Chapter III
Reference Point – A chat with Brian Mckern
—Before turning the recorder on we were mentioning the need to talk about the story of new media in Uruguay, and told you that your opinion was of interest to me as an active part of this story. Your opinion from the emotional viewpoint and what’s specific beyond mere and cold facts.
—I don’t know whether to talk of the New Media, because the story there goes a lot further back. I prefer “Digital Environments”, with digital elements as the media. In this case we would be referring to the mid 90s and could speak of different stages in history. We could even speak of the archaeology of digital support, and its violent, viral and quick advance. In Europe there was a search for the origin of this technology in an attempt to know more about low-tech aesthetics and go into details that could not be focused on due to the saturation produced by technological advances.
In Uruguay, however, things have been, and still are, different.
I could talk of the period starting in the 90s, but many things happened before that affected this medium, like videoart, installations, and other. But in what concerns direct work with Digital Environments, netart and software were not in discussion (I mean in Uruguay). I believe that was never experienced … and that’s why any work done in that sense proved to be a solitary activity. In those times, something as common as video projector was a item difficult to find and when someone was willing to lend you one it was not in good conditions, so you had to find the way to make your work look fine there, and that’s why we use to resort to contrasts, working with pixels, black and white (because colors would come out totally changed)… I think this is what marked the aesthetic research (probably in an unconscious manner). Things needed to be solved depending on the tools available. This was also an influence on our process capability. “Do it on your own” was the motto, and we had to learn everything through the Internet (in very active forums) with people from all parts of the world who were doing similar things. This working method conveyed us a particular profile. Pure data is not in question here, but the reason for such data, what is sensitive and what surrounds it …that’s what makes a difference in the story.
— What is your view on “Art and Digital Contexts”?
— In what refers to “arte in digital environments” there are two viewpoints. I am quite fundamentalist and go by one of them. For example: there is the artist who creates a digital video and uses certain software for non-linear editing as a tool (because this facilitates things), whose product will be seen as a work outside this environment. Then there is the artist who works directly with the digital world, with the process happening at that very moment, and with paradigms of his own in the game (paradigms generated by the environment itself, with what is specific in it). These are active processes that allow you to configure, on the spot, the situation where you will be installed in.
I mean that, though at first these paradigms were seen as very innovative, we then realized that many are founded either on the avant-garde of the 20th century, from Duchamp to our days, for example: Dada, Ready Made, Remix; or in controlled random like Pollock who would make Saint drip through cans riddled with holes, but he controlled where the paint should drip. This is similar to the digital artist who works with a timeline that generates an algorithm and makes the reader of the work go to different frames, controlled by a seed of random especially programmed. Now with GPS comes a renewal of situationist discourse, subverted control and localization. Subverted follow up of such localization. That is to say that we can be stuck with certain points of view that in fact respond to already existing modern manifests. But there is also what is specific of the medium, the things that would be impossible to transfer without that medium.
- The 90s and more…
- At the beginning of all this there was a much stronger manifest. The positions opposing the system, and art as well, were significantly more marked, a position linked to Dada. The idea was trying to live as an outsider, probably based on the will of living that way, or as the result of a reaction.
In my case, art in the Internet started as the only way to show things from a platform that I installed, and from where I created the discourse I wanted. This allowed me to be connected with peers with whom I shared viewpoints. And those who were not interested in my proposal would not browse through my pages and that was it. The idea was to turn the concept of interface into an aesthetic event. We worked anonymously or with invented identities, and the proposal had a naive touch.
It was in those times that I met Alcides, a kind of damned poet who had a very peculiar way of conceiving his work and of saying things (very “Duchampian”). When Internet appeared we came across one another in this scenarios and started to work there together, by obtaining manuals and exchanging information. We acted as feedback for one another and it was not only a matter of working together only but also sharing ideas and concepts. For instance, web environment (that was the name he used to call this space … for installing). He was a person with many layers of social and vital activity, a great enunciator, which made him an artist difficult to be fully coped with. All this led to a certain modern but DaVincian vein that was his characteristic. He had an attitude for trespassing disciplinary layers and being at various places at the same time. He left several traces, here and there. There’s a mythical hard disc that nobody can find, but everyone claims having it …
By the late 90s, there was also an interesting experience relative to electronics: INNOVA (Lagreca, Deutsch, Dalessio in music, Willy Amatto in visual elements, and myself in interfaces). I worked with a laptop (which I had bought at a museum in Valencia) where the video input was not functioning, so we did everything on the laptop’s screen, then set up a tripod, filmed the screen and Willy would process the image through his camera (laughs). There was a full creative intervention in real time… We had a time of “electronic Sundays” at Pachamama, which resulted in a good experience because we were able to keep it going. This helped us to become visible. I think Sunday’s a good day for working on this type of things, so “Dorkbot” is on Sundays (laughs). Now that we mention Dorkbot, I think that at present there are situation installers within reality, though they may be artists or not.
