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Performance
February 24, National Flag’s Day
Breif chronicle of an unheralded performance
* Play of words with La Bandera (The Flag) and Lavandera (washerwoman)
February 24th, Mexican Flag’s Day [1]
Brief chronicle of a non-announced performance.
Action by César Martínez, February 9th at 21:00 hrs., in 2005.
The hourly order indicated it was almost 19:00 hours. The spontaneous order was, as always, a delicious chaos. It was the regular situation of the invariable. As we walked out from the Campo de las Naciones subway station, the sun was close to announce us his replacement by the moon. I was on my way, with friends from Berlin —Gerhard Haupt and Pat Binder— to the fair’s building at IFEMA to witness the opening of the art’s fair ARCO 2005, this time dedicated to Mexico.
However, Mexico was seeable from the outside with an enormous reproduction that symbolized part of the wall of Sandiejuana [2] and that enveloped the exterior of the entrance to the fair’s event. It could be read several times: “Walls don’t stop ideas” and immediately I imagined thousands of conceptual migrants jumping over the wall, sorting out the border patrol from the world’s critic. It wasn’t an exact replica of the infamous wall built by gringos in the border with Mexico, but it was an idea of the border with our uncomfortable neighbor.
Surveillance was extreme. At the entrance of the fair, there were hundreds of police and bulletproof trucks with deep and fierce noses. Scanners were installed as an additional contention wall by the entrance. Bags, wallets, bag packs, portfolios, mobiles, keys, bison coats, mink scarves, sweaters and even my ixchtle Frida Kahlo bag were required by the nuclear bomb and weapon eye detector. The police’s gaze sighed to make you a suspect and eager to find in your eye the nationalist thug instead of the “niña qe corre***”. That day, the terrorist group ETA had exploded a car bomb. The car, a white 19 Renault with 30 kilos of chloratite exploited minutes before the announced notice. The explosion happened close to 9:30 a.m. Luckily, there were no deaths, only minor injuries, the startle and martyr of an all days ear’s buzzing from the insolent and resounding echo of the car bomb. The paranoia was no mockery when it broke the regular order of the place.
The explosion got all the way to Mexico. As the sun rose in Mexico, my mother got in touch with me immediately.
“My son, are you ok?”, said my mother.
“Yes, mother I am.”
“That they have put a bomb for Fox?”... I laughed out loud and immediately felt a huge need of hugging her. At the same time I felt a deep nostalgia for the Mexican sensationalism and how the bomb’s gossip had exploded beyond the cortina de nopal [3]. Immediately, I assumed: of course, Fox’s government is extraditing ETA prisoners to Spain that were trapped in Mexico. Was this the reason for the bomb? I correct myself, push control F1 and rather say “the stupid reason” for a bomb.
There was a galloping curiosity in my stomach. In reality, I wasn’t very interested by the opening. My admiration and affection for Gerhard and Patricia, as well as that of listening to their comments was encouraging to me to be present, as well as the fact of finding myself amongst friends and familiar faces. But I was more intrigued by the fact of why the Mexican president Vicente Fox and his entourage were present in the opening right next to King Juan Carlos I at the ARCO fair. In fact, this was an ‘unnecessary’ question tattooed in my intestines.
However, I couldn’t hide myself from the morbidity of ferocious reasons and ‘Darwinists’ that curators working in Mexico had in mind in selecting certain artists that live and create in Mexico and achieve a Mexican representation in Madrid. The idea of ‘solidarity’ was transformed into a phenomenon of natural selection where anybody of us that was antigonic**, fágico***, politicized or independent was artificially left outside.
So, to talk about my participation in ARCO 2005, I had printed post cards printed with “Two Mexican Flags”. One of them was the Mexican La-Vandera knelt down on her knees, washing clothes in a river, notoriously barefooted under poverty conditions that were miserably evident. On the background, an old baby from the same river water that is used to try and hide the miseries that dirtiness [4], I mean, society, produces. Behind and as a horizon there is a big dollar bill that announces the torture of working for nothing, the exhausting dehydrating DÓLOR, DÓLOR [5] of the economical horizon, the ONE DOLLOR BILL of today’s politics of the banking narcolavado, a real image of the aPRIcalypsis.
The second postcard is a big Mexican flag raised in America’s Discovery Square in Paseo de la Castellana in Madrid. From behind, it can be read: Plaza de Mexpaña, Antiguo Paseo de la Castellana, ahora del Nahuatleca.
