Guggenheim UBS MAP Global Art Initiative Under the Same Sun: Art from Latin America Today A Conversation: Tania Bruguera and Karen Finley, July 22, 2014 Christina Yang: Good evening everyone, and welcome to the Guggenheim. It s so wonderful to see so many familiar faces. We re really excited to be here tonight and to actually hear from two of the reigning queens of performance art, and really get into a little bit about what an artist thinks about each other s work and how they make it, and make meaning out of it. I m Christina Yang, Director of Public Programs here at the Guggenheim Museum, and I just want to give a few thank-yous before we start our programs. First and foremost I d like to acknowledge the incredible generosity of the funding from the Guggenheim UBS MAP Global Art Initiative for their support of Under the Same Sun, which is the exhibition that is on view, that you will get a chance to see after today s conversation. I also want to particularly acknowledge UBS s funding for education and public programs as part of their initiative, and in particular for their support of living artists. I d like to give another round of thanks to all of our corporate members who are here with us tonight; without their involvement we would not be able to reach the over a million visitors that we garner on site every year, and also for the three hundred thousand participants in our education and public programs, and this is an amazing number, but for the over six million people that we reach through our digital resources every year. And I just want to say a few words about our wonderful participants here and then we ll go into some more freeform conversation. We hope to cover a range of topics, and some shared themes and shared histories, that they have. And then mostly we want to just hear from you directly. I think many of you know Karen Finley for a body of politically subversive and deeply personal performance work, for her uneasy, visceral and humorous confrontation with social issues, including violence against women, the AIDS crisis, trauma, and censorship. We may cover some significant dates in her career, including the 1990s, when as one of the NEA Four, her artist grant was revoked, and then given back to her, and we will go over both these artists and a shift in their practice in the 21st century. Karen is also an incredible writer and educator. In 2012 she completed the Children s Memorial in Gusen, Austria, at a former German concentration camp. She teaches at NYU s art and public policy department in performance studies, and she s a fellow at the Kelly s Writer s House at the University of Pennsylvania. She s received several awards, including an OPI in 1997, a Guggenheim fellowship, and was Ms. Woman of the Year in 1997, and she s authored several books and engaged in many museum workshops including here at the Guggenheim, the New Museum, and currently at the Museum of Art and Design. You re likely also know Tania Bruguera for her politically charged performances, such as the Tatlin s Whisper series, which is on view upstairs as documentation of a performance work she did in her native country, Cuba. Tania s earlier installations staged for the participant a suspended state of control and psychological oppression. Her work has been seen in numerous international exhibitions including Documenta 11, at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London, and at the MCA Chicago, and in several international biennials in Transcript 2014 The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation (SRGF). All rights reserved. page 1 of 19
Sao Paolo, Shanghai, Havana, Johannesburg, and elsewhere. Her retrospective on the political imaginary was organized by the Neuberger Museum of Art at Purchase College in 2009. She teaches internationally, and we ll hear about her ongoing work with the Immigrant Movement International that was co-produced by Creative Time and the Queens Museum of Art, and which serves as a foundation for her ongoing thesis also on view at the Guggenheim, The Francis Effect. Okay, so with our official bios out of the way, I d like to give a chance to Tania and Karen to say a little bit about each other s work, and what draws them to each other, and what speaks to them about it. Tania, would you like to say a few works about Karen? Tania Bruguera: I love you? Karen Finley: I love you too! Tania Bruguera: Okay, next! Christina Yang: We ve got some videos to look at. Tania Bruguera: No, seriously, I think it was when I first knew about Karen s work, it was super important to me because I was just coming from Cuba to study an MFA at the Art Institute of Chicago, and I think I had a very tense relationship with performance at that moment, at that time, because it was a very different tradition to what I had been seeing in Latin America and especially Cuba, as Cuba has a tradition of performance art that I m part of, and it was more about doing the gesture, seeing performance as a cultural gesture instead of an action. You know? And it was super interesting to me to come up with a lot of stuff I didn t like, in those classes. And then I saw Karen s work and it was like, okay, finally somebody I can relate to. So I was super excited. Christina Yang: Fantastic. Tania Bruguera: And then we met because of you, and we realized we have so much in common it s not funny. So yeah. Christina Yang: Like two sisters, yeah. Karen Finley: Tania, I ve been familiar with the different stages of your work and your homage that you did early in your career to Ana Mendieta, and I found that I really enjoyed the spiritual practice of that, of you using the privilege to keep the memory of an artist alive, and that, to me, I found to be very generous and I just loved that idea of being able to be having discourse with artists. I have loved all of your work that you ve been doing in terms of social activism and going into different areas and not being pigeonholed to a particular genre, and innovating in the field. Tania Bruguera: Is that on record? Transcript 2014 The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation (SRGF). All rights reserved. page 2 of 19
