ITZIAR BARRIO

4K, 62 min, 2023

ROBOTA MML (2023) is a 54 min film looking at the many valences of work and traces the etymological origins of “robot.” Coined by Czech writer Karel Capek in his science-fiction play R.U.R. (1920), which is set in a factory where robots are built to free humans from work, the term derives from the word robota, meaning forced labor. Barrio relocates R.U.R.’s characters to a contemporary setting sensitive to biopower, class consciousness, identity, and gender fluidity. In Barrio’s interpretation, the agent capable of affecting the human psyche appears in physical form as smoke. Barrio complicates the narrative through a nonlinear narrative structure as well as aesthetic references to Géricault’s painting Raft of the Medusa (1818–1819) and queer night clubs. Continuous with the rest of Barrio’s Material trilogy, this film involves collaborations with different experts including a robotics engineer and a professional bodybuilder.

ROBOTA MML is part of Material a trilogy of multimedia projects employing speculative narratives and non-linear timelines to investigate the intersections between technology, labor, identity, and matter.

PREMIERE at e-flux, April 2023, NYC.
https://www.e-flux.com/events/529603/itziar-barrio-robota-mml/

CREDITS:

Director: Itziar Barrio

Stage and actors director: María Jerez

Scriptwriters: Sonia Martí Gallego and Itziar Barrio

Performers
Ainhoa Hernández
Cuqui Jerez
Anto Rodríguez
Mina Serrano
Cary Rosa Varona
Javier Vaquero Ollero
Colectivo La Dalia Negra

Bodybuilder: José Cano

Engineer in robotics: Javier F. Gorostiza

Editor: Itziar Barrio

Color correction: Alina Bobrova

Visual Effects: Mark Ramos

Director of photography: Sara Gallego

Second camera: Jorge Sirvent

Audio recordings: Raúl Gómez

Audio mixer: Avishag Cohen Rodrigues

Original sound: Seth Cluett

Original music: GLASSHOUSE

Costumes: Pablo Pelocodo

Still photography: Álvaro Hormiga

Lighting design: Víctor Colmenero

Set design: Itziar Barrio and Víctor Colmenero

Graphic design: Jaume Marco e Itziar Barrio

Text fragments from:
R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots), Karel Capek (1920)
El Angel Exterminador, Luis Buñuel (1962)
Interview with Elizabeth Grosz, SAGE Journals: Theory, Culture & Society,`Geosocial Formations and the Anthropocene’, (2017)
Interview with Luc Steels (Expert in robotics), Cristina Saez, Revista Redes número 2 (2010)
Teoría Queer y el Deseo como Máquina de Guerra, Ludditas Sexuales, Feminismoautonomo.wordpress.com (2012)
Sin triestesse, Mariano Mayer (2019)

Production: Carolina Olivares and Tatiana Tarragó (CO Producciones) Naves MATADERO

PRODUCED BY Naves MATADERO

Robots designed and implemented in collaboration with ESNE (Escuela Universitaria de Diseño, Innovación y Tecnología, Madrid)

Filmed at Naves MATADERO,2019

MANY THANKS TO Mateo Feijoo, Carolina Olivares,Tatiana Tarragó, Javier Vaquero Ollero, Sonia Martí Gallego, New Museum’s incubator NEW INC,Eric Alba, Laura Forlano, Jonah King, Álvaro Castro González (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid), Maria Jerez, Uriel Fogué, Jorge Dutor, Guillem Mont de Palol, Sarah Anderson and Chelsea Knight.

Itziar Barrio in collaboration with Seth Cluett

4K

13:04

2021

Particle Matter is an audiovisual work by visual artist Itziar Barrio, created in collaboration with composer and sound designer Seth Cluett. A materialist investigation into matter and multitudinous manifestations of the micro, Particle Matter approaches its subject in a rhizomatic fashion, utilizing the language of the montage -the dialectical technique of producing a new composite whole from fragments of moving images and sounds- to explore the forces catalyzing and created by the movements of the fragmented and microscopic; the pieces left over.

Particulate matter is the sum of all solid and liquid particles suspended in air. This complex mixture includes both organic and inorganic particles, such as dust, pollen, soot, smoke, and liquid droplets. Many of them are by-products. A by-product is a secondary product derived from a production process, manufacturing process or chemical reaction; it is not the primary product or service being produced. In chemistry, “by-product" is used to refer to a product that is not desired but inevitably results from molecular fragments of the original materials and/or reagents that are not incorporated into the desired product, as a consequence of conservation of mass.

Many of the sound recordings included in Particle Matter were carried out at the historic anechoic chamber at Nokia Bell Labs (NJ), which absorbs over 99.995% of the incident acoustic energy above 200 Hz, and is considered one of the quietest places on Earth. Particle Matter is a work approached from the horizontality of all the agents involved: images of geological phenomena, steam, gas and particles; audio recordings of protests, dusts of different origins converge creating this video.

Particle Matter is best experienced with the use of headphones.

This work was produced by AECID and supported in part by Nokia Bell Labs Experiments in Art and Technology program.

