Orson San Pedro and the community of others

En español: http://www.sublimeart.net/?p=80

The artistic community
In his study about the relationship between the Christian and the anarchist, Nietzsche emphasizes how both share a paradoxical situation: their instinct tends toward destruction . This search for common ground between the believer and the atheist coincides with an attraction to nihilism that comes to serve as verification of one fact: the community belongs to others. Because to try and address realms that were always linked to the sacred and the profane such as art, in times when the future religious character of its products has been forecast, leads to the confusing situation in which the apparent imposition of the institutional has triumphed. In this sense, to encounter Orson San Pedro dressed like a priest in places devoted to art such as biennales, fairs and other events connected with globalized exhibitionism could be interpreted as sacrilege. In reality, on the contrary it is a response to the institution’s inspiration that rests on the pillars of appearance: “communication is the deconstruction of social, economic, technical, institutional work” .

So the destruction of things and its consummation becomes, as Nancy states, nothing. Without attempting to offer a simplistic identification between communion and community, one must get closer to art to know, if, as the institutionalist paradigm of Donald Kuspit suggests, community can be the space of consecration for artists, critics and other agents involved in its processes.

Appropriation of papers, documents and secrets
The point, therefore, is to come to understand what is the true realm of principal art on a stage where it is not always easy to understand what is offered. That relegating to the inscrutable granted to art is significant when it speaks to us of its complications, without considering that the realm of the arts has never been easy, not even for those with understanding that have been building a historical narration with aspirations of objectivity. Kuspit has underscored the value of the spectator in that intermediate minefield where the artist and the public behold each other through a work of art. If the Duchampian paradigm precisely practices an ironic conceptual action, showing everyday objects altered in meaning, in the actions of Orson San Pedro those everyday values of the art world can be aroused, but returned to their literality.

So that, in his work he has tried to be critical using the art world’s discursive practices, trying to use its permissiveness to benefit his status brought about by its validating platform. For example, with credentials from Sublime magazine he has been introduced at fairs and biennales for the purpose of validating his own discourse. Compiling all the documentation from those places, he has rebuilt the principles that sustain these types of events. He has also been able to borrow other artists’ works to place the idea of authorship in doubt. He has disguised himself as a gallery owner in Lisbon and as a Vatican purchasing agent in New York.

This appropriation by Orson San Pedro is also related to teaching and education, in trying to resolve convincingly the chore of studying in another institution. In that endorsement is where the world of the adequate, not always being the best that he promulgates. In those documents or works that Orson San Pedro shows it is possible to observe the objectual distance from the real, uncovering that apparent secret that is hidden in the institution of art .

Metaphysical uniformity of disguise
A theory of uniformity would lead us to the realm of disguise. The world understood from the stage and appearance is, in Orson San Pedro, the ironic presence of the sacred in the space of the profane. As it went, Spain is a nation of armed theologians. And even though it is not exactly an easy joke to pull off, Orson San Pedro is seen simply as such. One can enter a uniform store, where curiously there is a mix of waiters and mechanics, fisherman and fish mongers, priests and flight attendants, obtain one and continue with the celebrations of the banal that is draped in the pretentious merchandising of a superficial world of art. The important thing is not only to consider the disguise as a place to hide, but also a refuge. In this sense, one should consider the status of the artist who enjoys the privileges granted by the cultural media as part of its own self-enhancing labour there where habit, custom or the institutionalization makes the monk.

A theatralization that assumes the acceptance of the rules that determine if something should be considered, not just as art, but also whether it is good or bad. In the case of Orson San Pedro, he tries to pass as an artist, theologian, critic or architect (Orson San Pedro, 1972). That role is really the investment of values that are credited as valid. As he has stated, “I don’t like Art,” underscoring that overvalued belief in geniality or in the excessive valuation of the work of art. Orson San Pedro prefers authors over their products. It turns into a heteronomous space of his conceptual action, situating himself in that dematerialization of the work of art, objectively enclosing himself, leading to negation and the conceptual practice derived from melvillian assertion before whatever judgment: “I would prefer not to do it.”

