Nicolas Dumit Estevez: My interest is in stepping out of the safety of the art institution environment to insert my experiments into a less predictable context. I enjoy dealing with projects where I often choose not to be in full control of their final outcome.
Nicolás Dumit Estévez – Mandy Morrison
Mandy Morrison: What influenced your decision to create (performative) work that would interact in a public sphere?
Nicolas Dumit Estevez: My interest is in stepping out of the safety of the art institution environment to insert my experiments into a less predictable context. I enjoy dealing with projects where I often choose not to be in full control of their final outcome.
MM: Audiences tend to be both fascinated by as well as intimidated by confrontational work. What benefits does the viewer derive from this experience and how do you think this can affect a larger politic?
NDE: Confrontation is something that disrupts the ordinary without necessarily resorting to spectacle. It might be a very delicate action that manages to dismantle one’s attempt to slip into conformity; acting as a sensory awakening. In Not For Sale, presented in 2002 with Lower Manhattan Cultural Council in the City’s Financial District, I bartered home-made baked goods for anything other than money; pushing people to resort to other means to “purchase” the items on display. Transactions ended up including a group song, secrets, a kiss, several hugs and a key to a guy’s apartment.
MM: What types of performances or experiences have been the most provocative and meaningful to you personally (or in the case of a group, collectively)? Why?
NDE: Once, as part of a residency at the Artists Alliance, I worked organizing a communal meal with a vast array of groups throughout Lower East Side. After driving myself close to exhaustion for months, giving slide presentations, meeting possible participants, inviting people to submit recipes, I realized that it was entirely up to the collaborators to show up on the designated day for the repast and to carry on the celebration. In making sure that the basic requirements for the event were met, a deep sense of trust in others was the main ingredient. The Mexican band that I hired on the spot while riding the #2 train downtown showed up on time to eat a mangú that an Essex Market vendor brought in a huge aluminum container.
MM: Do you think that American culture as a whole has become more passive regarding the political issues affecting them or merely preoccupied?
NDE: U.S. culture revolves almost exclusively around shopping. Perhaps a good way to shift people’s attention from rampant consumerism and numbness would be to infiltrate the sacred spaces of commerce with work that makes shoppers focus on what is going on with us as a society. I was able to experiment with that in Times Square when I open an outdoor peepshow on 42nd Street at a window space provided by Chashama. 25¢ bought passersby five seconds of viewing of one of my bodily organs; a real bargain, considering the skyrocketing real estate prices in the area. Mine was amongst the last peep shows in that neighborhood.
MM: Do you think that contemporary artists (and the art community as a whole) generally veers towards certain types of practices for reasons of fashion, conviction or economics?
NDE: This is an unavoidable situation in which validation and money play the key roles. There are artists who provide the goods that the art market demands and in return reap its benefits, and there is another group that simply relies on the satisfaction of doing as they please; you may call it “conviction” if pleasure sounds too compromising to one’s career.
Biographical Information:
Nicolás Dumit Estévez is an interdisciplinary artist working primarily in performance and has exhibited and performed internationally. Awards include the Lambent Fellowship Program of Tides Foundation and the Michael Richards Fund, a program of the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (LMCC). In 2006 he will participate in the IX Havana Biennial in Cuba, and will be a resident at MacDowell, Yaddo, and at the Center for Book Arts (CBA). He is currently working on For Art’s Sake, a performance developed for Franklin Furnace and LMCC, presented in collaboration with El Museo del Barrio, The Bronx Museum of the Arts, The Studio Museum in Harlem, The Jersey City Museum, Longwood Arts Project/Bronx Council and CBA. Estévez lives and works in the South Bronx.
www.longwoodarts.org/Artists/nicolas/