Particle Matter is an audiovisual work created in collaboration with composer and sound designer Seth Cluett that Smack Mellon will present as a live performance activation in conjunction with Itziar Barrio’s solo exhibition, did not feel low, was sleeping. A materialist investigation into matter and multitudinous manifestations of the micro, Particle Matter approaches its subject in a rhizomatic fashion, utilizing the language of the montage–the dialectical technique of producing a new composite whole from fragments of moving images and sounds–to explore the forces catalyzing and created by the movements of the fragmented and microscopic; the pieces left over.

Many of the sound recordings included in Particle Matter were carried out at the historic anechoic chamber at Nokia Bell Labs (NJ), which absorbs over 99.995% of the incident acoustic energy above 200 Hz, and is considered one of the quietest places on Earth. Barrio and Cluett approach Particle Matter from the horizontal convergence of all the agents involved: images of geological phenomena, steam, gas, and particles; audio recordings of protests, dust of different origins. The live performance will expand on the original audiovisual work to feature live sound and image. Recordings from current protests as well as audio footage recorded in the anechoic chamber at Nokia Bell Labs will complement content from the original film.

4K, 15 min 24 sec, 2022

and Dan and (when some small metal is spun) (2022) is a video based project by Itziar Barrio involving the creation of a narrative using artificial-intelligence. This piece uses now legacy technology, GPT-2, a form of generative large-language Transformer model that was a predecessor to ChatGPT, to remind us of the importance and nuance of meaning. This video explores the idea of meaning - or the lack there of - between the interplay of the AI model, the script, and performer Candystore's interpretation.

The resulting grammar is a glitched, a subverted and at times incorrect one. The language of poetry prevails in the final text resisting logic and opening future horizons. Barrio has developed this project as a member at the New Museum’s incubator NEW INC in NYC.

The script was generated in collaboration with creative technologist Jared Katzman, by using an algorithm that mimicked anamalgamation of texts across three datasets: a collection of texts from the Cyberfeminism Index; a subset of Poetry books from Project Gutenberg; and a manuscript of poetry from the performer Candystore. Through alternating different prompts to the AI model and putting them in conversation, dominant narratives around labor and bodies become transfixed by the salacious and radical musings of the trained artificial-intelligent model. This unpredictable text has been then interpreted by Candystore — uncertain and vulnerable — while being filmed.

and Dan and (when some small metal is spun) explores the idea of meaning - or the lack there of - between the interplay of the AI model, the script, and Candystore's interpretation. Using an earlier ancestor to ChatGPT, language models have shown and complicated what meaning looks and feels like, as so much of the conversations around ChatGPT is a misattribution of meaning around the affect of language. These systems are getting better at parroting meaningful and coherent language, but then at the same time we are quickly exposed to how quickly the AI shows its incoherence and lack of understanding. This video piece analyzes these themes and reminds us of the importance and nuance of meaning. When does it matter that the AI is coherent or incoherent? When does it matter for humans to be coherent and incoherent (not to mention incoherence is a politically powerful tool in a world of oppressive rationalization)? And how do we remind ourselves that at the end of the day, humans are who give these systems and other people meaning - it doesn't exist in objective truth. - Jared Katzman, Technologist

CREDITS

Director and Idea: Itziar Barrio.

Creative technologist: Jared Katzman.

Performer and Poet: Candystore.

Editor: Itziar Barrio.

Cameras: Erin Smith and Itziar Barrio.

Audio: Erin Smith.

Text written and generated in collaboration between Itziar Barrio, Jared Katzman and Candystore using data and a generative large-language Transformer model (GPT-2) Sustainably created garments by Timothy Westbrook.

Filmed at GUM studios, NYC, September 2021

Produced by Tabakalera

With the collaboration of GUM studios.

Many thanks to: Adonay Bermúdez, Carrie White (GUM studios), Jared Katzman, Candystore, Timothy Westbrook, Zachary Kaplan (Rhizome), Mindy Seu, Kat Mustatea, Sue Huang, C. Finley and the the New Museum’s incubator NEW INC Community.

Multimedia live performance presented by New Museum's NEW INC, Onassis ONX and Hyphen Hub.
Onassis ONX, NYC, 2024.

https://www.newmuseum.org/calendar/view/2036/new-inc-and-onassis-onx-present-particles-and-digital-serfs

Synthetica is a collaborative performance between Janet Biggs and Itziar Barrio, curated by Jane Ursula Harris, and featuring Jason Barnes, a self-described amputee musician and pioneering bionic drummer, and Candystore, a multidisciplinary artist, poet, and performer. Both are artists that Janet Biggs and Itziar Barrio - on view here -  have worked with in the past. An experimental, AI-based event that underscores the poetic and subversive potential of artificial intelligence, Synthetica courtsmalfunction and error to challenge ableist and other exclusionary biases in generative technologies and language alike.

Central to the performance is Barnes’ innovative use of a bionic drum prostheses, powered by advanced AI and machine learning algorithms. The prosthetic interfaces directly with digital audio workstation, enabling not just musical input but also the manipulation of audio and video effects. Using cues based on the input from the sensors of the prostheses and live playing, boundaries between musician, instrument, and digital media blur, creating a uniquely immersive experience.

In a call-and-response format, Candystore will read from a text created with AI-generated text created with GPT 2  by Itziar Barrio in collaboration with creative technologist Jared Katzman.  Merging the poet-performer’s own poetry with those derived from the Cyberfeminism Index and Project Gutenberg, the resulting text scrambles conventional meanings, creating a grammar of glitches that transforms dominant narratives about labor through the radical musings of a trained AI model.

