Chapter 12: JUST BEING: Claiming Radical Presence

 

Photo by Ray C. Freeman III, CoCA 2024. 

Chapter 12: JUST BEING: Claiming Radical Presence

​This body of work is perhaps the most important and yet, most reductive I have ever done. Just Being: LatinX is a series of unaltered documentary recorded moments. Scenes of me just sitting or making a cup of ramen or taking a pill, investigate and deconstruct the idea that art by artists of color must be made for a reason, that it must jump through programmatic hoops—defined by the expectations of others (or more precisely those that "other" us)—that it must be revolutionary—this art series is about Just Being—and it is sufficient. Though, in a turn laden with irony—merely existing may end up being the most revolutionary of acts—deconstructing and ultimately reifying the very idea that contemporary Latinx art deserves to exist, to be here at all and to tell its own individual stories.

​Through performance, I seek to engender, enlarge and expand the conversation of what Latina/x/o art is and what it must be and in "Just Being" I investigate the idea of the radical action of radically just being a person of color and just presenting your life—not as a revolutionary act, but as is. In other words, if you learn nothing else from me, learn this, to thine own self be true. This series may very well be my most important and at the same time the most boring set of performances of all that I have ever done. In a way, the series is all found objects and finds its power in its framing as art, like Duchamp's "Fountain," I am putting my signature on the most mundane moments of my life and claiming them as art.

​"Just Being," is a series that presents this Latinx artist doing the most quotidian, most mundane things like sleeping, taking a shit or cooking an egg—and yet, this is a series that points to the fact that individual lives of color matter and that art made by a person of color can exist merely as a representation of self. This is an overturning. Just as I pointed out at the beginning of the book you are holding in your hands; when I was a little boy walking through the Chicano Art Center on Euclid Ave, I used to watch these artists "doing their own thing" as they called it, and in this case, during this time—doing your own thing," meant being a revolutionary, it meant fighting for recognition and telling the stories of your people. My Father during these years used to wear a beret angled just right as he stood with his fist pumped right before him exclaiming, "Chicano Power!"

​It was an exhilarating and pride making sight to see for a youngster like me. But looking back at those days, individuality as we understood it was completely different than it is today. Don't get me wrong, every one of those artists truly believed that they were doing their own individual work, speaking their minds and following their dreams—and they were—absolutely. But those dreams were transubstantiated through the collective, filtered through the sensibilities of the many. Everything was seen through the needs of group—and the group was the individual. There was simply no separation between the two. That was the way that it was and there was nothing wrong with it—then.

​Which is all well-and-good, but for us to be making the same artwork from fifty years ago would be unconscionable, to make art guided by the same goals and sensibilities would be insane. Just as Marcel Duchamp, Joseph Beuys, Jasper Johns etc., made art that was a representation of their ideas, their hopes, their fears--so must every artist of color speak their own names, without the guilt of a society that tells us that we must subsume our desires for the sake of the greater good—our work needs to represent our lives as we live them, to celebrate our ideas and our desires—especially our ideas.

​For generations society, culture and the hegemonies they have created have sought to make the artist of color into an artistic subaltern—always crying up to the hegemonic forces, begging for scraps, kept busy running around in circles, by a series of cultural Wizards of Oz—making us believe their lives and mesmerizing us. Too many artistic lives of color have been lost to a continual hegemonic power-play that denies our own work, stunts our own evolutions and forces us to represent anything other than our own individual lives' work.

​Do not think that I say this without the knowledge that most of us are not there yet, that these words will be met with skepticism, anger and fear, but the truth is that the Subaltern has learned to speak and now that the Post modern has been popped, the Age of Nefarious has taken hold and we have all gotten used to the water, nothing can ever be the same and we are beginning to hear and claim our own voices in the once chaotic din.

​What we need is a Cultural and Racial Bechdel test! What do I mean by a Racial Bechdel Test?' What is this Lopez Litmus? It is simply this, does a POC artwork pass the test of being made conceptually for oneself, individually and for one's chosen audience? Or is it being made for hegemony, the larger oppressive culture, in essence is it being made conceptually for people of no color? I don't care who buys it, but rather what does the artwork itself buy into, is it trying to explain itself to the hegemony or is it claiming its individuality for all to see. That is the Lopez Litmus. Plain and simple. And it can be political. And it can be activist. But what is wrong with directing the artwork to your sisters and brothers and working from there!

