In the Museum of Modern Art of Buenos Aires the exhibition has just opened “This is theater. Eleven experimental scenes: from Di Tella to Parakultural”an exhaustive journey that travels the Buenos Aires theatrical scene from the avant -garde of The sixties until the experimental fervor of the early nineties.
With curatorship of Alejandro Tantanian scenic directorthe playwright Andrés Gallina and the criticism in visual arts Florencia Qualina, the exhibition is articulated in eleven stations that represent true milestones of renewal in the local theater. The different posts include the experiences carried out in the Audiovisual Experimentation Center (CEA) of the Di Tella Institute, led by Roberto Villanueva between 1963 and 1970. Emphasizes some renovating milestones, such as the premiere of “El Desatino” by Griselda Gambaro, directed by Jorge Petragliawork that originates a controversy of those years: those who raised a realistic theater in front of those who broken by the absurd.
In addition, transcendental figures such as the singer and actress are remembered Nacha Guevarathe Tucumano director Víctor García and the suggestive photographic records that Gianni Mesichelli made with the company of the Mimo Ángel Elizondo. You can also see the fascinating androgynous aesthetic drawings of Renata Schussheim Inspired by the artist Jean-François Casanovasplus the registration of the activities of the Parakultural, that kind of cave created by Omar Viola and Horacio Gabin, which was the seedbed where artists such as Batato Barea, Alejandro Urdapillata or Las Gambas al Ajillo, among others.
Everything culminates with photos of Pompi Gutnisky and the documentary of Ezequiel Ábalos about “UORC”, one of the central creations of the black organization, the group led by Manuel Hermelo and Pichón Baldinu that premiered in 1986, in cement. At that time, that group baffled the public with their interventions in public spaces where performers were chained in traffic lights, vomiting yogurt or falling collapsed above the cars.
Ephemeral art
The very nature of the theater transforms it into an ephemeral art. It is unique and unrepeatable, each function is different and, except in the memory of the spectators, unlike painting or sculpture, it does not leave a tangible record. That is why it is important to keep in mind that both video and photography are evocative and contribute to activate the affective memory of the event. In the opinion of Rebecca Schneider, an outstanding academic and theoretical of the American performing arts, specialized in performance studies, photographs “can be living agents of memory, which keep the act latent and allow their reappearance in other bodies, times and looks.”
Precisely, on the second floor of the wide museum, you can see photographic images, dissemination posters, videos, objects, costumes, audios, drawings and even notebooks that belonged to Urdapilta and that document those effervescent years.
“The exhibition is important because it values the idea of the fileof memory and also the work of researchers on which we work a lot like Lorena Verzero, María Fernanda Pinta and Malala González. Also because of the possibility of preservation that, in the case of performing arts, does not have a strong tradition of archivism in Argentina. Regarding the time it is interesting to think about Di Tella and in the Parakulturalas spaces in which there was a will for rehearsal and error. Have the possibility as artists to make mistakes and that this mistake discovered new ways of expressing, communicating, contacting the public. It is also an invitation to the generations present. For some to look again and for others to discover something that, with the acceleration of the times in the platform of the gaze, also complicates to look a little what was that preceded us. The sum of all these things I think they make exposure an important and unusual space. The theater is unthinkable, from its origins, without a link with the visual arts, ”says Tantanián.
Del Tella to Parakultural
We are going to stop especially in the spaces that open and close the tour: Di Tella and the Parakultural.
The recreation of the staircase of “The helm of Athens” by Shakespeare in Di Tella under the direction of visionary Roberto Villanueva. Posters, photographs of some works and the voice of the director, transfer us to the creative agitation of that epicenter of the advanced artistic of his time. Over there, Alfredo Arias, Ángel Elizondo, Norman Briski, Jorge Bonino, Grupo Lobo, Kado Kostzer, Les Luthiers, Marilú Marini, Mario Trejoamong many others, participated in experiences that sought to dissolve the boundaries between creative disciplines such as performance, happening, multimedia and dance. Financed by the company Siam Di Tella, in a kind of patronage or cultural sponsorship, taken from the American model, it was a space located on Florida 936 street and survived until the scythe of the dictatorship headed by Juan Carlos Onganía closed it due to its “subversive character and support to artistic avant -garde”.
The parakultural, meanwhile, was self -managed, an exploration and meeting space, almost a trench place where you could find Alejandro Urdapillata Wrapped in a Voile curtain that looked as if it were silk, Batato Barea with her long reddish hair and a squalid Humberto Tortonese that always ended up suffering from Urdapilleta’s attacks. The three, in the opinion of the prestigious critic and writer Ernesto Schoo: “They came to demolish the world to build a better.” There he could see, for example, “the poets”, where they embodied decadent and grotesque women who, through absurd humor, at ruthless times, made a social criticism.
In that basement of Venezuela Street 336 they were also born Ajillo prawns, which were part of Verónica Llinás, Alejandra Flechner, María José Gabin and Laura Market. His fierce style stated the tooth in machismo, militarism, consumption and gender stereotype with a punk aesthetic, almost carnival that included exaggerated changing rooms and excessive makeup.
In a society like ours, so elusive to exercise the memory of time gone, this opportunity offered by the Museum of Modern Art should be used to rethink the generation of a file on Argentine scenic activity. Hopefully, so.
Image gallery
