InterSER0, International Action Art Encounter
The International Action Art Encounter, InterSERO is an independent project by Mexican action artists in collaboration with the Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil and is supported by Mexico’s National Fund for Culture and the Arts (FONCA, its Spanish acronym) through its Program for Promotion of Projects and Cultural Co-Investments.
InterSERO emerges from a growing and widespread desire among action artists in Mexico City to create a venue for discussing themes concerning this art form in all of its modalities: photo or video performance; installation-performance, and public interventions, among others. InterSERO seeks to gather together and identify, by means of a select sampling of artists and artworks – connected through an intertwining of tendencies, concepts, positions, approaches, and attitudes – the cultural epicenter of the issues it addresses. The goal is to expand the contextual framing of the artworks and to identify the aspects that constitute the cultural, social, and political environment they inhabit.
InterSERO is divided into two curatorial lines proposed by guest artist and curator Elvira Santamaría: time does not exist, the creation of time, and hedonism in performance (Nota del Traductor: se nombran tres categorías, no dos). Her curatorial proposal is approached from an anthropological, artistic, and cultural perspective that contemplates the great affluence and influence of new concepts, values, and countercultural narratives, which are drawn from the scientific, technological, and philosophical fields, as well as from interdisciplinary platforms. Contemporary artistic practices promote – to a large or small extent – countercultural narratives in order to reaffirm a freer environment in the artistic field. In these performatic practices, the artistic field serves as a political platform for engaging in an exchange of ideas. The event is presented as a platform to meet and to discuss old, persisting issues through new approaches and artistic proposals.
Event II: Hedonism in Performance
Diametrically opposed to the physical practices in which the body is transformed into an object for exploration or into a vehicle for catharsis – through pain or exhaustion – the theme of hedonism here is formulated as an inquiry into the presence in art of the body in pain.
Today, notions, terms, and concepts related to pleasure and pain have been redefined by new available information, data, and knowledge stemming from “new” corporeal experiences, not solely in the art world, but also within a global context of countercultural movements and in the realm of private experiences made public. This generates a phenomenology that encompasses transformation and actualization of and frank opposition to the dominant Judeo-Christian moral and religious values of Western culture. What is its cultural significance? Is there a transformation or expansion of the possibilities of desire? What is desire in art, particularly in action art that relies on its corporeal-sensorial-sensual essence for creation? What is one’s affirmation through the possession of one’s body, i.e., through the freedom to experiment in various ways with one’s own body?
In these performatic practices, the artistic field serves as a political platform to engage in an exchange of ideas. Therefore, the International Action Art Encounter is presented as a platform to come together and discuss old, persisting issues through new approaches and artistic proposals.
General Program
wednesday june 17
conversatory: Hedonistic counterculture | 20:00–22:00 | Auditorium 3G | Speakers: Katia Tirado, César Martínez, Elizabeth Romero, and Pedro Ovando | Moderator: Elvira Santamaría
thursday june 18
performance: VACAciones-COWorld | César Martínez (Mexico) | 18:00–22:00 | Garden
“The Ordeñanzas [an invented word suggesting both ‘stipulations’ and ‘milking’ in Spanish] of life, require a new and less explosive manner of organizing the factors of production and resources. Cows, the plural form of the English word referring to the female bovine, can sound to Spanish-speaking people like the Spanish word for ‘chaos’: We will be exposed in this new performance to the New World Cows.” […]
friday june 19
performance: Huellas (Traces) | Alfredo Bellfiore (Uruguay) | 10:00–18:00 | In the lobby
Huellas delves into the obsessive nature – conscious or unconscious – of our acts though the repetition of the same movement that is a result of an obsession for the new or of a desperate attempt to confirm the known, as the action is reduced to its most minimalistic essence. It is approached from the natural desire to attain a hedonist conversion.
conversatorY: The Pain of Hedonism | 19:00–21:00 | Auditorium 3G | Speakers: Katia Tirado, Alfredo Bellfiore, Roberto de la Torre, and Luz Sepúlveda | Moderator: Elvira Santamaría
Corporeal pleasure has been underscored, sublimated, or understood as a dangerous thing, not only in art but also in nearly all cultures. Many foundational myths submit their heroes to passages of pain. In performance, we often observe similar passages in which pain must be suffered in order to achieve the individualization and renovation of the psychic forces. Nevertheless, pleasure is thrown into oblivion and is does not form part of the most intimate experiences, because it only appears to explain some other purpose or when it is manipulated in favor of other values. For many people, public hedonism is almost synonymous with “perversion”, with excess, or it is seen as “grotesque.” It also suggests a form of power to which we are not accustomed; it could, perhaps, be the power of self-possession.
saturday june 20
performance: En Declive (In Decline) | Roberto de la Torre (México) | 13:00–14:00 | On the exhibition room ramps
The theme of this performance will focus on the abrupt changes in the stock market that the world economy has been suffering as a consequence of the financial crisis in the U.S. The action will represent the fall of the international stock market with a dozen of avalanches that will slide down the museum’s center ramp. The goal is to generate an eventual flux of movement by means of a ludic activity with the public in attendance.
performance: Elektro Time Machina | Katia Tirado (Mexico) | 20:00–21:00 | In the parking lot
“Repetition turns us into machines, organic machines, and the ritual of the habitual is the place where the possibility of fulfillment is revealed to us. At the same time that we are fulfilled, we are also emptied; our unifying thread is merely the transient nature of the process, given that satiety is never there, just as the present.”
Performance Workshop given by Elvira Santamaría and Artist-Writer Elizabeth Romero
Tuesday, June 16 and Thursday, June 18 | 11:00–14:00 | Lobby of Auditorium 3G | Capacity: 15 participants | Conducted in English with the support of translated material | The deadline for applications is June 12
Videographic Exhibits of Earlier Works
From Monday, June 15 to Saturday, June 20 | Continuous screening: 10:00–18:00 | Lobby of Auditorium 3G
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