Tale of the Space Jesús-Annex

A TALE

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E SPACE

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JESÚS albert cruset

First statement of intent My main work is based in the way narratives appear from selected bits of seemingly disconnected or re-purposed media, and its potential for delivering subversive messages, often with the use of an absurd imagery. The groundwork of this concept lies in the idea that we can use the over-saturation of images we have nowadays to create a new message through the rearrangement or deconstruction of these images, offering a chance to the viewer of creating himself a new connection of its concepts.

In my projects I’ve usually strived to create media content that appropriates the style and form of well-known mainstream elements (posters, books, political organizations or history documents) and re-purposed its content with a very different message and use of its images. It is a way of subversion based on mocking the system’s distribution structure while using its very own strategies to fight it. We could even define these projects as tricks, since they use deception as its way to reach an audience. Bigotecracia was a fake political group that defended the moustache and über-manliness as a philosophy of living, using historical figures as its avatars. Flyers, posters and manifestos were created in order to make it believable and confront the public with this bizarre idea. The project Crawford collection presented a false series of books of celebrities focused in one specific part of them (like the eyes of Nicholas Cage o the hands of David Lynch). The book had only images of the celebrity and a brief text about the collection, forcing the reader to look for the purpose of the series. That inner purpose was never there, except as a gateway for the reader to generate its own understanding of it, since the original images were so common that by themselves meant nothing.

With the use of the fake and well-known images I try to challenge the viewer about what he is seeing. The objective of this approach is, like in most art practices, to get a reaction from them.

Ideally the project wouldn’t end with its showing in a gallery they’d operate through its interpretation in the public space, turning the viewer in an active part of the process who’d generate new meaning. In the project Bigotecracia, the main focus was to criticise the silliness of the Spanish political landscape (believe me, it’s very silly); in the Crawford collection it was to re-think the motives behind the idea of looking for coherence in everything and the fascination with the creation of myths (like in the case of celebrities).

Right now I’m especially interested in working with the public space, using it as a part of the piece, not only as the place where an object is located. And with that I don’t mean just graffiti.

Printed media, posters, flyers or even performance acts could work with this kind of frame. The methodology of a multimedia project, such as the one the Memento group made in Barcelona seems an interesting path to take and the ideas from the exhibition Post-fotografia: d’ara endavant offer interesting concepts about re-using second hand images.

I’d like to explore more how ideas are transmitted in the public space without the control of the organized institutions (such as museums) and how this concepts create a free line of thought regulated by its own spectators and their interpretation of the work. In this moment the project could crystalize in a lot of different paths, but this is its starting point and vague objectives.

School of Art and Design Tutorial Report 2014/15 Tutorial with Andrew Brown October 5th RECORD During this tutorial we talked mostly about how the university works; the different deadlines and objectives I should meet within the course and the project I would start here. This first part went on about the adjustments between the UB and the NTU, what was I expected to make and the different options I had available in the facilities.

The second part of the tutorial was about my project. I started by showing some of my previous pieces, mostly the ones done last year, and explaining where my interests laid and how I wanted to approach what I would do here. I wanted to speak with Andrew because of his works in the public space, hoping that he would give me some referents and somewhere to start looking for information about this kind of practice.

Barthes was the character that stood out from there, especially his ideas about pop culture and the way they determine our understanding of our surroundings, as well as the way they affect our reactions to certain elements and our behaviour against certain forms of art.

We also talked about the idea of urban sub-cultures and my interest in them as elements grown outside the scope of the system in the urban landscape; a chat that then derived in a discussion about cultism, tools of mind control and gangs.

REFLECT The most important thing I take from the tutorial is the necessity to keep working in order to find the angle of my project. The hunt for referents and people pursuing similar themes is useful, and it will certainly help narrowing down how I want to approach the concepts I’m working with.

I’m hopeful that the work of people like Barthes will help me understand in a new light the public space and the elements that thrive there, as well as the impact that pop culture and its agent’s causes on us as a society and as individuals.

I find the connection between those two elements, public space and pop culture, very important; since they work together in order to create our social landscape. I think that playing with them both is necessary if I don’t want to fall in the idea of simply treating the space as a canvas.

