AFTER THE PARTY
“After the party. Organic and inorganic residues”, Granada (Spain), February 2021. It is a site-specific artistic project for La Empírica gallery, Granada (Spain), in which performance art, video and installation converge. Everything in this exhibition revolves around objects and their transformation and resignification through action. Likewise, this project celebrates the very act of “action” as if it were a party.
Like my series of mini video performances that began in 2016, this proposal comes from the need to seek new ways of artistic communication beyond live-action, especially now that everything done in front of an audience has been made difficult because of the health crisis in which we are immersed. Thus, and in contrast to video performances, this proposal tries to recover the action in which there is no limitation of time and frame, despite not being able to be shared in the same space and time with real people.
It is, therefore, a project in which the protagonist is the performance art piece, which has no choice but to be shared through the video medium. However, this product (the video) is not a video action, as it is not intended for the camera. It is not a simple documentation of a performance piece either, since importance has been given to this work and there is special care in recording and editing, which has had two cameras. This element, the video, becomes part of the exhibition as one more artistic element. However, the projected piece is the complete video of the action that took place there, which lasts two hours, has no effects or artifice in the edition, and even has some technical flaws, since the action is shown in its entirety, without cuts.
“After the party …” is a reflection on the idea of the ephemeral and the immaterial, aspects linked to action art, and proposes the idea of seen the objects used in the action as elements with artistic value, and show them for aesthetic enjoyment. They are simple, everyday, even vulgar objects. Some are items that I have at home or that they show anywhere, easy to find or replace. They are not rubbish, but they can be it… To choose these elements I review actions carried out throughout my career as a performer (the first one I refer to is from 2007) and I choose some of them in which the objects used are the protagonists of the action, transforming or reinventing themselves in other elements with new meanings and with aesthetic interest. In “After the party …” these actions become a new action, where the lived experience is completely different since nothing is done exactly the same and the context is another.
When preparing the space with all the materials placed around the room, it remined me to a gymkhana with tests to go through. Everything was ready to “play with.” In fact, that is what happened; I played for two hours without having the slightest awareness of the passage of time, totally immersed in the action, in the experience, in that here and now. At the end of the action, I observed the space in which all those objects had been transformed, and they referred me to that “after the party” in which everything seems to be chaos and those remains remember you how fun you had.
Two photos of the “before” the action are shown. I also share a document with the links to the previous performances in which I had used the elements of this action.
You can see an 8 minutes video resume of the performance.
Full video of the action (2 hours) HERE.
Curatorial text by Mª Ángeles Herrera and link to La Empírica page HERE.