A Performative Visit from The Independent Republic of Ruedazuela

Maybe something will happen... but make it soon, please

Some how I had not written anything here for a couple of days.

I guess I just had not though of anything interesting, and I am not truly sure that I have anything great to say tonight either. But tonight I did go to an art show.
Yes, those strange events in which people drink and eat for no charge, and while doing so they look around to find themselves trapped in a room full of ''art'', and feel compelled, maybe obliged, to look, appreciate and/criticize what surrounds them. Some do go for the ''art,'' I hope, but at least I certainly enjoyed my evening.
Maybe I am being way too critical, maybe literacy has spoiled my brain, but I could not help but think how many things of what I saw could be better. I commented what I thought could be changed to my friends, and then noticed how overly presumptuous it was to think that way. I should just let it be, like The Beatles song, but I couldn’t. My brain kept dictating, and I voiced out the words. And some how, for the same reason that I cannot just look at something without revising its every inch and considering concept, sometimes I think academia has actually taught me what I did not want to learn.

I started to consider this as we drove away from the galleries, and I somehow related it all to my long process this past two months creating my latest sculpture. At first a time-based installation, now something else completely, this piece has taken me so long!

Every inch, every layer, every small piece of wood, everything had been well though of, everything had its meaning or purpose. The more I cut and put together, the more I would consider what the piece in its entirety would be, and consequently, the more complicated it would get. Until very recently I noticed I was not going to be able to do what I wanted. I was so upset!!

I had thought it through so well, I really wanted to see this piece happen, and I still do, but for the sake of time, I have to hurry myself up and make something different, which I have luckily already figured out. At first I felt pretty disappointed and a bit like a failure, but then I noticed how ridiculous that was. These things happen!

So, back to my main point, maybe I am thinking too much. Maybe that is making me go slower in the process of creation, but it has sped up the process of creativity. In a day I will get at least three ideas for pieces I would really like to realize, and that is good. This is good. I believe I am doing well. OK. I could be doing better… much better… but I am doing OK, and that's good enough as of now.

:)

Performance November 11th

Once again I will post without much lyrical explanation, but time is scarce. The flier is, I hope, self explanatory: I am performing with my piece ''Ruedazuela'' in the University of Delaware in the patio of Trabant University Center from 12:30 to 3:30.


Rain date scheduled for Tuesday Nov 17th, same time.
Here are links to two local newspapers that have featured the piece in an article:
http://eltiempohispano.com/
(last edition, #6)

http://www.delawareonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2009910130303

News Journal

A few days ago the News Journal wrote an article about a race that I was part of this past weekend. Here´s the link so you can check out what they wrote:

http://www.delawareonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2009910130303

And just today I noticed a lil' vid was also added onto the article, which was posted on the web-page delawaretoday.com (I swear I did not make the image for the video be mine, that's just how it came up, and that's kinda awesome I guess):



It's kind of funny. The narrator explains how in this kinetic race people "decorated their bicycles" and then mine, well, its totally not a bicycle; and he also happens to say the word "bicycle" when my piece and I show up in the video.

PS: I will soon post more information about this piece and the places it has gone...

CASA/remembering

A scrap piece of wood.
A rabbit (or hare?) covered in Wax
A scrap piece of metal.
An orange line.
A tooth.
A cardboard house.
A worn out photograph.
This aspects make up the piece here pictured, CASA/remembering. They make up the material/physical realm of this piece. That would be the most basic and straightforward explanation for it.
Now, lets get into concepts.
All of these materials were collected randomly. From boxes I have kept full of things around my room, or things that were lying around my studios. At first they were just that, random objects, but after sitting with them, a piece of paper, a pen, and (maybe?) a little rum, they became something else.
These objects are mine, I have kept them, I have collected them, and for some odd reason I did not just throw them away. They become a part of me; they represent and portray me, Esteban M. Pilonieta Vera.
The way they where arranged is meant to show something very specific (I guess the rum helped). All the objects lay on the legged scrap piece of wood because I present this to you as a theatrical moment, a snap shot of some kind, so it serves as the pedestal for it.
Weirdly enough, the rabbit has always been my favorite animal. This small toy was particularly abducted from a museum against its will, a sticker with a price directed a different ritual to take place, but my pocket found a way around it; in order to keep my kleptomaniac obsessions alive. So, my favorite animal, my little problem as a kleptomaniac, and a glob of wax. Wax? Yeah, wax. This I interpret to be like the cloud of things, the weight of the common day life that slows me down, that keeps me contrived here, in Delaware.
The tooth is the real me, or at least what at some point I really wanted to go back to being, but then I realized I am good enough as I am. It did at some point form ‘‘me,’’ since it is a molar tooth that was removed from my denture a couple of years back.
The cardboard house in which it stands in front of is CASA = home, Venezuela, Mérida, El Valle.
The orange line serves as a connecting passage between the ‘‘present me’’, and what I once considered to be the ‘‘real me.’’ It is the voyage I have to take with certain regularity so I do not drive myself insane, because I miss too much.
That is the worn out photograph, the worn out memories. At some point it portrayed my best friend, and it was in my wallet, next to other objects (like labels or tickets) that served as a quick escape (a quick fix) back home. Until it was so worn out that her face was entirely removed from the image and transferred onto my wallet’s plastic pocket. The sub-title remembering comes from these ideas, since the ‘‘present me’’ stands in front of the ‘‘real me,’’ reviving old memories.
These piece is part of a show, the Miniature / Micro-Monumental, in the Townsend University as of now, and until the beginning of November. After that they will come back to the University of Delaware together with other student’s work from Townsend and displayed here. Hopefully the show will make their way to Asia afterwards, to both Thailand and Japan.