In another level, it is also important that I understand how this uni works. It’s important that I organize myself to meet the deadlines and how the schedule works. Even though the way this place works is very different from Barcelona, it is also an opportunity to try other ways to create and understand how other people work.

ACTION As Andrew said, keep working. I have to look up some of the artists and writers I found out about, and I also intend to take a look through the papers of a subject I had last year, which revolved around the system’s ways of representation and the necessity to negate them and establish our own way to construct narratives. There were some interesting elements of the public space and its formation of new discourses, as well as some interesting artists that I can also look for some inspiration.

Right now my priority is to find an element from which to create the project, working as a detonator. I’m looking at diverse examples of actions, persons or groups that act with the subversion of the controlled space and I hope I can use some of them to my purpose to create my project.

I’m still not sure about the form it will take, be it drawing, video, printing, etc. But the main point will be about this fight between the controlling elements and the free narratives, between the public and the privatized.

School of Art and Design Tutorial Report 2014/15 Show and listen- November 25th Tutor: Lynn Fulton, Emma Cocker RECORD The main focus of discussion around my piece revolved around the relation between its title and the image, as well as the symbolism with the display- mainly the use of the plinth in front of it and the shrine-like disposition- The idea of religion was the dominant one and people started wondering about whether the protagonist Jesús was an actual representation of Jesus or just someone with the same name, which is pretty common in Spain. That first interpretation would make sense with the display of the scene, even though the physical appearance of Jesús wasn’t reminiscent at all of the classic Jesus. And also, he was in space. Then we had the relation between the print and the t-shirt with the same image. I was quite surprised with the few comments on the relation between them and how could that change the purpose of the piece.

Some interesting ideas about his true identity appeared. I quite liked the one that said that he might my a relative of mine, perhaps even my father, or a really crazy one I heard in the studio wondering that it might be me wearing an incredibly complex make-up.

There was a connection made with both the Spaghetti Monster religion, which I actually didn’t even think of, and the work of self-mythification of Dean Morris, which is quite similar in some points with my practice of generating these senseless narratives.

The concept of shock and a relation with humour also came up when working with comedic elements as a vehicle for the message- even if we can’t understand the message- and how it throws an unexpected element to get a reaction.

REFLECT I think one of the most interesting points made during the presentation was if I was trying to empower or ridicule the main subject, and how the choice of the character and representation affected that. The thought of the piece being blasphemous or defiling to the religious iconography interests me, in the sense of negating and going against the preconceptions we had about representation.

It comes to mind the idea that the protagonist was -literal quote-the blandest character ever, like some sort of blue print for the standard image of mediocrity; yet he was situated like a flying primal god in the middle of the universe, looking down with confidence all over his creation with unknown purpose. That the most interesting part of him for some people was the bottle of wine he was holding still fascinates me.

In my opinion, this trying to make sense of the mocking-revering implications is far more interesting than an outright answer to the question. We can reach more interesting conclusions by debating in that grey area between the idolization and the ridicule.

I feel that the riskiest part of the presentation was the elements surrounding the picture. The plinth was actually a last minute addition made the same morning, and I was wondering if maybe it was too obviously related to a religious environment. I also think that it took away part of the impact between the print and the shirt. It offered a very simple way of representation that narrowed the discussion that could have been formed with just the piece and the shirt. Still, I think it was interesting how the religious idea appeared so strongly from the first moment and didn’t quite disappear from the thematic points that were made.

I agree with a comment that said you can’t create a whole character only with the idea of the surreal and weird; there is the need of some kind of catch to truly engage with a new narrative. Otherwise you only get the oh, that’s weird kind of reaction and no real conversation appears, just impact without meaning.

The intention of broadening that idea with an outside representation of the character might not have worked as intended, but I can still get insight in how it can affect the reception of the piece, like with the focus on the over-religious tone and the identity enigma.

