Beatriz Santiago Muoz: Of Sad Tropics and Other Histories Julieta Gonzlez

All ethnography is part philosophy, and a good deal of the rest is confession. Clifford Geertz, The Cerebral Savage

Divided between the demands of fiction and those of the documentary, Beatriz Santiago Muozs films often explore minor unofficial, forgotten, or intimate histories of places and events. History, in her work, is not a univocal narrative, but a fragmented entity made of many individual narratives that depart from totalizing and essentialist cultural schemes. Memory and subject formation are central concerns in her practice, which is deeply rooted in the genre of ethnofiction, as she often collaborates with non-actors who dramatize these narratives from their personal perspectives.

Photography and film have long been associated with archival and ethnographic practices. Their indexical quality posits them as vehicles for objective representation; what we see in a documentary photograph or film is registered as fact. In this sense, film and photographic archives have been instrumental in the construction of historical accounts and purportedly objective representations of the Other.

We can identify two significant strategies in Muozs work. The first addresses the archive as an active site of discourse in which it is possible to read the relations between the diverse historical, social, economic, and political dynamics inscribed in its formation. The second is her subversion of this archive by engaging in a fictionalization of the document.

Muozs films draw from the long tradition of documentary and ethnographic film and the later genres of ethnofiction, neorealist cinema, and cinema verit. While Jean Rouch is considered to be the pioneer of ethnofiction, Robert Flahertys Nanook of the North (1922) was the first staged and acted documentary film depicting the lives of another culture. More or less concurrently, Dziga Vertov also ventured into the realm of documentary film, focusing on everyday life in a similar way to ethnographic film. His subject matter, however, was not primitive man engaging in a heroic battle for survival against the elements, but rather life in the newly born Communist state. On occasions tinged with the ideology of the Bolshevik Revolution, although never overtly propagandistic, Vertovs Kino-Pravda (literally, FilmTruth) series explored the discursive potential of documentary film and its ability to go beyond the factual portrayal of given realities. While Vertov rarely staged scenes or employed actors in his Kino-Pravda series, Flaherty consciously did so in Nanook of the North and in the later film Moana (1926),

both of which led to his collaboration with Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau on Tabu (1931)1.

Rouch, however, brings us closer to ethnographic practice, in light of his interest in ethnography and his relationship with the anthropologist Marcel Griaule, who guided his first steps as his professor at the cole des Ponts et Chausses, where Rouch studied engineering. He went to Africa to work as an engineer after the outbreak of World War II, and it was there that he made his first films and abandoned engineering to pursue his passion for anthropology. Rouchs films blurred the boundaries between fiction and documentary, transgressed subject positions, and problematized the relations between colonialism and ethnographic practice in Africa (most notably with his 1955 film Les matres fous, which is seen by some as profoundly anticolonialist and by others as perpetuating myths and stereotypes about African peoples). Separating himself from the traditional imperatives of ethnographic practice and the tacitly inalienable distance between observer and observed, Rouch engaged in the practice of shared ethnography in the belief that his observations could be greatly enriched by the insights and active participation of his observed subjects. He began staging and encouraging acting in his films, and he also emphasized the role of the participant ethnographer and

1 Jos Leito de Barross Maria do mar (1930) is another pioneering film in the field of visual anthropology. Satyajit Rays later Apu Trilogy (195559) is also considered by many to be an ethnographically influenced portrayal of rural life in India; althfough the filmmakers intentions were not documentary at all, he was nonetheless heavily influenced by an encounter with Jean Renoir and by Vittorio De Sicas neorealist The Bicycle Thief (1948).

camera, since his presence necessarily conditioned the behavior of his observed subjects in front of the lens. Rouchs shared ethnography fragmented and distributed the role of enunciation equally among observer and observed, undermining univocal representations of history and culture and breaking with ethnographys claims to objectivity.

Muozs use of filmic language to shed new light on seemingly banal and everyday situations, and her fragmentation of historical accounts by leaving their reconstruction to non-actors and spontaneous participants, who reenact popular histories in an improvisational way, are evidence of the artists close affiliation with the cinematic contributions of both Vertov and Rouch. Todo lleva a nada (2003), Pelcula de desastre (2003), Inventario (2006), and Archivo (2001) involve Muozs observed subjects in the creation of their own fictions.

