EXTRACTS FROM THE PRESS DOSSIER: INTERVIEWS FOR THE 8th INTERNATIONAL ISTANBUL BIENNIAL #1

used for 8th International Istanbul Biennial,
curated by Dan Cameron
(both in English and Turkish)
© Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts, Istanbul, June-August 2003

THE TELEVISUAL TASTE OF BRUGUERA’S WELCOMING TEA
AN INTERVIEW WITH TANIA BRUGUERA

Basak Senova: Cuba is always the starting point to read your works and performances. Nevertheless, the concerning issues constantly overlap with its doubles and/or variations all over the world. Especially after taking the conceptual grounding of Documenta 11 and Venice Biennial into consideration how do you consider the Istanbul Biennial and Dan Cameron’s approach -especially in connection with the current social and political climate of Europe?

Tania Bruguera: It is true that Cuba has being a starting point for reading my work. But in the last few years, Cuba in my work has being less of an existential scream and more of a place where I see contradictions clearer that in other places, like in a laboratory. Those contradictions are not the sole property of Cuba; they can be found in other societies as well. My previous approach to Cuba as a starting point may have been simply because I knew that reality better; it was home, after all. But that reality has lately been devastated and not that fertile; it may even be exhausted for me, at least for now.

In recent years I've being travelling, with my eyes wide open, and I think my newer work actually owes a debt to other places I've been to, like Germany, India, or more recently, Turkey. In these places and others I've found interesting associations and situations as well as ways to construct new metaphors and materials for pieces I'm working on now.

It may have to do with several things. One, of course, is the way people see you as a Cuban when you travel. They want you to be an ambassador for information they don't have. That causes problems because sometimes I have to balance their opinions for good or bad; generally, everything is in black and white, because for many people Cuba is not a place but an idea, where a lot of lost pieces of the puzzle reside. More than anything, it becomes a political position, and a passionate one (with Cuba everything becomes emotional). Other reasons are more personal. Sometimes it may be that I'm resolving some issues with Cuban society that implicates my personal decisions. Also, at first, I was afraid to talk about other realities where I didn't belong. I've seen that happen in Cuba, foreigners who come for a week and after that they write an article telling us, Cubans, and the rest of the world what we are like, or sometimes artists go for a week or even less and do art work about Cuba without understanding anything. I didn't want to be like that in other places.

My work has always tried, from the beginning, to be more humanistic than political. I mean, I'm of course interested in political situations, but the way I wanted to deliver this is always from the point of view of the impact of those situations on a human being. I think that has allowed me to make an easier transition from Cuba as a departure point to other places.

Documenta was by far the best art exhibition I've ever been in. This has a lot to do with the incredible efficiency for which Germans have deservedly earned their reputation but also because of their sense of responsibility. Let me tell you that, without the volunteers, my piece would never have happened. They were absolutely amazing and never missed shifts. That also had a lot to do with Okwui Enwezor, the Documenta director. It was easy to connect with him since we had worked together before in the Johannesburg Bienale, but most of all because we are both very interested in political issues. I really like how he works as a curator. I always remember that in both, Johannesburg and Documenta, he visited each artist daily to check every detail himself and make sure things were working. This is something as an artist in a big show you appreciate.

During the process of conceiving my piece, he was constantly communicating with me directly and we discussed every detail. I really liked that because it was a real collaboration. In the process I had to think through more of what I was doing, and I grew as a result. Moreover, Documenta for any artist is a challenge, it makes you think big; you dream of being part of a piece of history, to have a platform from which to deliver your ideas and that they will actually be heard, and maybe even have some impact. But on top of that, I owe Okwui for opening my eyes. At the start, he sat me down and, when he commissioned the piece, the message was clear: I needed to think bigger and look at the world, and work from there. I will always be grateful to him for this. I was also very lucky because Stephanie Mauch, the person responsible for a big group of artists that included me, really understood my work and was very helpful.

Venice was another story. It came before Documenta, so it was the most important show I had been in to that point. Working with Harald Szeemann was also a great and unique experience. Seeing him work was a lesson. His passion for art combined with his practical experience of how art works for audiences. His complete control in the middle of the hurricane that was putting up that show in Italy.

