Marsha Gall & Jaime Conde-Salazar

"WED ART. exploring the ruin"

(Spanish Abstract)

WED ART is a collective and simultaneous project that explores strategies of collaboration as means of resistance to the established processes of cultural and artistic production. WED ART is a meant to be a space/contract in constant process of definition and redefinition.

exploring the ruin
The main mechanism we are following now in the construction of WED ART consists in a constant exploration of strategies. These strategies compose a landscape similar to a ruin and our action is about wandering among them. In this process we depend totally in the accidentallity of our movements, and in the random encounter with remains. These actions determine a project that is not positive and that includes the possibility of failure. We explore a ruin.
Some the strategies in our ruin are:
" Invitation: Each action is based in a formal invitation to the other components. This is a way of eluding the creation of projects that foresee a series of goals. Invitation required first the acceptance of the invited so the host can suggest the departing conditions for the action but after acceptance, these conditions result inevitably revised by the presence of the invited.
" Promise: Promise is a strategy for the development of invitations. It depends on the skills and style of the person uttering the invitation. The promise use to work as an announcement but mainly as a process of seduction.
" Negotiation: The process of invitation implies a necessary and consequent process of negotiation. This process permits the dissolution of authority and authorship. Once the invitation has been accepted, the limits and goals of the action have to be defined by all the people involved in the action. Then through negotiation it is possible the collective nature of every action.
" Failure: An invitation can always be rejected. A process of negotiation can also be frustrated. Actions don't depend on the accomplishment of a series of goals established in the general project. In this sense failure is a possibility for the actions and as a result for the general project.
" Intervention: Intervention opens the possibility of arbitrary appropriation and use of other projects or actions. This is the strategy of the one that is not invited. It is another way of unexpected collaboration that eludes the predetermination of positive goals for an action.

WED ART as a project was created the 2nd of February of 2002 at 20:02 PM. Since that moment the following actions have been or are being developed:

" Two notebooks. This action inaugurated the project in the moment cited before. It is a double diary of the project developed independently by each of the components. And this double diary is meant to be a simultaneous process though which it is taken place the work of two dramatugists. Double diary. Simultaneous dramaturgy.
" Welcome to my wedding. This is the first public action of the project. It took place during the Sound Off at the Performance Studies International Conference (New York University, April 2002). The action followed the idea of creating a theatre of skin through the negotiation of the breathing of the participants. This theatre of skin was hidden for the audience and this concealment provoked a failure of spectatorship and of the spatial structure of representation of the theatre where it took place.
" La casa. It is the first spatial action of the project. Its aim is to create a place for the development of the different actions of the project. It is on construction and the date foreseen for its accomplishment is the end of summer.
" Trio Ah!(A transgender dance event). It is an action that aims to explore some gender aspects of the project through the performance of an extremely simple dance. It includes the participation of a third guest. By the moment, this action is still an invitation.