InBound- OutBound - Reassessing The Diaspora -Edge Zones International Exchange Projects

Edge Zones goes Global

On March 25th through April 4th, Charo Oquet, the director of Wynwood's Edge Zones took a group of artists to her furthest “edge” yet She took them to Santo Domingo, under the umbre la of a project called “Reassessing the Diaspora ” There, the artists, mostly re gning from Miami, were invited to take hold of the cultural p aza in and around the Museum of Modern Art of Santo Domingo

The artists created performances w th materials they found in Santo Domingo creating “trance plants;” “mode cities;” political statements on the re ationsh p between Hait and Santo Domingo; confluences of culture

All the while, the artists tried not to impose themselves but to create a dialogue with the people of what, to many of them, was a fore gn culture n a strange city Soon those strangers, however, became participants and the plaza f i l e d w i t h t h e l i f e o f d a n c e , m o v e m e n t , performance, painting, drawing, sculpture, and cultural exchange.

The group then went on to Puerto Plata on the opposite end of the island, where they exper enced much of the same within a very different geography. What remains is the images they took, the interviews they conducted, the videos of performances, and the conversations that developed from them both with the pedestrian citizen and with the cultural elite of the DR

Edge Zones dedicates itself to pushing borders and tearing apart edges, becoming in and of itself the avant-guard w thout a border. It makes sense that Oquet has extended her vision to a global perspective

San To Do Min Go 20

Telling time with the physica ity of nature has always been a part of my play and work Knowing when to wake up is determined by phototrophic rhythms or other cyclica events like the b eating of milk goats that need to be milked or mangoes that have ripened

A dry, almost abandoned fountain with a round foundation is a focal point of the grounds announcing the Diaspora Museo de Arte Moderno north entry To echo this I found a plastic hula- hoop at market to use as a stencil The paint was supplied by the ample amount of fuchsia colored bougainvillea found nearby in vacant lots The circles of blossoms formed the 12 dials of the clock and the upr ght fountain e ement the indicator of the time.

50 Bush Woodoo Dolls were made in response to the 2004 U S presidential election This project has been collecting responses to Bush‚s policies and actions around the world. Other places have been Lithuania, Brussels, Germany, Boston, South Florida, Georgia, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic

Here in Miami, Florida the evidence of Santeria is often seen with dead chickens in intersect ons of roads Wh le visiting the market in Santo Domingo, Santeria is al ve and well and it was fitting that the Bush Woodoo project visit one of the places that practices this hybr dized rel gion This project reflects or conflates the ocal perceived Caribbean religion and the powerlessness one feels when your candidate does not win or a sense of loss when horrifying policies are implemented. The viewer can feel more empowered by writing and applying their thoughts, fantasies or opinions. I consider these kinds of ceremonies, cleansing, cathartic and most importantly empowering for the practit oner

The work is interactive and invites the audience to apply curses or blessings with pins to the dolls The viewer can fee more empowered by writing and app ying their thoughts, fantasies or opinions and making them visib e The audience was caught in the perverse humor of each part cipant’s response The participants are invited to e ther leave their notes on the installation or purchase one to take home to perform anything they want

The two-foot h gh Bush Woodoo Dolls are posed in the cowboy stance favored by its model At the crotch is a tiny brain silk screened in pink ink This is to ndicate how W thinks He shoots from the hip or from his crotch The cowboy boots have Jesus‚ face carved into the leather pattern On the back of the dolls, is a quote by the winning candidate announcing: I‘ve earned capital in this election, and I’m going to spend it.

Bush, Woo Doo

Caryana

I considered the first ser es of my performances in the Dominican Republic in 2006 to be cleansing ritua s I intended to use them to ward off ev l and to attract joy, love, human pleasure, and most importantly to inspire art and music In a sense, they were “Love Spells” or “Hechizos de Amor”

Trance Plant:

The Caribbean's diaspora syncretic theologies and healing practices became the impetus that inspired t h e l o o k a n d t h e a t t r i b u t e s o f t h e c o s t u m e a n d performance entitled “Trance Plant” The body sculpture felt something like a girdle with roots, and was meant to symbolize the magica girdle worn by the Roman goddess Venus with attributes of the Yoruban deity Ochun I was interested in the simi arities and juxtapositions of the two archetypal figures I repeated this performance and others in separate locations During these performances painted on my body with colorful, metallic, and reflective body-paints and make-up Because the costume was much more mobile than my

previous works, I had the opportunity to adapt to new environments, and to change the paint and postures The work itse f grew and morphed over the course the week, with additions of fabrics, musical instruments, and adornments found in the different environments that I encountered The metamorphosis of the sculpture, as well as the body became a metaphor for wander ng, Exodus, germination, and the human abil ty to adapt to change

Attributes of the Costume/Performance: Peacock Feathers, Satins, Faux Furs, Jewels, Fans, Combs, Mirrors, Go d and Copper Sparkles, Venus Fly-Traps, Roots, Vines, Gold Bells, Sea-Shells, Honey, and C nnamon

Colors:

The colors are especially Red and Pink, but a so Gold, Copper, Magenta, White, Violet, Green, Blue, Chartreuse, Brown, Periwinkle, Pumpkin Orange

Number: Five and all mu tiples of Five!