ACTION I’m going to keep developing the idea of the space Jesús, but I think that there are better ways to treat it than the big mystification in the religious sense. A more subtle approach with the imagery might work better, and I want to change the methodology of the practice. I want to use more drawing in it, maybe some kind of mural and object creation. I’ve just came across the work of Lu Yang and her creation Uterus Man, and I’m quite interested in the idea of creating a space dedicated to a character, like her arcade room with the Uterus Man videogame. We could say that I want to create a Space Jesús space. The concept of defiling will be present in this space, twisting conventional narratives in a new reality that might not make a lot of common sense.

I think it would work to let the piece be a little less ambiguous to let it be more effective. Creating a tighter narrative would result in a more focused project, but still not working as a guideline in how to interpret the piece.

With that said, I have a positive response to the feedback received during the show and listen. It helped to understand some concepts that might be too direct, and ways that should be changed to express some concepts. I’m confident that these ideas will work for the betterment of the project and a more interesting final result.

School of Art and Design Tutorial Report 2014/15 One to one tutorial- December 4th Tutor: Lynn Fulton RECORD The main points of the tutorial were the result of the show and listen, the way in which the project will continue and an evaluation of the essays and overall work done in the course.

Some problems with the latter part should be addressed, like the grammatical aspect in some essays and being more participative in the seminars.

The show and listen took up most of the time of the tutorial. How the piece was understood, the way it was presented and what it was trying to accomplish. Even though the response was positive and in line with what I expected, I felt that I wanted to step back from the religious imagery I constructed for the presentation. We agreed upon the need to create a more complex narrative within the object to avoid the idea of the work as a mere joke or some kind of punchline that just wants to create shock.

The second part of the tutorial was spent talking about which directions the work should take for the mid-point review and the characteristics of the practical pages. I’m more interested in the combinations between elements, say the print+ the shirt, than in the idea of the piece as an object by itself, so the main focus was stablished in create new types of work that make use of this multidisciplinary idea.

REFLECT In my opinion, the follow-up to the show and listen was the most important part of the tutorial. It was necessary to establish what did and what did not work, as well as if the way it was presented and how the ideas were treated was an element worthy of pursue. The necessity of moving on was clear, there is a need for a more complex treatment of the concept so that the whole project can be taken into a totally surreal interpretation.

I intend not to get trapped into one form of representation, trying to delve into the psych of the Space Jesus in different forms that are linked but work independently on their own.

The necessity to not leave the interpretation completely loose becomes an important point.

It’s not enough with just presenting a character to the audience and expecting them to generate a whole narrative for him. There has to be a deeper meaning behind it. We discussed some referents that could help with this idea, from cult leaders to videogame arcade installations.

Basically, I consider most important the idea of re-working the elements of the project so they can gain a more insightful background and can be transported to new techniques. The project had to evolve in its form of transmission.

ACTION The first steps in the overhaul of the work will involve a search for new referents, mainly within the exhibition D’ara endavant: Postfotografia, which was mostly based in digital image, its representation and the ways it’s shared and replicated. I think I can gain some new interesting points of view in there.

Then the objective is to create a new narrative for the character, making full use of its persona, not just appropriating its style and likeness. This will play with his surroundings- the zone in Almeria used decades ago to film old westerns- and how its past has altered its current state. By creating a more narrowed narrative it’ll be possible to increase the thematic elements of the project by talking about robbed futures, construction of identity through pop culture and its representation and the defiled reality resulted of the confrontation between the systems’ construction and its effects on the real space.

The effort, then, will be put on constructing a new persona based on the original character of the space Jesus, understood as the way the systemic oppression shifts and alters our identities and social understanding of our common spaces. Starting from the tale of that sad man in a lost village from Almeria, I’ll generate a new narrative

Wandering like A needle walks into a haystack (Liverpool biennial 2014) Critcal review Space is key in this year’s Liverpool biennial. Sprawling throughout the city’s different art designated zones, galleries, cinemas or buildings serve as the showing area for the curators to point at the idea that flows with the guidelines of the exhibition when it goes to understanding space. Going through the biennial implies going through the whole city of Liverpool, and at the same time going through the spaces in between the pieces. It is a curious way to see the gallery space, as a puzzle formed by the public space. One piece was in a cinema surrounded by nightclubs where they played Fury and Gone Girl feet away from Sharon Lockhart’s installation. One collection was separated one wall from the restaurant. And those spaces have as much to say in the implied ideas of the exhibition as the very artists who made them. We don’t necessarily have to integrate the spaces as a part of the exhibit, but I think that, especially in this case, it can offer an interesting chance to speculate. I also have to confess that I couldn’t actually visit the whole of the biennial due to a quite tight schedule in the trip that involved fourteen hour long maddening bus trips, but I think I got a broad enough view to gather some interesting thoughts.

