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p4> aquello que sucede . debor ah cullen
That which happens Deborah Cullen
Everything is changeable, everything appears and disappears . . . (1)
Monika Bravo creates spaces that invite viewers into an experience, she states, “both meditative and investigative.” Employing digital video and photographic processes, while collaborating with contemporary musical composers, Bravo creates visual and aural elements that form pleasurable, oftentimes beautiful environments: poetic, elegiac situations that examine space, place, time, motion, memory and reality—both internal and external. Her imagery employs stills, slow pans, stutters, line-ups, and various motions and speeds that both absorb and disorient. Fragmentary flashes and colors distill and reinvent landscape (nature) and architecture (culture)—or connote interior spaces of emotion and memory—teasing out these densely intertwined relationships. Her work is marked by recognizable images—shadows, raindrops, tropical leaves bending in the wind, the pattern of windows on the face of a skyscraper—that, when framed and gathered into sequences, coalesce into essentially abstract moods, painterly and sublime. While Bravo’s most recent projects fall broadly under the rubric of digital installation, it is the viewer’s encounter fostered through her work, which is the most crucial element of her intent. Being durational, experiencing one of her pieces requires a transaction of time: Bravo proposes the space, the tone, and the images; by entering, the viewer tacitly agrees to engage. The unfolding of the video or the progression of the music can transpire over just a very few moments, or through a longer, more intensive span. Nonetheless, within this interlude, an exchange occurs:
p5> aquello que sucede . debor ah cullen
the concepts and proposals of the work are offered to the floating mind of the viewer, and he/she absorbs them. And, once ingested, he/she takes them away, makes them his/her own. In a blink or over a more lengthy duration, this intercourse takes place. A cycle is implied. The first portion of this is the artist’s: the process of researching and developing the idea, gathering and editing the images and sound, the creative production of the various elements that compose the piece, and the work’s installation for the public. From there, the second part of the cycle concerns the viewer: experiencing the work, and then taking away whatever images, emotions, and ideas were seeded. This balance can be understood as giving and receiving, growing and harvesting, or yin and yang. That which happens is subtle. The viewer leaves the space changed in some way. This does not happen through a narrative, lesson, fable or story. There are, of course, references and connotations. There is always art history to consider. Thankfully, none of this is fore-grounded. The experience is a passage. The artist allows the viewer to enter her process, to take part in her explorations, her journey. To reflect on her choices, her framing, her harmonies, A reflecting pool. A Zen garden, A sudden, nostalgic smell from the past. Food for thought. That which happens is a gift. Such offerings are, by nature, demanding. They raise expectation. They ask for an in-kind response: they ask that we rise to the occasion. True gifts, after all, have implications. (2)
A breath While considering Bravo’s situational proposals, Robert Blake has commented on her looping, cyclical style, which frees the viewer of any obligation towards timing, stopping, starting, or staying. He notes that her works, in a certain way, remain always in the eternal present. “Freedom from narrative origin removes the drama,” he notes, “the viewer is immersed immediately in the work, and slowly acquires the navigation skills necessary to decode it. Provocatively, leaving the work may not end its narrative. It is by proposing an escape from closure,
from the end of the story, that we may recognize in projection installations an idealized immortal presence, the possibility of endless return.” By focusing on the ‘now,’ while most contemporary viewers understand that anything photographically recorded is, by definition, past tense, underscores the attention which Bravo pays to the moment, the breath, the present contemplation. Similarly, the documentary factuality inherent to photo-based forms emphasizes the paradoxically eastern sensibility and spiritual connotations of her work. Roland Barthes famously stated that the properties of photographic mediums included “a vertigo of time defeated,” and “a new form of hallucination: false on the level of perception, true on the level of time.” He noted that, in conflating the potential of the future with the freezing of the past, our culture had, therefore, provided what the rites and ritual of religious ceremonies once had, through the contemplation of the image. “This is the way in which our time assumes Death,” Barthes wrote. (3)
The path Bravo’s breakthrough piece was SYMPHASIS *simultaneous appearances (1999-2000). For the first time with this full-scale installation, she incorporated the viewer inside the experience. Glimpses of floating jellyfish and swimming sea creatures ricocheted around the space, reflecting off mirrored Plexiglas And like goldfish inside a fishbowl, the viewer was submerged. She wondered what was outside and what was inside, feeling the proportions of the world suddenly and radically shifted, feeling almost as if she could lose her footing. She considered the idea of reality held by the different creatures and beings in our world. SYMPHASIS was the first piece Bravo considered to be painterly. Not only did she expand upon her work structurally, she opened herself by using the formal language of color and composition: each screen surface, a world. Bravo’s next major exploration was A_Maze (2001-2002). In this, she considered the idea of the labyrinth, an ancient pattern found across world cultures as far