In both Todo lleva a nada and Pelcula de desastre, we can see references to Vertovs particular style of filmmaking and approach to the representation of quotidian realities. Seemingly inconsequential and everyday scenes are charged with other meaningsin this case, emotion and suspense. In Todo lleva a nada, a group of teenage girls living in near-total isolation in the remote Puerto Rican countryside enact their fantasies of escape; in reality, nothing much happens in the film, but the cinematographic language and editing suggest a scenario of boredom, longing, and adolescent angst. Pelcula

de desastre was filmed in the streets of Mexico City, close to the Zcalo, in an area filled with street vendors who must pack up their wares every evening and take them home after a long day of work. Muoz approached the vendors and asked them to imagine their daily packing-up in an entirely different and unusual circumstance, in the event of a major natural catastrophe. The vendors readily complied, imagining a variety of apocalyptic scenarios, such as a volcanic eruption of the nearby Popocatpetl, an earthquake, and an approaching asteroid. The fantasy created a different reality out of their everyday and predictable routine, but it nonetheless reflected the precariousness of their economic situation, casting it in an entirely different light.

Inventario was made by the artist in the township of Frontera Corozal in the Chiapas region, on the banks of the Usumacinta River between Mexico and Guatemala. This settlement was founded in 1976 as part of the Mexican governments program for the assimilation of Indian populationsin this case, the Chol ethnic group. Each inhabitant was granted a piece of land measuring 50 by 50 meters, and these lots configure an almost perfect grid in the midst of the Lacandon rain forest. The artist visited Frontera Corozal for three weeks in the context of an artists residency organized in this isolated location. Cast in the uneasy role of the Western foreigner visiting the indigenous peoples of her own continent, Muoz collaborated with the inhabitants of Frontera Corozal to make a film in which they seem to draw with their bodies the past

and present history of the town, a place where there was once only rain forest but that is now populated by buildings, a city in the making. The body language employed by the actors seems to bridge the cultural and linguistic gap between the artist and her subjects, Spanish and Chol Tila (a language of Mayan origin), respectively, making this particular history both universally comprehensible and incomprehensible at the same time. The video ends with one of the members of the community council reciting in his native tongue an inventory of the things that now exist in the settlement (601 community landowners, 22 cooperatives, 10 churches, 60 midwives, 10 carpenters, 82 stores, etc.) and the things that are no longer there and to which he bids farewell (goodbye jaguar, goodbye pheasant, goodbye armadillo, goodbye boar, goodbye cedar, goodbye ceiba tree, etc.). In this inventory, there is no hierarchy between the old and the new; that which is now absent, it suggests, is still present in the imagination and culture of the townships inhabitants and coexists with the trappings of civilization that are now in their midst.

In a similar deconstruction of the historical narrative, Archivo is comprised of a series of videos that focus on specific places and eventsor rather, faits diversthat persist in the collective memory of Puerto Ricans. Place and memory are addressed in three of the videos, which center on the changing and growing city of San Juan and how former uses and structures still live in the minds of the citys inhabitants: the building that now houses the Escuela de Artes Plsticas was once a hospital; Escambrn Beach was once the site of

a lively and glamorous social club; the streets around Calle Hipdromo still resonate with the energy and excitement of the long-gone racecourse that gives the area its name. Local history and the fait divers become mainstays of the collective imagination in the account of tightrope walker Karl Wallendas fall to his death in Condado and the capture and killing of the escaped criminal Too Bicicleta in Lares. These histories were staged on-site by Muoz with the collaboration of locals and passersby who, as onlookers, felt compelled to contribute their particular perspective and in the process engaged in a rewriting of those histories.

The anecdotal aspect of Archivo relativizes the notion of history, and it does so in relation to an island that has a very complicated one as it has yet to define its sovereignty or at least come to terms with its ambiguous status as a commonwealth state in the 21st century. It also addresses the fact that more than half the population of Puerto Rico lives on the mainland of the United States, no longer speaks Spanish, and has very little cultural or historical attachment to the island other than through certain symbols of popular culture or identity stereotypes, such as the jbaro (peasant of the central mountains) or salsa and reggaeton music. The children of some who left decades ago have returned to Puerto Rico or travel back and forth, but the legacy of the islands Spanish colonial history is lost on these uprooted Puerto Ricans, for whom the immediacy of the anecdote and the fait divers, unusually prominent in the local media, holds more appeal.

