PERFORMANCE AND STAGED PHOTOGRAPHY
THE BODY AS HETEROTOPI
"Heterotopias are worlds within worlds, mirroring and diskursive spaces that are intense, disturbing, incompatible, contradictory or transforming"
M. Foucault
2021
Other perceptions
A new level around the central theme of my artistic research: "Mediating artifacts / re-subjectivity". If until now the central was the creation of an active corridor between the present and the past, it is in the ecophysical relationship where now the body pivots for its new perceptions in the path to its re-subjectivity.
"Portales" - Fotocollage
2021
"Implicaciones (in) voluntarias
Fotocollage
2021
"Lengua materna" / "Mother thongue"
Intervention in a forest of Upplands -Bro-2021
"Im anfang war die Tat - In the beginning was action"
performative photography- 2021
"Recognize me self in the unknown"
"Matter folded on itself" Performance-2021
4 Exercises for 1 performance
The perception is about the things and the gap between things.
PERFORMATIVITY IN THE HETEROTOPIC BODY: In performative art or art of action, whose motor is autopoiesis, which means the ability of a process to generate its own life, the performative is interrelated with the uniqueness of each body. The forms that acts take can never be separated from the background of singular experience already registered in the body. In "The Words and the Things", Foucault says: Heterotopias are disturbing, no doubt because they secretly undermine language, because they prevent naming this and that, because they break up common names or entangle them. " What would be the results in image language, when the flows of knowledge are combined with the memories of the body?
Ageism and performance.
The feminine as a synonym for "male pleasure object" has also been defined by means of signs and codes. The length and color of the hair, the height of the heels, the style of the nails, etc. all responses to the masculine ideal about the feminine as a fetish. "The feminine" also encodes the behavior of women (speak little, laugh moderately, use low tones of voices) Something is slowly changing, but as "social goods" women have an "expiration date" past which we are discarded as "products of desire". Can we regain our self-esteem after menopause? Do we accept ourselves more fully as human beings? How can we free ourselves from imposed roles?
Fredagen den 13e november
Självporträtt projekt
2020
"No me pesa, es mi hermana"
Staged photography
2020
Photo: Héctor J. Álvarez-Ana Maria Almada
Two different natures transplanted: The plant brought from Spain, the person from Argentina. Two similar processes. What happens to our "shapes" when we change the context? What is the development in relation to the origins?
”Merope”
Staged photography. 2020 -
Photography: Héctor J. Àlvarez-Ana Maria Almada
Reflections on communication
The question is:
What are we talking about when we talk about Merope?
"Resubjetividad"
Staged photography
2020
Photo: Héctor J. Álvarez-Ana Maria Almada
The analysis of my singular origin is nourished by the analysis of my history to reconstruct broken links here-now, starting from the body and its ability to compose the desired subjectivity.
" Mujer con nido y fantasma"
Staged photography
2020
Photo: Héctor J. Alvarez/Ana Maria Almada
"Corpus Tensile"
My body, a machine to produce subjectivities, ties me to the world and through it the world ties me.
"Nuevas brujas viejo ritornello"
Staged photography
2020
Photo: Héctor J. Alvarez/Ana Maria Almada
"New old witches ritornello"
The connection between ritual and creation manifests itself according to the evolution of each singularity. The past is a fold between game and war. The present: Rite of passage from camels to lions and children. The Future: Crossing of Two Flows, Present Memory Games. The art born between mirrors and windows, ritual, magic, games and superstitions is science and witchcraft, philosophy and agonistic game is an experiential commitment with and towards others. Philosophical witchcraft. Yesterday we said that witches were nuns, today that they are avatars and we will always say that they are artists.
"Relaciones pandémicas"
Staged photography
2020
Photo: Hector J. Alvarez/Ana Maria Almada
"Pandemic relations"
Breathing the other has become dangerous step by step. Strict recommendation to choose: distant breaths in physical solitudes or death by intubation. Let us respect the distances, you there, me here and between both the fear, which turns into anger and bitterness. Paradigm of shared membership. Today we are all, gravediggers, draggers of death, when before we were dedicated to carrying life.
Bro Centrum/Sweden - Project: "My history".
SEDIMENT-2019
"...When the deaf tones are so deaf they can't even mimic a sound.
Nothing is said. Nothing has been said
in the intermediate tones only empty questions
non-human languages accessories gadgets."
