Ernesto Pujol centers his performance art around a small habit and daily activity many of us take for granted: walking.
“People have a very traditional notion of art that is based on skill,” he said. “And because we all walk, nobody thinks that walking is a skill.”
Instead, Pujol says performance art is meant to draw attention to things people often overlook. Unlike physical art that can be bought and sold, performance art is an experience. The choreographer spoke Thursday night at ASU’s Grant Street Studios in downtown Phoenix’s warehouse district at the event “Making Conscious Culture.”
“You take a very daily activity: walking or breathing, and sitting and standing, or slowing down and being still,” he said. “You set it in a place, in a context, that needs to be addressed.”
In one example, Pujol organized a project in Hawaii where performers walked around 12 sites that were significant to the state’s history while wearing red, a color associated with the state’s historical constitutional monarchy. He said he hoped that when observing the walkers, people would perceive familiar locations in a new way.
“I work with people in different cities in creating a kind of metaphor of who they are,” Pujol said. “I usually research a community, a neighborhood, a city and their histories, documented and undocumented.”
Pujol cites an interdisciplinary approach to his work, with roots in anthropology, ethnography, archaeology, sociology and psychology.
“When you mix art with a non-art-making discipline, it might just be that you make something that is not recognizable as art or that you have given up the anxiety of making art, and (you’ve created) something else that the community needs more than art,” he said.
Kim Lyle, an ASU graduate student studying intermedia, said she was drawn to Pujol’s focus on creating impermanent art.
“What I appreciated most about him and his talk was that everything came from a genuine place,” Lyle said. “A lot of times in the art world, people make things and objects, and it’s something very humbling to not make anything.”
“I do happen to think that art is not a fetishized, precious product for an elite,” Pujol said.
Pujol described his long performances, some lasting several days, as belonging to whoever happens to watch him.
“I’m not painting my portrait through performance art,” he said. “I place art back into the cultural arena, and I place it at the service of society.”
Contact the reporter at jjmcaul1@asu.edu.
