On August 2, 1914, Franz Kafka writes in his diary “Germany has declared war on Russia. In the afternoon, I went swimming.” There is a great disparity between the facts that Kafka puts forth: one of great historical impact, WWI, and on the other extreme, one of the private life of some unknown upon whom posterity granted the identity of genius. It is not by chance that Enrique Vila-Matas begins his book Hijos sin hijos (Children Without Children) with this quote by Kafka. Hijos sin hijos is a unique review of some of the episodes in Spain’s history in which the main characters are “children without children.” In other words, or better yet, in the words of Vila-Matas, “when headline news happens, the wandering ghosts that have the main role in my stories about Spain, see it as an interference in their lives and wait, as Kafka did, for the afternoon and go for a swim. They also place the historical and personal on the same level.”
But how is collective memory created if not from individual stories? Really, aren´t collective memory, individual memory and historical memory different facets of the same prism? Can we not consider science to be the result of the linking of numerous experiments and observations, or really, the sum of a multitude of small essays and small stories that allow confirmation of initial intuitions? Also, on occasion, the personal starting point becomes the detonative of a theoretical body of great transcendence. ”All of this must be considered as if written by a character in a novel”, writes Roland Barthes in Roland Barthes par lui même (Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes), 1975, and, from that affirmation onward, the enamored “I” appeals to its own experiences and feelings and elaborates a discourse plagued with philosphical and literary references entitled Fragments d’un discours amoureux (A Lover’s Discourse),1977. Shortly thereafter, a sorrowful “I” who has just lost his mother, looks through the family albums to find a photo that captures the true spirit of his mother, while simulaneously creating a touching yet severe reflection about photography as a means of representation, La chambre claire. Note sur la photographie (Camera Lucida. Note About Photography), 1980.
The will to narrate, to share personal testimonies and facts of the world, its cohabitation and opposition at different levels, makes up the articulated focal point of Minimal Histories, a program of videos that share the need to tell, understood as a form of revelation, of the existence and the creation of the story, as a continuous, participative and permeable activity. To collectively define the nine imaginary journeys that make up Minimal Histories, we can appropriate the words of Vila-Matas when referring to his stories: “I believe that from the combination a rigorous reality has emerged (that big truth that lies tell), different from the official reality and possibly unique. After all, what are we, what are each of us but a different and unique combination of experiences, readings, imaginations.” As the historian Marc Ferro affirms, “film, image or not of reality, document or fiction, authentic intrigue or mere invention, is history. The postulate? That that which has not happened, the beliefs, intentions, man’s imaginary, has as much value as History as real History.”
The title Minimal Histories alludes to Carlos Sorin’s 2002 movie by the same name, and shares with it the will to center on the facts told, despite their effect, from a human scale. If the movie Minimal Histories compares the magnitude of the small individual stories to the immense landscape of Patagonia, in the video program Minimal Histories the individual referents contrast with the story as a backdrop, in such a way that the individual narratives compare, contrast, establish ironic relationships or simply occur in parralel to some of Spain’s historical references: from Philip II to Inditex, from “No to War” to Julio Iglesias to Velázquez’s Surrender of Breda to Faemino and Cansado…
In Cada día paso por aquí (Everyday I Walk by Here) (2004), Raúl Arroyo brings us on an everyday, urban walk, narrated in first person and using badges, posters and other signage as visuals. But other elements cross the path of this subjective walk (phrases like “hate breeds hate” or “vote, idiot” shown in graffitis) that place us in other political and social spheres.
Luis Cerveró also works starting with individual and collective imaginary references to fabricate his own reality. Death / Rock & Roll (2005), one of the works in the trilogy Love, Death and Rock & Roll, creates its own sentimental map from bits of music and emblematic images from pop culture (ranging from Bob Dylan to models photographed by Richardson) that, cut out and re-combined, seem to come alive.
The off stage voice brings us closer to Daniel Cuberta’s experiences of El hombre invisible (The Invisible Man) (2004), a metaphor for the individual that sees but can not be seen, who is as unusual as impotent a witness to the facts, history and culture of his own biography.
Josu Rekalde’s Contando con los dedos de una mano (Counting With the Fingers of One Hand) (1996), is based on the potential of a story in constant construction. It emphasizes the power of the word above that of the image, and shows several facts related to Spain’s most recent history, using fixed distance and the artist’s own hands to narrate, without showing concrete images.
Patricia Esquivias also explicitly refers to the history of Spain and does so from a very personal narrative that relates facts and characters distant in time in an absolutely subjective way, amongst which the artist establishes a series of more than evident connections. If in Folklore (2006), Esquivias weaves a thread that unites Franco with Jesús Gil, and ties it up with the rave culture parties in Valencia (with all of the related consequences), in Folklore II (2008), the artist draws the similarities between King Phillip II (1527-1598) and the singer Julio Iglesias, as representatives of global empires that are distant in time, but amazingly parrallel.
Determinación de personaje (Determination of Character) (2000), by Antonio Ortega, also makes direct reference to a historical fact, to Velázquez’s painting The Surrender of Breda, but he does so from an unprecedented perspective in order to center attention on other aspects. Antonio Ortega takes a monologue from the comedians Faemino and Cansado to explore the theories of biological determinism that relate certain physical characteristics with a specific personality. In this case, the art critic David G. Torres, and the artist Óscar Abril Ascaso represent the roles of Faemino and Cansado, who are just a contemporary version of the traditional Whiteface and Auguste clowns. The monologue that they give alludes to creation, its dependence on power, and includes other references to Spanish culture.
Social Sculptures (2005) shares with Determinación de personaje an unusual way to approach reality. In Social Sculptures, Manuel Saiz takes Joseph Beuys’ famous line “everyone can be an artist” as a starting point for his multidirectional reformulation. Three actors repeat and give different versions of this declaration of principles in different situations and with different intentions. Thus the “everyone can be an artist” with which Beuys alluded to the necessity that all people could develop their own creativity becomes “I wish I could be an artist” or “not everyone can be an artist”.
Not everyone can be an artist, but they can play an active part in an artistic project. In Secret Strike. Inditex (2006), the artist Alicia Framis explores interpersonal relationships in the work environment. She does this with the collaboration of the companies and institutions where she films her videos. In this case she uses Inditex, the Galician empire of fashion. Alicia Framis proposes the carrying out of a minimal action (stopping all activity during several minutes) that can hypothetically have an enormous impact (reduction in the production indexes of the businesses). Alicia Framis thus reminds us of the large impact that small personal actions can have.
The circle of stories is completed and expanded with Dora García’s All the Stories (2001), a vídeo that documents the performance of a narrator willing to recite “all the stories of the world.” For the recording she selected 40 stories of the 3000 that she had gathered up until then (and which continue to grow on the Internet on http://www.doragarcia.net/insertos/todaslashistorias/). The video, far from being a closed work, is resonant with the essence of an unfinished, open project: “A man, a woman recite all of the stories of the world. When they have finished, all of the stories, all men and all women, all time and all places will have passed through their lips.”