p6> aquello que sucede . debor ah cullen
in must be traced back out to exit. The labyrinth is considered a spiritual tool; one’s journey inwards and back out again is considered a form of meditation, fostering mindfulness and internal focus. Similarly, A_Maze, appears to be, at first glance, a floor piece. On its surface, the poem Ars Poetica from Jorge Luis Borges is laid over an image of commuters transversing a town square. The type is designed in labyrinthine form. Since the delicate text subtly merges into the much stronger image of people, there is a struggle for legibility. If the viewer steps upon the floor piece to read the poem, he/she activates pressure switches hidden beneath. These trigger a random series of video clips that project onto the surrounding walls. Images flash: cities and countrysides, around the world, “passerby” images taken in motion, from buses or trains, signal Thailand, Italy, New York, Colombia. Raúl Zamudio has suggested that this work proposes a “different dialectical exchange between the eye and the body…” Bravo herself has stated that A_Maze addresses the circumstances of time. “How do we relate to spaces?” she asks, “how do we carry those memories within? Personal experiences make the viewer travel within, became the vessel. . .” The viewer’s interaction with the work submerges them in a cascade of travelogue images that evoke memory, travel, and experience.
The most recent work is No_Name: [Frequency+Repetition] (2004-2005). Composed of still images housed in colorful light encasements, as well as an interactive installation, this work relates to the I Ching (The Book of Changes), which describes an ancient system of cosmology and philosophy at the heart of Chinese cultural beliefs. A fundamental book of Taoism and Confucianism, it is the oldest of the Chinese classic texts. Also a book of wisdom and a divination system, the I Ching today is considered a popular spiritual resource for gaining insight. Consulting the I Ching involves casting coins or stalks to create a series of six lines, or a "hexagram." Each hexagram represents a state, a process, or a situation that, circling in the present, may be about change itself. In poetic and symbolic language, the I Ching describes in detail the meanings of each line, thus offering a “reading.” While the readings often lend themselves to various interpretations, they are believed to provide a very complete picture. The readings are not fateful or prescriptive, but they center on process as an evolution of events, and the inevitability of flux. At the heart of The Tao (The Way) is the belief that through stillness, one can return to the source; through contemplation, one can re-learn how to trust intuition. Thus, by casting the I Ching, we are confirming that which we already know.
The next work, DozenFields (2002-2004) reverses the proposition of A_Maze. Instead of surrounding the viewer with a plethora of interactive, optical data, this work is much more stripped down, designed to tap into the memory and interior space within each viewer. “Ripe with emotive associations yet almost void of visual information,” as José Roca has noted, these six, one-minute looped sequences evoke very real spaces from simple melodies and pared-down abstract surfaces: drops of rain, shadows of leaves, a ball floating on water. These impressionistic colors, sounds, motions, and textures, are, in fact, devices that translate spatial experiences. As the viewer focuses attention, looking hard, the repetitive images become clear. What appears to be a seemingly simple work is actually quite complex. It links ideas about filming, seeing, and remembering simultaneously, questioning their similarities and differences through, as Roca has eloquently stated, “their extreme indeterminacy.”
In No_Name, Bravo offers the viewer a space for quietness and contemplation on these themes. In addition to the still images, she has designed an interactive program representing abstractions from the I Ching. These are coupled with ambient sounds, sonic experiments utilizing field recordings, which Bravo commissioned from sound engineer Mike Hallenbeck Random hexagrams and a soundtrack load, and fade up and down in sunrises and sunsets of glowing color on the screen opposite a sole, seated viewer. In one sequence, through the hexagram’s bars, we glimpse an image of a Renzo Piano’s Bolla, a tropical greenhouse/biosphere built on Genoa’s old harbor, broken up into its wavy, watery reflection. With this work, Bravo deliberately dissolves the “real” world into the elements of light, sound, and inner vision. In this, she moves ever further from her previous use of captured and manipulated images from the physical world. The private, simple geometries and deliberately meditative staging of
p7> aquello que sucede . debor ah cullen
No_Name reflect a new stage in Bravo’s oeuvre. While Roca has noted this work’s “positive silence,“ in submitting herself to this ancient code, Bravo is very openly staking out the terms of her concerns, rather than alluding to a mindspace which might be created from the snippets of our imperfect reality.
