Art does not have to be pretty, at least not according to Marcel-Lí Antúnez Roca. The visiting artist from Spain formulates art in a curious mix of animal, man and machine.
On Sunday evening, Townhouse Gallery’s Factory Space hosted an autobiographical lecture by Roca entitled “Sistematurgy. Coined by the artist, the term is a fusion of “system and “dramaturgy, signifying a practice between computation and art.
Roca is an artist negotiating two very different times through his art. “I am 50 years old now, he told Daily News Egypt, “I was born in the 20th century, but I work in the 21st century.
At the presentation, Roca had a device strapped around him with which he presented the installation. A belt around his waist carried a box where he would press buttons to rewind and forward, whereas his fingers were used to produce musical sounds, or echo his vocals.
Roca’s early works focused on the animalistic. Animal parts mix freely with the human body, be it in cartoons or in installations where animal parts are grafted together to present a human body.
In an autobiographical short film, his family is represented as father rooster and mother hen, while the chicks are all born with human faces. Existence on the farm is crude, where life, sex, and death are displayed clearly.
The Factory Space is the “only space where [displaying] something like this is normal, said audience member Frederike Meier-Menzel, who teaches design at the German University in Cairo (GUC), clearly a fan of Roca’s work.
Roca’s work shows a concern with aphasia, the inability to read. It presents a common affliction in the modern age where one is constantly readapting oneself to advances in technology.
In a 1994 piece entitled “Afasia, Roca’s body is fitted with a mechanical “exoskeleton. Controlled by the audience, this exoskeleton decides the movement of Roca’s muscles and body. The exoskeleton is also fitted with the sounds of bagpipes, drums, guitar and violin.
“It’s like a video game, says Roca, “I’m a marionette, and people play with me, producing different sounds and movements. As with aphasia where reading is relearned, the audience learns the language of new media in order to move Roca’s body.
While the concern with the animalistic body belongs to a former time – or another place like Egypt, where ugliness can be quite visible, according to the artist – the interactive installation puts Roca’s work firmly in the postmodern time. ‘Afasia’ received many awards including the Best New Media Award in Montreal in 1999, and has been staged in many cities worldwide.
In 1999, inspired by the Egyptian sarcophagus, Roca created a metallic exoskeleton to be worn by immobile subjects which would be controlled by the audience. The installation was called “Requiem. Unlike the previous partial choreographies, the performer here was completely passive, and moved only by audience’s directions.
An unsuccessful 2002 production, “Pol tells the story of a rabbit who, while on a voyage to experience love, goes through biological and physical changes. Here too the audience interacts in the service of storytelling. The structure is mechanotronic, again a curious mix of man, animal, and machine, but people “do not buy it, Roca says.
Following “Pol, Roca had a lucky break with Dèdal Experiment in Russia, where he, along with other artists, has been invited to experience zero gravity, and where he also raised prototypes for extraterrestrial life. The products are similar to the robotic exoskeletons of “Requiem except these operate under varied gravities.
Roca then fell back on what he knew best: drawing. Out of this came his personal “sistematurgy entitled the “Protomembrana.
“Drawings become the primary part of the discourse, he said. As audience press buttons, it is not human bodies that move, but drawings that change. In one popular piece, audience members put their head in a box and found their faces on characters in comic scenes in video installations.
The drawings themselves are colorful and surreal. Featuring an amalgam of animals and body parts grafted on surreal scenery, at times Roca’s work resembles Salvador Dali in motion.
In 2007, the Gallery of Contemporary Art in Italy invited Roca to produce a dynamic wall painting. In the resulting DMD Europa, Roca s interactive installations reveal the fears and problems of Europe, including censorship, bureaucracy and fear of sickness.
Two productions in 2007 and 2008 witnessed a surge of color in Roca’s work: the blood and gore of his former work returned in “Hipermembrana, while the colorful richness of murals was explored in “Metamembrana.
Influences on Roca’s work – varying from the art produced by mentally challenged artists, to the works of Picasso, 70s underground comics of Robert Crumb, the silent short films of French pioneer Georges Méliès, and avant-garde cinema – are clearly visible in his latest “Metamembrana.
Besides, there are only three books of life, Roca said: childhood, adult experiences, and books in the library.
Roca’s concern as an artist is to bring things inside out; to bring the skeleton to the fore, and the animal and the carnal over the body and clothes. And the picture is not always pretty. As the artist admits, “I try to paint things that are ugly.
For more information on Roca, visit his website http://marceliantunez.com.