Turkey, so far, I was telling Dan Cameron the other day over the phone, is precisely a combo of these two places, Germany and Italy. So far they have been extremely professional, responsible, respectful with the artists' work, working every little organizational detail -- like the Germans -- and, at the same time, they are as charming and enthusiastic as the Italians. I think it's the best combination possible. Let me tell you, I'd come back here any time for another art project. I got a lot of inspiration for future works while I was here for a site visit.

This biennial is also special for me because of Dan. He is a curator I met in 1994 in Cuba. I had no idea who he was. We did an interview for an article on Cuban art for Art and Auction. At the time I had just graduated from art school, but he was very respectful. Later on, I saw his show "Cocido y crudo" in Spain, an exhibition that was very important for me. This is the first time I'm showing with him. I'm really happy because I respect him a lot and think that he is a person who takes risks with young people and who has a clear point of view in his shows. I also think he is the one curator, whom I know, who, without being Latin American, has worked the most with Latin American artists and has had the most impact. He is totally committed to Latin American art, beyond fashions or flavours of the months. He sees Latin American art not as an exotic practice but as part of the whole discourse in the art world.

Documenta is indeed the one exhibition where people kind of go to see the proposals of the moment, the vanguard, the possible future orientation of the art world. It was like a thermometer or crystal ball. The work is what really counts. Documenta gave all of us the same opportunity, the well-known and the less known, and same space. Venice I found to be more related to the market (maybe it was just the one I was in). It was easier to see which artist had the best galleries by the size of the work and the money put into it. Turkey has an advantage, being from "the margins" (although it is not really), and has the opportunity to take more risks and show a different point of view. In my experience so far it's a serious event, and with Dan Cameron and Emre Baykal leading it, I think it's definitely become an indispensable art world event now.

BS: And how art operates with and for these situations?

TB: These venues are really good for exposure of the work and to legitimise artistic discourse. The most immediate impact of being part of these events is that, later, you can be more radical and experimental in your work, since you have been "chosen", you have the "approval" of the mainstream, you're a "real" artist to others.

Often these shows have a theme and it is interesting to try to respond to those in your work. Sometimes the result is really surprising and you can discover a new edge to your work.

BS: What do you think about the performative aspect of this work?

TB: I've been trying lately to incorporate the audience in my work more and more. Usually they just walk through the piece --Untitled (Havana 2000), Untitled (Kassel 2002)-- but their reactions are part of the meaning of the piece. I'm planning a new piece in which the audience is the performer in a more evident way.

In "Poetic Justice," rather than performative, there's a participative involvement in the production of the piece, from the people to whom I gave the tea to drink to those who come to stare at and smell the finished artistic product. I think this is a more subtle (the aesthetics) and, at the same time, a very strong piece (especially because of the documentary fragments I used).

BS: Last but not least, I would like to ask a late question about your work in Documenta 11: In comparison with your former performances and installations and also your work in the Istanbul Biennial, the interaction of the Documenta work seemed to be totally different. Generally, your performances and works position the audience as the witnesses: The heaviness of witnessing a violent but passive act; the difficulty to digest what you see and what you think. So, you were performing intensive silent-acts as strong towards what is being ideologically consumed, what is being experienced and the ignorance. But in Documenta 11, as if the act was more aggressive; it was physically absorbing the audience rather than being symbolic. So, was it a kind of reaction towards the tentative political stance of Documenta 11?

TB: The involvement of the audience in the Documenta piece was crucial. The fact that it was German volunteers carrying the "loaded" guns, the fact that more than half of the audience was German -- those were very important elements. Here the audience was, at the same time, witness and victim and perpetrator. I think what worked the best in the piece, as you mentioned, is the balance between the violence and the passiveness; the overlap between living a moment and being totally aware of it at the same time. I did want for people to stop for few seconds (when the lights were out and all was totally pitch black, so they had nowhere to go or move) and think, think about all that is happening now, not of what happened before but what should be our immediate responsibility. Would we even recognize it?

Unfortunately, the opportunity to show and produce my work is not always linear. I mean, the piece I'm showing at the Istanbul Biennial was conceived long before the one at Documenta, so you'll see that it is back to symbolism and representation rather than presentation like in Documenta. So it was a different investigation.

The Documenta piece was not at all a reaction towards any tentative political stance on the part of Documenta 11. It was my personal reaction after interviewing Germans who were old enough to have experienced WWII and they told me that did not know anything of what was happening there at the time.