BCN PRODUCCIO/10 TIME THEFT E 2162

Time Theft BCNproduccio/10

The notion of Stolen Time , Narrative as Montage in Cinema , accumulation of "visual data" and making Lists .
Film as the apparatus to deliver Time based , re-constructed , re-narrated "visual contents" that
become what R.Barthes calls The Third Meaning.
The film uses Barcelona's dark heart and memory of ruins , mixing far past and immediate past based on Walter Benjamin notions about the Angel of History and the use of juxtaposed contents .
Edited, highlighting structures of montage and narrative used for brain wash, political propaganda and  altering perception techniques , repetition and the subliminal induced ..
Time Theft was presented as an installation, a publication, an unfinished novel, a silent film, a soundtrack on a tape and a live performance.
Questioning the construction of narratives to produce History for the means of manipulation and control.
The piece it self was inspired on an archivist procedure and its method of compiling data and the practice of constructing Lists ( as in W. Benjamin ) .
The Screening of the Film , was set up in an Installation ( Set /Environment) as if a Party was holding a Propaganda Film Screening on a Church ( with all implications and references related to Barcelona's Civil War events ) Heaps of Propaganda News Papers and a deconstructed barricade.
Esther Planas performing the role of Agent E 2162 a Double Agent Provocateur, during a retro-futuristic revolution and civil war , reminding a kind of Breton's Nadja who questions us : Who am I??, activates memory and situations of control, power and punishment.
Containing images taken by her during a whole "derive" around the Raval area plus many just taken/stolen from youtube finds on net derives. Delivered as if a stream of conscience by the film it self, as a neutral apparatus  containing all sort of images, detritus, ruins and ghost.
District 5, Film, Death , Dance Apache,L'Age D'or, CNT, Addiction ,Revolution, Spies , Thieves , Aliens, Danger , La Criolla, Anarquist, Sci-fi, Torture, Industry,Ghost, Barcelona,MACBA, Bombs, Cocaine,Bullets ...........The revolutionary feeling manifested

Time Theft E2162 Installation Shots and Film Stills

XINO E 2162

Love , called Eros, the God, is so attracted unavoidably to Death ,the Thanatos, a huge black hole of nothingness like the most warm embrace ...

It is never the person we give the privilege of causing disturbance on our hearts

the real culprit , it is us.. we know this by now, after the likes of Freud or Lacan , its our transference , our projections, on the blank screens of appearances we see things, symbols, signs and we eventually find lost parts of our selves , of our forgotten past and dreams.

And this is exactly what happened to her when she meet him, and after the meeting.. that trail he left.. that scent that for some reason seemed to take her, to guide her, in to the deep nights of secret meetings for debriefings about the real exact Revolution, as was so much needed at that times.

So, please , don't even think that due to some weird auto destructive tendencies or some extra powers about this man she did love, she decided to put her self on a list to go and jump in to death , to disappear , because he had also gone long ago...

As it was irrelevant where he was now, because it was what happened then, the essence of that times and the subdued influence he exerted over her with out his will .

It was more to do with how he smelled and tasted, his sun kissed skin , his deep black eyes, his hair and how he move, how he spoke, how he love..

This is what was mysterious, thrilling, fascinating about the fate of agent E2162




