NEW TECHNOLOGIES

New technologies have expanded the modes of performance art and video art. First conceived as a way to tape and document performances, the most interesting twenty-first-century hybrid projects are by performance artists that blur the boundaries between documentary and video arts. OMNI Zona Franca was a pioneer in combining these two art forms. Important video-performance artists include Janette Chávez (“Self Censorship”), Katiuska Saavedra (“Extasis”), and the team of Javier Castro, Renier Quer, Adrián Melis, Yunior Aguiar, Celia González, Grethell Rasúa, and Luis Gárciga. This group, which emerged from Bruguera’s Cátedra Arte de Conducta, works collectively but maintains individual “authorship,” applying new technologies to the narrative language of performance. In their quest to maintain a more direct relationship with the people with whom they work, they focus on the aesthetics of daily survival. The Circus Project: International Performance and Audiovisual Event, founded by Juan Rivero Prieto in 2003, shows performance video art and allows projects to be shared with other international artists.