Back to "Just Being," through this work, I see myself and other contemporary Latinx artists defining how our art is to be perceived, accepted and what form it will take in the future. I see a Latinx art defined by our complexity, criticality and biographical and theoretical strength, creating a "Latinoism" based on alliances that owes more of its form to the Queer and Feminist programs that lead the way for identity movements than to an essentialized Latino-ness. I seek to engender, enlarge and expand the conversation of what Latina/x/o art is and what it can be. We live at a time in which definitions of race, masculinity, gender and art are changing, and through these and other performances I seek to be a voice in this change.

​Flash back to childhood. When we were still young, my father delighted in telling us stories of Socrates and Plato and would often present us with one of life's big questions and ask us to argue from various philosophical/Greek positions. To this day, I can still name about half of the letters of the Greek Alphabet and know enough to realize that Plato preferred policemen to artists. During that time several guiding principles were born, primary among those being that our differences are merely skin deep—we are all humans and the differences that lay between any of us--none of that actually matters. There are no important differences between the races, sub-races, tribes, etc. etc. and so on—especially in the ways that truly make any difference.

​We all have the same capacities of feeling, we all have the same abilities to dream and we all hope for better lives and wish to see a better world. Historically, all of the books we read have been filled with inventions and discoveries by people of every race, color and creed. Humans of every kind have created all of our photographs, paintings, sculptures, cities, books, languages, romances, poems, movies, etc. and etc. and so on—and every single one of these is as real and as valid for each and every one of us and is enjoyed and understood with no difference that is affected by race, sex, gender, religion, etc.

​Wanting to Express your own life, then, to exercise your own individuality, share your own dreams and obsessions is not wanting to be white. It is, in fact, your right to claim this—all of it. As I have noted before in earlier chapters there have been many times when I was given messages that claimed the exact opposite, very often the message was quite clear, you have a Mexican last name--you must make Mexican artwork, and it came from every direction, even from those that look just like me. I have learned over and over again, that I don't want to look back on my life and realize that I wasted it playing a game that was always rigged against lives of color, stacked against us in a way that was always meant to waste our lives. No, wanting to express your own life is not wanting to be white--in fact wanting to live and die in any other way would be insanity.

​Race, itself, has never been anything more than merely cosmetic—we wear a series of hues likely having more to do with climatic effects and our ancestors’ originary locations than with any real, inherent differences in us as animals. Race is merely skin deep, and it is clear that we often confuse culture with race. Ultimately, to me, over the years it has become clear that race is in fact phantasmatic—it simply does not exist, it is a ghost—an illusion—at best, it is an illusion hidden in the pigments of our skin—it is a ghost identity. One might as well separate those that have red hair or freckles—make them feel inferior or treat them as a group of personae non gratae. Or segregate by height or hair color or eye color or penis-size. Any of these would be silly right? Unfair? Or just sheerly idiotic—right? And yet, we do separate on the basis of skin color—to this day—we still assume that people see the world differently—that based on skin color that someone might not have a soul or the same intellect as others. All of these things have been asserted at more than one time by men of intellect—in fact, damn you, Noah Webster for ensuring that even the very language that I speak is rooted in racism.

​In the "Just Being" series we open the pages of our text to include things that have never been seen, documented, nor claimed as performance art. A Latinx documenting his own life, rather than what society has determined he should create. This is not the LatinX artist as societally approved revolutionary, as standardized stereotype, as a "Bandido with a heart of gold," etc., but rather being true to his own vision and for once, just being—perhaps the most revolutionary act that a person of "colors" can claim in this day and age.

​In this project I try to just do what I would naturally do, aside from the camera being there, unscripted, usually at the beginning of some simple act, though that may eventually change with both random starting and stopping points—the idea is not to achieve any level of vérité, or to even ignore the presence of the camera, but rather to just record and see what we get. In the videos, being aware of the camera or reacting to the camera is a valid part of "just being" as these aren't about pretending to emulate reality, rather they are a capturing of reality in, at least to the best of my knowledge, the best way that I know how to do that.

​Every act, creation etc, that has been recorded before and which has left a document, a story, a mark, by any Latino artist has been done so, in response to the power structures of oppression. Instead of, say, just breathing. Just being.

​This series, however, is an attempt at, to at least try to take things, not necessarily back, but to at least claim our presence and unwillingness to back away. This series is about radical presence--merely presenting yourself as a person of color, becomes, in fact, a wildly, radically activist act. It became clear to me one day, while writing my bio for a grant just how many lives of color have been erased because the only acceptable way to express yourself as a person of color is as a reaction to everything else—as a reflection of the power of hegemony. It became clear to me that artists like my heroes, artists like Marcel Duchamp or Jackson Pollock were never asked to make artwork that was about their heritage or about their people or culture. They were simply asked to make art, art that reflected their ideas and their beliefs--in fact, they were never asked--they just did it.