- The Dorkbot …
- When I started with Dorkbotmvd (http://dorkbotmvd.blogspot.com ) I was thinking of generating a space like the one I would have liked to have 10 years ago. I remember Osvaldo Cibils’ experience, who put together “Lezlan Keplost” in a basement, a place from where Montevideo’s art movement was engined and dynamized during three years. A place that mixed format with discourse… An expression of generosity by an artist who was able to see the need of that time.
It was a space meant for converging. It gathered people whose projects were developed, and focused on the emotional aspect, on the enjoyment of subverting the use of any physical interface and conveying to a certain device a different sense of use, or disassembling things to assemble them again. All this has a lot to do with culture remix . There is a comeback to that enjoyment that existed at the beginning of this story, where the playful aspects are retrieved along with the delight of working with the environment.
Works that can be seen in the Internet:
http://www.internet.com.uy/vibri/
http://34s56w.org/soundtoys2006/
Chapter IV
- Two years ago I invited you to explore an experience in 16mm and you replied something like: “thanks but no thanks. I don’t think that the medium I use is suitable for what I do”. Your firm statement led me to think that there was something more than comfort in the option of capturing images through a digital medium. It is on that assertion (mine) and on your experiences back in the 80s that I founded my decision to select you as the representative for this support, so, as of this moment, I will be recording your account on the start of this path.
- In fact, it is all due to a crisis in my vocational definition, because I did not know what to do. When I took a vocational test it turned out that I could be anything but an architect (laughs). And also the context during the dictatorship was not encouraging for studying anything. So I went into the field of electronics, which was not a good idea because the circumstances did not help. There was a kind of discrimination against UTU (“Work Trades University of Uruguay”), classes where in a cold warehouse and the subjects at hand were outdated. But technology and science have always fascinated me, and I think it is a feeling shared with my generation. I was born in the time of satellites.
When the time came to choose something to make a living on I went for photography, and based on that professional training and on other interests (literature, art, etc.) came moviemaking as a result, which would then become a passion. Back in the 80s there was a cooperative group that worked with Super 8: CINECO (cooperative cinema, founded by the architect Dardo Bardier). It was there that I learnt to cut and paste (S8 film) and I was trained to study scripts, and on moviemaking theory. This was the origin of the group HACEDOR, responsible for an important feature film called “La vida rápida” [Quick life].(*)
- Two years ago I invited you to explore an experience in 16mm and you replied something like: “thanks but no thanks. I don’t think that the medium I use is suitable for what I do”. Your firm statement led me to think that there was something more than comfort in the option of capturing images through a digital medium. It is on that assertion (mine) and on your experiences back in the 80s that I founded my decision to select you as the representative for this support, so, as of this moment, I will be recording your account on the start of this path.
- In fact, it is all due to a crisis in my vocational definition, because I did not know what to do. When I took a vocational test it turned out that I could be anything but an architect (laughs). And also the context during the dictatorship was not encouraging for studying anything. So I went into the field of electronics, which was not a good idea because the circumstances did not help. There was a kind of discrimination against UTU (“Work Trades University of Uruguay”), classes where in a cold warehouse and the subjects at hand were outdated. But technology and science have always fascinated me, and I think it is a feeling shared with my generation. I was born in the time of satellites.
When the time came to choose something to make a living on I went for photography, and based on that professional training and on other interests (literature, art, etc.) came moviemaking as a result, which would then become a passion. Back in the 80s there was a cooperative group that worked with Super 8: CINECO (cooperative cinema, founded by the architect Dardo Bardier). It was there that I learnt to cut and paste (S8 film) and I was trained to study scripts, and on moviemaking theory. This was the origin of the group HACEDOR, responsible for an important feature film called “La vida rápida” [Quick life].(*)
Two years later, in 1982, we had the chance, with Esteban Schroeder and Alejandro Barreiro, to put together a NGO called CEMA (Audiovisual Media Center). It was a studio for independent production, and my first opportunity to use an electronic means for audiovisual purposes: slide editing to two synchronized projectors with a sound track, which, for the time, was state-of-the-art technology.