In A needle walks into a haystack there is not a major thematic milestone uniting the artists, at least not at a first glance. 19th century British drawings give way to eastern European coming-of-age video-installations. Traditional contest winning paintings meet with fake object-amplifying technology and stone sheep wandering in abandoned rooms. But even with that disparity we find in its language a common idea, a sense of experimenting with the idea of socially given conventions, in twisting the predefined spaces in various ways. We are offered a glimpse of alterations to the norm, new creations within common grounds, being those changes focused in either physical or social grounds. The sense of anthology that’s found in most of this kind of exhibitions works quite well with the objectives it tries to accomplish, disconnected but still showing a conjoined narrative, offering an array of similar methodologies with the same base while having some of them different forms and even different objectives. Usually in big, well-known displays of multiple artists the disparity of visions can be damaging to the exhibition as a whole, leaving the final opinion of the spectator in a grey shaped arty blur.

This biennial makes full use of this situation. It allows us to get lost, but without losing focus. Even in the title of the show we find the idea of wandering and the sense of being overwhelmed by our surroundings. And it exploits it, even by making you get lost trying to find the next gallery and ending up in another one that’s probably not part of the biennial but you’re not entirely sure, so you might as well go in.

This paradox in what is part of the biennial and what isn’t in the gallery can produce very interesting atmospheres in certain points if the surrounding lend themselves to be integrated with the art practice(and the artists work with it).

I’ll take the exhibit in the Old blind school as a major example of this relation between art and space. Founded by Edward Rushton in 1791, it was the first such school in the country. It’s been also used by the Merseyside Police and in 1983 and the music studio The Picket to launch some bands into stardom and has a rich and profuse history. I didn’t know any of this when I first went inside. When I first went inside I just thought that it was a massive ruinous old building that nobody bothered to repair. And I thought that it was fantastic.

The painting in the walls was falling, it was full of cracks and holes, a fireplace had collapsed somewhere in the last thirty years and at least three windows were broken and repaired with wooden planks. Its broken aspect ties perfectly with the biennial concept of the twisted space in the common grounds; and it allows for a de-mystification of the art gallery. We understand the art space as the clean, white-walled zone with minimal elements outside the art pieces. It is a neuter space designed to separate itself as much as it can from the work, establishing two completely different dimensions: the art and the space. The gallery is where art is shown, not where art is or where it’s produced. Here we find a different notion. The pieces are fully integrated in the building. Walking through the gallery forms an integral part of the experience here and generates continuity between all the pieces. It gives character to the exhibition.

The work that takes place there goes with it and makes full use of the space and the ways it can be changed, re-thought or manipulated. In Charoc, by William Leavitt, we see a billboard with sand in its base and what seems to be a rock UFO flying through the desert in it. What it really is it’s a painting of an old Indian grave upside down flying over the desert in a sci-fi faux that is a canvas and a billboard-installation at the same time, really making you wonder the very nature of the object you are contemplating.

Down the second floor hall the DVS chamber creates a system with a scientific method in mind. Designed as a waiting room, the space gives you the instructions to use the DVS, consisting of an extensive guideline and safety measures on how to magnify an ordinary objects for its study. This process takes place in another room, which only opens itself once per hour and where every step is controlled.

The metaphysical store counters by creating a free space full of arranged boxes, strange noises and devices that, in the of the artists very own words, blurs the lines between action, art and purpose, operating a zone with no commandments and items ready to experiment with.

This correlational narrative between the space and the art piece gained its height with an untitled piece by Judith Hopf consisting in three ropes hanging from the ceiling. You see them right in the hall when you enter the building.

