BROKEN DIALOGUES.
2006, DVD two channel installation, B&W, sound, 6’20”
Intérprete: Armand Arce. Cámara: Xoán Anleo. Edición: Roberto Martín Gálvez. Colaboración: Jorge Quintana. Localización: Vigo. Idiomas: inglés, francés, español. Estreno: Xoán Anleo. Mirar sen que nada responda, Galería Ad Hoc, Vigo, 2007.
The character’s position works as an observatory from which he can use different models of representation, platforms helping him to understand himself, to identify himself, to explain himself to others. This self-referential discourse, ironic and caustic, challenges the certainties of visual art. A paradox all the more entertaining for being occasionally disquieting.
The artist confronts his own vision annihilating completely any certainty on the object/art. This cancellation of distance between art and subject confounds the power of representation. It offers a dialogue between the artist and the other/spectator. The end result is a mimetic act that incorporates the other. It is about preserving Art, taken as an object, at the same time as concealing the aggression against it. The performance represents a social construct of what contemporary art is. What is, or is not art doesn’t depend on established opinion but on an ever-changing conventionalism with strong socio-political and ideological implications.
The image has the power to create a reality redefined by the introduction of the act of speech and the acknowledgement of the body as representation. Body language and speech act as an imperative form, pretending to supplant the performance. The relation between body and language is emphasised. The act of speech is irreducible to the meaning. Language becomes an instrument to produce meaning. These references to art question it and ridicule its solemnity and narcissism.
Visual arts, like any other system, look for a way to survive, persist and reproduce for ever so that what is made is redefined and spread, organising and pre defining the experience, reduced to the meanings of a global society. So much so, that like any other system it tends towards - in the words of Maturana – an “autopoiesis” thanks to the relations it maintains with the observer/receptor.
The art world is forced to reflect on its significance its intrinsic purpose and its capacity to build new representations.