Representations, iconoclasms
Gilles Deleuze shows how, in principle, denial is a choice related to the protagonist, Bartleby, working as a copyist. Therefore he tried to link the plot of the representation with an impossible action because that preference for refusing to copy something is, in the action of Orson San Pedro, the occasion to show that he is not trying to affirm or deny, but to demonstrate the uselessness or impossibility of action that which he does. Images from these are left, such as would be from anyone travelling to those types of events, on trains and planes, in taxis and subways, to clearly assert that he was there. They leave remains and real documents such as IDs, brochures, travel tickets, but the enduring work is in that denial that the art tends to enclose itself, for example, in a showcase at a contemporary art exhibition that is in a railroad museum in a train station (Barrio del Carmen, 2007.)

This tie to credentials does not necessarily imply a fixed repetition but a difference that is articulated around the disguise of the tourist spectator, as a youth running in front of the bull, dressed as a Catholic priest or as a wandering Jew for those biennials, expositions, and other fairs. Because, in some way, Orson San Pedro tries to pass unnoticed and, precisely because of this, is able to be any person he represents. But, does it have something to do with the transvestitism of Duchamp becoming Rrose Sélavy? Is his portrayal in reality a depersonalization of the work of art? Marcel Duchamp had thought in 1920 of the possibility of adopting a Jewish name, but decided to use the disguise of appearing as a flirtatious and mysterious woman. In reality, the various representations of Orson San Pedro are not directed toward changing his sex, or has he tried to make his clothing conform to the latest fashion. (Orson San Pedro flies to NY (Pulse Fair) like a priest and Jewish, 2008). Nothing is hidden in his clothing, despite being conscious of the immediacy of his uniform. A representation destined for the conversation and encounter with others (Dialog with…, 2007) through the creation of a small salon in the expositionary space where it is possible to converse, discuss or drink something.

This making the most of the space, connected with a representation of what art truly is, in this sense of conversation and conversion, is one more contribution to the apparent denial of Orson San Pedro to make art. Iconoclasts are attentive to image and to what they represent. This is the case with the aquiropitas paintings, not made by human hands and which, in addition to constituting an icon of institutional power, were also known for their magical power of turning anyone who gazed upon the face of Christ to stone. More relevant is the consideration of Pisides when he states that it has to do with the writing, not as written. (André Grabar). Denial is not understood as pure destruction, but as a choice linked to apparent disability and its postponement. That negativity, corresponding to an iconoclastic deal of emptiness, in reality is a proliferation of actions linked to an art that already does not believe either in what is said or in what is shown. In this sense, Orson San Pedro is not an author preoccupied with offering work with expensive materials or determined by its supposed aesthetic value. He simply appropriates the souvenir to preserve aspects of the artistic institution, defending his own denial. So it is not an impersonation of someone else, or even a true disguise. In his work, there is no proper work as such, but a cancellation of the happening. Orson San Pedro is not acting.


The real mean in off
The Duchampian conception of appropriation coincides with the literal fulfilment of the assault of the individuals on the queen. Orson San Pedro has connected the significance of art criticism to the enjoyment of ejaculation, underlining his markedly mental, conceptual and material character (The real meaning of art critic, 2008) Departing from the appropriation of a homemade video shot in a public park in Amsterdam in broad daylight, he shows the critic assaulted by bullies. Possibly, that consideration of the critic’s true work resides in the insufferable seminal proliferation that brings happiness to its spectators, the artists. But what is accented in that conception of art from the appropriation of the hotel television is that there are various meanings related to art, always appearing together, the illustrations of Picasso or pop art, the nude bodies of women (The real meaning of art, 2008). What does he do that we are able to access other art forms appropriating us simply from their discursive procedures? What makes this ejaculation a manifesto is the necessary actualization of community expression, but in a special sense. How do you say that in the search for the real meaning of art the disposition toward the means that lead to the negative is found, where the only support is the lack of a valid foundation. That closure of representation, the cancellation of the formative and the absence of a support because what is said is what is, leads Orson San Pedro to a negative impersonality, where the portrait of its author hardly appears.