Karen Finley: Yes it is on record! Innovating the field is something I like to think about in terms of performance or new genre-type work. We are in research, we are thinking of looking at each other s work and we can even think about it in terms of futurism and history and how our work impacts each other. So it s a pleasure to be here. Christina Yang: Thanks. So I thought we could start by looking at some earlier works by Karen and Tania and have them talk a little bit about that moment that they knew that they were going to be working in performance. So could we show the first set of videos? [Video shown: Shut Up and Love Me (2001) by Karen Finley, followed by The Burden of Guilt (1997-99) by Tania Bruguera] Christina Yang: So having just seen some of your earlier works again, can both of you talk about your beginnings? Karen Finley: Well, I d like to hear about the video, what we just saw. I d love to hear about that. Tania Bruguera: Well that s old. I m so over that. Karen Finley: Isn t that a funny feeling that you feel like it s so old? Like, what s the relationship to the past. Tania Bruguera: Well I think my work has made a shift, I think at the beginning, like this one too at the beginning, I was having a different relationship with the limitations of how can you say things in a very charged political environment where everything is very clearly laid out for you, and start to be an artist. The sense of what is your responsibility as an artist is already being shaped for you, is being told. So I think when I was doing that work I was more trying to use the symbolic as one of my tools, and trying to escape Cuba in the sense of trying to use the idea of something that is a universally understood symbol, as a way to escape the borders of the actual moment I was living. And then I realized that was not where I wanted to go, so it s funny because I never showed these pieces you re showing right now. So it s kind of weird to see it, because when I do my lectures, my talks, I never show this one, because I even think it s a wrong kind of work. I go into a process in my projects. I started, in the project of Ana Mendieta you mentioned, paying homage to an artist who was dead, and who was Cuban-American, and I felt that I really went into a very nice way of talking about the limits of art, which is my biggest interest like what is art what is not art and working between those. And then I did the newspaper in Cuba maybe if somebody from Cuba is here, they might know it I did the newspaper piece. And then something happened, some big censorship happened to me, and I went back to instead of doing that kind of more blurry work, where you don t know if it s happening in people s lives and not in the museum. After that big censorship, that big traumatic event, I went back to inside, and I used all the symbolic ways. For example, this piece is called The Burden of Guilt and is about the history of Cuban Indians who could not confront the Spaniards and decided to suicide massively by eating dirt, and only dirt until they die. And for example when I did it, I did Transcript 2014 The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation (SRGF). All rights reserved. page 3 of 19
it in my house in Havana during the biennial, and there were international curators there with local people, and the dog of the neighborhood also who went to my house. And it was very interesting to see how people in Cuba in 97 understood what I was talking about in term of censorship, in terms of having horrible moments and sacrifices and so on. And the curators were having a very different take on that. And then I realized the symbolic was not working for me, and I had to do a big shift, and I actually considered that part of my work a mistake, which is interesting. But well, we re here to talk about everything so... Christina Yang: And Karen, what about the earlier reason and your relationship to history. I m obviously interested in that. Karen Finley: In thinking about what you re saying Tania, and thinking about artists and how we look at our work from the past and how we relate to it. But when I was seeing the work I was having it, in slow motion, speak to me as you know, memory and trying to recall, and thinking about what is happening in the world today. You know, when I go home I don t even know what s on the news. There was some type of activity that I didn t have to necessarily identify with a particular group, but that I knew that there was imprisonment, or there was difficult political times happening, and that you just felt it. But I d never seen that thing of having it in slow motion, and it just struck me because usually we re just seeing so much of this imagery on the news and everything so quickly. Seeing it now in 2014, I think that it s a classical work, and I think that you should rethink it, and I hope that you can be more patient, because I think it s wonderful. I just think it s speaking to what s going on today. Tania Bruguera: But for me it s more about how you can control as an artist what you want the other person to feel, or to think. More than feel, to think about, through feelings. And I feel that what I m doing now is more interesting because I always said that I wanted to do performance because I wanted to go into people s lives, I wanted to stay in people s memories. My ideal way of documenting performance is not a video or photo, it s just somebody s remembering what they experienced in the work, you know? And going back into permeating the real life, whatever that is, the public sphere for me is more interesting than having this kind of very clear performative act. Karen Finley: That s more theatrically based. Tania Bruguera: It wasn t... the funny thing, what I don t like about documentation is that that was super intense when it happened, and then because of the documentation, because of time and so on, it looks very theatrical. But the people who were there were, you know... Karen Finley: In the moment. Tania Bruguera: Yeah, in the moment, it was really intense, so I think that s a kind of décalage that we have problem with in the medium we re using. And on importance, I Transcript 2014 The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation (SRGF). All rights reserved. page 4 of 19