Three video channels will interface with these musical and literary interventions in AI that will be manipulated in real time by predictive AI responses to the sensors in Jason's prosthesis.

ROBOTA MML, Film shooting/Performance

Naves MATADERO MADRID, April 2019
https://www.mataderomadrid.org/en/schedule/robota-mml

ROBOTA MML is the shooting of a film, a remix of other films and cultural references that leads to an encounter.

The first time the term “robot” was coined was in a science fiction play called R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots) written by Karel Capek in 1920 and premièred in New York in 1922. The word "Robot" was devised by the author's brother from the Czech word “robota”, which means “work”. R.U.R. takes place in a factory where they build robots to free human beings from work. And in Robota MML, Itziar Barrio relocates the characters in this work to a context that is sensitive to class consciousness and biopower. Another reference for ROBOTA MML is the work The Raft of the Medusa, painted by Théodore Géricault in 1819 and Luis Buñuel’s inspiration when he wrote The Exterminating Angel. In his painting, Géricault portrays survivors on a raft adrift in the middle of the ocean. While senior officials were most concerned about saving themselves first, they suffered from dehydration and resorted to cannibalism to survive. “All these references converge with contemporary gestures such as body-building and the use of burning objects in recent music videos,” explains Itziar Barrio. “ROBOTA MML addresses in an interrelated manner such issues as robotics, labour production mechanisms, and the deconstruction of cinematic apparatus. Using bodies, technology and smoke, we will construct a narrative over the course of two weeks in Nave 11, articulated through a process of execution, collaboration and meetings with the agents involved”, the artist sums up.

Itziar Barrio will work with a film crew and different collaborators, including the engineer and doctor in robotics Javier F Gorostiza (DART), bodybuilder José Cano, screenwriter Sonia Martí and María Jerez as acting and stage director.

During the final days, the process will be opened to the public thereby forming the piece ROBOTA MML.

CREDITS

Idea and direction: Itziar Barrio

Stage director: María Jerez

Scriptwriters: Sonia Martí Gallego and Itziar Barrio

Engineer in robotics: Javier F. Gorostiza

Performers: Ainhoa Hernández, Cuqui Jerez, Anto Rodríguez, Pepe Serrano, Cary Rosa Varona and Javier Vaquero Ollero

With the collaboration of: La Dalia Negra collective

Bodybuilder: José Cano

Director of photography: Sara Gallego

Second camera: Jorge Sirvent

Sound: Raúl Gómez

Costumes: Pablo Pelocodo

Still photography: Álvaro Hormiga

Lighting design: Víctor Colmenero

Set design: Itziar Barrio and Víctor Colmenero

Graphic design: Jaume Marco e Itziar Barrio

Production: Carolina Olivares and Tatiana Tarragó (CO Producciones), Naves MATADERO

“Sin tristesse”, poem by Mariano Mayer

A Naves MATADERO WORLD PREMIERE in collaboration with CO Producciones y ESNE

You Weren’t Familiar but You Weren’t Afraid, follows the journey of Stella, a revisited character from Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire (1947). She leaves New Orleans, Stanley, and their abusive relationship and starts a new life in Bogotá, among the subproletarian characters of the Colombian film La Estrategia del Caracol (1993) where her polyamory causes conflicts. Later on, in Rome, Stella is a sex worker and the exlover of the dissident character of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s film Accattone (1963).

Enacting scripts, manifestos, and historical events, actors assert their subjectivity within existing power dynamics. By challenging conventional ideas around narrative, the text is performed as a palimpsest, reinvented through repetition.

You Weren’t Familiar but You Weren’t Afraid is the concluding film of twelve-year, multi-site project by Itziar Barrio, THE PERILS OF OBEDIENCE (PREMIERE). THE PERILS OF OBEDIENCE (TPO) merges different media to generate a movie in real time, participating in a larger debate about labor conditions and subjectivity. As a whole, the project seeks to query the limits of film, performance, sculpture, and installation by deploying dissent as a tool to rewrite dominant narratives and open future horizons. Throughout the history of TPO, which has unfolded in Bilbao, New York City, Bogotá, and Rome, performers worked with directors to develop their characters. In each location, over time, this process was witnessed by audiences and recorded, to be edited later. As noted by art critic Ángela Molina, Barrio seeks to produce “an art of feeling, of bonds and symptoms that operate within a social order marked by class division and the imperative of capital.”

The processes of work and embedded power dynamics were revealed, opening the possibility for a new narrative to be constructed in the exchange between all agents involved. This passage of bodies, languages, and characters through movies, cultures, and architectures, Johanna Burton mentioned, “points to the ways in which gender, race, sexuality, labor, desire, and more are the subtext of all negotiations, whether political or personal. Yet, rather than simply victims of circumstance, we may work to write, rewrite, or reroute the stories in which we play a part, whether small or large.”

TPO Timeline:

ROME
THE PERILS OF OBEDIENCE (+2), The Spanish Academy in Rome, 2019 [Directed by Federica Tuzi and Cristina Vuolo, and performers Lola Kola, Lilith Primavera and Ondina Quadri.]

