eBook - ePub
The Francis Effect
Tania Bruguera, Noah Simblist, Noah Simblist
This is a test
Share book
- 96 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub
The Francis Effect
Tania Bruguera, Noah Simblist, Noah Simblist
Book details
Book preview
Table of contents
Citations
About This Book
"The Francis Effect was about proposing something completely absurd, as absurd as borders are. If Immigrant Movement was for the thousands of people who went there, The The Francis Effect was just for one person, the pope. But the more people that participated, the more personal it became." âTania Bruguera
Stemming from a performance that originated at the Guggenheim Museum, The Francis Effect explores Tania Bruguera's work as an artist, activist, and Cuban immigrant to the US engaging the tension between art's pragmatic, activist, and aesthetic possibilities.
The performance of The Francis Effect follows the guise of a political campaign, aiming to request that the Pope grant Vatican City citizenship to all immigrants and refugees. As a conversational, collaborative project, the resulting book mirrors Bruguera's artistic practice with essays and conversations from the the curators and Bruguera. In addition, the book-project is embiggened by socially-engaged commissioned essays from art historian Our Literal Speed, sociologist Saskia Sassen, and historian Nicolas Terpstra.
A groundbreaking interdisciplinary discussion of borders, Pangaea, sociology, and religious studies, The Francis effect offers art as a vehicle for social change, placing this work in the context of its creative and critical reception.
Frequently asked questions
How do I cancel my subscription?
Can/how do I download books?
At the moment all of our mobile-responsive ePub books are available to download via the app. Most of our PDFs are also available to download and we're working on making the final remaining ones downloadable now. Learn more here.
What is the difference between the pricing plans?
Both plans give you full access to the library and all of Perlegoâs features. The only differences are the price and subscription period: With the annual plan youâll save around 30% compared to 12 months on the monthly plan.
What is Perlego?
We are an online textbook subscription service, where you can get access to an entire online library for less than the price of a single book per month. With over 1 million books across 1000+ topics, weâve got you covered! Learn more here.
Do you support text-to-speech?
Look out for the read-aloud symbol on your next book to see if you can listen to it. The read-aloud tool reads text aloud for you, highlighting the text as it is being read. You can pause it, speed it up and slow it down. Learn more here.
Is The Francis Effect an online PDF/ePUB?
Yes, you can access The Francis Effect by Tania Bruguera, Noah Simblist, Noah Simblist in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Literatur & Literarische Essays. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.
Information
Topic
LiteraturSubtopic
Literarische EssaysCURATOR CONVERSATION
LucĂa SanromĂĄn, Noah Simblist, and Christina Yang with Tania Bruguera
New York, July 2016
NS: The goal of this conversation is to track the narrative of The Francis Effect. How did it begin? How did it manifest itself in the different cities?
LS: In 2012 I was curious about artists that worked with policy issues. I was in Mexico City that summer, and Tania was working with the Sala de Arte PĂșblico Siqueiros. I went to meet her for the first time, and we started talking and very quickly developed a rapport. Then, as the project for the Citizen Culture exhibition began to take shape, I invited Tania to be part of that exhibition with Immigrant Movement International (IMI).
But the question always was, how on earth do you present a project that is contextually driven? Itâs not that the issue of immigration is specific to context, but the whole conditions of IMI were so particular. They had a relationship to institutions and to a specific neighborhood in Queens. We had four or five meetings over the course of a couple of years about how to do that.
CY: How did you go from that to this idea of approaching the pope? I think that started with the two of you, right?
TB: That started in 2010. I was invited by the curator Eugenio Viola to do a piece for the Madre Museum. It was a performance festival, and I presented a press conference to announce a dream I had about Pope John Paul II. He gave me a message, and I felt it was more important to deliver the message than to actually do a performance. Thatâs how the relationship with the pope starts. But then I actually had a dream about the current pope, who is the migrant popeâthink of his visit to Lampedusa, Italy.1
LS: I remember when we first had a discussion about the dream that Tania is describing. Anyway, in 2012â2013, we went to Tijuana to see if there could be some kind of contextual, more operative version of the office of IMI. The discussion turned into a critique of the systems of nongovernmental organizations and activist organizations around the issue of immigrationââhow much they help or donât help. We went to a couple of homes for undocumented immigrants that returned to Tijuana from the US. Nongovernmental organizations that work with undocumented migrants do amazing work, but their job is actually perpetuated by the fact that they are needed. In other words, it doesnât really serve their purposes to âŠ
TB: To be successful.
