INVENTORY
2015
BOOK
This book is the continuation of a lecture I gave in MDT (Stockholm) on the 20th of November 2014 as part of DOCH’s open lecture program. Before writing the text of that lecture, when someone asked me what I do, I always answered: “I am an artist”. Then, people would ask: “an artist on what?” and I would always have a lot of difficulties in answering that question.
After writing this lecture, if someone asks me “what do you do?”, I would be quite convinced to answer that I am a choreographer.
Once, Fernando Quesada, a Spanish architect who commissioned my second piece together with Jaime CondeSalazar, THIS SIDE UP, defined me like this: “María Jerez is a choreographer with a strong interest in some sort of paradox (typical of many visual artists) a kind of paradox of something that we could call the materiality of semiotics. Maria’s main interest is to put semiotics in movement, and that is why I think she is a choreographer. Maria sees signs everywhere: in signs,in objects, in the spaces, in human bodies, in behaviours... she sees the world in terms of signs and the possibility of displacement of signs, that is how movement comes in. She sees in a choreographic way. She is not interested in semiotics as a semiotician or a conceptual artist could be, but much more she is interested in signs as tools and to put signs into motion.”
She is interested in signs as tools and to put signs into motion.” In June 2014 Frederic Gies, artistic director of the MA of choreography at DOCH at that time, told me that for that lecture it would be interesting to focus on the choreographic aspects of my work.
Talking with Uriel Fogué, another Spanish architect, and discussing about how to focus on the specific aspects of my approach to choreography, he told me that, for him, more than a choreographer of the signs, I am a choreographer of “things”, understanding “things” in all its meanings, as: objects, symbolic referents, signs, questions, concepts and matters.
In that sense, I think I am a choreographer: a choreographer that put things in movement, but not necessarily things that move. In this book I look at these things that I put into motion in my work. And to do so, I propose an inventory of the “things” that appear in two of my pieces the first one and the last one at that time (10 years separate one from the other):
El Caso del Espectador 2004 ba-deedly-deedly-deedly-dum
ba-boop-be-doop! 2014
In order to make the inventory of “things” that are choreographed in these two works, I have chosen 4 different definitions of “THING” that I collected from different dictionaries.
THING
noun
1. Equipment, utensils, or other objects used for a particular
purpose:
“Where are my make-up things?”
2. The object or concept referred to; reference:
“The tomato juice and red piece of paper refer to the same
thing”
3. Matter, issue, subject, concern, topic, question,
preocupation:
“Many things on my mind”
4. An abstract entity, quality, or concept: “Contradiction and
opposition are not the same thing”
CREDITS
Title: Inventory. A choreography of things
Author: Maria Jerez
Editors for this issue: María Jerez, Federico Soriano, Pedro Urzaiz and Eva Gil
Graphic Design: María Jerez and Rafael M.Hernández
Cover Design: Andrea González
Edited by: Fisuras fisuras@fisuras.es
Fisuras Director: Federico Soriano
ISBN 978-84-942926-3-7