BOGOTÁ
Casting THE PERILS OF OBEDIENCE, Espacio ODEON with Rincón Projects Bogotá, Colombia,2015 and THE PERILS OF OBEDIENCE (+1) Museo del Banco de la República with Rincón Projects, 2017 [Directed by Julio Correal, and performers Clara Sofía Arrieta, Anderson Balsero, Endry Cardeño and Andrea Quejuán.]

NEW YORK CITY
Casting and Rehearsal THE PERILS OF OBEDIENCE at Abrons Arts Center, 2013 and 2014; and THE PERILS OF OBEDIENCE (0), Participant Inc, 2016. [Directed by Charlotte Brathwaite, with dramaturge by Anne Erbe, and performers Prema Cruz, Kelly Haran, Miriam A. Hyman and T.L. Thompson.]

BILBAO
THE PERILS OF OBEDIENCE (-1), The Pilot at Bilbao Theater and Contemporary Dance Festival, 2010 [Directed by Juanjo Otero and performers Izaskun Fernandez, Maitane Muruaga, Gabriel Reig and Urtza Zuazo.]

4k, 19 min 37 sec, 2021

Imagined as a sequel of "Accattone", the first film made by Pier Paolo Pasolini In 1961, "Stella a Roma" (2021) is a short film about sex work, gender identity and capitalism. In Pasolini's film, Stella is a naive young woman who is persuaded by her boyfriend Accattone, a sub-proletarian who lives his day exploiting the sex work of his own partner. Itziar Barrio makes her jump to the future, to the present day and puts her in conversation with the goddess Venus, protector of love and sex workers, and Minerva, protector of intelligence and craftsmanship. Which of the two goddesses is best suited to protect Stella?. With irony and poetry, mythological references and a good dose of sarcasm, "Stella a Rome" is the manifesto of a freedom based on bodies, on the fluidity of gender and on emancipation of sentimental and economic roles imposed by society.

"Stella a Roma" is part of the long term project by Itziar Barrio, THE PERILS OF OBEDIENCE, about the making of a film in "real time". The main resulting film does not start from a script, but rather "it is made" and draws on the culture in which it is developed. In New York City THE PERILS OF OBEDIENCE was based on the iconic scene of "A Streetcar Named Desire", in which Stanley cries "Stella, Stella!". In "Stella a Roma", it was the work of the filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922-1975), Roman Mythology and 20th century women workers revolts who informed Barrio to create the film's final scene.

Director: Itziar Barrio
Script: Federica Tuzi and Cristina Vuolo
Actors directors: Federica Tuzi and Cristina Vuolo
Performers: Lola Kola, Lilith Primavera and Ondina Quadri
Editor: Pietro Daviddi
Director of photography: Pietro Daviddi
Camera: Chiara Livia Arrigo
Sound: Mike Priore
Original Music: Aranzazu Calleja
Stylist: Alexandros Mars
Make up: Federica Mosca, Giulia Falaguasta and Alessia Monteriù Venus chain accessories: Kenneth Ard
Still photography: Giorgio Benni and Cristina Vuolo
Production: Royal Spanish Academy in Rome

3 Channel HD Video
2018
53'11"

A group of actors rehearse and perform the iconic scene from ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ (Tennessee Williams, 1947). They also play scenes from movies like ‘Opening Night’ (John Cassavetes, 1977), and fragments from texts like ´Cyborg Manifesto’ and the Astor Place Riot (1849) historical descriptions. In this passing of texts and movement the usually invisible labor dynamics are being exposed, along with the actors own lives narratives. A rough cut of the video premiered at ´By All Means´, Itziar Barrio´s survey exhibition curated by Johanna Burton (Director at LA MOCA ) at Azkuna Zentroa (Bilbao, 2018).

‘There is Nothing to be Scared of. They are Crazy About Each Other’ is a video piece created mainly from the footage of the project THE PERILS OF OBEDIENCE iteration in NYC at PARTICIPANT INC in 2016. Currently Itziar Barrio is concluding this long term project. Latest iterations have taken place at the Spanish Academy in Rome in 2019; and at El Museo del Banco de la República in Bogotá (produced by Rincón Projects) in 2017.  THE PERILS merges different media and challenges notions of social rules, participating in a larger debate about labor conditions and subjectivity. THE PERILS places a cast of performers within fictional and non-fictional parameters, using material from iconic movie scripts, narratives from their own lives, manifestos, and historical and recent events. The audience witnesses at the same time the performance and the making of a movie.