How was her involved on this could have not been ever explained
if he will not had crossed her path at a very special moment of her
life...
As simple as this may sound, him, out of the bluest blue, him the unexpected been,
him, influencing her trougth out his hands and kisses and his deep bright beetle
eyes ....
They did not enjoy such long times together , most was, as she pointed out after his proposal . like love in war times, love in a short time timing and context and then a long distance a long time passing by , as she had also had said then , like love before we just die...
She agreed , even knowing she would regret it both ways , if rejecting it , the whole
nothingness up on her for ever.
And if agreeing as she did , having almost for sure ( will she had not already knew -??) having to live with that passion, that memories, that burning desire for
"that" which had gone like a lone sailor at that harbor... the harbor where maybe as sailors fate could always be: never ever come back to again.
So all this happens on his absence, on his shape up on a reconstructed figure, fragments of very black lazy hair , a strength where her body felt covered and protected wile squashed by his , kisses so deep that she did wanted to die even by then, and
a feel on his penetrating her that she recognized as the ultimate dream come true
with out knowing how she could even know how was this feeling and how and why
was this exactly what she wanted and how she wanted it.
And how all this could transform in to politics and then later in to a total militancy ???
Still a mystery as the one of the saint trinity ..a sort of transubstantiation , all of it unexpected , as him and as the rest of her twist of fate after him....
She was more aware, she had been for a wile, but this feeling of loneliness and inloveness mixed up together make her eyes open wide and her mind awake and alert for things, feelings and issues that before seemed pointless or just impossible to reach.
One of them been Revolution...
Revolution, she used to think, is not possible any more, we are too much under
control, we love too much out little easy narcissistic lives and comforts ... and even if I know ( she said so many times ..) we are just bloody happy slaves .. there is not much we can do about it no ??
But for some reason, ( we know is because of him, because he, we had not said this before, exudes this feeling of strength and wilderness , self contained but intense , because he reminds her of a romantic hero, a mysterious revolutionary, a quiz... but she is not aware yet .. ) she developed this un- comfort , this agressive feeling .. this sickness to what she witness , as the every day life squizo extreme poles every where around her .
And one day , as if this was just also on her way , next to how unexpected and ephemeral had been her meeting with that man she knew she will not forget for at least a long long wile if ever, this other man appear ( a man almost as a negative version of her by then so long ago tasted unknown hero, a man so feminine, hermetic like an sphinx and excitingly dangerous) and this was by then how she
got recruited and how she did give her self to all this risk and commitment and ultimately to her own death . Her own death as an exchange for her believes and also ( she did not know this ) as the part of the deal she silently made when she
gived her self to that unknown man, sailor, love just for few hours and for never ever again as this was implicit on his words on his kisses on his own distant impossible life.
Marlene, was a man, and he had an immense ambitious agenda:
Revolution
can you believe it?
She was baptized agent E2162 and her mission was double directions as her self
was half burgeoise and half gipsy .. two ways, two love and hate : deep down high society and the left overs ,the fringes and the un- rested .
So she did started and she did got drip by drip, day by day more involved and more
hard headed .
And drip by drip, even if all we do anyway is going to the same place, her death was getting closer and closer like a mathematic diagram she had traced a kiss after a kiss that one night , at that one humid harbor with that man she had
promessed to die for, after their ritual made and sealed .

words, statements, messages, grounds, pavements,streets

The project , " words, statements, messages, grounds, pavements, streets" is an ongoing activity happening some times at some places , is ephemeral and unexpected , the idea is to recollect
documents after a wile and compile them on pictures or a publication.

London 2011

Barcelona 2010

Esther Planas Artist of the Week by Ed Winkleman, New York

Monday, January 30, 2006

Artist of the Week 01/30/06

A few years ago the New York art world saw an impressive resurgence in the metaphor and artistic potential of youthful angst as represented, seemingly, by nothing so much as the decorations and objects cluttering that sanctuary of reluctant innocence: the teenager's bedroom. A series of exhibitions, magazines, and events heralded the arrival of this fresh, sexy, smart, energetic, transcultural phenomenon and a series of stars and variations on the theme were born. Oddly, but perhaps not coincidentally, the vast majority of them (all of them?) by male artists.

Preceding this trend in New York, however, was the practice of Barcelona-born, London-based artist Esther Planas who has for a decade at least been combining drawings, rainbows, posters, porn, music, confessions, pop, sex, and cheap furniture in her installations, fanzines, and live performances with her band, Dirty Snow. Her installations never quite reached the critical mass of objects we associate with the New York genre, but what she may have lacked in density, she more than makes up for in intensity. This excerpt from the text for a recent exhibition at Transition Gallery in London sums up nicely what I mean:

Esther Planas is the achingly and archetypally poetic visionary, playing out her own life/love/art dramas in her work – meshing it all together in a glorious fuck it collage. Her confessional practice predates Emin, influenced instead by the original hardcore exponent of the genre, Kathy Acker.
Esther’s is a plaintive world where everything is continually in flux. Her persona shifting between the wannabe roles of rebel, rock-star, artist, painter, poet, porn star and writer. In her art this personal world is opened up, creating a space for the audience to drift through, to read her narrative as they would a text.

I first met Esther in 2000, when she was involved with London's legendary East End alternative space, Five Years. I found her hypersexual, rock-n-roll bad girl persona a bit threatening, but she went out of her way to make me feel comfortable during our first studio visit. She didn't hold back in showing me any of her work, even the most graphic, but her warm smile and genuine openness made me trust her motives and that went a long way toward providing a point of access. Here's an installation view of her work at Five Years in 2002


Esther's practice includes so many aspects, it's tempting just to list them and provide links where you can learn more. In fact, one central place to start is her website, Club Esther. Another is her fanzine, Dark Star, whose tagline is "Publish and be damned!"
Indeed, there's an amazing dark and yet fun dichotomy to Esther's work that has led to more than a bit of confusion on the part of folks trying to write about it (leading to her hilarious objection "who the fuck said I am a goth artist?"), with many of her videos and collages including stuffed bunnies, or unicorns, or rainbow stickers (the sort more often seen gracing the notebooks of schoolgirls) amongst pornographic photos of herself or other models (what Holland Cotter termed "funky teenage-diary" format [disclaimer: in a review of an exhibition at our gallery]).



