THE WHITE SERIES
\n\nHAUS DER KULTUREN DER WELT 2009/BERLIN GERMANY
\n\nDIET GALLERY 2008/ MIAMI-US
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\n\nOne text to define the multiplicity of a body, the necessity to actually conquer one
\n\nMaria Jose Arjona
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\nThe “body” is not a word and can’t be defined as one. It is, if we what to identify it, the expression of all the definitions contained in all words.
\nThis phrase could actually explain the “White Series” as well as my recent work, in its most complex implications in relationship with the body and its inference regarding language. This unit, the “white series”, is a play of words which implies a different way of understanding language to better release the expression or expressive force of the body from single definitions. What I want to state with this, is the universal meaning of the body itself and the need to free words from specific delineations in order to be free. The body as the space from where we experience life, functions and happens in terms of actions and reactions; every process that takes place in the body, including rational practices, is a result not of a definition but of the assimilation of stimuli, which in return is the intersection of different phenomena. Language as we use it, cages that experience as it expresses verbally or written that same experience; words have become segments composing the line that further on will create the limit which circumscribes and address certain characteristics, attaching and attracting with these definitions, individuals who think and feel that those descriptions communicate what they are and what they believe within the same boundary (a save place). The body, in opposition to this system and ironically living in it, talks through organs, plays with images, sounds, smells, textures, blends everything, reacts, absorbs and transpires, giving as result fluids, which are not singular on their composition but bundles of bodily experiences. These fluids in a metaphoric way are all the possible meanings and forces of single particles as it is the body.
\nHow we understand something defines our position in a group, or what I call boundary/limit and under this equation, we divide ourselves by gender, identity, sexuality, nationality etc…It is my intention with the white series to dissect words in order to experience all their possible definitions instead of attaching the body to a word or in reverse, a word to talk about the body. By releasing the word of its singularity and freeing it by addressing it through its multiplicity, the body transgresses it’s own circumscription or “local identity” to better address issues pertaining to all of us; issues that can alternate and intermingle with each other as it is the case of “Untitled”, the first performance of the series. I don’t want to define, or even write about the “issues that pertain to all of us”; it is a cliché by now. I want to describe a little each piece and give some “clues” working as “stimuli” for the reader or viewer to continue. I don’t want to be attached to my identity, to what I might find right or wrong (everything is), I don't want to be attached, even, to my first language…I don’t want to talk. I want the body to express, act and react, I want to play in order to become all the meanings, all words, all possible languages, a common vocabulary; which it would be to say: Become multiplicity, become an intensity.
\n\nSHORT DESCRPTION OF THE PIECES
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\nUntitled
\n(On violence)
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\nIn the same space used for “what? “, the body blows soap bubbles into the space. The bubbles have a transparent coloration and after exploding they leave a red stain on the surfaces they come in contact with. The performance pretends to cover the space of red stains as if an explosion had occurred, leading to different interpretations on the word violence and further, addressing it as a force capable of permeating every level of culture and transforming not only the topography but people’s behavior.
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\nRemember to Remember
\n(On memory)
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\nThe red space is again returned to its white appearance by writing repeatedly “remember to remember” with white chalk over the red stains. While writing, a video of a tattoo artist, writing this same words on my back (permanent mark) are projected into the floor of the gallery creating an extension of my skin into the space. The space that receives the effect of the action, is then transformed into memory, a present memory, that can transform the future as the whole project evolves.
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\nKaraoke
\n(On French legacy to western civilization)
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\nFrom a more commercial point of view and circumscribed within the definition of performance created in the first piece, this piece is about voice, sound and the way sound builds an image that we can associate to different memories or feelings. The karaoke will only loop one song from Edith Piaf and I will sing this same song until my voice fades completely. The machine keeps performing while the body is silent by it.
\n(Describe the dress in relationship with the space)
\nDress becomes the video-skin
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