like very much when you do something and you don t know if it s important or not, or you play with this kind of like, I don t know what s on top of this... Karen Finley: But performance, my reason for going into it, it was as a political action of going against the art object. The economics of being a student in the 70s was to reject the art market, or to be subversive, or to interject a shift, so that if there wasn t going to be the object, then that was going to shift the market. But I think that with much of performance then, there was a market eventually for it, so I m always searching for ways to subvert performance. And I think the way of seeing where it can be of service, or where it can be of assistance, is something that I like to think of, that is, where to situate the artwork in terms of what s a social issue or concern. Tania Bruguera: I didn t have that relation with the market because in Cuba there was no art market. But I was really bored by everything else I tried. I tried everything, and I get bored really quickly. Karen Finley: But not having a market is a market right? In a way? Tania Bruguera: Yeah, that s true, it s more like an attitude that gave you value. But the thing is that for me when I studied at the Art Institute I got a lot of problems. I went there because it was the only place where they were teaching performance, and I had a highly problematic relationship with the way it was taught, because it was very North- American-centric. It was many years ago, it was 1999. Karen Finley: It s probably that way still. I think an American education is usually American-centric, right? Tania Bruguera: Yeah, and one of the things as a result of that MFA was that I stopped calling myself a performance artist, and I was calling what I do arte de conducta, like behavior art or conduct art. I would say it in Spanish because I wanted as kind of political attitude, force people in the art world to say it in Spanish instead of me trying to learn English for everything that I had to express my work in. So I think that was a big thing. I don t identify so much with performance, more like this kind of work. There is a tradition in performance that works with behavior, from Vito Acconci and everybody. And that s what I m more interested in, instead of the more theatrical. Karen Finley: But in America there is a politics of provocation. We were talking earlier of not using the word provocateur, but [Bruguera: I don t like it.] it challenges the Hollywood system and challenges the notions of performing, or the industries. And that is very important to me, to infiltrate these high-bred forms of what entertainment is. I think that we have seen the entertainment industry being innovated by performing artists. So I don t want to lose sight of that, because individuals go into characters or they re on stage and they have an adulation that can be an innovation to their work too. But that I think is so important in America, especially if you re living in California. There, you re infiltrating that industry. Transcript 2014 The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation (SRGF). All rights reserved. page 5 of 19
Tania Bruguera: Yeah, I understand. But for me it was very different because we don t have that industry in Cuba, and I actually think the biggest performer in Cuba is Fidel Castro, in politics. So that s what I was going against, as a performance artist. Karen Finley: And that worked! You did. Tania Bruguera: You know, he spoke for ten hours, and he has a Guinness record in that. Karen Finley: Wait, he spoke for ten hours? Tania Bruguera: Yeah, he has a Guinness record in the longest speech ever in history. Karen Finley: It s a ten-hour speech?! Tania Bruguera: Nine-something, I don t know. Karen Finley: Boy, we really are America-centric. Tania Bruguera: That interesting because I think in the United States there is a lot of self-reflection in art. It s a lot about talking about the practice itself, and about different aspects of the practice, Hollywood and identity politics and so on. But for me, in the tradition I come from, it is more about political spectacle. Like by politicians, not by people who enact certain ideas or narratives, but is the politicians themselves. That s what I m more interested in, and at some point I decided in my work not to talk about power anymore but to try to use the tools power has, to do my work. So that s why I did for example in art school, political art in Cuba for seven years, because I said okay, what is the first thing power wants to control? Education. So I said I m going to do that. So after that I said okay, what s another thing? Political parties. So I worked on that. So I think it s shifting from representing something to actually doing it, through the work. And that for me has been a very important shift. I hope we have all the pieces. Christina Yang: No, we do, we do! I think before we maybe leave performance, as we move into this question about realism, I actually do want to ask Karen about the work that s up here. I m interested in this reference to stickiness, this reference to the body and ingesting. Tania and I talked a little bit about performance and the gaze, and actually we thought it was very interesting the way in which performance in America frequently is constructed for a certain gaze, and how it s different from Tania and the way she thinks about her work. I would love to hear you talk a little bit about that. Karen Finley: This piece Shut Up and Love Me was the first performance I did after we lost the supreme court case, and I like the fact that you got that. We didn t get our grants back ever, but I was going to not correct you because it s great in terms of the mythology. I had to make a decision about thinking of what could be a way to respond creatively, and one of the ways I decided to respond was to agree with my enemies, because I was being cast as being, well, I am sexualized, but that I was obscene, that my work was indecent. Transcript 2014 The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation (SRGF). All rights reserved. page 6 of 19
So with that, I was posed in Playboy and I had my performance work be more about sexuality. And this was a ballet I did in honey, but it was all parody. And so that s what this work was about. So that I continued that sense, I performed with chocolate, but then you know, yes, there is a third act. Christina Yang: Tania did you wanna say something? Tania Bruguera: I m an anti-sexualized body right here, so it s actually the opposite. So I dunno. No, I think in my case, I did a lot of nude performances as well, and I felt when I started doing performances with my body it was like a one-on-one. You have to do that. But at the same time, I realized that once it was not about the sexualized body, it was about the vulnerability of a human being. So once I realized that I was not vulnerable any more, in that state, then I say why should I do it, I mean as a performance artist, which I have to say I love performing, isn t it the highest, like, better than anything in life, like drugs or sex? It s really good, it s really nice. Karen Finley: I don t like performing. Tania Bruguera: I love performance, I love it! But I don t do it that often so that's maybe why. So the thing is, I felt like I was very... I mean, in Cuba when I was growing up, there were very few girls let s say, doing art, and there were even fewer artists who made it as artists, as women, as female artists. So it was very hard for me, really, really hard for me to make my space. And I think one of the earliest decisions