Photo: Felice Hapetzeder.
Torres de Serrano- Valencia/Spain-2019
Group performative class led by Professor Bartolome Ferrando- University of Fine Arts of Valencia
Photo: Bartolome Ferrando and Audience.
"Man måste kämpa" -2019
(Duved/Åre by side of the Caroleans army memorial )
Performative act in collaboration with a local resident.
What kind of knowledge is it that in the body reveals the difference between what we do and what we say we do? Is it objectivity, power, truth?
It is said: Knowledge is a combined and collective act: Who kind of knowledges is important? Who is allowed to speak? What can you talk about?
Is the fight pleasure or suffering? If we were forced to choose one virtue, what is the most important : to fight, to remember , to learn?
Is the passion for the truth a knowledge way? A kind of healer? An imcofortable habit?
What role does it play in the construction of the heterotopia of the bodies and in the relationship between them?
The death march.
December 1718 :Sweden planned an attack on Norway from Jämtland towards Trondheim. The retreat to Sweden is known as "The death march"
More than 10.000 soldiers marsched and relatively few people died in combat. At the end of December 1719, the sweden King Charles XII was injured.
The project exterminated 40% of the male population of Jämtland.
Tanks to Martina Sturmhoefel!
Photo: H. J. Alvarez/H. J. Alvarez jr.
"Cuando quisimos peces nos mojamos"2019
(When we wanted fish we got wet)
In statistics it is called spurious relation to a mathematical relation in which two events have no logical connection, although it can be implied that they have it because a third factor not considered and known as “a confusion factor” or “hidden variable”that intervenes in the process.
Alicante -
Photo: H. J. Alvarez/Ana M. Almada
"Portalen" 2019
Free cours (master) thesis
Stockholms Dramatiska Högskola
Abstract
Can the rite and the play affect feelings, needs and decisions?
Our perception is to a greater extent individual and subjective, our affective reactions have links to the various tools the experiences have equipped us with. Our sensory system makes selection in the references that the body's memories have been stored. I am interested in resilience: the capacity to repair the traumatic or injured in natures, both people and environments. The energy that we can release during the resilience process, in my own experience, can be compared to the act of "crossing a portal" with uncomfortable or dangerous sockets, the other side allways holds promises.
The term "portal" in my exempel is in relation to energies and state of min. But in that association we most include an important part in any portal : the embrasure (in architecture the external part of a portal)
In my hypothesis, It figuratively correspond to the direct and indirect experiences we carry with us, and how we use it in the construction of shields and/or ornaments, to attract / isolate the surroundings during our existence.
What a function it "emotional embrasure will fill is individual and depends on a lot of aspects: expectations, desire, interest, purpose, knowledge, genetic components, including beliefs and ideologies. Different stimuli can increase the level of attention through intensity, change, movement, repetition and emotional content among others. In my portal figure, I can see some resemblance with the "liminal phase" that the French-German ethnographer Arnold Van Gennep has studied in his research on Les rites de passage (transitional rituals) and the British anthropologist Victor W. Turner later developed in the book The ritual process.
Photo: H.J.Alvarez/Ana M Almada
Performatic intervention i Bro´s Library -2018
Was in inclusive and "visionary" gest?. A "prosthesis" was introduced into the body of the library in the form of an unlisted book.
Art as a vaccine against institutional rigidity, as a way to encourage processes, as a contribution to individual subjectivity
"Luciferina oxidada"-2018
Norrköpings Konstmuseet
Luciferina oxidada (in spanish) Is the name of an high intensive process of transformation in bioluminescence. It produces cold light in some insects, fungi, bacteria and in some species from the sea.
The oxidation phenomenon includes 2 molecules (luciferin and luciferase), oxygen and ATP (adenosine triphosphate).
There are various forms of bioluminescence, however, all with a common denominator: oxygen, thanks to which we can keep remembering
"Kasta Diva" 2018
Hommage to Deleuze
"When you are forced to choose between one and two, choose three" Guilles Deleuze
VÄXJÖ KONSTHALL
"Blödande glömska"-2018
Hommage to Floreal Avellaneda, tortured and killed by the argentine state terrorism at 14 years old
From magical thinking to the magic of thought:
The selfimaginary game-ritual of ranking and dose the memories became over time a skill . It was necesary some rulles, because it required contact with one’s own humanity and objectivity over the reall current mental state. If the memory was painful it was necessary to censor it. Especially painful was the memories of the children. Awareness that the loss time could not be replaced is extremely hard.
