De DesnuDOS, Desnudez y DesnuDARSE

A raíz de eventos recientes, personales y ajenos, se me hace obligatorio un comentario al desnudo.

Nunca deja de llamar la atención la atención que atrae el cuerpo, especialmente si este se conjuga en femenino. Material físico, viscoso, presente, voluptuoso; sus componentes son parte de un ente paralelo que compartimos, una demostración táctil de humanidad, empleando dicha palabra como adjetivo, no como sustantivo, pues es un atributo de nuestra existencia.

Y aún se insiste en censurarlo...

En mis andares visualizo el desnudo de manera cotidiana, en las Venus griegas, en cuadros de Boticelli, en las pristinas Madonnas Lactans, en las Olympias confrontadoras, las Carolee Schneeman, Marina Abramovic, Priscilla Monge o Regina Galindo de nuestra época. Ya en el arte un cuerpo no escandaliza, se mueve entre la necesidad expresiva y el cliché sensacionalista. ¿Será ese reflejo en cuerpos ajenos (muchos cuerpos, muchos distintos) lo que me acomodó la comodidad de ser asimilada primero como carne y piel para quien se aproxime antes de ser mente y razón? Pues un desnudo, el mío o el ajeno, no se convierte en secreto ni misterio, simplemente ES... Es esa desnudez.

Seamos “creativos” (sarcasmo implícito) y agreguémosle entonces una capa de sexualidad al material. Pues si bien un cuerpo no es escándalo, DOS juntos ya es lujuria... ni qué decir de tres. Y entonces, a una imagen el erotismo se le multiplica, o inclusive se le adiciona sin importar cual fuera su intención comunicativa inicial, cuando Otro la hace propia. Entonces (quizás) el cuerpo de quien se comparte por razón del arte se ve mutilado, condenado a convertirse en posesión sexual de una mirada inmadura, entrenada bajo la tutela conservadora de la ignorancia. Se borran las distinciones que crea el contexto y termina archivada dicha imagen, cualquiera que sea, en el mismo registro de la pornografía o la obscenidad. Por consecuente la desnudez se convierte en barbaridad, aún cuando desnuDOS hemos estado o estaremos todos.

Lo que se obvia es el hecho de que el deseo es independiente de la intención. Dar el cuerpo es sincerarse, no entregarse, ya sea al descubierto o en mantas, pues pertenece a quien lo tenga no a quien lo quiera; lo comparte quien lo cargue no quien lo reciba momentáneamente. DesnuDARSE es difuminarse, diluir mi componente material con el de mis colegas para darles a entender que debajo de todo material que nos cubre existe uno que es propio y es ajeno simultáneamente, pues es algo que se comparte. Es articular en un gesto físico las palabras “este cuerpo es mío y escojo utilizarlo por motivos que sobrepasan el pudor.”

Configurando Nuevas Acciones: El Arte como Ente Educativo

Invitación a leer un artículo que escribí para la Revista Surco.

Ideas extraídas de la tesis que actualmente consume mis días

(y anteriormente consumió mis meses).

Resonancia

And thou art dead, as young and fair

As aught of mortal birth;

And form so soft, and charms so rare,

Too soon return'd to Earth!

Though Earth receiv'd them in her bed,

And o'er the spot the crowd may tread

In carelessness or mirth,

There is an eye which could not brook

A moment on that grave to look.

I will not ask where thou liest low,

Nor gaze upon the spot;

There flowers or weeds at will may grow,

So I behold them not:

It is enough for me to prove

That what I lov'd, and long must love,

Like common earth can rot;

To me there needs no stone to tell,

'T is Nothing that I lov'd so well.

Yet did I love thee to the last

As fervently as thou,

Who didst not change through all the past,

And canst not alter now.

The love where Death has set his seal,

Nor age can chill, nor rival steal,

Nor falsehood disavow:

And, what were worse, thou canst not see

Or wrong, or change, or fault in me.

The better days of life were ours;

The worst can be but mine:

The sun that cheers, the storm that lowers,

Shall never more be thine.

The silence of that dreamless sleep

I envy now too much to weep;

Nor need I to repine

That all those charms have pass'd away,

I might have watch'd through long decay.