I made in my work was I want to do art, I mean not this one of course, but I want to do art, and you don t know if it s a girl or a boy who did it, like asexual work. Once I started using my body, I got into a lot of trouble because I was a female, very clearly. And when I went to Chicago, I mostly did all of this work when I was in Chicago actually, I always assume that because the female figure has been used for universal concepts like freedom, justice, et cetera, just because I was a girl I was going to embody all those concepts. And yeah, it was very harsh to be learning about identity politics and feminism after being so I mean, deciding that in Cuba and then coming here and seeing that in all the different discourses. So I decided I would not use my body any more. And I had all these people saying Oh, you re a feminist, because you use your body. And then I decided to do a performance [Displacement, 1999] where I cover myself completely in nkisi nkonde, there were nails, and you don t know who is inside. And I got that one passed, you know. But then I did Endgame from Beckett, which is something I still want to do, and everybody s like, well, you are directing men so that s also feminist. So I was like, okay, I stopped then, being in the performance. It was hard because I felt also that in the United States there were a lot of sections, you had to belong really quickly. For the first time in my life I was a Latina. I mean before, in Cuba, I was just a girl doing art, and here I come and I m a Latina, and I m all these things, and I m dealing with all these things. And it was interesting to say the least. Karen Finley: I think entering the sphere of performance and using my body at that time in the 70s, 80s, 90s, was a certain time in terms of feminism of using my body and then controlling my body, and controlling the gaze, and that was a political moment for me to Transcript 2014 The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation (SRGF). All rights reserved. page 7 of 19
be able to have that privilege, to be able to use that. Because I felt that maybe before me I had this opportunity to do that and as a female artist, and it was kind of a sense of a correction. What I be doing that work now? I think that it was important at that time but I ve done much other work too, installation work, I ve appropriated other genres so I consider it part of the body, of my using the body right, the body. But it is the work that got, some of the work, I think was what I was saying, that got me into trouble more than what people were seeing. Tania Bruguera: Interesting. Christina Yang: Why don t we look at the next slide and talk about a shift actually, and see where that s taken us. So Karen, can you talk maybe? Karen Finley: So this is the cover of my book The Reality Shows, and I have been involved in publishing and literature, and with my first book, with City Lights, which I did with Amy Shoulder, and I have worked with her on several books, and this was The Reality Shows that I did with Amy, with Feminist Press. And after 2000, after my court case, Karen Finley just got in the way. I could no longer perform in that vulnerable space anymore because people seemed to know me, I had become a public figure. And I started creating and performing within creative nonfiction, starting with the piece I did about 9/11, performing as Liza Minelli, and interpreting the day of 9/11 with other Liza Minnellis and drag artists and myself. And so for ten years I did a series of works where I d be interpreting and critiquing especially American policy through celebrity culture that I would embody, and that could be... I did The Dreams of Laura Bush or As Terry Shiavo, that would be dealing with different issues. Christina Yang: Tania, do you also want to talk about your continued works, or shift into real art, real life, the real. Tania Bruguera: Real or Reality? The Real. Okay, the thing is, as we were talking before, I think I had a shift in which I went from using my body, like my personal body and personal history and all that, into the social body. And I think that was a very important shift. And then, for example, this is a piece called Tatlin s Whisper number 5, and it was at Tate Modern and it was basically, I had two mounted police, real mounted police, coming into the space of the Tate to use all the crowd control techniques they use when there are uprisings and manifestations, disturbances, with the audience of the museum. So what I like about that piece is the fact of this being part of my work in which I don t work with actors. And for me it s very important not to use somebody who represents something, but somebody who s actually working on something. And they give a chance that they have reactions that it s impossible to teach somebody. For example, these guys were doing the exercises, the control crowd exercises, and at some point a girl didn t want to move, and immediately something happened in that policemen. It s like [clicks her fingers] and he starts being the policeman that represses people. So I think it was very interesting. You cannot teach somebody to do that, it s something that you have learned through years and years. And the other thing I liked about that piece is that it was not announced. You know, that s something I also work from the beginning, Transcript 2014 The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation (SRGF). All rights reserved. page 8 of 19
like the idea of not the ego of the artist but the idea of the authorship. I have a lot of issues with authorship and I try to disturb a little bit that or question it, and for example in this case, of course you are at the Tate, everybody s oh, the Tate, and I say I don t want my name anywhere in the museum, I don t want it announced in the program or anything, I don t want to be part of the show officially, so people did not expect anything from me. So that happened, like all of a sudden these horses came and started doing that to people, and people were like what the hell happened, and I was in the audience, because people don t know how I look, and every six months or so I changed my look a little bit. And the thing is that I was in it and it was super interesting to see people like, Oh yeah, I think I heard there was a bomb threat or something. I like the idea that Tatlin s Whisper is all about, and the piece here in the museum is part of that series. It s all about taking something from the news that we don t feel connected with, and make you feel it as your own personal experience so next time you see it you have a different emotional relation with the news. So in this case, every time you see disturbance