Our audiovisual productions were made for social and educational purposes, something that was called “popular communication”. In 1985, the church of Germany, Sweden and Canada financed the project: “Video production for social, economic and cultural development in Uruguay”, which was CEMA’s institutional project, for which there was a full U–matic equipment. From here we produced over 40 videos in professional format.
We applied everything we had dreamed and studied in filmmaking and photography to the electronic media, modern cameras that at that time had tubes (3 cathodic-ray tubes, for each color: RGB). For lighting scenes we had to resort to powerful equipment which implied a significant volume of equipment and a work team. So we could say it was a working method and a filmmaking format, but done with electronic media. And that’s the reason for the expression “electronic movies”. We made fiction, documentaries, and “experimental” productions, working with people from other areas and with other artistic interests. A lot of people were into producing and this was an input for the creative environment. To name a few, there was Cristo Olivera, a poet, Sanopi the drafter, Laura Canoura… The CEMA was the place that saw the first generation of video and movie makers of the period following the military dictatorship.
Parallel to this, Enrique Aguerre and Álvarez Cozzi were doing videoart and Padín was into street performances. Though there were things in common, we did not produce art, we made films (also because quality mattered: they did not use professional equipment). The term “art” was not part of our goal … we could say that image was our trade.
We knew about Nam June Paik and others who produced art with television, even from the decade of 1950, but I was personally much more interested in what I saw of electronic music and other fields linked to the new media. For example, the fact that the Siemens Company gave Stockhausen the first computer to make music was something that caught my attention more than other things happening with electronic media.
In 1989 I authored a video with Marosa di Giorgio in a work that implied producing, actors, a special location, the electronic soundtrack by Daniel Maggiolo (forerunner of the new music in Uruguay). We spent two weeks at a farm with a team that included director of photography, camera assistants, producers, actors, costume designers, etc. And this was the start of something different for me. During the time that I left CEMA, from outside the institution we did Cabo Polonio en invierno (Winter in Cabo Polonio) with my brother Guillermo. We wanted to do something concerning image in itself (pure photography). We took with us a very heavy tripod and used to charge the batteries at the lighthouse every night. We filmed for hours, in delayed shots, with no time, in 20-min cassettes, with a cassette player apart from the camera… as the clouds went past the dunes, and the waves disheveled by the wind, the sand hitting the stone, and a seal dying on the shore. This work could be considered videoart. Had it been filmed, then it would be filmart. And because there was no specific denomination for it, the festivals of the time classified it as “experimental films”. Before that I worked on a videoart-type documentary on the Etchepare Hospital, where the key thing was the photomontage of those terrible images. And we considered it art because the means of expression in it was mainly image and music, with some narration but with no representations by the institution. It included Marosa reciting a poem from the Divine Comedy´s Hell, which implied a different way of showing a reality. Starting there, we started a period of significant production with the Uruguayan poet Roberto Mascaró, a resident of Sweden who brought the novelties of videoart in the work he had done with Juan Castillo, who in turn had worked with Raúl Zurita and Kjartan Slettemark. This video was part of several video exhibits of the time, along with productions of Aguerre, Cozzi and Padín, among others. It was also aired by Channel 10’s show called “Unedited” with Luciano Alvarez. I was also awarded a prize for this video, which was requested by the newly-formed parliament to be shown as a document at the Congress.
“Itinerarios” was a piece we made with Roberto Mascaró, for which we won SODRE’s award “Carabela de plata”. He later did “Jacuzzi interior” (where I was the cameraman and editor), and I made “Despertador” with Roberto acting in it. Together we came up with “Florida fluden”. With Anneli Göranson we did “Mermelada”, and another one with Antolín… Those times, in the early 90s, were very productive as far as creation was concerned, and that’s what I would label as creation video, or authored video or videoart.
- How did you end up in television, when you were already so firm in film productions?
- I would say it was by accident, following a stay in Sweden where I met the people I mentioned before and invited a lot of people to come to Uruguay. In Sweden we make “2012 Nervios de acero” [Nerves of steel], and here we invented the art festival “La punta del diablo” [Devil’s point] in Cabo Polonio. That was in 1992 and 1994. The thing was that all these activities demanded a lot of energy from me, and out of nothing (which was where I had ended up) I offered Channel 5 a program with what we had done at Cabo Polonio. The channel’s director at the time –Víctor Vjorgan – offered me in exchange to do a program on Uruguayan art, and that’s how “El Monitor Plástico” [The plastic monitor] came to be. At the beginning the format was what I was used to dealing with – professional, “camcorder” – together with the Encuadre cooperative, but later on came the Hi 8 cameras whose quality was almost the same as U- matic, with the only difference that they were half in size and weight. And in the year 2000, the second stage of the show, we worked with handy cam directly. I decided to go along with that change because it turned around the whole concept of production by economizing it and making it possible especially for a show on art that lacked financing. I thought that it would be the means for doing television, and that it was the format that I wanted for doing a show of this kind.
