Presentación del profesor-artista (2003)

Presentación del profesor-artista

En la primera clase de la asignatura, el profesor pidió a los alumnos que entrasen todos juntos al aula cuando hubiesen creado un grupo numeroso. Al entrar, encontraron al profesor sentado en frente de una cámara de video.

Este se tapó los oídos, se metió un trapo en la boca, se amordazó y acto seguido empezó a atarse con una cinta de embalar a la silla. Primero los pies y las piernas, después por el tronco y uno de sus brazos. Al no poder continuar por sí mismo, solicitó con gestos la ayuda de los presentes, que contribuyeron al amordazamiento del profesor. Una vez terminada la cinta, incitó con gestos a los presentes a que le vendasen los ojos, con unos pañuelos que previamente había preparado en el suelo. Acto seguido, el profesor paró.

Los estudiantes se quedaron totalmente desconcertados y empezaron a hablar entre ellos, haciendo bromas sobre la situación. A los pocos minutos decidieron desatarlo y el profesor dio las gracias.

La acción de presentación sirvió de motivación para emprender una discusión sobre los límites del arte contemporáneo, la función del profesor, el papel del alumno y del público en las obras de arte participativo, la improvisación, la relación entre el arte y la experiencia cotidiana y la unión del arte contemporáneo y la educación. Se realizó un procedimiento de preguntas dirigidas que ayudasen a reflexionar sobre la experiencia.
Artist-teacher presentation 

In the first day of the subject, the teacher asked their students to come in together, once they create a numerous group. When they came in, they found the teacher sit down in front of a video camera.

He bind up his eyes, introduced a cloth in his mouth, he muzzled himself, and then he wrapped himself with wrapping tape to the chair: First his feet and legs, them his body and one of his arms. He couldn’t continue by himself, so he asked with gestures the cooperation of the public, which they helped to gag him. Once he was totally bounded, he encouraged the students to bind up his eyes, with a handkerchief, which he had prepared in the floor. Forthwith he stopped. 

The students were confused and started talking to each other, making jokes about the situation. After a few minutes they decides to unbind him. The teacher, free from his bindings, thanked the students for his freedom.

The presentation performance worked as a motivation to start a discussion about the limits of the contemporary art, the teacher duties, the roll of the student and public in the participative art works, the improvisation, the relationship between art and daily experience and the relationship contemporary art and education. The teacher used specific questions to make the students think and reflect about these themes.

This simple action reflected about the meaning of the occidental education specifically the artistic higher art education. Studied the need of an educational change which was presented in the performance Reality versus Ficción, and developed in the doctoral thesis based in the common research of the student and teacher without any hierarchical structure. The teacher performance showed and proved the parallelism between the participative art and the participative education. On the other side, this presentation treat the repression and the limitation of the teacher in the institution, needing from the students help to overcome the limitation of the institutional education, based in the specialisation, disciplinary studies and the fragmentation.

Besides this educational perspective, the performance analyse a personal and vital situation. The artist presence in a world, which stimulates and also denies his senses, tied and liberates him, oppress and help him… This open process to the public decision creates a perverse dynamic which makes the viewer accomplice and culpable of the artist suffering.