somewhere, every time you see the horses, you know it s very symbolic. And yeah, I think people come up with a lot of subconscious reactions they have to unlearn because of the performance, and I m very interested in that in terms of the behavior of people. And then they had to disappear, like the performance was really quick, it s in three or four minutes, they go away and they only come back two or three hours later, when a new set of people is in. And for me it was very interesting because the Tate bought that piece, and it was very interesting to negotiate with them. Part of the agreement is that you have to have certain political and social tensions in order to do that piece. Like this is not one you can do whenever you want. I mean in the case of this piece you have to have special news happening all around the world, that not in your country but all around the world, that you are like okay, maybe I m also in that danger. Christina Yang: So the audience is already primed for some sort of tension? Tania Bruguera: Yeah, so for me it s very important and I call it political timing as specific. It s something that I work with and I just came up with that political timing as specific as a way to talk about it, that my work is not only specifically for one place but is also in a very clear relation with what s happening politically at the moment the piece is born, or is happening, so it is independent. Like for example if there are certain tensions in politics then the piece can happen, but if the day after these disappear then the piece could not happen, and I really like that. Christina Yang: Yeah, I think that s important because you know, there s a lot of discussion about how can you recreate performance, how can you restage it, and if you can t recreate the conditions that it was originally created in then it doesn t really have any meaning anymore. And so, then that is part of your practice that certain conditions have to exist before a performance can have meaning. Tania Bruguera: Because you rely on people s psychological state in order to understand the piece and react to the piece. The same with the piece here, like I had a lot of discussion like are we going to do it for real, or only the documentation. I say, I mean Transcript 2014 The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation (SRGF). All rights reserved. page 9 of 19
that piece upstairs you only can do in places where freedom of expression is being corrupted and being controlled. Mexico is coming, so we re doing it there. Christina Yang: Karen, do you wanna talk a bit about your relationship with images and media and your work and with The Reality Shows in particular? Karen Finley: Well, I think that I m very involved in criticizing, or in social critique, and in thinking about art as a way to examine or using sometimes parody and motions of particular female characters, and I m interested in the archetype of certain celebrities that we select and highlight, and that becomes a transference of some other engagement or issue to deal with. I guess my most recent work is I was Jackie Kennedy who I m just performing, looking at her images of trauma. Am I really being Jacqueline Kennedy? No, it s way for us to look at images of trauma and how we document images of trauma. And that interests me because I think that s... What I do like about celebrity culture is that it provides an intimacy for all of use as a way that we know those people and we have a closeness and I like to exploit or appropriate and manipulate the relationships and consciousness that we have by not being entertained primarily but to be thinking deeper. Christina Yang: Thank you. Why don t we look at another body of work from both of you which also is looking at certain histories and certain others and, Karen, do you mind continuing to talk about this project [Open Hearts, 2012]? Karen Finley: Yes. We have been talking mostly about my performance work but I ve also done installation work, a great deal of work on AIDS in the 90s, and installation work. In fact I will be performing at Baroque, this October, my collected writings on AIDS. Because of time, I m not going to go into the whole story, but this is a public memorial that I ve been working on with others at a former concentration camp, Gusen, in Austria. And I created this when I was invited to go to Austria when I was doing research and found out about how many camps were there, and a little bit more of the denial of the camps in existence, so I created this memorial for when I found out about children dying, about lethal injections to the heart, and I decided immediately to start creating a memorial. I work in ceramics, and I started working on this project called Open Heart, which was to create a memorial out of ceramics and make an abstract shape into a heart and the difference of how it goes against traditional memorial sculpture is that this disintegrates, and anyone can be making and adding to this heart. And it is now at Gusen. I go every year, maintaining it and it s part of Holocaust education and I travel and work with other people that help by adding to it. So I ve worked with survivors and families and Austrians, although I am having difficulty of course with the Austrian government for the upkeep, that s part of it. It s difficult for me to even look at because it s just an emotional work, and I just returned from Austria in May and was maintaining and cleaning it and then children, the ceremonies that we have each year at the site, by families and people from around the world come there, and I m planning to be giving it to be maintained by different people so it becomes a living memorial. Christina Yang: Thank you Karen. Tania, can you tell us a little bit about this work [Immigrant Movement International, 2011 13], and we ll lead up to your new project. Transcript 2014 The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation (SRGF). All rights reserved. page 10 of 19