At rest “All of my work is based on a discovery: creating a void does not result in emptiness. I'm interested in this process, in the resonance, which emanates from this nothingness. To do this, the most important thing is to have nothing to say. I aim to bring about a series of phenomena and perceptions, which everyone can experience and use to move towards a poetic existence. Each work is above all an event. Something happens.” —Anish Kapoor Monika Bravo’s work flickers between experience, "reality," memory, and representation. At essence, it is paradoxical, combining all the inherent contradictions of our contemporary world. Bravo opposes inside and outside; the active and the passive; space and time; West and East; absence and presence; motion and stillness; emptiness and fullness. Mathematical, logic-driven philosophical content is contradicted by emotive, lyrical sound and color. Technologically proficient, sleek, media-savvy presentation addresses our profound inner existence, the elusive core of our souls. With all the trappings of the contemporary but passing world, Bravo’s work asks us to listen. And in listening, if we listen, we are able to still the mind.
Notes: (1) The Teaching of Buddha (Tokyo: Bukkyo Dendo Kyokai, 1987), 380. (2) See Georges Bataille, “The Notion of Expenditure,” Visions of Excess: Selected Writings, 1927-1939. Edited and with an introduction by Allan Stoekl; translated by Allan Stoekl, with Carl R. Lovitt and Donald M. Leslie, Jr. (Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press, 1985), 116-129; or Georges Bataille, The Accursed Share: An Essay on General Economy. Translated by Robert Hurley (New York: Zone Books, 1988.) (3) Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography. Translated by Richard Howard. (New York: Hill and Wang, 1981), 97, 115, 92.
p09> catalogo
p 1 0 > A _ M a ze . 2 0 0 1 - 2 0 0 2 . l i b r o d e b o c e t o s / s ke t c h b o o k
p11> A_Maze. 2001-2002. Video instalaci贸n interactiva: Sonido: Flora & Fauna, reproductor de DVD industrial, sensores a presi贸n, software, planchas de madera prensada, impresi贸n digital, dimensiones del tapete: 3 m x 3 m.
p12> A_Maze . 2001-2002. dibujo preliminar/sketch
p 1 3 > A _ M a ze . 2 0 0 1 - 2 0 0 2 . S e c u e n c i a / F i l m s t r i p # 5 0
p14> A_Maze. 2001-2002. libro de bocetos/sketchbook
p15> A_Maze. 2001-2002. libro de bocetos/sketchbook, secuencias de la instalaci贸n, filmstrips from the installation
p16> A_Maze. 2001-2002. Interactive video installation. Sound: Flora & Fauna, industrial DVD player, Tape switches,Stamp control, Masonite, outdoor graphic print, Floor dimensions : 3 m x 3 m.
p17> A_Maze. 2001-2002. Video instalaci贸n interactiva: Sonido: Flora & Fauna, reproductor de DVD industrial, sensores a presi贸n, software, planchas de madera prensada, impresi贸n digital, dimensiones del tapete: 3 m x 3 m.
p18> A_Maze - Itiner ar ies 2002 - 2004
p19> A_Maze - Itiner ar ies 2002 - 2004
p20> A_Ma z e - ITINERARIES 1 - 45. 2001-2002. Pelicula Polyester Digital/Digital Polyester Film, Aluminum. 20 x 20 cms cada una
p21> A_Ma z e - ITINERARIES
46 - 72. 2001-2004. Pelicula Polyester Digital/Digital polyester Film, Aluminum. 40 x 40 cms cada una
p22> A_Maze - Itiner ar ies 2002-2004
p 2 3 > A _ M a ze - I t i n e r a r i e s 2 0 0 2 - 2 0 0 4
p 2 4 > D o ze n fi e l d s . 2 0 0 2 - 2 0 0 4 & Pa r a l l e l s 2 0 0 2 - 2 0 0 4 . L i b r o d e B o c e t o s / s ke t c h b o o k
p25> Par allel #14. 2002-2004.
