected but Katz explained that once he had seen the atrocities of violence he couldn’t turn back. He explained that he was recording time when reality smashed him in the face. Seeing a shift in subject matter in Katz’s work made him seem more versatile and it made me respect his work even more. 

Spiraling Time: Reflections on Cindy Rose Bello

On March 15 and 16, 2013, the Arts Research Center at UC Berkeley presented the symposium Spiraling Time: Intermedial Conversations in Latin American Arts. In the audience were students from Professor Julia Bryan-Wilson's History of Art course Latin American Art Since 1920. We are grateful to them for sharing with us their reflections on some of the lectures and conversations they heard.  This post is from student Natalie Cone.

Encountering the Spiraling Time symposium exposed just how steeped in restrictive ideologies about the linear progression of time I was.  My conceptions about how time works have been transformed.  I have discovered that time and memory are nuanced and complex, and do not neatly conform to any systematic grid like a calendar.  Blurring the lines even further are the political and economic forces invested in the way we remember. There are incentives to controlling the way humans experience time, and especially the memories of the past, when they are saturated with a history of state-sanctioned terror, violence and disappearance. The scholars and artists who contributed to the event all presented compelling work that challenges the impulse to think about time in narrow terms. Their work resists the notion that lives of the past and present are disconnected, discrete and isolated in their experiences. In contrast, the weight of the past was revealed as a significant force that haunts and shapes the contemporary human experience. 

             Cindy Rose Bello described the precarious state of existence in Columbia, and the experience of suspended time, as manifested in the art of Oscar Munoz.  Bello explained the instability and violence that plagues Columbia as cyclical and perpetuated by ties to a global economy. Munoz’s evocative work Aliento (Respiration), from 1996-2002 suggests the instability of life in Columbia that generates an inextricable and suspended relationship between experiences of past and future.  The work is a head-sized mirror upon which a portrait of a disappeared Columbian citizen is invisibly rendered on the surface of the glass.  The image only begins to reveal itself after another person engages with the work by breathing on it.  It is as if the essence of the disappeared is harbored within the body of the person engaging with the work.  As hard as one might try, the portrait inscribed on the mirror is never fully resolved. Just as one gets close to covering the glass with the moisture of her breath, the reflexive instinct to inhale prevails, withdrawing the precipitation from the mirror and erasing the registration of a face from the surface of the glass.  All that remains in the mirror is one’s own reflection.  In this work, the intimate level of engagement between the viewer’s body and the portrait of the disappeared is a metaphor for the indistinct boundaries that define the time and space between the two. The suspension of the photo’s indexicality conveys the stifled human narrative that frames contemporary Columbia.

This work described by Cindy Rose Bello profoundly demonstrates the fluidity of time and space, and the potential for memory to shape contemporary experience.  Munoz’s work is also a critique of contemporary government, and its implication in the disappearances and perpetual civil violence that impedes upon Columbia’s ability to move forward. It was only one of a number of memorable works that altered the way I envision the relationship between past, present and future.  

Spiraling Time: Reflections on Cecilia Vicuña and Cindy Rose Bello

On March 15 and 16, 2013, the Arts Research Center at UC Berkeley presented the symposium Spiraling Time: Intermedial Conversations in Latin American Arts. In the audience were students from Professor Julia Bryan-Wilson's History of Art course Latin American Art Since 1920. We are grateful to them for sharing with us their reflections on some of the lectures and conversations they heard.  This post is from student Alysia Echevarria.

On Friday, as I walked up to the Berkeley Arts Museum and Pacific Film Archive to attend the event Spiraling Time, I felt a sense of excitement in the air. People were buzzing with chatter about the first hour and a half of the symposium including some of my classmates who I ran into at the front door. They expressed to me how moving and extremely emotional the first event was, increasing my excitement and anticipation. As a first-time symposium attendee, I was pleasantly surprised by the serenity of the space, the structure of the event, and the participant/audience dynamic.

Cecilia Vicuña speaks via Skype at Spiraling Time.

The first event I attended consisted of a dialogue between artist and poet Cecilia Vicuña and Cindy Rose Bello of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at UC Berkeley. This dialogue was moderated by Laura Pérez from the Department of Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley. The main concept discussed by these intelligent and passionate ladies was that of time. First to speak was Cecilia Vicuña. Although this part of the conversation took place over Skype, her emotional and comedic impact was not missed by the audience. Laura Pérez introduced her works of poetry and art as “transformative acts of metaphors in space” speaking of the “political-spiritual necessity” of her works. Following, was a short video of Vicuña walking along the sandy beach of Concon in Chile. Alongside her, trailed a long chain of string-like red fabric which was eventually released into the ocean where it spiraled, twisted, and bent in its own accord. When Vicuña spoke about this work it was only to say that the ocean was its creator, that there was no other director. She followed this by showing a pretzel-like diagram with the letters T, I, M, and E placed at intervals throughout. She explained its purpose as a metaphor for the bending of time, describing how the continuity of things contrasts to the knots that it forms creating overlap and a blurring of beginning and end. In a slight change of topic she references her Precarios which are “always disappearing” and have a history of both inclusion and exclusion. Despite speaking about various topics, Vicuña maintained an aura of lyricism and amusement (i.e. the different colored mesh she wore on her hand resembling a turkey). Her voice was mesmerizing as she chanted and poetically spoke about her art and of her life.

Cindy Rose Bello responds to questions at Spiraling Time.