Tania Bruguera: One of the things is that I ve gone through several moments in which I had to rethink my practice, and how things end up fitting, and one of the things I had to rethink is a relation with time and the experience of the work, and for example I came up with these two concepts, short-term projects and long-term projects. And the short-term projects are the kind that can happen in an art institution set up in terms of the timing, not necessarily of the place, but in terms of the expectation of how much you re going to learn in that period of time that you can devote to seeing art. So those works are more violent in a way, because you have to compress all the experiences to, okay, that person has to get this in like ten, fifteen, or twenty minutes max, so it is really kind of a violence, putting people in front of things unapologetically. And then I came up with this idea of long-term projects, which is, actually when I m trying to go into the social and political tissue and trying to change something. And that comes from very naive idea that I think art can change reality. I ve seen it happen very few times, it s extremely hard, but I ve seen that happen, and I think one of the ways this can happen is to be very patient as an artist in understanding how long it takes for change to happen. Real change, not the happy change that people are excited about, but real change is extremely hard work and sustainable activities. I never identify myself as an immigrant, because for a Cuban that means a different other complicated world of discussion, and I didn t want to assume the politics of my country Cuba with the immigrants, people who have left the country, as eliminating them as part of the conversation. So I always force the idea of I m here and I m there, and you have to deal with that. One day I was in Paris, and it was during the revolt in the banlieue, and it was the first time in my life that I was in the place where the news was happening, so I was in the streets seeing what was happening, and I went home and I was looking at the news of what I just saw. So for me it was very intense, and it was very simple, I was walking with friends and I saw a gun on the sidewalk, that was broken, and for me that was it. And I say why have immigrants been relegated to having violence as their only means to speak, either to them or by them, like there is no way. So I think that was the first time I was like okay, I feel I have to take a different route. And then I realized that what I wanted to do, the original project, was to do a political party for immigrants, to actually put them in power, because they have been used all the time as you know for political negotiations, and once people get into power they forget them. So I say, well, they can take power. I mean, we are in the global society, everybody s transnational, so let s do it. And then I tried in Paris a little bit to work on that, and then Creative Time called me. And it s amazing because I did a seven-minute talk at the Creative Time Seminary a Pecha Kucha and that gave me that piece, so that was great. After seven minutes they called me and said we d like to work with you in a project, and I said the only reason I will go back to the United States is to do the Immigrant Movement. And then I came here, and I was very struck by the fact, I mean, to be honest, I d never understood why the way political art happens in the United States has been always struggling. How did this happen? And then I went to a political party and the first meeting I had in New York was with the super high corporate lawyers in a very big office with 17 lawyers and paralegals, and me, with Creative Time people. And it was like do you want to close Creative Time? And I m like, not again! I don t want to be responsible again for something happening, Transcript 2014 The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation (SRGF). All rights reserved. page 11 of 19
and I was saying oh, of course not, and it was really scary and I understood for the first time all these problems about the way in which political art is being structured in the United States only as an educational tool but not in a way in which you can intervene in real politics, and I think for me that was extremely disturbing, and I had to process that very intensely. I like Creative Time and I called Tom [Finkelpearl], I don t know if he s here, but Tom. I mean I don t have my contacts, I knew Tom from before. And then he was the director of the Queens Museum, and I understood that it could not be done only by an art institution, that it has to be with somebody who works with community, has a long history of commitments. So yeah, so I think we came up with this idea of Immigrant Movement instead of Immigrant Party, and I learned a lot. I have to say, I was very naive, and I learned a lot through these three years about politics, about how things work, and I went to... Cuba is very interesting, Cuba is a super highly politicized place, but there is no way you can intervene in politics at all. There s no activism in the streets, there s no community organization, all the community organizations are officially done by the government, and the political party tells you what to say and what to do in community work. So for me it was very fascinating, and I m very, very happy that I learned so much about activism and what is called artivism, which is art that is activist, and at the same time is being liked and valued by people in the arts. I also defined more the idea of arte útil, which is, roughly translated, useful art, but also as a tool, because in Spanish it has a double meaning, and the idea of probably working with a group of people who have no relation with contemporary art at all, and understanding how can you make people who don t know anything about contemporary art, who don t care about contemporary art, who don t feel represented by contemporary art, part of contemporary art. So the project is not only about working with immigrants, it s more about creating a space in which people can create different culture, ethical culture, when you enter Immigrant Movement there is a different way in which people treat each other, no matter who you are, and we deal with a lot of stuff. I remember at the very beginning, Segundo, one of the guys there, I was talking to him about something and some American person, white, came and he immediately stopped talking to me and run away. And next time I m like, no we have to deal with this. You know, in this space, it s not going to happen. So I think it has been very interesting and for me the work has not been done yet. It was harsh with critics at the beginning because people killed me, that project, the New York Times guy is still suffering that one. He didn t understand anything, he thought I d been living in this house with 14 people, and that was my performance, and I m like, you don t know what performance is and I hope my work is not that simple. And in a way I think it has been very good, and I think this piece I m doing here might be the first time I m doing something that is a reiteration of the piece outside of the piece. Which I think has been really good. Christina Yang: Yeah why don t we just go look at two, well one, piece that is on view and still existing and a piece Karen that you did, I think it was a year ago, the Sext Me if You Can project. And I would love to hear both of you talk about this idea of exchange with the audience. Then Tania you can maybe talk about the actual goal of this piece. Karen, I m interested in you re-entering your performances. Transcript 2014 The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation (SRGF). All rights reserved. page 12 of 19