Director: Itziar Barrio
Theater Director: Charlotte Brathwaite
Performers: Prema Cruz, Kelly Haran, Miriam A. Hyman, James McGinn and Tanisha Thompson
Performers (“Body Parts” in Bogotá, Colombia): Clara Sofía Arrieta, Anderson Balsero, Endry Cardeño and Andrea Quejuán
Dramaturge: Anne Erbe
Technical Director: E Lee Smith
Cameras: E Lee Smith, Sarah Tricker, Alessandra Zeka, Jacqueline Kuper and Itziar Barrio
Editors: E Lee Smith, Christopher Watkins and Itziar Barrio
Writer and voice over (end): Dia Felix
Original Music: Robyn Hood, Heroine and Truth Teller
Original (Music beginning and end): Aranzazu Calleja
Audio Mixer: Matthew Jinks
Project Manager (Shooting at PARTICIPANT Inc): Xavier Acarin
Project Assistant (Shooting at PARTICIPANT Inc):: Jacqueline Kuper
Production Assistant (Shooting at PARTICIPANT Inc):: Jacqueline Popjes
Still Photography: Olivia Divecchia
Graphic Designer: Jaume Marco

Scenes adapted from film scripts and plays:
A Streetcar Named Desire, 1947, Play by Tennessee Williams
Opening Night, 1977, Directed by John Cassavetes
Who is Afraid of Virginia Wolf?, 1962, Play by Edward Albee
Texts compiled from:
Account of the Terrific and Fatal Riot at the New York Astor Place Opera House, 1849, Published by H.M. Ranney
A Cyborg Manifesto, 1983, Written by Donna Haraway
Music fragments from:
Alex North,’Four Deuces’, ‘ A Streetcar Named Desire’ Soundtrack, 1956
Be Harwood, ‘Opening Night’ end credits, 1977
J P , ‘Heart of the City’, Year unkown

Filmed in/at:
New Orleans, Louisiana. EEUU. 2017
Casa Uribe, Bogotá. Colombia. 2017
PARTICIPANT INC, New York, New York. EEUU. 2016
Mana Contemporary. Newark, New Jersey. EEUU. 2016
Tabakalera. Donostia. Basque Country. Spain. 2015
Abrons Arts Center. New York, New York. EEUU. 2014

Produced by:
PARTICIPANT INC
AC/E
Azkuna Zentroa
Etxepare

Many thanks
Xavier Acarín, Sarah Anderson, Johanna Burton, Oscar Cortés, Lia Gangitano, Dia Felix, Chelsea Knight, Niegel Smith, Erin Lee Smith, Jordan Strafer, T, Christopher Watkins and Alessandra Zeka.

2 Channel HD Video
2018
1' 50"

Barrio appropriates an infamous scene from the film Basic Instinct. Rather than a panty-less Sharon Stone, however, Barrio’s actors are both clothed and male. Reciting Stone’s lines they call attention to the artifice and mechanisms of all production (as well as the ways in which it is always inflected by gender, race, and class). Both performers, who we also see performing the police and the thief in 'All Of Us Want To Work Less', repeat gestures and lines of the scene. Sometimes they are synched and sometimes they are not, referring to the learning process and ideas of the otherness.

Director: Itziar Barrio
Performers: Guillem Mont De Palol and Jorge Dutor
Technical direcor and camera: Rach Rodriguez
Camera: Klamer Hernández
Make-up artist: Maialen Elosegi
Filmed at Tabakalera
Produced by Tabakalera

Special thanks to: Javier Andraka, Soledad Gutiérrez, Erin Lee Smith, David Markus, Eva Mateo, Anna Manubens, Fernando Pérez, Alessandra Zeka and Itziar Zorita,

HD Video

Sound

9' 29"

2018

HD

24 min 1 sec

2015

The working material for All of Us Want to Work Less are pickpocketting scenes from Robert Bresson’s feature Pickpocket (1959). The reconstruction of these and other scenes from the film in which the social use of stealing is questioned are the focus of the video. All of Us Want to Work Less explores the relationship between labor and legality, while queering the space of 'criminality' the original movie implies.

Director: Itziar Barrio

Performers: Guillem Mont De Palol and Jorge Dutor

Choreography: Guillem Mont De Palol and Jorge Dutor

Music: Keith Milgaten

Technical direcor and camera: Rach Rodriguez

Camera: Klamer Hernández

Dolly operator: Ivan Jimenez Medina

Make-up artist: Maialen Elosegi

Filmed at Tabakalera

Produced by Tabakalera

Special thanks to: Javier Andraka, Soledad Gutiérrez, Erin Lee Smith, David Markus, Eva Mateo, Anna Manubens, Fernando Pérez, Alessandra Zeka and Itziar Zorita,

THE PERILS OF OBEDIENCE is a trans-disciplinary approach to the seduction of power. Inspired by Stanley Milgram's 1961 psychological experiments, the project confronts established sets of rules and cultivates the conditions for unscripted consequences. THE PERILS OF OBEDIENCE merges different media and challenges notions of social rules, participating in a larger debate about labor conditions and subjectivity.

The project places a cast of performers within fictional and non-fictional parameters, using material from iconic movie scripts, narratives from their own lives, manifestos, and historical and recent events. While being filmed, four performers are directed towards the completion of a scene. Situated in a conflict, the actors will reveal their inner desires and the power dynamics behind the group. The project blurs the line between the subject and the character, the fiction and non-fiction. The audience witnesses at the same time the performance and the making of a movie.

THE PERILS OF OBEDIENCE is taking shape over a multi-year, multi-venue process conceived and led by artist Itziar Barrio.

FOR MORE INFORMATION:

itziarbarrio.com/perils-of-obedience1

Over the last decade, Barrio’s work has included virtually all mediums—from prints, photographs, and sculpture to video, and installation. Yet, perhaps at the core of all these modes of production is Barrio’s interest in performance. The artist’s live events are often staged within museum or other art spaces, and blur the line between rehearsal and finished work; between actors and audience. Indeed, by opening up such categories, Barrio effectively asks that we look as closely at processes as products, and imagine exhibitions as themselves evolving entities. To that end, during the course of her exhibition, BY ALL MEANS, Barrio’s ongoing work, All of Us Want to Work Less will include two distinct performative components.