p 2 7 > Pa r a l l e l s . 2 0 0 2 - 2 0 0 4 . l i b r o d e b o c e t o s / s ke t c h b o o k
p26>Par allels. 2002-2004. libro de bocetos/sketchbook
p 2 8 > Pa r a l l e l s # 2 4 , # 1 3 , # 2 0 , # 1 7 , # 3 4 , # 1 6 , # 1 9 , # 3 5 , # 3 2 , # 1 5 , # 2 5 , # 2 9 , # 2 2 , # 2 7 , # 3 3 , # 2 3 . 2 0 0 2 - 2 0 0 4 . C - P r i n t t r a n s p a r e n t e , P l e x i g l a s 4 0 x 6 0 ”
p29> Par allels #8, #10, #3, #1, #4, #2, & #9 2002-2003. C-Pr int tr ansparente , Plexiglas, 40 x 60 “
p30> DozenFields. 2002-2004. Sitios del rodaje / Locations: DozenFields: [Corridor] & DozenFields: [Ripple], Santa Fe Ar t Institute, New Mexico. 01.2002 & 09. 2002
p32> DozenFields. 2003-2005. VideoBox_TS: Pantalla sensible al tacto interactiva, componentes inform谩ticos y software. Musica: memoryhouse por Max Richter. Late junction BBCLJ30022. 38cm x 44.5cm x 12.7 cm. Edici贸n de 6.
p33> DozenFields: [Raindrops]. 2003-2005. fotograma/videostill
p34> DozenFields. 2002-2004. Sitio del rodaje / Location DozenFields: [Beaubourg] C.G. Pompidou 03.2002, DozenFields: [Meno male che ci sei] & DozenFields: [Raindrops] Ar t OMI, Ghent, NY 07.2003
p35> DozenFields. 2002-2004. Sitio del rodaje / Location DozenFields: [Ephemera] Palm Springs, California, 01. 2004
p 3 6 > D o ze n F i e l d s : [ M e n o m a l e c h e c i s e i ] . 2 0 0 3 - 2 0 0 5 . F o t o g r a m a / v i d e o s t i l l
p37> DozenFields: [Beaubour g], DozenFields: [Cor r idor], DozenFields: [Ephemer a] 2003-2005. Secuencias/Filmstr ips
p38> DozenFields: [Ripple]. 2003-2005. Secuencias/Filmstr ips
p39> DozenFields. 2003-2005. VideoBox_TS: inter active Touch screen with components. Music: memor yhouse by Max Richter. Late junction BBCLJ30022. 15" x 17.5" x 5". Edition of 6.
p40> NO_NAME: [Frequency+Repetition] 2004-2005. Libro de bocetos/sketchbook
p41> NO_NAME: [Frequency+Repetition]. Hexagramas, 2004-2005. Caja de luz en aluminio, Impresi贸n cromog茅nica digital, Plexiglas, tubos flourecentes
p42> NO_NAME: [Frequency+Repetition] 2004-2005. Libro de bocetos/sketchbook. sitio del rodaje/location Genova, 09.2003
p43> NO_NAME: [Frequency+Repetition] 2004-2005. Dibujo digital de la instalacion/digital rendering. Video instalacion interactiva. Panel de vidrio semiopaco, componentes informaticos, software, sonido: mike hallenbeck
p44> NO_NAME: [Frequency+Repetition]. Hexagramas, 2004-2005. Caja de luz en aluminio, Impresi贸n cromog茅nica digital, Plexiglas, tubos flourecentes
p45> NO_NAME: [Frequency+Repetition]. Hexagramas, 2004-2005. libro de bocetos/sketchbook
p47> NO_NAME: [Frequency+Repetition]. 2004-2005. Hexagramas # 58, # 46 # 15 # 09. Light Encasement: C-print, fluorescent tubes, aluminum, Plexiglas. Unique. 26 x 26 x 4�
p46> NO_NAME: [Frequency+Repetition]. 2004-2005. Hexagramas # 04, # 43 # 54, # 29. Caja de luz en aluminio, Impresión cromogénica digital, Plexiglas, tubos flourecentes. Piezas únicas. 66 x 66 x 10cms
p48> SYMPHASIS* simultaneous appereances 1999-2000. Video instalaci贸n. Proyectores, Monitor, DVD, Plexiglas, pelicula Mylar. Sonido: Raul Rothblatt. Sequence #3 var 1, #12 &#10
p49> BIO