There is only the name of the piece and no other explanation to be found there, so after reading it and making some assumptions you continue you tour through the building and quickly forget about it when faced to the other complex creations that you see there. Then, an hour and a half later you reach the top of the building and you are right over the entrance room. And then you see three ropes lying on the floor that go down through the ceiling beneath and you suddenly realize. You’ve been played by the artist and you turn your head and find the whole bibliographical information for the piece, giving her signature to this moment. The whole visit to the building has become part of the artistic object in an unexpected move.

PRESENTING CONTEXT The main focus of this essay is to prove my thematic ground and establish the way it has shifted compared to the writing in the statement of intent. Through the experiences in the presenting context talk and the workshop I’ve narrowed some new points to address in my previous statements, which will be defined with different referents useful to my practice.

There is a sense of regaining power in the work of Nuria Montiel. By creating a mobile printing machine she gave the chance to the people from marginalized neighbourhoods and public manifestations to create its own slogans, used to protest during events like student riots. The act of sharing and giving voice to the voice-less is seen here as a revolutionary tool, a way to break the institutionalized system.

The teoria del Bloom has a more radical approach to the ways in which information is delivered and shared. Their pieces are usually books of revolutionary content. But what interests me is the way they send the books to the public. Opposed to the traditional printing and distribution methods, they make use to the mouth-to-ear and handto-hand way by establishing a one person network where each reader passes on the books he received. Thus is created a parallel system outside the mainstream channels, acting the same way as Montiel’s printers.

This is the key idea: to create sub-systems outside the main ways of distribution, avoiding the pressures of control by negating the controlling system as a whole. It could be simplified to cutting the middleman between the creator and the spectator, but this concept goes far beyond that. For once, it alters the role of the spectator. Forming part of the network he or she becomes an active aspect of it. Suddenly you’re not just the receiver of the message; you’re also a producer of the experience. It works in the same way Montiel’s mobile printer gave the ability to express discomfort to the public; it is a way to use these unregulated zones to our advantage to create independent systems.

Bender aptly referred to it in the show Futurama: “We’ll create our own Theme Park, with blackjack and hookers”.

These public spaces, our shared zones, are places of conflict. We understand this conflict as a clash of subjectivisms given by the people in the space confronting each other and the controlling elements that condition themsuch as advertisements-. Those are places of paradox, both regulated and of freedom and highly influenced by the biopolitical elements of the systems-understood as the standard way we should act with our body and behaviourBut they also have potential to create new sub-systems and narratives outside the norm.

The only way to affect these spaces is not just negating its pressures, they can be confronted and twisted. The objective of such constructions would be to liberate or to fight off the imposed way of existing. Exhibit A: the Memetro organization in Barcelona. It works as a citizen-driven campaign where the idea of a disease causing a temporary amnesia while validating the subway ticket makes it unreasonable to charge someone who suffers it with a fine.

Making use of the bureaucratic aspects of the regulating institutions, the Memetro members act as a legitimate front to stab the town hall in the back for raising the price of the subway ticket 4 euros.

Exhibit B: In the event of amnesia the city will recall by Denis Beaubois. In this performance a man establishes a conversation with the security cameras one can find all around the English urban landscape. The conversation is presented by a series of cards with messages pointed at the cameras, with instructions such as Move the camera up and down to agree or side to side to disagree followed by questions. It is curious how this is at the same time humorous and terrifying; giving us an understanding that the unnamed system that watches us is controlled by very fallible humans. This re-purposing of the systems engages with the critical thought, since while we’re mocking its flaws we’re also aware of its objectives of –terrifying- total vigilance.

I’m really drawn to the use of an absurd and extreme language in order to confront such concepts in the space. To present the bystanders with an unknown element that creates a question that develops a new narrative. If before I talked about the free space and the ways some people act in it, this is about the ways those actions resonate with us individually, conforming a unique narrative.