Over the course of an hour, an audience will encounter two distinct but interrelated scenes: two male actors in an endless loop of pick-pocketing each other and a single male protagonist who moves between producing a concrete sculpture and rehearsing a monologue (constructed on the one hand from dialogue from the film Basic Instinct and on the other elements of ACCELERATE MANIFESTO—a text by Alex Williams and Nick Srnicek arguing for the speeding up of capitalist tendencies as the only way to overturn them). Part of the action is being directed and filmed in real time, which adds yet another layer of productive ambiguity to where the action begins and ends, and where such brackets are usually placed. This performance was first executed in 2015 at MACBA in Barcelona.

There will be two ‘activations’ of Barrio’s installation during the run of the exhibition. New concrete sculptures will be produced and placed within the show during public hours, indicating their production could continue in perpetuity.

Johanna Burton, 2018
Keith Haring Director and Curator of Education and Public Engagement at the New Museum in NYC

CREDITS: All of Us Want to Work Less (Performance), Azkuna Zentroa, 2018

Itziar Barrio in collaboration with Javier Vaquero Ollero.

Direction: Itziar Barrio.

Performers: Javier Vaquero Ollero, Guillem Mont de Palol and Jorge Dutor.

Repeater/Acting Director: Maia Villot de Diego.

Camera: Jone Novo.

Activation: Juanjo Otero.

HD
3 min 13 sec
2013

Casting THE PERILS OF OBEDIENCE: A Performance is the second stage of visual artist Itziar Barrio's exploration in power dynamics and constructed situations. Using the methods of casting, the performance will unfold the wills and desires of the actors to succeed and be recognized. By placing them within fictional and non-fictional parameters, whether movie scripts or their own lives, Barrio reveals the production of power through seduction.
Following an open call, actors will audition for four full days with theater director Niegel Smith and will undergo a selection process. Open to the public for only two days the entire process will be recorded and included in a resulting video piece. Exploring simultaneously the limits and in betweens of theater, film and performance art, the live recording emphasizes the experience that is being created by actors and audience.
The four selected actors will be part of THE PERILS OF OBEDIENCE, consisting of building a scene in real time.
The fine line between the persona and the character finds its mirror in the audience, who executes its silent power by being present. Their presence implies a voyeuristic disposition and it functions to unveil the group dynamics and the negotiation of social roles and rules.
Pushing the actors to reveal their limits on stage, underlining the narratives present in any situation the performance frames an experience where conventions are decoded, contemporary fears of domination are confronted, and exhibitionism and social acceptability are critically examined.

*Full length film available upon request

HD
5 min  15 sec
2015

The iconic scene from Basic Instinct (1992) is used by Itziar Barrio as the starting point for All of Us Want to Work Less (Trailer). The artist has created a monologue that states the position of the character through a text that questions the learning process and failure as a condition. 

Performer: Javier Vaquero Ollero
Repeater: Quim Pujol
Camera: Victor Gonzalo
Camera assistant: Daniel Gañan
Lighting design and Audio: Diego Rada
Still Photography: Cristina Inocencio

Filmed at MACBA, Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona
Produced by MACBA, Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona

Music: Crossed Legs, Basic Instint (1992), Jerry Goldsmith.

Scene adapted from the film script of Basic Instint (1992) Dir. Paul Verhoeven

Texts compiled from:
La recolección de 1909 en Barcelona. Semana trágica para unos, gloriosa para otros. 
Dolores Marín. www.portaloaca.com
Protesta, desobediencia y violencia subversiva. La Semana Trágica de julio de 1909 en Cataluña. Gemma Rubí. www.dialnet.com
www.wikipedia.org
ACCELERATE MANIFESTO for an Accelerationist Politics. Critical Legal Thinking. Alex Williams and Nick Srnicek (2013)

Special thanks to: Xavier Acarín, Sarah Anderson, Jorge Dutor, Sergi Faustino, Bea Fernández, Guillem Mont de Palol, Monica Muntaner, Juanjo Otero y La Poderosa.

HD
4 min 50 sec
2014

THE MUSIC YOU WANT ME TO HEAR is the video piece created from the footage of the live audition/performance to cast the actors of project THE PERILS OF OBEDIENCE iteration in NYC. The leitmotif of this video is an interview lead by the power and seduction between the theater director and a performer at the casting. The narrative force of what is unseen but still present serves as the mechanism of construction for this video piece. 

In THE PERILS OF OBEDIENCE, Barrio mixes performance, theater, film and live experience to confront established sets of rules and cultivate the conditions for unscripted consequences. Inspired by the findings of Stanley Milgram’s 1961 psychological experiments, in THE PERILS the four characters are immersed in power dynamics within the same scene and an endless conflict.  

In the words of David Markus (Art in America):

At the heart of Casting THE PERILS OF OBEDIENCE is a commentary on the desire for public affirmation. Confronted with questions such as, “are you a good liar?” actors were forced to weigh their privacy against the seductiveness exerted by the cameras, the casting director, and the unwittingly implicated audience. This exploration of the queasier underpinnings of spectacle was punctuated by a segment involving the recitation of a famous monologue from the film All About Eve (1950) in which the title character, a wannabe starlet, exults in the “waves of love” that pour over the performer when the audience applauds—when it’s clear that “they want you.”