This also implied that the filmmaking task implied a team work that could be a good thing or … hell (laughs). There was an issue with how cinema became professional here, by leading everyone to a context a little military. All the groups producing in the 90s proposed this working method, rigid and authoritarian. I was not happy with that because I was already used to aesthetics of my own, and I wanted to defend that against all, a matter of rebelliousness and respect to myself. Maybe this characteristic of going by my own way of thinking and doing things was what allowed me to have everyone’s support today in Monitor Plástico as an authentic archive that is worth maintaining.
Maybe there’s a little of Basque attitude in all this…
- We will have to talk about your work after 2000 in an upcoming interview. You are already invited. 
Videos that can be visited in the Internet:
http://www.youtube.com/user/pinchocasanova
http://elmonitorplastico.com/VideoPlaylist_Videoteca/VideoPlaylist_Videoteca.html
Blogosphere-. Interview with Teresa Puppo
http://autorretratoteresapuppo.blogspot.com/
- I would like to tell me about your blog. I remember that, at the beginning you told me you were looking for a work that would be based on the web as support, but at the same time a form of self-preservation.
- I have been doing self-portraits for a long time. I then became interested in this subject. I had done a series of photographies in costumes, and what was important in those photos was the mirror, and what was reflected on it. Being yourself and being someone else too. Then I did 72 portraits of myself that mix images from different times of my life. There I play with time and with everything that coexists within a person, what you were, what you are… Before that I attended a workshop with Enrique Aguerre and told him about my idea of doing something with everyday stuff, something dynamic and interactive, and he suggested that I use the glob, a format quite new. I thought it was a good support for that idea, and I also liked it because anyone accessing it could go to wherever his interests were, and was also bound to find things in common, so there I started with the day by day record.
What triggered this work was a phrase by José Luis Brea * that I came upon. Mi relation with others, in this case, my self-portrait is not the same as the rest, because I was not only the main character but also the environment. Here is where the ephemeral is, the everyday and the time as witness of my life. Everyday I take photographs of minimal things, some are almost imperceptible in the daytoday, and I write a text about that day, so the work became a work in progress, an open task… until the day comes when it ends.
Many people know my environment through my blog, and when I refer to my environment I mean my family, the FAC (Contemporary Art Foundation), artists and friends. People from other parts of the world, Danilo Volpato for example, the Brazilian artist that was awarded the residency at the FAC, came to know the Sarandí breakwater and my life environment through the blog. And that’s what I meant when I talked of my way of relating to others. On one hand, my life is private, and on the other hand it is in the Internet for everyone to see. Some time ago I used to take more note of how many accessed the site and paid more attention to comments, but now I think that the important thing in the work is that exercise of accounting for time, the possibility of looking back and remember those things that apparently were not important in your life and are recorded there to not be forgotten. My memory is here, in this work.
— ¿Qué pasa si el soporte que usas deja de existir?
— What happens if the support you use no longer exists?
- I know that the Internet is a changing support, but I have a backup of almost everything, a kind of file of all images and now I’m also doing that with text, but I am not thinking of what would happen to my work if that were to happen. My work is ephemeral and the Internet is always changing. - What artist or theorist could you mention as someone who encouraged you to work with New Media (beyond your work in the blog)?
- I think that digital media are part of my process, as painting or writing. At the time of coming up with something I mix all that. However, I think that working with every language, for different supports, is different, the way in which doing a performance or a photograph are also different. The blog is a work that has been going on for 6 years and I would like it to go on. It made me see things like the fact that a day has 24 hours and I chose an instant that tells about those 24 hours. At first I thought that I could be objective and today I see that differently. My idea about the space of time has also changed. In regards to artists (Uruguayan? – Yes, Uruguayan), who had an influence on me to work with New Media: Enrique Aguerre, Ángela López (you), and, of course, Graciela Taquini (who is almost Uruguayan) who marked a beginning in this process that I am in.
Índice
Travelling. Introducción
Travelling (parte 1). Capítulo I y II
Travelling (parte 2). Capítulo III y IV
Travelling (parte 3). Continuación capítulo IV, capítulo V y enlaces