Karen Finley: Well, this work is called Sext Me if You Can, and I m sure some of us in this room have performed that on our own. But this piece is inspired by wanting to take away the taboo and the violence that comes out, and the fear and the shame when people discover sex from people, whether it s young people or the whole shame that s gone around in terms of seeing or discovering a sext. I think it s just a ridiculous overreaction by time and society. So in this piece what I have in each place can be done differently, site-specific. But here people commissioned me. And I had a phone and they sent me an image. And they had a space in the New Museum I m sure we could set that up here at the Guggenheim and they had their ten minutes and they sent me a picture or they would text me. And it was actually one of the most wonderful experiences, it was all completely positive, and then I made artworks inspired by the images that I received in that time frame. And those artworks were on display. And I didn t meet any of them. It was an anonymous situation, and I liked the exchange. And I liked using that history of life drawing, because that s what I m also trained in, and reusing the body, looking at the body and really using and exploiting and enhancing and reminding us that looking at the body is so much part of the art experience, and thinking about the composing that goes along with looking at the body. So that s what that work is about. But I m also interested in museums and the relationships to the public in the museum, and I ve been interested in that for many years. And right now I m having Artist Anonymous meetings at the Museum of Art and Design every other week, and we have meetings for those whose life has become unmanageable because of art, and mine has, right? Tania Bruguera: I m going to go next week. Karen Finley: And we have artist testimonials. So I m interested in using art as a way to explore other types of psychological and social issues. Christina Yang: Tania, why don t you tell us a little about The Francis Effect? Tania Bruguera: Well, you have to sign the postcard, have you ever seen it? Christina Yang: And you ll get something back in exchange. Tania Bruguera: Or not. No, The Francis Effect came about because I think it s too early to talk about the piece, but the whole idea is to actually address the Pope as a head of state and not as a head of the Church. These three or four years working on the Immigrant Movement have been very frustrating, not being able to, as an artist and as a person interested in immigration, find a solution. When you see corporations having a lot of benefits, a lot of transnational potential, people have problems with mobility, and judgment because of that. We did in 2011, something I m very proud of, together with a lot of academics, activists, and so on, a manifesto for the Migrant Movement, which I think is a very beautiful text. One of the lines says that we want for immigrants the same rights that corporations have. In this case I feel very frustrated, and I find my work very funny. Nobody else does, but I do. I have a very different kind of dark sense of humor. And in that case I feel like this Pope is also, I mean the character he has created as a Pope, is one that is talking very much to the left more than to the right. And I was Transcript 2014 The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation (SRGF). All rights reserved. page 13 of 19
fascinated by how many of my leftist friends are so happy about this Pope and so hopeful. So I feel that all the time, my work is dealing with the idea of the propaganda people made, whether a state or a politician. And what I do is a very simple exercise, I just follow their propaganda, and there you see the cracks in the, you know. So in this case I m like, oh well, if you re so good, just give immigrants Vatican city citizenship you re the head of state, you can give them citizenship, when nobody else has done that. And the other thing that is interesting for me is the Vatican is the only place I found that is a nation recognized by the U.N., if I m correct. It doesn t have a seat I think but it s recognized, like the Palestinians, and at the same time is kind of a transnational nation, because it is not set up in the piece of land so much, the piece of land is more like a symbol. But everywhere they have a church is kind of their territory somehow, you know. And they have a lot of privileges they could share. So I feel that s what I want to do I want to talk to him as a politician. I don t know, we ll see what happens. And the whole idea is we re going to get ten thousand [signatures]. We re already at 5,300, we re halfway. And I promised everybody if we get to five thousand, I m going to write the Pope. So this week I m going to start my letter to the Pope asking him for an audience. And so we can bring him all the postcards and maybe I do a performance there. Christina Yang: Maybe... Tania Bruguera: I mean that s the performance. So we ll see. Christina Yang: So this performance actually is going on with Tania everyday in front. Tania Bruguera: And with Mariana, and Francisco, and Chris. Christina Yang: And all her collaborators, in front of the museum through October 1st, which is the run of the Under the Same Sun exhibition. So Tania is focusing on getting signatures if you want a private appointment with her. Tania Bruguera: I m rather obsessed, more than focused, I m really obsessed. Christina Yang: She s obsessed with getting signatures, but if you want an appointment with her, she takes a lunch break everyday and you can talk to her longer, or on Thursdays when the Museum is closed. Tania Bruguera: But the other thing that s important for me is, what I like, when we were talking about relation with the people and talking to people and how that can you know be part of the work or something. What I really like about this project is that I m showing the work in people s imaginations. Because what I like the most when I start talking to people, seeing the reaction, sometimes they just like, they re like, Oh, wow, that s great! I really enjoy that part, instead of showing in the museum, having the person internalize the piece and staying with it, hopefully. Christina Yang: Well I think that s why I wanted to sort of leave with these images which are a return to the visual. I think from the beginning, Tania and Karen, in our Transcript 2014 The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation (SRGF). All rights reserved. page 14 of 19