*Full length film available upon request

HD
16 min 13 sec
2014

THE HISTORY OF THE FIST takes the symbol of the FIST as the main character of a new fiction. A FIST is a multi layered quotidian sign that will be showcased in this multimedia project strongly based in audiovisual language and theory. Through the video concepts of sexuality, violence and social revolutions are explored and put in relationship to each other.

One of the collaborators of the project is the writer Dia Felix. Her text brings the mythology into the narrative. Felix is the narrator, the writer, as well as the archaeologist of the story. Historian and archivist Lincoln Cushing brings the non-fiction element through his studies on the icon of the fist from a political art perspective. The line between fiction and non-fiction is blurred through the video. Original music by Keith Sweaty accompanies the visuals.

This video piece uses repetition and collage to structure different footage: digital computer screen shots, super 8 mm film, HD video and smart phone shots. All of them collapse together to reflect on history and the classic storytelling motif of discovery. The allusion to the recurrent sci-fi trope of the myth of the cyborg is also present in the piece.

THE HISTORY OF THE FIST analyzes the contemporary social codes related to the FIST: the perverted, the obvious, and the secretive. It creates a mythology between the known and the strange, the oral and the non-verbal.

*Full length film available upon request

HD
9 min 21 sec
2013

In this multi-layered digital video, Itziar Barrio takes a line borrowed from popular music as the departure point for an elaborate exploration of performance, language, politics, and sexuality. Drawing its title from the chorus of British pop star Adele’s 2011 smash single, “Rolling In The Deep,” the work pays homage to the global appeal of Adele’s music while inquiring into the myth-like notion of total fulfillment.

The work is set inside the Teatro Arriaga, an historic theater in Barrio’s native Bilbao. A sequence of slow tracking shots and luscious stills, inspired by segments from Adele’s Live at the Royal Albert Hall concert video, capture an ornate interior, emptied of spectators yet intermittently haunted by the voices of two female poets asked by Barrio to collaborate on the project by responding to the lyrics in Adele’s hit song.

Maialen Lujanbio, whose voice can be heard as the video opens, is a Basque poet who practices an improvisational form of sung poetry known as bertsolarismo. Chavisa Woods, whose words follow in subtitle shortly thereafter, is an American writer living in New York. Reflecting on the social, economic, and erotic dimensions of fulfillment and its frustrations, the two poets enter into a dialogue with one another and with their pop star counterpart. Portrayed with vivid sensuality, the vacant theater itself becomes another performative figure with which the poets interact. As the video’s soundtrack—based on a looping Adel sample—slowly builds, the intertwining of music and image, Basque and English, song, text, and speech creates a viewing experience in which the conventions of public performance are redistributed like the sexual sensorium described in Woods’ poetry.

Writer and poet: Chavisa Woods
Poet and Bertsolari: Maialen Lujanbio
Video and Audio recording (New York City): Erin Smith
Video and Audio recording (Bilbao): CDL
Original Music: Aran Calleja
Video Editor : Eva Mateos
Produced by : ENPAP (European Network for Public Art Producers)
Coordinated by: consonni

Filmed at Bowery Poetry Club (NYC) and Arriaga Theater (Bilbao) in 2012.

*Full length film available upon request

Digital Video
20 min 4 sec
2013

The four selected actors will be part of THE PERILS OF OBEDIENCE, consisting of building a scene in real time. The first stage of the project was carried out in Spain during BAD, Bilbao Theater and Contemporary Dance Festival in 2010.

The fine line between the persona and the character finds its mirror in the audience, who executes its silent power by being present. Their presence implies a voyeuristic disposition and it functions to unveil the group dynamics and the negotiation of social roles and rules.

Pushing the actors to reveal their limits on stage, underlining the narratives present in any situation the performance frames an experience where conventions are decoded, contemporary fears of domination are confronted, and exhibitionism and social acceptability are critically examined.

THE PERILS OF OBEDIENCE is inspired by Stanley Milgram's psychological experiments which began in 1961, a few months after the trial of the Nazi Adolf Eichmann. Milgram wished to test how much pain a person would inflict on another simply because this was asked of them for the purposes of a scientific experiment. As Hannah Arendt reminds us, "under conditions of tyranny it is far easier to act than to think." Barrio analyzes how obedience to a higher authority, even in democracy, can lead to extreme consequences and can involve large numbers of the population.

*Full length film available upon request

Digital Video
4 min 30 sec
2011

WE creates a new fiction based on the historic memory of a construction site in Williamsburg (Brooklyn) -105 Metropolitan Avenue- and the plans for the future of the space.

In this video, original renderings for a building that was never constructed at the location are being mixed with custom text by the writer Mark Hage.
Exploring the vein of failed enterprises WE make references to footage from Kubrick's "The Shining" that never made it into the final cut but nevertheless found a home in the main title sequence of "Blade Runner". For this project, music by Jamuel Saxon provides an audio interpretation of the credit music from both films. Accompanying the images, the sound creates a bridge between the films, while referencing film language and pop culture with their universal and iconic natures.

