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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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