Tania Bruguera in "Legacy" - Season 7 - "Art in the Twenty-First Century" | Art21

(ambient electronic music)

(Train rattling)

(group chattering)

TANIA BRUGUERA: The strategy of the Immigrant
Movement project

is to open the door to things you already
know.

So by you coming into something you already
know,

you feel that you understand what's going on

and then, after, walk you
towards other places you don't know.

(crowd chattering)

For me, the most important moment for an art
piece

is when people are not sure if it's art or
not,

and this is the most, for me, productive moment.

(lively traditional music)

I am an artist, and I need to defend that
because I'm going beyond art,

because I'm trying to do things
that are not being seen as art.

As a political artist,
I always want my work to have real consequences.

The major goal of Immigrant Movement at the
beginning

was to rethink the political representation
of immigrants.

Why?

Because once you become an immigrant,
the first thing that is taken from you

is the opportunity to talk about politics
and to talk about yourself as a political

being.

(plucky string music)

I feel that I needed to do an immigrant movement
in the United States because

when you say, "Where do you want to live?"
to anybody in the world, they say, "United States."

(lively traditional music)

(singing in foreign language)

The people in Immigrant Movement are using art

to empower themselves and to change as people
and to change as human beings.

I'd like to welcome you to this gathering

at the end of this cycle of Immigrant Movement.

We are very happy with everything

the teachers

the people that come here

who have made

Immigrant Movement their home.

(train rattles)

Immigrant Movement has been very different
from other projects.

(horse hooves clopping)

For other pieces, I have opened different
doors.

The whole idea of the series of Tatlin's Whisper
came out of uncomfortable feeling I had with

the news,

the fact that, as viewers of the news,
we are in a way anesthetized by some of the

issues.

I had other series, but the two pieces
that survive

are Tatlin's Whisper 5 and
Tatlin's Whisper 6,

and in the first one, I wanted to bring the
mounted police

and ask them to do their normal job,

but instead of doing it with protestors,
doing it with people in the museum.

[OFFICER] Are these your children?

[VISITOR] Yes.

Could they stand with dad or with mom?

That's it, so they're not too close.

That's lovely.

Well done.

Okay, the horse is now gonna walk forward.

Could you just stand aside, please?

That's lovely.

Thank you very much.

Just wait there.

[TANIA] I always felt it was too easy
to look at the news of something happening

somewhere else

and just sit and change the channel.

And I wanted people to understand,

when you have the police coming with a horse
towards you

and telling you, "Go there, go there," how
that feels.

(horse hooves clopping)

So I think it was very interesting

when you stage repression, knowing that what
you're doing

actually is protecting people.

The second one, Tatlin's Whisper #6,

is a piece where I use all the theatrics,
the spectacle of a political event in Cuba,

which is mainly the podium
and a very simple moment of the expectation

of a speech.

And also, it was interesting that at that
point,

Fidel had disappeared from the news

but is somebody that we felt the emptiness
of the leadership.

Even if the brother has came in,
he had not done enough changes yet or enough

presence.

So the piece work in two way.

It can be a monument to the absence of a leader,
or if people intervene,

it can be actually a performance piece
where they exercise their right to say things.

You have the podium, the microphones,
and you have two people dressed with military

outfits.

Once everybody was there, we gave
200 disposable cameras,

and we announced that anybody can say
whatever they wanted for one minute.

[VISITOR 1] Millions of children are starving.

None of them are Cuban.

[VISITOR 2] Why do we need a podium to say
what eats up our soul?

[VISITOR 3] I am 20 years old.

This is the first time I feel so free.

(VISITOR 4 Screaming)

After one minute passed, whatever was happening,

they removed the person.

[VISITOR 5] What

is more

important.

to talk

[TANIA] That piece I like a lot, in part because,
for the first time, I was able to freeze power.

It was really satisfying to not having
anybody after

being incarcerated, or there is always some
repercussion.

They talk to me, whatever, but I feel like
it was well done

in the sense of very controlled.

My childhood was a little different from other
Cuban kids

because my father was a diplomat,
so I was traveling around the world,

when in Cuba, I was not permitted to travel.

Because my parents represented the country,
I was witnessing all this propaganda.

And when I was 12, everything changed

because my parent divorced
and I started living the reality of Cuba.

I think once I had a normal life
in the Cuban reality,

I started seeing the distance
between the promises and the accomplishment.

I still believe in a dream.

And as an artist, I feel that everything
that I have been trying to do

is trying to kind of force
or redirect reality towards the dream,

but with the knowledge that propaganda

is different than reality, and trying to,
in a way,

push people to be realistic about the goal

and about the political means
instead of presenting us with just a dream.

I am committed to be a Cuban.

I am committed be in Cuba and to work in Cuba.

When I do work about Cuba, I do it in Cuba,

because this is whom I want to talk to about
those issues.

Displacement.

It was a piece that was done
originally the day of Fidel's birthday.

I decided to do this piece where I dress as
a Nkisi Nkondi,

which is a figure from Congo.

People can ask for something, and each nail
is one wish,

but you have to give something back.

Like, okay, if you if you give me this,
I will do this for you.

I will bring flowers or cut my hair or whatever.

If you don't give back the promise to the
Nkisi,

it will go after you and punish you severely,

so that's why people are afraid of it.

So what happened is I dress like that,
and I was in as in a sculpture in the gallery,

and then I "woke up" and went to the streets.

And it was beautiful because it was the first
time

I went out to the street as a performer,

and I was a little nervous because I was thinking,

"People might be, 'What the hell is this?

It's not carnival time.'"