Monika Bravo, Nace en Colombia, vive & trabaja en Brooklyn; Recibe los premios de Longwood Digital_Matrix 2005 Commissions, Bronx council on the Arts, Scope Miami 2002’s Emergent Artist y NYSCA’s Electronic Media & Film en el 2000 y 2002; ha sido seleccionada a participar en las siguientes residencias: LMCC WTC World Views, NY; 2001; Santa Fe Art Institute y 2003 ART OMI. Su trabajo ha aparecido recientemente en exhibiciones que incluyen: Frequency + Repetition en Bryce Wolkowitz, NY, Urbes Interiores, Biblioteca Luis Angel Arango & Urbanismos Sinteticos, Museo de Arte Moderno en Bogota, Colombia; A_Maze en Pilar Parra, Madrid; Psicogeometrias, Futuribles/Up & Coming en ARCO 04; Il Viaggio dell'uomo Immobile en Museo d'Arte Contemporanea di Villa Croce, Genova & Fondazione; Ragghianti, Lucca; Playing with time en SITE Santa Fe; Itineraries en Ciocca Arte Contemporanea, Milan; L’Attitude en Bryce Wolkowitz, NY; Copy It, Steal It, Share It en Borusan Gallery, Instanbul; Der Rest Der Welt, Neuffer Im Park, Pirmasens, Germany. Sus videos han sido proyectados en diversos lugares como el MOMA, Anthology Film Archives, Brooklyn Museum, The Kitchen, New York video festival en el Lincoln Center y the Americas Society en NY, MoCA en Los Angeles, Video Ex en Zurich, Tate Britain, Museo Reina Sofia en Madrid y Concurso de Creacion Audiovisual en Navarra. Born in Colombia, lives & works in Brooklyn, Most recent exhibitions include: Frequency + Repetition at Bryce Wolkowitz in NY, Urbes Interiores, Biblioteca Luis Angel Arango & Urbanismos Sinteticos, Museo de Arte Moderno in Bogota, Colombia; A_Maze at Pilar Parra, Madrid; Psicogeometries, Futuribles/Up and Coming, at ARCO 04; Il Viaggio dell'uomo Immobile at Museo d'Arte Contemporanea di Villa Croce, Genova & Fondazione; Ragghianti, Lucca; Playing with time at SITE Santa Fe; Itineraries at Ciocca Arte Contemporanea, Milan; New Museum en NY; Copy It, Steal It, Share It at Borusan Gallery in Instanbul; Der Rest Der Welt, Neuffer Im Park, Pirmasens, Germany. Her films September 10 2001, Liquify, Playing with time and Wind-eye have been invited to be screened close to 50 times around the globe in venues such as the MOMA, Anthology Film Archives, the Brooklyn Museum, New Museum of Contemporary Art, The Kitchen, New York video festival at the Lincoln Center & the Americas Society in NY, MoCA in L.A, Video Ex in Zurich, Museo d'Arte Contemporanea di Roma, the Tate Britain in the UK, Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid, & Concurso de Creacion Audiovisual in Navarra, Spain. She has been the recipient of 2005 Longwood Digital_Matrix Commissions, Bronx council on the arts, Scope Miami 2002’s Emergent Artist & 2000 & 2002 NYSCA’s Electronic Media & Film Awards and selected to participate in 2001’s LMCC’s WTC World Views; the Santa Fe Art Institute & 2003 ART OMI Artist-in-Residency Programs. Agradecimientos/aknowledgements: Paco Barragan, Deborah Cullen, Flora & Fauna: Sacha Crnobrnja + Fa’ Ventilato, Galeria Pilar Parra y Romero, Mike Hallenbeck, Chris Kossifos, Marlena Kudlicka, Carl Lydon, Juan Luque, Arnaldo Morales, Pilar Parra, Max Richter, Joey Stein @ moeyinc, John Littig @ royce steri-case, Marion Tande, Jeremiah Teipen, Kasia Urbaniak, Belen Valbuena, Bryce Wolkowitz, Brian Yee, Rufo Criado y a todo el personal del CAB. Creditos: pags 11, 16, 17, 48 y 49 fotografias por Juan Luque, pag 39 por Bill Orcutt y pags 20, 21, 29, 46 y 47 por Monika Bravo