✫ Quotes ✫
Hispanic Executive | Interview with Shaun Leonardo - Performance, Pedagogy, and Philosophy
“…but to this day, I don’t understand how I never felt that the historical art canon could not be achieved simply because of my ethnicity or color. That was never a blockage for me, psychologically.”
I feel there are people that the systems doesn’t influence or is part of their lives yet. Having this kind of strong vision that you can achieve anything without taking in mind how society sees them. And even if they got hits with the walls that the systems of the society puts on them, people as Shaun Leonardo use this “disadvantages” on their favor as elements in their art and/or bringing to the light this social problematics to the light.
“Artists need to take in, to process, to decipher, to separate from the noise and create things that are beautiful and impactful to the spirit. Artists have to offer a different type of slowness to work against the speed of today.”
With how the actual situation(s) and news are constantly being bombarded towards us, creating art that constantly reminds us of the uncertain in what we are living now is not the best. Sometimes, even if it's imposible to think, writing something hopefully helps not only mentally but also in other people minds. People could get more hopeful and demand a change in look for a better future. Or, in other cases, help out to give us and other a break to breath and regain force to fight against this problematics. Constantly fighting without taking a break it just ends up hurting ourselves.
The Art of Activism. Chapter 4: Culture
“Either way, we are producing Culture in order to influence culture.”
The job (voluntarily or involuntarily) of art is not only to just to create “beautiful” things to please a certain public, but also in a hope that, not only their public, but also to the whole world seeking for a change or to bring attention to certain topics or problematics that are important to them. In conclusion, people create art in multiple forms in a hope they are able to change and inspire people.
“Unlike pop culture, where our needs and desires are reflected in cultural products created and sold to us by someone else, alt culture is created by us.”As an alternative person, I totally agree on this. Being honest, nowadays people are thinking too much on “I should be getting this from this brand!” and I don’t judge if they want to get stuff from brands that are alternative or objects that they like. However, I had seen people saying stuff like: “Gifts for your goth girlfriend: 1 A DIOR LIPSTICK”, or even people identifying as alternative, for example punk, and at the same time being conservative. Oh and don’t let me start on the mere concept of Vivienne Westwood, as this is a “luxury punk brand” and is a walking contradiction. Creating a nowadays distorted version of alternative that is consumable, that is more “pop culture”, which I am not against with, but the way is getting mixed up and even watering down alternative culture is making it to loose its own original and core purpose.
✫Performance✫
~Una vida en una maleta (A life in a bag)~
A closed suitcase is presented to the audience, this object is taped all around with a tape with the words “wet content” on it all around. The artist or a member of the audience could open and start inspecting it. The audience is totally welcome to check and take one object. The suitcase has two principal compartments; one emptier than the other. In the most empty compartment, there are barely any clothes, where each one is tightly folded, an old “wet” passport and few art supplies (between them a diary where the audience is welcome to read). In the most full compartment, there is more information about the owner of the suitcase; a white robe, medals, stoles from academic programs, a white graduating cap decorated with the colors and design of the Dominican flag, with glued golden letters forming “CLASS OF 2024” and golden border. Additionally, there is more clothes, art supplies, and “wet” IDs. The key element to understand who was the owner of the suitcase is the diary; inside it there is time stamps of the owner talking their life before and after coming to the United States, expressing how slowly they got the their life around in the US, until they mysteriously, at the end of the diary, express they hope to whoever finds the suitcase, they can keep it until they come back. So far, the interpretation of where the owner is uncertain.
~Artist explanation~
I want to represent how people immigrate with so little to, not only the US of course, but also countries, and create a life. However, the act of the public being able to take whatever they want from the case is to represent how in reality, even though they are one of the sectors of society who contribute the most, they receive little to no compensation. Instead, people could take advantage of them. I want the performance to be somewhat in the base of “Unsolved Cases Files” games, where a fictional criminal case is given to you to solve with a few clues. Additional, the constant mention of the word “wet” is to use it also as a clue as many people who are undocumented are called “wets”, appropriating this word to express the feeling of the owner of the suitcase, as even though she is not there, they (or in my case the artist who is making this artwork) want you to know how this status is affecting them and reflecting in on their “wet” IDs.
Note: just to clarify, in reality, nothing will be physically wet.
Note: For the purpose of this class, give it back to me at the end of the class as in this case all of the objects are the originals and not replicas.
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