photos: Latin Love by Clemente Padin
CHAT with CLEMENTE PADIN
and Filipe Diaz of ONO
(thanks for Filipe's much appreciated translations)
Zoe and I wake up early to the sounds of congregating
Youth for Christ hotel guests leaving Dayz Inn in their
yellow school bus with signs in the windows:
"Honk if you Love Jesus".
Our hotel certainly keeps entertainment quotient high;
the night before the downstairs bar was surrounded
by 6 police squad cars assisted by a helicopter
with a sweeping search light JUST LIKE in Miami Vice re-runs.
Note: Stay out of Albert's Bar unless you're looking for rough
trade. The hotel restaurant, on the other hand,
serves a terrific breakfast special and the waitresses
are FABULOUS!
At the gallery, Zoe preps her tea tray
for today's 1st performance of DEDICATED TO YOU
while I cut up the marinated pork from Clemente's
performance last night. I am adding veggies,
flour, herbs & more garlic when Filipe & Clemente
arrive for our chat.
Clemente is a 67 year old artist from Uruguay.
He names himself as "poet, graphic
artist, performer, videomaker, multi-media and
networker". His first discipline was and is poetry.
He has been making performance art since 1970.
Earlier this week, I watched Clemente Padin's DVD
documenting 6 of his performances most from
the '80's. Many of his performances employ
his cutting, hacking, or beating meat.
To me, since the meat was beaten/cut
without the respect a butcher or a doctor would use
toward flesh, it felt like torture/violation or
a violent execution. I said his performance, although
centred in his experience in Central America with
The Disappeared, also resonated for me in current
political world conflicts. I asked him if my interpretations
of the meaning of his aktions was within the area of his intent.
Clemente said yes, this was within his intent, and that
for him meat was what was what is "essential"
of the human body. He said all his art was political
and about human rights. Certainly his work is centred
about life, struggle & human rights in Central America
but also for the whole world.
I found Clemente's performance to be a combination of
"classic" akition-based gestures as well as ritual.
The black hood reminded me of Alastair Mac Lennan.
Carolee Schneeman's "Meat Joy" crawled across my
screen-memory as he was beating the meat.
His use of "der Kunst unt Material" reminded me
of art from the performance community of Le Lieu.
However, the whistling, candle lighting and prostration
felt very different to me and was my favourit part.
I felt it was ritual and asked him if he thought of it that way.
Clemente said yes and that there was a new
awareness in Latin America of the place, aktions and art
from aboriginal peoples. It was this shifting awareness
and also it being absorbed into performance that was
what is "new" in both his and in Latin American
performance art practice.
I also asked what made his work/aktions different than
Populist Theatre of Latin America -- the political, agit-prop,
pure gestured work in the street, in union, in mines, etc.
He explained it was both the form of performance
art as being slightly different from theatre but mainly that
performance art was just him and his body without pretending
to be anything/anyone else.
When I asked CLEMENTE if he had questions/statement
about performance that he would like me to put on this blogg,
he replied that it was important to him to bring Latin American
performance to the outside world and see what it means to
people not living in Latin America; he also said it was good
to make art friends around the world and he was having
an excellent time ata Visualeyez.
Clemente and I started "on the wrong foot"
(a peculiar English idiom & oddly a dance expression)
because we clashed over his and my definition
of performance art practice especially in regards
to Tanya Lukin-Linklater's work WOMAN AND WATER.
But over this week, we have gone
from clash to tolerance to respect.
photo: La Dragu cleans to exit.