• Everything can become a symbol.
• Each symbol can express a memory.
• The solitary game is linked for över to the own existence
STOCKHOLM SUPERMARKET ART FAIR
"Bestiario" 2018
The art was for a long time associated with male geniuses which isolated from the surroundings they produced and sold at enormous prices on clinically stripped galleries where not many dared to step in (It is not the intention either) The point is that art can equally take place among pans in the kitchen, a storage room in the workplace or in the body here and now with its history of play or ritual. Being human has always meant being able to take responsibility for our specific nature, which, like other natures, lives in constant change, in contact with itself and its surroundings.
Upplands- Bro Biblioteket- Sweden
"Att döda en wonderbaum"- 2018
"Art is always political, either by what it says or by what it does´nt say when "Political" is not a synonymous to propaganda
Bro Centrum torget-Sweden
"Canto ostinato"- 2017
Women are more than any living being exposed to many form of censorship among other criticism and judgment. Let's continue clicking all those balloons
Den lilla teatern- Uppsala-Sweden
"In between" 2017
Can someone answer why
some people choose to become executioners?
Fill bodies with stones of contempt
suffering and tags of shame.
What's behind that miserable logic?
Konstnärshuset- Stockholm
"Maria och odjurens verk"- 2014
Maria was a mother who suffered the loss of a child, throug injustice, complicity and abuse of power.
Maria was a sister who suffered the loss of her brother, through injustice, complicity and abuse of power.
Sons and brothers as well as mothers, fadhers and sisters are human roles that we offer each other.
The monstrosity, in different ways, is a rol too. The difference between one and the other is that becoming a monster is a personal choice.
Lids Kyrka- Nyköping-Sweden Photo: Ana M. Almada
"Att välta en taburett"- 2015
Some flies make entrance when something is rotting.
Relationships are not things but produce brands on bodies and place. The air of the processes become rarefied when self-deception, inconsistency between the saying and the fact together with half-truths define the relationships of a group. Thence to exclusion, servility with hierarchies, and more, there is a short flight.
A fly alone cannot transform a chair into a stool and then flip it over, but several people, together, can try it again and again. Or not, according with their purpose, energies, experiences and hopes.
Konstnärshuset-Stockholm- Photo: H.J.Alvarez
"Judith efter Olofernes" -2015
Love me not too much, love me good!
San Valentine's Day become a contemporary and commercial ritual: What kind of love do we celebrate in this day? Hollywood love: beautiful but false? Love like a property rights? Narcissistisc love? that transforms people into things. Love for 'our people', who can end up in segregations? Love for 'our country' that historically generates war and exclusions?
Love can also be evil. Under the feeling of love, loving people can destroy others. But even the lack of love can have terrible consequences for people. The religions spread peaceful and loving messages and talk with double tongues when only refeers to they peer. Love is love is god.
Kulturhurset i Stockholm Photo: Madeleine Aleman
"Entre nosotros"- 2007
The expression between us is used in Argentina in many ways: As a synonym of confidence, to indicate the belonging to a group, in referens to a habit or a custom of a group, or to refer to the presence of something, someone or some in a certain group or place.
All these expressions are valid to leave a mark in the outraged geography.
In the vicinity of Palermos forest, the heart of the city of Buenos Aires, for decades a place commonly used to walk, play or love, opereted one of the many centers of torture, terror and death during the last military dictatorship.
Buenos Aires/Palermos Hood
Photo: Ana M. Almada
"Tango Ball(ade)" 2012
My mother loved to dance, and i loved my mother, although his musical ear was disastrous.
I was eight years old when my function was to accompany her, and tell discreetly
what kind of rhythm each music played was.Is it waltz or is it tango? she asked me.
(Tango was later called my very loved dog)
According to my answer she accepted or not the invitation to the dance floor.
Hugo Ball is the artist in the picture, who contributed to create the Dadaism, sometimes and to somebody a way of live.
ID:i Galleri - Stockholm
Photo: G.C.Alvarez
"Händelser som ser ut som tankar"
KONSTAKADEMIEN STOCKHOLM
Projectpresentation
2007
"Inom ramen för psykiatrin"- 2007
Foucault believes that it is in discourses differences and contradictions that the new concepts and hypotheses find its foundation. These contradictions also include discourses taboos.
