Esther Planas

Copyright 2023

Closer Encounters of The Third Kind Inside the White Cube at Five Years Gallery March 2011

CEOTKITWC , started as an artist curatorial piece, experimenting with the bare white cubical space of the gallery site as a place where "encounters" would happen during the length of its duration between "different" people or better called "alien" people belonging to various practices and nations, cities and sexual genders.

At the core of the "encounters" where the issues of Alienhood, as to populate the English land of London, not only physically but also "aurally" as artists, curators, cultural agents, writers, teachers, and so on and so on.

Taking as a departure point, the example of my own subjective experience and intuitive theories about the dynamics of my professional life in London as an Alien and how, not only criticise and analyse the foreigns expectations about me but also to expose that I can decide what kind of Spanish or Hispanic or Latino, etc. I want to "perform" for them "the other" too. implying in my choice a whole range of politics, from a sort of Pimping (as in Suely Rolnik's text) to one subversion or negation to this self-representation forced on me, etc.

I had invited the subjects to be part of the transiting elements of the white bare space ("a la par" the empty/ uncolored /virtual space of the internet and a Blog ) to collide, to cross over, to negotiate, transfer and maybe fagocitate .. (the cannibal in all)

The Theme: "Being an Alien" unfolded on the polyhedric faces of related issues as Marx Theory of Alienation, notions of Anglo-sphere,The United Kingdom and the 'continental' experience: political and cultural history, Eurocentrism versus From Empire and Metropolitan Cultures by John M. Mackenzie, Cultural Supremacy of the White /The Culture of White Supremacy by Sharon Martinas and the Challenging White Supremacy Workshop KKK in DC in 1928, Abstracts on Englishness by Anna Gruetzner Robins, Rachid Areen's Third Text,The State of Spain: Nationalism, Critical Regionalism, and Biennialization by Rosa Lleó and Peio Aguirre, The Great British Art Debate at Tate Britain curated by Cedar Lewisohn and a series of interventions of the gallery space by Michael Curran (Scotland) Richard Crow (UK), Joan Morey (Mallorca Spain) next to "presence on the virtual" from Alberto Gracia (Galicia Spain) Ivan Ordoñez (Bogota Colombia) Alejandro Vidal (Mallorca Spain) and guest to talks on the subject: Kiki Mazzuchelli (Brasil), Maria Berrios (Chile) Alex Carvalho ( Brasil ) Cedar Lewisohn ( UK ) Carmen Julia ( Madrid, Spain ) Tariq Alvi (UK) Pablo Leon de la Barra (Mexico/ UK).

The three weekends of the no-show were structured into a one a day intervention and the blog was updating constantly and still online and ongoing

Link to blog

ME ALIEN YOU EXTRATERRESTRIAL

The term 'folklore' is nothing but the hypocrisy of the 'civilised' who won't take part in the game, and who want to hide their refusal to make contact under the mantle of respect for the picturesque...? Man is irrevocably a stranger to dawn. It needed our colonial way of thinking to believe that man could have remained faithful to his beginnings and that there was any place in the world where he could encounter the essence of the 'primitive'. (trans. Clare O'Farrell)
Michel Foucault, (1994) [1963]. 'Veilleur de la nuit des hommes'. In Dits et Ecrits vol. I. Paris: Gallimard, p. 232.

CLOSE ENCOUNTER YOU ARE AN ALIEN AN ME???

Closer Encounters of the Third Kind ////////// Aliens on the surface on London

DAY ONE
THE PERFORMANCE/THE LECTURE/ THE TALK/ THE DEBATE PERFORMED BY ESTHER PLANAS

The idea is that the tactics of Imperialism have been transferred throughout the distribution
of culture and the making of the actors of the art and cultural scene been always superior and
influencing down towards the rest of the globe from the anglo-sphere // north Europe centrism from the top.

Art licks visiting Five Years
Carmen Juliá and Kiki Mazzucchelli
Tariq Alvi
Richard Crow Institute of Rot
Joan Morey inst shot