Tag: Tania Bruguera

Cuba
www.taniabruguera.com

Tania Bruguera produces political artworks through installations and performances. In January 2003 she opened Arte de Conducta, an artistic–pedagogical project in Havana. Her work has been shown at several international exhibitions including Documenta XI, the 49th and 51st editions of the Venice Biennale, the V and VII Havana Biennale, and the 23rd Sao Paolo Biennale, among others. She has had solo shows at the Kunsthalle Wien, Casa de las Americas, and Museo de Bellas Artes. Tania Bruguera was a participant in Documenta 11 (Germany) as well as in several biennales such as Venice (Italy), Sao Paolo (Brazil), Shangai (China), and Site Santa Fe (USA). Her work has also been exhibited at The New Museum of Contemporary Art (USA); The Museum of Contemporary Art of Chicago (USA); Boijmans van Beuningen Museum (The Netherlands); Museum für Moderne Kunst (Germany), among others. In 2000 she received the Prince Claus Prize (The Netherlands).

Her work is part of the collections of the Museum für Moderne Kunst (Germany); Daros Foundation (Switzerland); JP Morgan Chase Bank (United States); Museum of Modern Art, artist book collection (United States); Bronx Museum (United States). Bruguera was featured in Fresh Cream (Phaidon, England); Performance Live Art Since 1060’s (Thames and Hudson, Ltd., England); Art Tomorrow (Terrail, France); Holy terrors: Latin American women perform (Duke University, USA); Corpus Delecti -Performance Art of the Americas (Routledge, England), among others. She has been written about in The New York Times, Le Monde, The Village Voice, Newsweek, Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times, and reviewed in Art News, Artforum, Flash Art, Art Nexus, The Nordic Art Review, Beaux Arts, Performance Research, Kunstforum among others.

She is the founder / director of Arte de Conducta, the first performance studies program in Latin America, hosted by Instituto Superior de Arte in Havana and she has taught at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, USA.

Vigilantes: The Dream of Reason
Edited by Tania Bruguera
Design by Bill Pusztai
2004, 36 pp. (including 6 pp of b/w images)

Introductory text and performance descriptions by Tania Bruguera; plus essays by Tagny Duff and Erin Manning.

From the Time Zones Residency, curated by Tagny Duff

Vigilantes: The Dream of Reason is a small book reminiscent of a group of plane tickets in a travel folder that documents a series of liminal performances dealing with the relationship between ethics and desire. Produced in conjunction with the TIME ZONE residency curated by Tagny Duff, with internationally acclaimed Cuban artists Glenda León and Tania Bruguera.

During the residency, Bruguera will commute weekly between Chicago and Canada (first to Montreal and then to Toronto), using these trips as an opportunity to perform for the unsuspecting audience of her fellow travelers.

Bruguera describes Vigilantes—the dream of reason creates monsters— as “…a series of performances dealing with the relationship between ethics and desire; with the tension that can be found in a state of emotional vigilia, which is the state between being awake and asleep. Each piece will have several layers of appreciation, either from the position of the audience or of their level of boldness. These will be pieces that talk about the false strength and the hidden fragility.”

TIME ZONES residency with Tania Bruguera & Glenda León

Curated by Tagny Duff

VIGILANTES—the dream of reason creates monsters— by Tania Bruguera
October 19–31, 2004

During the TIME ZONES residency, Bruguera commuted weekly between Chicago and Canada (first to Montréal and then to Toronto), using these trips as an opportunity to perform for the unsuspecting audience of her fellow travellers. She also presented unannounced performance actions in Toronto. In conjunction with this work, Bruguera produced a booklet that compiled images and experiences associated with the project, including the texts of four talks that she presented (two in Montréal and two in Toronto). Each talk visited a text by one of the following performance artists: Allan Kaprow, Adrian Piper, Vito Acconci, and Francys Alys.

Bruguera describes the work in this way: “VIGILANTES—the dream of reason creates monsters— will be a series of performances dealing with the relationship between ethics and desire; with the tension that can be found in a state of emotional vigilia, which is the state between being awake and asleep. Each piece will have several layers of appreciation, either from the position of the audience or of their level of boldness. These will be pieces that talk about the false strength and the hidden fragility.”

Every Step is a Shape of Time by Glenda León

For the Toronto portion of her residency, León developed a new audio-based performative installation presented at OCADU entitled, Every Step is a Shape of Time. This work invited the public to create individual and collective aural experiences generated in the lag time between walking and listening.

León writes: “Every step we make is a small yet important instant in our lives. The direction, the speed, the decision to make one step or a sequence of them can take us to certain events or move us away from them. The sound amplification of this daily act is a way to make us reflect upon and notice infinite possibilities sculpted through time. Listening to our own footsteps is metaphorically linked to the act of listening to ourselves. Where are we going? How are we walking on this path we have chosen? In fact, have we chosen this path we are walking? I believe these are questions worth asking, however, they are ones not easily answered.”

PROGRAM & EVENTS

Performance: Every Step is a Shape of Time by Glenda León
October 29, 2004 @ 7:00pm
OCAD University, 100 McCaul Street, Toronto

Infiltration, a Panel Discussion
With Glenda León, Mideo M. Cruz, Esther Ferrer, Cheryl l’Hirondelle and moderator Johanna Householder
October 31, 2004 @ 3:00pm
XPACE, 303 Augusta Avenue, Toronto
Sponsored by 7a*11d International Festival of Performance Art