The flower in ripen'd bloom unmatch'd

Must fall the earliest prey;

Though by no hand untimely snatch'd,

The leaves must drop away:

And yet it were a greater grief

To watch it withering, leaf by leaf,

Than see it pluck'd to-day;

Since earthly eye but ill can bear

To trace the change to foul from fair.

I know not if I could have borne

To see thy beauties fade;

The night that follow'd such a morn

Had worn a deeper shade:

Thy day without a cloud hath pass'd,

And thou wert lovely to the last,

Extinguish'd, not decay'd;

As stars that shoot along the sky

Shine brightest as they fall from high.

As once I wept, if I could weep,

My tears might well be shed,

To think I was not near to keep

One vigil o'er thy bed;

To gaze, how fondly! on thy face,

To fold thee in a faint embrace,

Uphold thy drooping head;

And show that love, however vain,

Nor thou nor I can feel again.

Yet how much less it were to gain,

Though thou hast left me free,

The loveliest things that still remain,

Than thus remember thee!

The all of thine that cannot die

Through dark and dread Eternity

Returns again to me,

And more thy buried love endears

Than aught except its living year

And Thou Art Dead, As Young and Fair - Lord Byron

Preámbulo a un Cortejo: On How to Unsuccesfully Avoid a Temptress

Rarely do I express my english thoughts for my Español vocabulary flows in a more natural way, allowing the stream of consciousness to dispense of such trivialities as translation. Yet the language I speak now is but a testimony to the multicultural presence within. So it is that my worldly experience cannot do justice to what the body carries, to what the tongue might profess. After the experience of a stimulus nothing more is left but the desire to somehow shape into words the testimony of the world’s presence in me.

I have been to Madrid, Barcelona, Roma... spend my hours in London's Harrods and strolled down Firenze, Venezia and Paris. I was rocked in the Amsterdam canals and walked Frankfurt as if seen from a distant window to the past, one tainted by the modern aesthetic. I was fortunate to see a different Habana from what is sold in the media, and proved its presence in Miami. I was charmed by the southern warmth in Atlanta and am thankful of being able to have called Savannah home. I learned to appreciate Panamá city with all its contradictions and rivalries. Furthermore, I adore my San José as undoubtedly not many Costaricans do, unwilling to give in to the third world claims its streets attest to and instead appreciating the cultural richness found in them.

Yet somehow She, the restless city, always creeps in, finding shelter within my body just as it itself inhabits her, the tempting mistress and her lures. It must have been an affair that began in the first decade of my life and has consumed and driven me ever since, my strength unable to fight her charm even with the knowledge that such relationship can only be doomed. Longing for a more original land to call home, one not coveted by so many before me, the conflict grows as I walk her streets, from Madison to Broadway, Columbus to 5th, feeling entitled to call them my own I do not even heed the distances. The sound of my firm steps confirms my presence, owning the concrete as much as it owns me.

I cannot, however, help feel betrayed. Forced to share her with many other suitors, past present and future, I am reluctant and completely unwilling to call her mine. The courtesan in our palace, this love/hate relationship is bound to eventually break us all, reason why I am wary of giving in to such temptation.

Sensorially overloaded and sensibly shocked to awareness, my mental state recognizes the raw material her sounds and sights provide. It is not this physical embodiment that entices me nonetheless. It is its challenges and oddities, as if a secret kept for years is waiting to test my capacities. Thus, by subduing her I am essentially overcoming my weakness, my ignorance. So it is that I come to her ever so often on a pilgrimage to visit the bride to be.

The teaser that is New York, that innocent troublemaker, keeps me away, unsuccessfully I will add, for as much as I have tried to leave this love behind fourteen years in waiting cannot simply be ignored. It is the eternal duel between reason and emotion that fuels this affair. My mind resists, due to it's pragmatic nature and sensibility; but my entire self, nevertheless, still longs for what I might discover along its streets, for what I have already tasted but would like to have more of.

And so it is that leaving her is always painful, and the hopes of seeing her again feel like an obscure pessimism relying on what she may hold in the future. One never knows with a naughty girl... she has you wrapped around her fingers, but there's only so much love can take.