Trained as a dancer in Spain before entering art school, Planas is a born performer. In early 2001, I included her in an exhibition I organized in London, and her band performed in the space the night after the opening. In fact, Dirty Snow will be performing live tomorrow on the Resonance FM show, "Make Your Own Damn Music," hosted by a previous artist of the week, Bob and Roberta Smith. You can listen on your radio if you're in London, or hear it online Tuesday, 31st January, at 21.45 GMT at www.resonancefm.com.
What fascinates me most about Esther's work, though, is its underlying thread of self-sabotage or as one writer put it "doomed romance." Indeed, many of her projects have seeds of genius, but as presented represent only a brilliant start...rarely what seems a totally resolved finish. I thought this was perhaps just a clash of aesthetics (mine vs. hers) at first, but this review of a performance by Dirty Snow suggests there's something else there

Following with a much more mature sound and appearance were Dirty Snow. A band with an average age of about thirty, they bash ‘em out with the best of them. With the ‘wall of noise’-ness of ‘Sonic Youth,’ and the conservative gothness of ‘Siouxsie and the Banshees,’’ Dirty snow` show a fierceness that would make children cry. Most striking is undoubtedly the leading lady. She looks like Shelley Duvall of ‘The Shining’ fame. Wendy Torrence armed with an arsenal of twisted, tortured writhing, gyrating ‘dance’ moves to send Jack Nicholson straight to hell. No discernible words came from her mouth, and if they did were hidden under the screams and wails of that wild banshee woman. But hey, who needs words anyway. The ‘Dirty Snows’ are not at all precious about their sound, giving it up for an energy that truly shakes and stirs the front woman. ‘Dirty Snow’ are not doing anything particularly new, if anything they are playing on old styles, but their energy is fresh, sincere and exciting to watch. It’s just a shame they burnt out after only 15-20 mins.
James Bridge Williams, The Dry Bar, Manchester 2/12/2004

But perhaps burning out after only 15-20 minutes is the point with Dirty Snow's performances, as if to suggest an entire life can be lived within that period, or at least one worth living, if lived well. I'm not quite sure (and neither are most critics) whether to take the band (which plays in clubs as well as galleries) as a serious musical endeavor or consider it an "art performance." Here again, that nebulousness seems to be part of the point. "Who's to say we have to choose." Here's a live performance audio clip.
UPDATE [RELATED]: See this article by João Ribas on the increasing respect in the visual arts world for artwork by musicians (including [can't praise this show enough] the exhibition at DCKT of collages and journals by Exene). João notes:

Influenced by the legacy of punk rock, and its do-it-yourself spirit and barrier-breaching ethos, a new artist-musician vanguard is helping to finally put to rest most of the negative connotations of being a musician who also paints, draws or takes photographs.

posted by Edward_ at 8:58 AM

White Cubicle Gallery 2009 Drinking in the Fountain of Art

Esther Plana's '‘ Drinking in the Fountain of Art'

Drinking on the Fountain of Art

For the show at White Cubicle Gallery, Esther Planas presented an unfolded zine (containing cut-up text from  Foucault, Blanchot, and Baudrillard plus her poems and a performative series of pictures taken

previously at the site where Esther Planas is drinking supposedly some piss /urine coming from an anonymous source .....

Drinking on the Fountain of Art, was a site-specific work, for her intervention at the gallery project which for the first time asked an artist to interact at its peripheral areas (in this case the men's toilet /pissoir and the Bar at the George and Dragon pub where the gallery has its White Cubicle site at the women toilets as its usual (white cube) where guest artist resolve/ install their works.

Given that the space and the Pub itself is a known as a Gay pilgrimage venue and wanting to respond to a

the shared fetichism about pissoirs and men inside a toilet, at the same time that the Duchampian "object" has the same origins it  appeared almost a natural consequence to re-enact  and activate a few of

the traditions and associations relating to our culture either as artists or as cults and underground lovers of pop.

Jean Genet, Focault, Philosophy, Duchamp, Maurice Blanchot, Drinking Golden Rain, Bruce Nauman, Jean Baudrillard, Critical Theory.

A film

A performance inside a Zine

A ritual offering of Roses for the beauty of Men

A flower offering performance re-enacting the scene at Jean Genet's Journal du Voleur, where

a group of transvestites called Las Carolinas to go on a procession around Las Ramblas de Barcelona (my hometown) and give flowers (red roses) to a derelict pissoir by the harbor. Becoming Carolinas, the soul of queer man becoming woman adoring men. 

Esther Planas re-enacting as one of The Carolinas of Jean Genet 

                               ......................a moment of prayer for the pissoir