Next, Cindy Rose Bello, in her presentation “The Aesthetics of Impasse: On Temporality and the Art of Colombian Conflict,” spoke of the trajectory of violence which developed in a unique way in Colombia as a reflection of a violent global and capitalist economy. She spoke primarily about Oscar Muñoz whose work Aliento (Breath) involves the photograph of a missing or lost person which appears only when the viewer becomes an active participant and “breaths life onto it.” She explained how this act of performance brings an archival truth to a collective political trauma meant to create and advance social change. Bello discusses the problem of the photograph as indexical and how Muñoz created an index that is allusive and impossible. It works towards a different aim; extending temporality rather than fixing it in a specific moment.

At this point, interaction from both the moderator and audience was encouraged. Pérez posed a question involving how two culturally different spaces invoke time, being, presence, and ephemerality from a non-Western perspective.  While Vicuña’s answer is directed towards the idea of disappearance and fluidity of space and time reflecting the consciousness of ancient people, Bello discusses Muñoz’s attempt to find a way to represent liminal humanity and to discover what it means to live in conflict zones in Latin America, searching for a dialogue between government critique and notions of indigenism. A question directed towards Vicuña involved the intermediality of her work and how she decides what medium to explore. To this she responds that it does not matter, because the medium does not really exist, but rather its potential is what is important. Another question directed at Bello was asked by Julia-Bryan Wilson of the Department of History of Art at UC Berkeley, regarding memory museums and governmental efforts for “transitional justice measures.”  Bello discusses how this new form of museum exhibits an architectural temporality where the site is used for specific installations meant to rejudicate the crimes of the government and to promote the idea of civility.

Although both women spoke on completely different topics, they both seemed to focus on the idea of metaphorical ephemerality and impermanence as well as the ideas of the individual and collective consciousness. They shared common themes of transcendental communication, struggle, repression, and most importantly, hope for the future.

Spiraling Time: Reflections on Andrea Giunta

On March 15 and 16, 2013, the Arts Research Center at UC Berkeley presented the symposium Spiraling Time: Intermedial Conversations in Latin American Arts. In the audience were students from Professor Julia Bryan-Wilson's History of Art course Latin American Art Since 1920. We are grateful to them for sharing with us their reflections on some of the lectures and conversations they heard.  This post is from student Liliana Herrera.

Professor Andrea Giunta delivers the opening keynote at Spiraling Time.

The Spiraling Time symposium opened on Friday, March 15, 2013 at the Berkeley Art Museum, with the keynote address by Andrea Giunta, Chair of Latin American Art History & Criticism of the department of Art and Art History at the University of Texas at Austin. One of the world’s leading authorities on modern and contemporary Latin American art, Giunta provided a compelling lecture about the recurring themes in the art of South America – violence, memory, and scars from the past. These themes are perpetuated as counters to the totalitarian regimes that swept a dark cloud of disappearances, torture, and murder across the Southern Hemisphere in the latter twentieth century.

Giunta shared with the audience powerful works like Lotty Rosenfeld’s One Mile of Crosses on the Pavement (1979-1984), temporary action installations in Chile and Washington, D.C. that converted lines on the road into white crosses, which functioned as subtle symbols to denounce repression, and to demand a search for the truth from the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship in Chile. Later, the same cross symbol in Rosenfeld’s work appeared as the “no” symbol in the 1988 Chilean National Plebiscite that ended Pinochet’s sixteen years of power.

Gustavo Germano’s Ausencias series (2008), are haunting re-enactments of old photos with individuals who are no longer there. The absent persons were one of the 30,000+ disappeared in Argentina’s Dirty War. The photos evoke the notion of human temporality and the precariousness of life during this time in Argentina. Paradoxically, in their absence, their unseen presence is eerily summoned.

Gustavo Germano, Ausencias. 1970, María Irma Ferreira and María Susana Ferreira /2006, María Susana Ferreira.

Giunta explained the officializing of memory in post-dictatorship South America. In Argentina and Chile, there have been official programs implemented by the governments in order to investigate the past. Throughout Argentina, bronze and tile plaques with personalized information mark the locations of the last whereabouts of persons who were disappeared. In Buenos Aires, the Parque de la Memoria serves as a monument to the victims of terror.

In Santiago, Chile, President Michelle Bachelet, herself a survivor of torture, inaugurated the Museo de la Memoria y los Derechos Humanos in 2010. The museum is meant to provide a documented narrative of the past in an architectural space that reflects the experience of remembering an intensely repressive era. Its zigzag layout, Giunta explains, is meant to be jarring and symbolizes the complexities involved with memory. The museum also includes multi-perceptual and multi-sensorial spaces that exacerbate the past and function as mechanisms of meditation on the victims.

Giunta briefly discussed the existing analogy in art between the Holocaust and the disappeared of South America. Lotty Rosenfeld, for example, re-installed a row of crosses in Kassel, Germany in 2007. And Berlin, much like Buenos Aires, is a cenotaph city. Giunta explained that there is a strong sense of solidarity between Germany and Latin America because they both vehemently oppose repressive systems that are designed by outside forces, and because they both believe in a commitment to the global agenda of memory.

The first lecture of the symposium dealt with difficult, but important subject matter. Giunta led an insightful conversation about a realm in the aesthetics of contemporary art that deserves not to be swept under a rug, but to be seen and discussed in the hope that history does not repeat itself.