That ability to delegate to others even one’s own name speaks of that rejection of appearing in that orgiastic and realistic scene where that theatre of cruelty along with the sacred. In that scene, Derrida states, “there is neither spectator nor spectator, it is a party” . Because it is precisely that stain or the clinician’s misdiagnosis that is relevant: “to become, in his word and his body, in a work, the delivered object, a role laid out, to the furtive diligence of commentary. The only, which by definition is not given to commentary, is the life of the body, the living body that the theatre maintains in its integrity against the bad and the dead. The sickness is the impossibility to be upright in the dance and in the theatre” . The critic, like the end of the party, becomes in that domain in which he functions like the post-artists in the banquet of opinion: “Artists,” said Allan Kaprow in 1971, “have become commentaries and announce the post-artistic era. They make commentaries about their respective histories in such a way that, for example the televised media comments on cinema, a sound that touches directly together with its recorded version making commentaries about which of them is real, an artist makes commentaries about the latest advance of another, some artists make commentaries about their health or about the world, others comment that they do not have to comment (meanwhile the critics comment about all the commentaries). This should be enough” .

In that community of others, Orson San Pedro is seen with the indifference provided by his disguise as Jew or priest, mechanic or gallery owner, artist or tourist, to try to stay in the limits of the arts. This neutral position of not wanting to be present, the ability not to make his work visible except through disguise, give an amplified conceptual sense of audiovisual creation, the poetry of action, through a manner of provoking surprise through the overturning of supports. That appropriation that paradigmatically fulfils the idea of the artist as witness of the art of his time.

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1 “There is a perfect likeness between the Christian and anarchist: their object, their instinct, points only toward destruction. […] The Christian and the anarchist: both are decadents; both are incapable of any act that is not disintegrating, poisonous, degenerating, blood-sucking; both have an instinct of mortal hatred of everything that stands up, and is great, and has durability, and promises life a future …”, NIETZSCHE, Friedrich, The Antichrist, trans. H.L. Mencken, 1920.
2 NANCY, Jean-Luc, La communauté désoeuvrée (The Inoperative Community), originally published in 1983.
3 The use of an apparently important secret is, in the case of Alfred Hitchcock, a rhetorical resource that arouses expectation. In the case of the appropriation of Orson San Pedro, it can be identified with that consideration of the artistic object as Mac Guffin: “is the name that is given to this class of actions: to rob…the papers –to rob…the documents-, to rob…a secret. In reality this is not important and the logicians are mistaken in seeking the truth of Mac Guffin. In my case, I have always believed that the papers, or the documents, or the secrets of construction of the fortress must be of great importance for the characters in the film, but not important for me, the narrator”, TRUFFAUT, François, El cine según Hitchcock, trad. Ramón G. Redondo, 2000, p. 127.
4 “Althea limits that plow through the classically theatrical (represented/representing meaning/signifier, author/director/actors/spectators, stage/salon, text/interpretation, etc.) were ethical-metaphysical prohibitions, wrinkles, grimaces, grins, symptoms of fear before the danger of the party. In the festive space opened by transgression, it would still not be possible to stretch the distance of representation.”, DERRIDA, Jacques, “The theatre of cruelty and the end of representation”, Writing and Difference, Anthropos, trad. Patricio Peñalver, 1989, p. 335.
5 “La palabra soplada”, ibidem, p. 252.
6 “Video and digital art. Virtual realities and digital inflections: the appropriation of the new media”, VAN PROYEN, Mark, Arte digital y videoarte. Transgrediendo los límites de la representación, (Digital art and video art. Transgressing the limits of representation. ed. Donald Kuspit, Círculo de Bellas Artes, 2006, p. 94.