LS: During this trip with Tania these ideas were percolating in her mind and she came upon the idea of what would happen if one could address the pope himself. He has this exceptional capacity. The Vatican has a specific governmental authority that has a historical capacity to make exceptions to laws. For example, it was the pope in the fifteenth century who allowed the Americas to be divided between Portugal and Spain in the Treaty of Tordesillas.
TB: I think it fell into a theme in all of my work, which is about taking a situation of power and demanding something. What triggered the project was the event in Lampedusa. But I also thought about the idea that the Church is an enterprise of charity, and our charity is not what immigrants need. Immigrants donât need food to eat for one day. They need the empowerment of papers. The only thing they need is papers. So we started dreaming and came up with the project as something to say.
Also, I was interested in the fact the Vatican was an exceptional country because it was created that way. It was an abnormality in relation to other nation states. The Vatican is a nation state that is not defined by territory but by religion. It was interesting to me that the Vatican was not about traditional nationalism. It is a nation that says you belong here no matter where you are from, but you have to believe in something. So I thought maybe countries should be organized in other ways than territory.
NS: Itâs interesting that when you describe the beginning of this project, you wanted to critique the NGOs that work with immigrants on the San DiegoâTijuana border. By performing the role of the activist, the image of the NGO worker, one reading of The Francis Effect could be that we should all take on this role. But on the other hand, it could also be read as a critique of this role, by saying that none of these NGOs can do anything effective, but the pope can actually do something.
TB: Exactly.
NS: So, then how did this progress? What was the chronology?
CY: So, chronologically I think she went to SMU first before we started talking in New York, right? Because Tania came to me and said, âI donât know what Iâm going to do, but I already have two partners.â
NS: Yes, but it really began here in New York.
TB: Yes, this is the first place where it happened.
CY: I knew that we were going to acquire one of Taniaâs works, Tatlinâs Whisper #6 (Havana Version).2 Pablo LeĂłn de la Barra also wanted to commission a new piece. The idea was that it was going to be live and embodied in some way. But we werenât going to stage Tatlinâs Whisper, because the political conditions didnât seem appropriate.
TB: Yes, because you can say anything you want here! I remember I was joking with Pablo and said, âI think the only thing we can do in New York is set up Tatlinâs Whisper and ask people to reveal all the gossip of the art world, because that is forbidden.â
CY: But you had an idea early on about the pope and the Church. We looked into doing something around doves. I think you were very interested in the dramaâthe space and spectacle that the Guggenheim provides. Also, you were very interested in having a visual signifier for the project. You had the Pangaea graphic. At some point, Pablo said, âYou know, just do the letter-writing campaign. Weâll do it on the sidewalk.â
LS: So, at the same time as Tania was talking to Pablo at the Guggenheim, we were also figuring out how to do the letter-writing campaign. I was working with the Mexico Cityâbased designers BurĂł-BurĂł to do all of the graphics for the Citizen Culture exhibition. Then I came to New York and met with Christina. There was also an idea that there would be T-shirts and all of the different parts for The Francis Effect. I think the Pangaea was an idea that Tania had already drawn.
TB: Yes, we had an early version of a Pangaea postcard with Immigrant Movement International.
LS: What we discussed then was the capacity that the Guggenheim has to synergize attention around the project and to gather the signatures. What became really interesting, and in a way almost prefigures the kind of social network that has gathered around #YoTambiénExijo, is that the vast majority of the people who signed were art world people.3
TB: No, I donât think so. For the Guggenheim it was very different. I remember a few things. First, I wanted the color to be the same color as the UN blue. Also at some point I said that we have to go outside, because it should look less like the Guggenheim, because if people see the setting as the Guggenheim then they wonât think that itâs real. I wanted to emphasize the public reality of the project, and actually a lot of people thought it was a real conversation, which is great. And actually I think that we gathered almost twelve thousand signatures at the Guggenheim. The majority were not artists but tourists. It was great because we had people from all over the world, which worked really well for the project.
NS: Do you remember anything about those conversations?
TB: I remember this guy who was extremely racist, like Trump. He said, âYou have to get those immigrants out of here because they take all the resources.â Then his girlfriend arrived, and sheâs Asian and doesnât speak English very well! That was something that shocked me. Another thing that was interesting was that there were some people from the Vatican at the beginning. One who worked there, but he said that he couldnât sign. One was a priest, and [there was] someone else who came with his family. He was an administrator at the Vatican, and we had a really good conversation. We explained why I chose the pope for this project and about the capacity of the imaginary that could be used by him, and they all wished me good luck. Then I remember a woman who was Catholic. She was very mad because she said that the pope is not a politician, the pope is not political.
