documentary film “Paris is Burning” (1990) surveys the cultures produced around the dance competitions in night clubs during the mid-1980s in New York, played out by African-American, Latin, gay, or transgender communities, the majority of them men, grouped together in different families or “houses”: the members of the clan LaBeija, the Pendavis, the Duprée, or the Xtravaganza. In the documentary, through the different situations and above all through the juries united around the dance floor to award the different prizes,30 different terms are displayed, and more importantly, questioned, that seem to have a very specific meaning but which, however, acquire a weight, conceptualisations, an application, and ramifications that are very different. Concepts such as “family”, “mother”, “house”, or “community”, which figure prominently in the conversations of the persons in the documentary, but also in those of the audience, rupture aspects that seemed to be fixed, understood, and accepted. A questioning taken up as well by Luis Jacob in his work “Flashlight” (2005). Using a video, several panels, and a model, he exhibits an installation realised in the Sculpture Garden in Toronto in the spring of 2005. In this garden he placed a series of deck chairs with bicycle pedals connected to an electric generator (transforming the visitors’ exercise into energy) and several solar panels which turned a mirror ball and lighted an LED sign where one could read “Everybody’s Got a Little Light Under the Sun”. This message was taken from the song of the same title by the group Parliament Funkadelic, whose motto was “free your mind and your ass will follow”. This statement established a relationship between the installation as a whole and the aspirations for self-transcendence and social union embodied in Funk culture from the 1970s, under a festive personal interaction. That is to say, just as important in powering the project are the sunlight and the generator, as well as the disposition of the visitors and their pedalling, or the knowledge of the social
30. Diverse prizes that range from the best hairstyle or the best dance to specialisations such as the best costume in the category “preppy-East Coast-masculine way”.
projects initiated by Parliament Funkadelic, shaping a common project, a political agency.
4. Having fun is alright, but what is really important is that they see you having it The project “Flashlight” is augmented with a series of panels where different images of collective, utopian, social and political projects of the last 40 years, ranging from scenes in a discotheque to proposals for a city powered by efficient and sustainable energy. Panels not very different from those in the project “Augustus” (2004-2010) by Red Caballo, a work that interprets the connection between experiences denominated “macro” (those that configure a political, economic, and administrative context at a general level) and those “micro” (the everyday, the immediate), and how both can be disputed by means of diverse symbolic actions and components. Their photographs document the experiences of a series of summers travelling through Europe and the north of Africa where issues such as the arrival of democracy or the extension of the European Union are visible, but addressed from a near perspective, questioning the uniqueness or the supposed consistency of borders in order to formulate a cartography very different from that marked by physical boundaries. Thus, music festivals, Erasmus scholarships, discount airlines, the happy hour at certain bars, or the InterRail transport network are converted into the tools and the principle content of their project. In it one can observe the dramatisation and staging of individual and collective situations, such as getting ready to go out, or putting on makeup before going to a concert, something proximate to what Luc Sante said about the New York music scene of the 1970s: “Having fun is alright, but what is really important is that they see you having it”31. Transforming the personal into something shared and dramatised.
31. SANTE, Luc (2011): Mata a tus ídolos. Translated by Zulema Couso. Libros del K.O., Madrid. 39