​My father created artwork that was about religion and the struggles of being a person of color, but I always wanted to create artwork that was about me. As an individual. My obsessions. My ideas. My life. In the First Person, so to speak! So to speak.

​In the "Just Being" series. You can't get more basic than "Sleep," or drinking a glass of water, and yet, as far as I know, I have never seen those documented before by a person of color--especially a Latina/o. It ends up becoming, radical, it ends up becoming revolutionary and possibly political. Perhaps, at some level it shows that in this monad of time, that it is impossible for people of colors to represent themselves without it being revolutionary, but along the way, almost as detritus I will also document myself, claiming my life as an artistic gesture. That is the most important part for me, and it is perhaps that, which is the most radical act—even just using my Latinx body to replicate Gilbert and George or Bruce Nauman.

​I want to add that this for most, should be seen as merely a goal. Any artist's work can say whatever the artist wants it to say, in fact, that is the point, not to judge yourself or others, but rather to release oneself and your praxis from a set of invisible confines that have been set in place by hegemony to systematically stop people of color from "singing" their own lives and instead subsuming them onto either a predetermined visual language like the "Day of the Dead," etc., that we forever regurgitate and which disengages from evolving, creating art that is endlessly acceptable to the majority or to constantly explain ourselves to the hegemony and again to keep ourselves wearing their prison uniforms, even remaking the same music over and over again and telling the same stories once a year. When was the last time you saw someone take any of the Day of the Dead imagery and do something truly revolutionary with it? Probably never, instead it has become quotational, a Latino shorthand, as it were. We need to start to poke at our own clichés, we need to move forward with the knowledge that our own, individual lives are bigger than all of this and that we are not the by-products of a bunch of symbols and signs, no matter how comfortable those signs may be. We must begin to create, write and perform work that is willing to say, "This isn't about you. Go away." We must not pander to anyone at the expense of our own stories. And to be completely fair, many of us are already doing this, some never will and that is okay too. The idea is to make work that is authentic to your own experience.

​At this point, I think that it is important to add that this is not a denial of history, of collective identity or collected symbology, “folklorico” or otherwise, rather this is in addition to it. It is about looking at our history not as it has been packaged and presented to us by Fritos, our parents, or even by what galleries expect and want to see from us, it is about looking back with a complex, critical eye and deconstructing everything, making sense of everything and visualizing the power dynamics of history. It is about applying feminist and queer principles and opening up history to a complex and rigorous examining eye. It is about figuring out how your story fits into the larger history/herstory/our story—it is not about changing yourself to better fit into an already posted history. It is also about a complex reimagining of our present and most of all it is about questioning everything and making something new and exciting and yes, even, at times, quotidian and boring.

​Ultimately, this is about positionality, too, and it is fiercely critical, being strongly influenced by feminist and queer theories and especially gender theories that begin with the body and the individual as a primary locus. It is very Latinx and very much calls upon intersectionality as being foundational. Intersectionality requires a center and that is what this calls upon as well, that center being the individual identity; messy and misunderstandable, it is the vehicle through which all intersections are navigated, and choice and desire are two of its primary vehicles.

​To this day, I still wince, when I see my soft, fat, Latino body on a television screen, when I see myself revealed and naked for others to grade and gauge me in comparison to whatever models of the human body they have in their minds. I still wince when I see a misstep in the middle of one of my performances, though perhaps the sting hurts a little a bit less and happens just a little less often, now as I become accustomed to the shape and substance of my body and more sure of my message. A message that has no intention to put aside the theoretical, even abstract tools of hegemony, even though, like bell hooks, they will be inflected, interrogated by a new set of tools, that are less rational, at times, more rational at others. For it always strikes me just how reflexive the definitions of hegemony truly are in order to maintain the illusion that they are aloof and undefined/undefinable/indefinable. They bounce back and forth, encompassing as many positions as possible, for it is difficult to hit a moving target. At the same time, they are more than willing to deal with other groups as though they were simply defined, as irrational, as queer, lazy, invisible, etc. Masculinity, especially, has the privileged location of being all things to all men, the center—but the center cannot hold.

​Art at its very heart is hope—it fights for what it believes in and is an expression of humanity’s greatest desires, fears and aspirations. If we are, in fact going to be able to see our ways out of this era–if we are going to move out to the stars and preserve this planet’s ability to contain us–it will be artists who will have to envision these possibilities.

​Just as we were the ones who gave humans the first images of heaven and hell—just as we created angels and aliens and all manners of monsters that no human eye has ever seen—so will the tribes of poets, painters, sculptors, modelers, filmmakers, writers–creators all–so will they show us the way out of these turbulent times into the next great Renaissances of human development. So, let’s do it now! Change those chips that hold each of us back, fake it ’til we make it and start a brand-new day and a brand-effing-new Renaissance!