Slave of God and the article Wot I think: Slave of God give an interesting example of this. As an interactive experience, SoG presents us with a very curious form: it is a disco simulator. And it comes featuring neon fuelled aesthetics, drunkenly dancing and blurry humanoids form. By giving us no pre-made narrative the game forces us to move on and figure it out for ourselves, but the only thing we can find there is our own understanding of the space. It may be a virtual space, but it is public in the sense of it being known for all of us. Maybe the term common space would be more correct to express this. This common space shares many traits with the physical public space, being the most important its focus on the biopolitical control in our cultural landscape. The fact is that this game will offer us as much as we give to it. If you allow yourself to be swallowed by it, SoG lets you create your own narrative and

break the impositions. The experiences you bring into the game resonate with Slave of God elements, conforming a new, independent viewing of the piece. I strongly recommend reading the piece of Wot I think to see a good example of it.

A great example of work with the ideas of subjectivity in narrative, criticism of the system and subversive language is Joan Fontcuberta.. In his work Sputnik he forged a fake version of the Sputnik space operation where the craft had one astronaut whose identity was later on buried by the government to hide its failure. The whole mission was forged with the artist as the astronaut, and even a Spanish Tv-show reported it as a true obscure piece of forgotten history. What interests me in this process is the way he disrupts the concepts we have about truth and our trust in media, generating whole new narratives that gain significance by entering the world and becoming truth-that doesn’t last, since he reveals that is all fakeThe conclusion of the process of researching these referents would end with the concept of defiling. To defile implies to attack something and to degrade its content. It is an effective way to confront the control of the system. It is also a word not usually related to art, but more referred to as an antagonist of it. It is a dirty idea, probably related to corpse-robbing or vandalism. And I’m not backing from this concept. I’m interested in a kind of art that defiles the impositions by twisting them, making them dirty and degrading its ideas. Giving new purpose to elements by destroying its former significance, even turning them the other way round; and using this new significance in favour of new narratives not tied to the needs of the forced systems of representations.

Process from the action Neonize. Digital collageNEONIZE with image appropiated from the videogame Slave of God. Susceptible of being cut into smaller rectangular parts and distributed as cards.

Images from the town of Centralia. Part of the archive complete with several maps, air views and pictures from its residents.

Piece presented in the Show and listen. Image printed in a B0 satinated paper. The presentation was made with a t-shirt with the same image on. Title: Space JesĂşs.

ICONOGRAPHY Complete set of illustrations derived from the figure of the Space JesĂşs.

13 pieces made with ink on printed image.

21x29,7 cm 8 of them will be selected for a final presentation

TĂ?O CLINT Complete showing of all the labels designed for the action TĂ­o Clint.

Series 1: 4 pieces, 6,8x11,9 cm Series 2: 5 pieces, 6,8x11,9 cm Mixed media

TÍO CLINT Back labels for the Tío Clint action Series 1: 2 pieces, 3,7x8,4 cm Series 2: 3 pieces, 4,3x8,4 cm Mixed media

SPACE JESÚS

SPACE JESÚS

COMERCIAL JESUS Next page Set of 4 postcards designed 9,9x14,5cm Mixed media

2

Vino ROSADO

75

cl.

13%

vol.

1

1

75

13%

5

Vino TINTO

2

1

cl.

vol.

1

5

Vino BLANCO

EASTWOOD

EASTWOOD

EASTWOOD

A mi caballo le molesta la gente que se ríe. Se figura que quieren burlarse de él, pero si me aseguráis que le pediréis perdón, con un par de coces en la boca saldréis del paso...

A mi caballo le molesta la gente que se ríe. Se figura que quieren burlarse de él, pero si me aseguráis que le pediréis perdón, con un par de coces en la boca saldréis del paso...

A mi caballo le molesta la gente que se ríe. Se figura que quieren burlarse de él, pero si me aseguráis que le pediréis perdón, con un par de coces en la boca saldréis del paso...

Produced in San Miguel, Almería 1964

Produced in San Miguel, Almería 1964

Produced in San Miguel, Almería 1964

Tío Clint

Tío Clint

Tío Clint

SPACE

JESUS

almeria

SPACE

JESUS I

GREETINGS FROM

almeria

I

al me ria

S G N I T E E R G FROM

al me ria

For Steve