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Thesis Abstract
Being-with-one-another: art as enactment
There are many types of collectivities, various modes of being together that affect the way we perceive our surroundings and ourselves. Some implicate us more than others: some we see from a distance, others we experience closely, from the inside, and some we are part of. Some others we only suspect. Collectivities are forms of being-with, a simultaneous sharing of space and time. The experience of mutuality they generate participates of the social and public domain producing meaning through the relations we establish with-one-another.
My thesis investigates the image of the collectivity and its visibility in the public space. By focusing on the works of three contemporary artists ?Francis Alÿs / Rafael Ortega, Mircea Cantor and Santiago Sierra? that deal with the creation of performative collectivities, I examine the boundaries defining certain practices as artistic, and others as political. Through a close reading of the works and the contexts where they take place, I explore how art as enactment and collective representation navigates the contours of artistic and political practices, testing them, by making possible new modes of being together.
In the spring of 2003 I travelled to Panama City to attend a contemporary art event titled ciudadMULTIPLEcity. Most of the works included in the project took place in the streets: installations, events, and situations “responding to the specificity of the context and the urban environment,” as the curators explained in the various press releases and printed material available. My encounter with one of these actions occurred one day while walking around the city. A group of young men and women surrounded me, as well as other people around me, subtly gesturing to us ?their index fingers crossing their lips? to remain silent. The gesture was soon replicated by other passersby, generating a feeling of uneasiness among a group of people, bringing them (us) together in a joint venture, one with no apparent cause. This silent collectivity is a performative work by the Belgian artist Francis Alÿs and the Mexican filmmaker Rafael Ortega.
My presentation will focus on the aesthetic ideas and socio-political implications embedded in 1 Minute of Silence (2003). By inducing a crowd to unite in a single action, Alÿs and Ortega transform silence into a presenceæas opposed to absence. 1 Minute of Silence performs a sensorial transformation that becomes political as a result of the redistribution of spaces and roles in the public arena, thus opening the possibility to think communality and social power differently.
Contact
paola.s@mac.com
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