And at some point during the performance, there was a crisis in the news about the kids from Latin America coming into the United States.4 I think a lot of things that were in the news influenced peopleâs reaction to the project. I remember at some point there was a crisis in the Middle East in Palestine.5 Some people said yes, but others said âIâm Israeli, so no.â They asked, âWhich refugees?â
NS: Yes, because in the case of Israel-Palestine it is a very politically contentious question to ask: Who is a refugee?
CY: I remember also that when we were talking about doing a performance, Tania said, âI havenât done a performance in a long time. But you said one hundred days? No problem.â You were committed to it. Tania said, âI want to do a performance, but itâs going to be durational, it has to be really demanding. I want to be out in the street.â So, in the beginning we said, âI guess we canât stop her.â But then we had to figure out things like weather and are people going to be here when the museum is closed? So over time we figured out the best times. Also the press wanted to see her. They asked, âWhen is she going to be there?â We had to figure out a way to organize it a little bit more like a theater piece. The performance was every day. Even some from Immigrant Movement International came in and did some canvassing.
NS: So, how did the volunteers work?
CY: Just to clarify, they were paid.
NS: OK, so how many people were there, and how were they trained?
CY: Tania trained them. We had a pilot day, and Tania, myself, and two staff members did the piece. We ordered the posters and ordered the T-shirts and the tote bags and the stickers.
TB: I remember that we had a conversation with the woman from visitor services.
CY: Yes, we had meetings with visitor services, with legal, with security. We had to figure out how the frontline staff were going to talk about the project. We developed an FAQ. We did a script for how to approach people, how to get to the question relatively subtly, but quickly, and then listen to them and then move on. Because at some point Tania said we have to get a hundred signatures a day. So not every signature was a conversation. Sometimes a group would come. For instance, [performance artist] Karen Finley brought her class. But every day Tania had good conversations. There was one with a woman who was an artist. She said, âI came to see this show, and if you hadnât told me this was an artwork I would sign it. Iâm very political, am very involved in social work. Iâm very involved in immigration, but because you told me it was an artwork Iâm not going to sign it. Because that would ruin it for me.â
Tania was like a slow shark. Youâre looking to have a conversation. In the end you have to commit to having a conversation and listening. But you also want to wrap it up because you have to get your signature and move on. So each canvasser or performer had their own technique.
But there was also the time when one performer had a hard conversation with somebody. She had a conversation with a guy who was very aggressive and said that this will never work, how can you imagine that the pope will ever do this, and he shut her down. She was traumatized by it. She said, âI think I have to take a break,â and I remember going to our curators and sa[ying] that we have to shut the piece down for an hour because she had a hard conversation. And that led me to think about the piece as an object. It needs to be protected. It needs to be contained and taken care of.
NS: So, is âitâ the conversations?
CY: No, the performers. They were vulnerable to anything that people would say. So even though the script said that this is an artwork by Tania Bruguera, itâs in the show at the Guggenheim Museum, even when it was contextualized and framedâwhen they realized it was about immigration, thatâs when difficult interactions came up.
TB: Thatâs an interesting point. There was a very interesting reaction to that script, because people heard whatever they wanted to and they couldnât hear anything else. But then there were those that signed and didnât care. There were cases in which one person from a group would sign and then everyone from the group would sign.
NS: But thatâs good because you wanted signatures, right?
TB: Yes, but we also wanted this to be kind of a campaign. We had lots of good conversations, but at some point we had to focus on the numbers. In that sense the project was very political.
CY: Because we had this picture in our minds that a big box of postcards was going to arrive at the Vatican with fifteen thousand signatures.
NS: So, at the Guggenheim this project occurred within the context of a group show, Under the Same Sun: Art from Latin America Today. It wasnât a solo project. It was a project that was framed in relation to Latin America.
TB: Thatâs why it was appropriate.
CY: Yes, because the pope is from Argentina.
TB: I wanted to do a piece that was connected to the United States, and one of the main subjects for the US is immigration. Thatâs the one thing that I didnât see in the show so much.
NS: So, then, LucĂa, how did the transition happen from New York to Los Angeles?
LS: Well, there was a group of people working with the curator of education at the Santa Monica Museum. And we were very conscious of the change of scale from the Guggenheim. Also, the Santa Monica museum didnât have a lot of foot traffic. Like everything in Los Angeles, you have to drive and park. So, working with the curator of education and a group of volunteers, we worked on figuring out in what churches the canvassing could take place.
That became an interesting thing. In fact, I donât think we were very effective at canvassing i...