Another instance of Muozs approach to major historical narratives is her series of short films inspired by Elsa Morantes 1974 novel La storia (History), which recounts the experience of World War II in Italy through the lives of a Roman family. Through the transformations of one of the characters in the novel, the Jew Davide Segrewho is rst introduced as Carlo Vivaldi, a pacist anarchist, and then as Pyotr, a partisan, a member of the armed resistance against the Nazi occupationMuoz explores the complexities of war and the utopian and dystopian motivations that often accompany it. There is an affinity between Morante and Muoz in the way they address the notion of history; both deal with grand narratives through microhistories, day-to-day events, and characters who do not play lead roles in the script of History but are nonetheless part of the collectivity that makes it. Muozs films are to be viewed as a suite, each providing a contingent perspective on the major narratives that shaped modernity; ultimately, they all convey a sense of disillusionment. Davide Segre (2007) juxtaposes a coastal view off the ramparts of Old San Juan with a voice-over of a woman reading an excerpt from Morantes book that reflects on the nature of collectivism and other utopian forms of social organization. Pyotr (2007) evokes the novels persona of the pacific-anarchist-turned-partisan by engaging local concrete poet, anarchist, and union organizer Esteban Valds Arzate in a monologue about his views on life, work, art, and political activism. Carlo Vivaldi (2007) does not involve any actors and instead features an invisible hand flipping through the

end-pages of various books, including Paris by mile Zola; Deschooling Society by Ivan Illich, an Austrian philosopher and priest who at age 30 was the rector at the Catholic University of Puerto Rico, after which he toured South America by bus, renounced formal education, and agitated, wrote, and theorized against modern schooling; Bertolt Brechts Poems: 19131956; the experimental Brazilian novel Parque industrial by Patricia Galvo; Pier Paolo Pasolinis Lutheran Letters; and George Orwells Homage to Catalonia. According to the artist, it is a film about endings that ultimately want to be beginnings. The last film in the series, Aniversario (2007), could very well illustrate one of Michel Foucaults reflections on historyin our time, history is that which transforms documents into monumentsby presenting the voice-over ruminations of a disillusioned idealist against the backdrop of fragmented takes of the Haymarket Martyrs Monument in Forest Park, Chicago, commemorating the Haymarket Massacre of 1886, in which a rally in support of striking workers turned into a bloodbath, resulting in the trial of eight anarchists and the execution of four. This incident is commonly perceived as the origin of the May Day celebration as International Workers Day.

Muozs concerns with the narratives of anarchy, labor movements, and other utopian ideas are also voiced in an earlier film, Fbrica intil (2002), made in collaboration with the workers at a packaging plant in Puerto Rico. The artist visited the factory over a period of two months, meeting with the workers and

discussing with them a variety of issues, ranging from their labor situation and the idea of production to work and leisure time and what these mean in terms of the monetary and material output of the factory. As a conclusion of this experience, Muoz and the workers organized a series of leisure activities within the space and time of factory production: watching the sun rise, a sight they rarely saw because their work shifts started before sunrise; cooking lunch on burners normally reserved for melting glue; a race around the factory building; making portable beds from leftover packaging foam for employees to nap on; a wrestling match; a dance with party decorations made from material used in the factory; and finally, a staged discussion in which the workers enacted their last day of work and expressed their concern for the hypothetical closing of the factory. The workers engagement in these leisure activities prompted a reflection on ideas such as labor, free time, the transition from an industrial to a postindustrial society, which surfaced in the last part of the film, when they faced the possibility of being laid off and what consequences this might entail: how they would reinsert themselves in the workforce and how they would come to terms with the dynamics of postindustrial society.

Muozs films map out a history of personal interests and motivations, foregrounding the inextricable link between the artist and her fictional objects of study, which can be seen as projections of her own desires and ideas. From her beginnings as an activist, educator, and mural painter, to the videos that

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have built up her body of work for the past eight years, the path she has taken portrays her individual concerns in terms of identity, her practice as an artist, and, ultimately, the agency of art in the real world.

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