conversation we have always been about the tactility of art and this notion that it does exist in the imagination, and that is the first step towards shifting perceptions and art making a change. I want to invite the audience... Karen, did you want to say something? Karen Finley: I just want to tell you what this image is. This is how I first met you. It was a psychic portrait that I did. I am psychic, that is, I do sit with people and do automatic writings and I do a reading for them. So that s been a practice that I did, which is like embodying that whole spirit, so that s what this drawing is. Christina Yang: Tania do you have anything to respond to that? Tania Bruguera: No. Christina Yang: No okay, maybe she could do a reading for you? Karen Finley: But I think it d be good, this image here that you have could you just tell everyone. Tania Bruguera: Oh yeah, it s Pangaea. It is a super-continent. It is the world billions of years before it separated into continents, and way before people thought about nationstates. I m a no-border person, so I believe in no borders and that the U.N. should start giving people passports so everybody can move around. I know it s complicated in terms of like [Christina: Paperwork?] paperwork and control and stuff, but the means to control people are there, people are being super controlled. They should let you go wherever you want. So yeah, it s the idea of reuniting again. It s kind of a happy work; it s one of my only happy works I think. I m just very strange. Christina Yang: It is an optimistic work. So I know we ve taken up quite a bit of your time this evening, but I d like to invite anyone from the audience who d like to speak to Tania and Karen and see if they have any questions about the numerous issues that we've talked about. Does anyone have any queries? Or contestations? No? Really, no questions? Wait! Could you come to the microphone please? We re recording it. Audience member: I don t know how your funding is, I m new to... Tania Bruguera: You re talking to me? Audience member: Both of you as artists, I m not sure how you are funded, but if you are ever funded by corporate sponsors, how does that fit with your ideas around being subversive around social and political issues, being sponsored by corporate sponsors? Karen Finley: First of all thank you for your question. I think I would say that by being subversive I still work in an institution, so I live in America, I have money in my pocket, I pay taxes, I m a professor, so being subversive doesn t necessarily mean that you re out of the system. I am part of the system but yet within funding I ve had issues and concerns Transcript 2014 The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation (SRGF). All rights reserved. page 15 of 19
obviously with funding, but I think that that is a good question, how do we look at it? In looking at funding and how things are coopted and work, I think about it all the time and I appreciate bringing those questions up of who s funding and who s participating, and I think that s something that both Tania and I think about when we re looking out within work. But there is sometimes people that believe that all money is dirty, and so use the money, right? Use the money like that to benefit others. But I think for now because of the time I m not going to expand on it, but I just appreciate bringing that up here today, thank you. Tania Bruguera: In my case I haven t had the luck to be sponsored by corporations, so I didn t have to deal with that so much. But I ve been sponsored and produced by Creative Time, which itself had probably people from corporations, by certain museums. But I think for me, I m a political artist, so everything I do has to be analyzed from that point of view, and for me it was very clear at some point in my work that I need to understand who the allies will be for my work. And I have different ways of working I don t always have to confront people sometimes I can go from the inside of the institution and try to change things from the inside. So I think political work as an artist can take very different shapes and forms and strategies, and sometimes they are tactics, sometimes they are long-term strategies. And I think in the case of UBS, one of the things is that, of course it was very weird that a bank does that, but at the same time, I felt it was very important for me as a Latin American artist and a female Latin American artist to be in this exhibition. And my response to be invited was to talk about immigration, because if you do a Latin American show in the United States, you have to talk about immigration. So that was my response. Karen Finley: It s beautiful. I d like to just thank Tania: Thank you. I wanted to add that I feel that you cannot ignore or escape funding or public funding for the arts when it comes to you. Everywhere there is going to be some kind of public funding somewhere, and I think that nations or governments are our largest, you know, if you wanna see it, corporation of support, and you can t escape it. Wherever you re going to be walking into, there s going to be support. And the problem happens is that these decisions of using, indiscriminately, forms of censorship that are vague, or when to apply these restrictions. So that s what exists. And I really have similar feelings as to what Tania is saying, but I work within institutions and I feel that s part of my artistic activism, which is working within the institutions as best I can. Tania Bruguera: Also I think that it s very important to understand what happens when we work with certain institutions or money sources. I think for me the most important thing is not to be manipulated by them. You know, if you feel the pressure, that they re using you and how they are using you, I think that s very important. You as a political activist have to be very aware all the time that you are working with this institution, like how the balance is going? Is your discourse distorted by the money you re getting? So I think artists doing that who are political need to be very aware of the ironies, the subtleties, of the relationship and understand that sometimes you can change people by working with them and asking people to do things because now they trust you, they can. Maybe it s not glamorous, nobody knows about it, it s done in secrecy, like nobody ever Transcript 2014 The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation (SRGF). All rights reserved. page 16 of 19