Trance Plant Performance

Despite having lived in Puerto Rico as a child, and knowing Spanish, I was a bit disoriented upon arriv ng in Santo Dom ngo with a sitespecific project on the grounds of the Museum of Art as my goa Large draw ngs are my metier but a request to draw on the walls was met with incredul ty So, I went hunting in a local mercado for inspiration

I bought yards of waxy plastic table cloth materia printed on the sh ny side with designs that mixed 50's and Latino sensib lities- bright color and homey, fruity, imagery Turning it over, I drew shapes from my notebooks and cut them out, form ng a lacey, whacky design that I taped to the round fountain and sculpture in front of the museum By the next morning, it was gone and nobody knew what happened to it!!!!! Ephemeral installat on

I settled myself on the front steps of the museum and sculpted miniature figures made of self-hardening clay that I'd brought in my suitcase These I placed on the lovely cool rocks near the entrance I mixed black and white c ay They were marbleized creatures c a m o u f a g e d a n d s e c r e t i v e a m o n g t h e flamboyant works by many of the other artists

La Chocolatera

El Colectivo Chocolatero es un movimiento sin manifiesto, que propone un arte con otra función, otras relaciones y estructuras En lo referente a las acciones colectivas, un arte colectivo en todo el proceso artístico y en la paternidad de la obra. Existiendo siempre diversidad de posiciones frente a los conceptos c e n t r a l e s q u e i m p u l s e n a l C o l e c t i v o . L a convivencia como obra, la función del Colectivo en la relación artistico-social, la revalorización de nuestras vidas íntimas, nuestras relaciones sociales y de tipo geográficas Lo que exigen los nuevos tiempos a cada uno de nosotros es crear obras que establezcan las bases para un modelo distinto; n u e s t r a s o b r a s e x c l u y e n p o r l o t a n t o , a intermediarios ya que no somos ni directores, ni actores, ni autores desprendidos, nos basamos en nuestras vivencias y en el contexto que nos rodea En este sentido es importante reconocer y respetar los distintos esfuerzos, así como encontrar en donde se unen nuestros intereses como colectivo. La liberación de los hábitos, de las normas y condicionamientos, son actitudes fundamentales para lograr objetivos en conjunto

La Cho Co La Te Ra

Rewind Ritual- Rituals of passage toward a new media in the Dominican Republic

Until the end of the nineties performance in the Dominican Repub ic was, almost in ts tota ity, an alien discipline in which three cats and a dog were used only as a s deshow at openings for painting exh bitions Only a small group of multimedia artists, including Geo Ripley, Martín Lopez, and Charo Oquet, conducted independent performance art in which artistic strategies njected meaning nto the final work Geo Ripley with painting, Mart n Lopez with photography, and Charo Oquet with installation, managed to integrate performance i n t o t h e i r m o r e c o n v e n t i o n a p r o posals

At the time, the documentation of these actions with cameras and the creation of art action through a camera were almost nonexistent These performances and works existed in a per pheral area of the art world, where access to equipment was limited and art-wor d writing and d scussions had limited references to such projects

The national academ c menu was not any r cher than the possible local references The art schools, until recently, were focused on institutiona romantic modern sm Which we are still trying to shake off today Performance and its masters were treated in a slight manner with only a one-hour workshop offered once every two years To all these ills, which fell on performance, we must also add the deficiency of a theoretical concentration in our academic world, scaffolding without which an eminently conceptua art cannot be articulated In this landscape; self-teaching under the protection of a network of initiations, social gatherings, small private librar es, parties and coincidences, foreign lovers that send monographs, v deos and magazines, the Internet and faith, was the only remaining option, even for the graduates of the Fine Arts Academy

In 1999, the terms performance and video action were limited and inorganic in the Dominican context I bought my first digital camera and with it I documented my sma l daily actions The immed acy w th which the new apparatus allowed me to capture and reject my body permitted me a different access It was more crit cal and various, dislocating my knowledge of normal space, time, and language. It cou d be asserted that the small camera was my teacher, my studio, and also that which made possible the quantum leap. This was a leap

that was occurring in the work of many other emerging artists in the third world, who began to experiment with similar devices

These projects destined to be projected dur ng an electronic party or to be shared in small art spaces in Mexico, Puerto Plata, and NY, made me ass milate video-creation and performance from a strange, almost biological familiarity (The same one that is now shared compulsively by the thousands of people that post daily in You Tube, one that aligned me to a visual deconstruction, whose voluptuousness has infected my writing.)

