I want commemorate a performance artist who passed away this January, and I want to talk about one piece in particular that she did, and its conceptual substance. In 1990 Maria Teresa Hincapié brought all of her portable belongings into a gallery space in a big Tula, which is a big fabric bag, and placed them on the floor. Then she started to take the objects from the pile to arrange in a spiral manner around her. She would do this very slowly, playing with the infinite logical possibilities in which the spiral could be arranged. One by one, she organized the objects according to color, shape, purpose, or just plain whim. When she finished placing all of the objects in the spiral, she would pick them back up and start over. The gallery visitors came in and out as Hincapié silently surrounded herself with these lines of everyday objects 12 hours a day for 18 days. This is more than two weeks of strict discipline. But why would someone do that?
When we study performance from an anthropological perspective, we find that humans have an inherent need for ritual. From the beginning of civilizations to modern societies, there are thousands of different manifestations of rituals. There is evidence that In Mesopotamia, before and after the conquest of Babylonia by Alexander the great, there was a costume of bringing food to an anthropomorphic statue that represented the god, in Mexico today, we see a similar costume when in the Day of the Dead, people bring food to the cemetery. American culture has it’s own rituals: We have the most obvious ones, which are the religious kinds and the holidays, but we have other more customary forms like putting gasoline in our cars so that we can drive, or shopping. We have rituals to get up in the morning and we have rituals to go to bed at night. We have rituals at work and for tea… sometimes we go to the beach to feel the breeze and the sand to break away from our daily routine. What makes all of these actions rituals is that they have a purpose of existence. Objects, like rituals, also have purposes. The anthropomorphic statue was to the Mesopotamian people an extension of god, that object had a purpose, and today we have tombstones that serve a purpose: to represent, to commemorate. Every object ever made by a human, was made for a purpose. But what happens when we stop seeing the purpose for those rituals? When we stop seeing the need for those objects? That’s when the ritual becomes routine and the object becomes profane. The ritual and the object become a waste of time.
In my reading of Maria Teresa Hincapié’s performance there are two important factors: The Object and The Ritual.
1st Factor: The Object: In the action, she was giving each object respect by letting it influence her behavior. In doing this, she was emphasizing how immense of a communication tool an object can be and how emotive it can be. In a society like the one we live in today it seems ridiculous to pay homage to an object because everything seems replaceable, especially everyday objects. Compare that for example, to the care and devotion given to objects in indigenous societies around the world. Hincapié was encouraging the audience to thing about their quotidian objects as important material goods, and not as temporary items of disposable nature.
2nd Factor: The Ritual: The performance was called Una cosa es una cosa. One Thing is One Thing, which is a title that alludes to time. Is, is a verb, a conjugation of the verb to be. Is, is also an eternal word, one that stays in the present forever. With this piece, in a ritual of arranging and rearranging her everyday, Maria Teresa Hincapié demonstrated how to experience eternity. This piece could be done a million times and every time it would be done differently according to the performer’s mood or instincts. This allows the performer her to get lost in time.
Maria Teresa dedicated her life to encourage people to slow down, to look at things from a different perspective, to observe, to analyze, to listen, to be influenced, to pay attention and to play with reality. Once she said, “I invite us to stop, to transform time into something sacred”. She invites us to be satisfied with what we have and to make the most of it. To live our lives to our fullest, with discipline and with joy.
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