​RETURN OF THE DUM-DUM BOY

Perhaps my darkest and most personal performance so far, resurrecting the DUM DUM BOY, a character from my very first performance done way back in the 90's during one of the presentation nights of Robert Morrison's Sculpture Class at the University of Nevada, Reno. The Dum Dum Boy is pure ID with no superego to keep him in check. In this performance the Dum Dum Boy expresses the fear that we are all undergoing at this point in time—the fear that we are going to die.

When I first created the Dum-Dum Boy, I know that I had been reading about Gilbert and George and was heavily inspired by the idea of becoming a living sculpture and I know that I have always been very interested in the idea of DADA being a deconstructive, anti-hegemonic force capable of turning a caustic eye toward systems of power and that was reflected in the clown mask that the Dum-Dum Boy wears. In essence, the form of the Dum-Dum Boy, while also saying that he is just clowning around, is also a statement that perhaps—the entire set of systems of power and hegemony are a joke. Dada and the artistic theory of those who were influenced by Marcel Duchamp was flowing through my work at this point. as I was experimenting more and more with how to express my ideas through language, sculpture and performance.

​As the Queen of Hearts attempted to teach a Modernist Alice--when Alice haughtily opined that one could not actually believe the impossible. "I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen, "When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast." Alice just hadn't had the proper practice, growing up in Victorian England as she did--but in the 100+ years since then, we have all had that practice. Modernism with its heavy reliance on "truth," the manifesto, the "universal," the phallus, masculinity, God, hegemony and so many "isms" "it would make a shy, bald, Buddhist reflect and plan a mass murder," turned very quickly into absurdism, nihilism and went absolutely berserk when it discovered that God had died somewhere on the way to the forum.

This was replaced by a football field of vying positions all questioning the supreme hegemony/ies, until it became necessary to bring out the phallus and take away the toys of identity before this post-modernist "play-time" could get out of hand and become a polymorphously perverse, identity orgy. Little did anyone know that when the phallus finally did blow that it would not be a fun, sexual or liberating event (I mean, Freud must have had a sense of that, though-- right?). -Instead, it erupted into a terrified/terrifying, manic, paranoid, madness--at least so it seems.

Historically, even when post-modernism sought to deconstruct things, it was still with the faith that what would arise was some sort of deeper truth, even when that truth was ironic, or presented ironically, the result was still filled with hope and faith. There was still the idea that if you took the truth to the top of the mountain and shouted it to the people, that everyone would recognize it, act accordingly and do the right thing. Before this, the funny thing was that in the modern era, this same mountain was the space from which you received, interfaced and interacted with the "Kierkegaardian God " of Enlightenment, then tried to figure out how much of that truth you could keep in your unworthy, little head. Well, nowadays--that mountain has been blown up and strip-mined for the last bits of helium on the planet, no one believes in truth today. Even if you did receive any wisdom from the experience, as soon as you tweeted it you would get a thousand people all coming from so many different points of view that the original "truth" would be completely lost. Then scientists would tell you that we probably live in a giant hologram anyway, so what is the point?

​Perhaps this really is the Age of Nefarious--the culmination of DADA and the completion of its agenda. It is an era where reality has met "the Real" head on, and the only ones with any faith are the ones that are trying like crazy not to go completely, irreducibly insane. Luckily, however, this is all just theory and has no real basis in reality--Right? Right. Maybe. Because if it did, then that would be absolute madness, right? Right.

​Ever since I had done the original Dum-Dum Boy performance, I was planning to reintroduce the Dum Dum Boy into my performances, I just needed to find the right moment and to reproduce the original outfit, or something like it, one of those issues included trying to find a mask that approximated the one that I used at UNR, but which got destroyed making a sculpture in graduate school at UC Davis.

​Like many performances this one ended up being a mix of more than one idea. In this case the Dum Dum Boy mixed with another performance, called "I'm Dying," in which I was to repeat those words over and over, but which initially had nothing to do with the Dum Dum Boy.

DEMATERIALIZATION

This Performance begins to answer the question "Can you have a performance with no body present," in this first answer to the question the camera--essentially the audience's eye is turned outward through a window, away from the artist, who in this first tentative step is still mostly present through a reflection, spoken description and presence behind the camera.

​Like the just being Latino/x series and how the idea of being has led to creating art about its mortal opposite—dematerialization—oh and how ironic is it making art when you are being hunted down by a dangerous virus—you begin to think about what the universe would be like without you.