I w a n t t o d i s c u s s t h s j u m p t o w a r d s t h e n o nconventional arts in the Dominican Republic in terms of a contemporary artist whose recent artistic path saved the country from decades of conceptual and formal lethargy. The work that I am going to focus on, Eliú Almonte's "the Goat Sacrifice" (2001), manages to be placed with n a tradition and dissolve it

I had known Eliú Almonte through his installations, his co lages and the impressive co lection of more than 30 colors of Chuck Taylor's Converse sneakers he had managed to amass from the Puerto P ata flea markets He is a cultural activist, midnight cowboy, and creator of the CHOCOPOP (first festival specialized in performance in the Dominican Republic) Yet it was not unt l I saw the video "The Goat Sacrifice", that I was honored and thrilled to know him This piece, a ritual that initiates a new per od n the visua arts in the country, is the simple and effective exploration of a subject It is so effective that it has permeated a great part of Dominican discourse

Let me describe the work itself A machete penetrates a b ack goat chosen from a meadow; the head of the goat is cut off We see El ú's image t w i c e i n t h e v i d e o - - o n e i n w h c h h e a p p e a r s carry ng the goat on his death journey, in the other his hand ho ding a leg of the animal He prefers to stay behind the goat, but not like a passive spectator. Instead he makes the camera something more mag cal, the nonexistent sacrificial stone in the very green meadow on which the victim rests. The piece works, in a cultural heritage reading, like a

generational relay race of the already ritualistic and consecutive representation of the great Dominican sacrifice of the XX century; the death of the primordial male goat, the tyrant Rafael Leonidas Trujil o, n cknamed "The Goat" But Eliú does not remain like one of the infamous multitude of artists who have made their small tribute to the execution and to the dictatorship (one and the same face of a coin), his video d sassembles l i v e , t h e m y t h a n d q u a l f i e s a n e w m a g i c a lt e c h nological discourse that reduces the monster to bones The very close video shots, as in a porno clip, reveal a sophisticated commentary on the compulsivity w i t h w h i c h t h e e v e n t h a s b e e n represented on pages and on canvases for 40 years Eliú's work also may be alluding to the g e n e r a t o n s o f D o m i n i c a n a r t i s t s w h o h a v e s a c r i f i c e d truth for a genuine search for the lame and servile official version, instantaneous repetition phenomenon ad infinitum since the times of the regime.

This repetit on becomes flesh at the end of the video, when the camera zooms n on the skull of the goat resting on a shining bowl at the same time that we hear the starting of the motor of a nearby auto This image repeats itself several times zooming in and out. By doing th s it estab ishes the possibility of a new distance, from which the bodiless goat, placed on a metal bow , turns the Dominican patriarcha trauma into a clinical specimen, diagnosed and awaiting a final cure

The fast rate that the tools of digita reproduction allow images to be consumed and discarded has worked like a time machine in our marginal areas, where the artists sharpened by the toils which the new medium demands, are as comfortable in the new media as in the solitude of the present body T h e f u n c t o n a l i t y o f t h e v d e o - a c t i o n o r documented performance piece in a country where witnesses are for sale and where machines were for a long time pr vileges of a minority s obvious A new itter of Dominican creators find themselves immersed in the exploration of this discipline, resuming discuss ons as old as bread and cheese, but more importantly, prov ding new so utions to old problems, populating local spectators with the necessary - What the hell is this?

[R ta Ind ana Hernández]

Dulce Verguenza was conceived over a del cious breakfast of Mangu and café con leche in Puerto P ata with Charo Oquet, David Vardi, Pip Brandt, and Duane Brandt It was performed at La Chocolatera, an abandoned chocolate factory, and expanded around the city This spontaneous and exciting collaboration came together quickly, as we used all natural materia s found at the local market. We purchased cinnamon, molasses, cocoa powder, a paste made from sweet dried fruits, and other colorful spices Next we walked towards the butcher, “la carniceria” to purchase beautiful white chicken feathers

Charo and Pip made a beautiful earth toned painting on my body At first I felt almost as

if I would suffocate in a cloud of cinnamon I did dare not open my eyes When I was at my stickiest, they covered me in the white f e a t h e r s T h e r e s u l t w a s a n e p h e m e r a textured and great sme ling painting on my body, I am sure that I looked a walking Jackson Pollock painting with hair on top, tied up in cinnamon sticks and feathers stuck to it

At the end I was coaxed into jumping on the back of a motoconcho, which is a motorcycle taxi to parade my decorated body around town The group performance was very intuitive, and seemed a lot like cooking The way that th ngs came together seemed very spiritual, yet earthy to me

Dulce Verguenza, a Collaboration at La Chocolatera: Performance