My practical experience in psychiatry in Sweden, in a role of mental nursing students first and then as medical secretary, talked about an activity stuffed with taboo, censorship and restrictions, confrontations, manipulations, hidden conflicts and dictatorial exercise of power in a very hierarchical context. In other words: During my professional practice in different sections of the activity, I experienced unhealthy working environments where destructive relationships and exclusions were not unusual. My perspective is simple and compassionate only with common sense, and humanistic parameters.
It was therefore interesting to participate in the same activities in an artist's role. This was possible thanks to an invitation to a pilot project where Konstfrämjandet was one of partners. I was only careful to choose a section known in Psychiatry as the most "democratic". Maybe art could contribute further with its open perspective? My artistic basic material during six months was the relationships; therefore I supported the project in experiences that Nicolas Bourriaud gathered under the concept: Relational aesthetics. Most of the staff accepted to participate in a process that nobody controlled, a new and original dimension in the framework of psychiatry. The pictures would speak for themselves; no one had a role of interpretation representative. Daring to be active under these conditions was already a success.
STOCKHOLMS LÄNS LANDSTING
Photo: Ana M. Almada
"Juku" Att skapa en ritual- 2005
In times when groups are more engaged than ever in concentrating and rejecting each other at the same time, it is a good exercise to try to immerse ourselves in our history as specie and bring to the present our common origins, our similarities and our searches. My way is to trate to understanding and accept the differences between us to achieve support other along the way, like a new and necessary ritual
Svarta Havet- Konstfack
Photo: Valeria Montti Colque
"Like you, like me, like she/he"
In Malmö I joined the choir of artists that the sculpture of the place represents, to draw attention about the phenomenon of refugees, who daily defy death looking for a place in the world to live with dignity.
Malmö- Public space
2004
Photo: Marta Aguirre
The nomades pacifiers
A distance-participatory project "In Memoriam" of 30,000 disappeared in Argentina during the state terrorism between 1974-1983. Pacifiers picked from streets and other public places, received name of a missing person and later distributed to people interested in "adopting them to give them ny life". The project was documented in form of photos and exhibited at the Bro Library and at Tensta Konsthall.
2007-2008 -People from different countries
"Hommage to Pipa Bacca"
Pippa Baca was a performance artist who did hitchhiking från Italy
with the intention to arrive to Palestine . Along the way in a gesture of peace and confidence she washed the feet of the meeting people.
She don't get any further than Turkey. She was raped and lying dead on the side of the road. I wished visit his country and walk on 'Via dell amore' in Cinque Terre.
Cinque Terre- Italy
2003
Photo: H.J.Alvarez
"Tankar att ta med sig hem"
A performative intervention in England, in the Tate Modern and in the middle of political paranoia, without any authorization, without recommendations, without names of famous artists behind ... what are the chances of being successful?
One more experience among all valid, that is how the world was built.
Thanks to the artist Andrea Macchiavelli and the poet Ann Jäderlund for participating i the experience.
Tate Modern UK
Intervention
Photo: Ana M.Almada 2003
" Jardin de gentes"
Rules, hierarchies, schedules, controls of different types, various intentions. I wanted to give those kids an image of someone other than those they know. No instructions, no explanations. Let the image play with the child fantasy in the way it decide.
Buenos Aires/Argentina
2003
"Inside-outside-offside"
During my period of residence in Paris, 18 years ago I was sadly surprised at the number of people who slept on the sidewalks at night. Today nobody is surprised över the homless number in the world. My reaction then was to take my camera and ask visitors to the Palais de Tokyo a center of contemporary artists, if they agreed to lie on the restaurant floor, very decorative on the other hand , to experience in their own bodies the lack of protection that some peoples suffers daily. Most of the 25-30 respondents accept. Everyone was upset by the experience.
PALAIS DE TOKIO-PARIS
2001
Intervention
Photo: Ana M. Almada
"Att bära sin mors mantel"
The equality of women? But when it comes to practicing it in terms of symbols and on public roads… who? when? and how many accept the challenge? I took a camera, a dress and went out through the streets and neighborhoods of Stockholm to ask the men if they were willing to do so?
I asked the same question to almost 200, 50 agreed to be photographed. A projekt with Amnesty .
Stockholm -Urbanproject
2002
Photo: Ana M. Almada
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