Art over here, art over there; galleries galore; artists, collectors, curaitors, churris, ple-bellos, and a very special soft smell under the carpet. We had a brief tour, greeted some friends..., gave a lot of hugs until from afar we saw a crowd that waved as if it were clothing being cringed in an old washer. The evident was seen in the ceiling of 15m high; the reflection of hundreds of flashes in one direction were felt. It was the King and Queen, Fox and his entourage. Clack, flash, click, click, noise from portrait machines all around.
“Hostia, joder, look at them there, varied expressions, pushing and the police running over our curious impulses to see them.”
We followed our path surrounded by art and stands of allegedly creative innovations. But something was making my spirit unchangeable. The spectrum of the diversity of innovative thought didn’t scare off my boredom this time. There was something incomplete in my querer queriendo [6]. I needed an inclusion moment. What was such an ominous presence of those leaders? Endless questions began to distress me, I was surrounded by myself again. I had no answers but I did have many fake questions. I felt monstrously alone in such big a crowd. What I could see from outside those crowds that spattered stomping was the representation of mistrust, wit and hostility.
So...at that moment, I began to feel a double life impulse, and by taking advantage of the virtue of spontaneity I found an excuse to separate from my friends.
“I’m going to the bathroom”, I said, “If I take too long, we can text message each other and meet at the hotel later...”
The natural kindness of my steps ran again to look for those leaders. My impulse was translucent, the desire was voracious, each turn of my head was transparent but neither the King nor Fox showed up anywhere. I raised my ears, but that was not enough. Sweat was pouring from my head since it had already been half an hour, until I saw the shining of the reflected flashes in IFEMA’s ceilings. There they were! At the Marlborough Gallery, almost about to leave the fair. The police yellow tape was starting to be placed. Some churris dressed in red were raising their hands; a non verbal protocólico code that signaled the caution that the privileged would pass by without any interruption. I remember an intense close up, arms interweaving as a steel net willing to open and close the human sea waters of ARCO and formalize the crossing to the other side: the exit, no more art.
I managed to sneak in through a crevice of elbows and uniformed arms and began screaming as if it were the Munich’s scream before it was being stolen: Vicente!, Vicente! DOOOON ViiiicentEEEE! He looked at me and captivated approached me and I had the opportunity to say to him: With all due respect, I hand you Two Mexican Flags from a Chilango artist that lives in Madrid.
“Thank you very much. Good night, he said with his deep voice after receiving Two Mexican Flags and shook my hand.
“Goodbye Marthita!”, I said, not being able to contain myself, nor avoided her squinted eye and waved my arms as I said goodbye to the Mexican president’s wife.
I decided to come back to the security reasoning of such moment, when 10 steps from there I saw his Majesty the King and proceeded with break the human wall. I bowed and as I did I said “Your Majesty the King, please receive Two Mexican Flags, one more comment on today’s policy.” “Thank you very much. Good night.” He bowed back as we looked strongly into each other’s eyes and shook hands.
At that moment, I felt as if my autonomy was becoming competent and irreverent, cynically elegant. I also achieved to feel that I was taking a plunge into the deep layers of today’s society. The use of of such Two Mexican Flags allowed me to cross towards a freedom by raising a hymn of sol-edad [7] and being able to be in the middle of such animated border, able to be close with a personal comment on distance and the afar and recognize my status as creActivist performer and therefore giving the democratic sense a worth value of giving an opinion.
What I was doing was an ARTEntado. Not ARTErrosism, but my hidden wish was that both of those had “uncomfortable comments” in their hands about my vision of today’s sinthetized and linking reality. Here, only my word exists and two or three people more recognized as Roger Casas, who gave testimony to the event of Two Mexican Flags were deposited in the hands of two leaders. The end of the action was seen by Mexican art critic Francisco Reyes Palma who heard the people ask what was being handed to the King and Fox. In fact, he got Two Mexican Flags, since it was about a 1000 numbered and signed edition with a symbolic price of 10 Euros.
That is unique: to be standing and shaking hands becomes a Consciousness State, beyond the notion of the Nation State.
[1] La Bandera (the flag) or La-Vandera (washerwoman)
[2] Sandiejuana: Term coined by artist Guillermo Gómez Peña to refer to the intercultural urban zone of San Diego and Tijuana.
[3] Cactus curtain
[4] Play on words between Sociedadf -society- and Suciedad -dirtyness.
[5] Play on words between Dolor -pain- and Dollar
[6] Wanting to want
[] Sol-edad -solitude- separated means Sol -sun- edad -age-