The piece was about all the things
that were promised during the revolution

that were not being fulfilled
and that we're still waiting for them.

At one point, a policeman came and said,
"What's going on?"

because we're not supposed to do that
in the street that day, wherever for that

matter.

And then a kid was saying,
"No, it is a art work,"

because he was hearing something people talking.

There were people from the arts as well.

And the policeman was quiet, and I couldn't
see it,

but I could hear he was...

He was quiet, then he said, "Oh, okay, okay.

Proceed.

Proceed."

And that was the exact moment when I realized
that art can go places other people cannot

go.

(train rattling)

We also have the meeting

for the selection of the Useful Art Committee
that...

Something like this?

Yes, it's better.

I would like us both to present it so that
you could

introduce me again and we can talk about...

I will introduce you, and you explain it.

Yes.

Perfect.

And what will you be explaining?

Just inviting them to the Useful Art Committee
and...

Let's tell them that we will be having artists-in-residence

who are also immigrants.

Exactly.

So that it's all pertinent

and that it's all about Useful Art.

So the idea is that we will be having a meeting.

We'll be serving coffee and little cupcakes.

It will be very delicious.

Buying the public's vote, I see?

No, the idea is that it will be delicious!

It doesn't have to be all business!

It's like fun business, Tania!

I know.

I have to learn that part.

(relaxed music)

INSTRUCTOR: And remember you have
those little wood chips, Brandon,

so you
have to put a lot of pressure.

I see the role of the artist
as somebody that can propose things,

whether that be creating an environment
for something to happen,

or will that be giving the tools
to people to do certain activities on their

own?

And that's the role I think we have now,

showing people this is what we can do, these
are the tools.

Take it.

The Van Abbe Museum invited me to do a solo
show.

And after thinking, I realized that it was
the best place

to bring Arte Útil to a museum and use the
opportunity

to be in a museum to do multiple things.

What is the use of a museum in the 21st century?

And challenge also the idea of a spectatorship.

How can you eliminate a spectator from a museum?

All of these ideas came together,
and then I decided to create

what I call the Museum of Arte Útil.

We have so much to cover.

It was, like, impossible, so we decided to
create a focus

on the idea of the archive.

[ANNIE] When Tania came up with this idea
of making a Museum of Arte Útil

it immediately brought up the question, what
do museums do?

Do they make history?

Do they brand a movement?

Are they the authoritative voice that says,
"This is minimalism, this is performance art,

this is Arte Útil"?

So we thought, "Okay, how would we do that?

How would we gather together this archive?"

The fact that we call it Arte Útil,
the intention was to be in Spanish.

The word "útil" in Spanish has two connotations,
whereas in English it's only one.

The two connotations are
the benefit you can get out of something,

something that can be useful to you.

"Útil" is also a tool.

"Un útil de trabajo" is a tool, a working tool.

[ANNIE] You saw that facade outside,
and this wall cuts through all of the spaces.

It seemed necessary to us
to break with the pattern of the white cube.

It's totally a theatrical device,
contradiction number one in the show,

because we kind of really tried to avoid metaphor,
symbols in our selection of works.

We tried to think about a practice of art
history

that is not about the metaphor.

It's rather about generating a kind of engagement
that needs a user and an initiator.

To do this project was a team effort.

I wanted the project to grow naturally.

I didn't want to come and impose an idea.

For me, it was very important
from the beginning, as an artist,

I should not be the author of the project
but the initiator,

which is one of the categories we use about
Arte Útil.

[ANNIE] We had Laurie Jo Reynolds on a residency here with her cat, contained in the tents

most of the time.

But she is an extraordinary artist
who campaigned for 10 years

to close down a high security supermax prison
in the states.

Her work has been archived
over the last six weeks here in the museum.

She just left yesterday.

The biggest project here is the Honest Shop.

This shop works in a really successful way
in Britain.

The shop has nobody running it except for
the participants.

Anybody who wants to contribute to the shop,
there's a series of rules.

They have to be amateur, creative people,

so they can't be professional artists
or professional designers,

things that you feel that are kind of creative
and that you do as an amateur hobby

that you would like to sell.

♪ Green hills I like the firestone ♪

♪ I like to walk alone ♪

♪ do waka do waka do waka do waka ♪

♪ I like the flowers ♪

♪ I like the daffodils ♪

♪ I like the mountains ♪

♪ I like the green hills ♪

♪ I like the firestone ♪

♪ I like to walk alone ♪

(train rattling)

[TANIA] I'm very happy that an immigrant movement
has happened

and is working very nicely.

I think the culture of the place have been
established.

The principals of the project have been established.

[INSTRUCTOR] When we do this excercise
our circulatory system gets activated

and we activate the entire body.

[TANIA] Once we gave the project to the community,
the project doesn't need me, which I'm very

happy with,

because I think part of the homework
that socially engaged art have to do

is try to rethink the way in which the project
survive

beyond the artist's presence.

[INSTRUCTOR] Now we raise our arms, palms
up.

This exercise helps us re-energize ourselves.

This excercise at the same time

stretches the organs.

The liver

the stomach

the intestines

They are all doing their own Zumba right now.

[TANIA] I don't see socially engaged art
being preserved by three photos and a video

in a museum.

I see real good, socially engaged art and
political art

live beyond the life that the artist has given
it

by being taken by other people
who are reproducing the models,

changing those models, being inspired by that.

(lively music)
(singing in foreign language)

[TANIA] The art that we should be doing today in the

21st century is art that is not for the museum.

It's art for the street and people's life.

(lively music)

(ambient electronic music)

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Century"

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(ambient electronic music)