WE is part of THE BLUE WALL PROJECT, a larger project exploring our sense of time, history and place by converting an ordinary blue construction fence into a live blue screen. It examines mutable and historic notions of the city, with its constantly shifting landscape, as a physical manifestation of impermanence. In this way, the project deals with the temporality of the city landscape as well as our daily interactions with urban fixtures.

Architectural and Plan Renderings: MIDM Arquitecture
Original Text : Mark Hage
Music: Jamuel Saxon
Video Editor: Hector Bragado
Lighting: Paul Clay
Production Assistant: Erin Smith

Sponsored in part by the Greater New York Arts Development Fund of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, administered by the Brooklyn Arts Council, Inc. (BAC) and Etxepare, Basque Institute.
In collaboration with MDIM Architecture.

Special thanks to Rami Metal, Councilmembers Steven Levin & Diana Reyna, and Ayton Performance.
 

*Full length video available upon request

Digital Video
12 min 44 sec
2011

THE MUSIC STARTS BEFORE THE DANCE BEGINS creates a new fiction based on the historic memory of a construction site on Suffolk and Delancey in the Lower East Side (NYC) and its plans for the future.
The corner architectural history becomes a character in Barrio’s video, shaping memories and fictions in a perpetual re-elaboration of the urban field.
The video includes a text created in collaboration with the fiction writer Mark Hage and interviews with Maria and Rose Dell Vecchio (Neighbours), Rob Hollander (Professor, Historian and Founder of the Lower East Side History Project), Rafael Jimenez (Security Guard of the location) and Etsuko Kizawa (Soy Restaurant owner and neighbor).

THE MUSIC STARTS BEFORE THE DANCE BEGINS is part of THE BLUE WALL PROJECT, a larger project exploring our sense of time, history and place by converting an ordinary blue construction fence into a live blue screen. It examines mutable and historic notions of the city, with its constantly shifting landscape, as a physical manifestation of impermanence. In this way, the project deals with the temporality of the city landscape as well as our daily interactions with urban fixtures.

Original Text : Mark Hage
Video Editor: Hector Bragado
Lighting Designer: Paul Clay
Production Assistant: Erin Smith
Produced by: NO LONGER EMPTY in collaboration with MOVIEHOUSE for THE NEW MUSEUM'S FESTIVAL OF IDEAS FOR THE NEW CITY 2011.

*Full length video available upon request

RETURN (Welcome to the new paradise) is a documentary about an art piece temporally displayed in the public space as well as the community where it was placed at: Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn.

This video addresses issues of paradise, vacation, migration and consumer culture and capitalism. At the same time it describes the neighborhood where the billboard was located and reveals its particularities trough interviews to its neighbors and different professionals.

RETURN was also the title of the billboard crowning a building in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn during 6 months in 2009 and 2010 by Itziar Barrio. At first sight, the billboard appeared to be a travel agency advertisement that attempts to lure the audience into buying an idyllic vacation package: "Welcome to the New Paradise. You, a lonely Wild Cat." Barrio created a melting pot of her own iconography, interconnected with elements of the cultural imagery of the area, which enjoys a flourishing immigrant population, the majority of whom have left tropical settings to make their home in NYC.

The video RETURN (Welcome to the new paradise) was shown for the first time at La Havana Biennial in 2012. Since then it has been shown in internationally in different venues and institutions : Loop (Barcelona), Thomas Henry Ross Gallery (Montreal), acb Gallery (Budapest), etc

Digital Video
7 min 48 sec
2009

The video, a mixing of film and animation, places two women in a tropical setting, where pink bombs explode in the background, perhaps indicative of the bombs exploding beyond our own borders that do not serve to separate us from our own paradises.

The Palm tree is presented as a key icon, simple and disturbing. It becomes part of the merchandise created by the artist, such as caps and pins, but in this case, the cliches of the palm or dolphins don't show any feature of certain origin, there is no Benidorm, Punta Cana or Hawaii, but the clean icon, pure, signifying. Barrio explores her relation to the symbols, some of which she repeats, taking part either in the iconographic repertoire of the artist, or the new "islandian" imagery, and this reiteration puts us in contact with the commercial realm and advertising language.

Itziar Barrio develops an original deconstruction of the icons and social codes that inhabit our daily lives, distorting the quotidian to establish a re-lecture of these images-symbol, and leaving a disturbing taste in the reconfiguration of this new system. 

*Full length film available upon request

Digital Video
4 min 37 sec
2009

BAILALO, 2009, sets up a strip-tease scenario with a gyrating torso and eye-catching colors, which becomes complicated by the words slowly revealed by successive shirts; ‘You have to know your customer’. With each reveal, the viewer renegotiates their position to the subject (“You”, ”You have”, “You have to”), and materialization of that which seems guaranteed from the beginning is thwarted by mention of the transaction as such. 

*Full length video available upon request

Digital Video
4 min 27 sec
2011

KRYPTONITE uses a non-linear narrative to create a new mythology showcasing power structures and sexual desire as the main characters.

Original Text: Chavisa Woods
Original Music: The Spookfish
Production Assitant: Erin Smith
Sponsored by: ELECTRICA and Cervantes Institute (NYC)

*Full length video available upon request