Zero Guzman

Piertopolis at Gemak, The Hague 2012

2012-01-06T20:52:00.000+01:00

IDFA Starts 16th - 27th Nov 2011

2011-11-16T15:29:00.003+01:00

A video with my presentation last year at The Prologue / Paradocs
International Documentary Festival Amsterdam

Presentations by filmmakers featured in the section of IDFA's program dedicated to experimental and artistic documentaries. Video artist Duro Toomato makes live recordings of two new editions of his Yes or No project. Finnish directors Hannes Vartiainen and Pekka Veikkolainen display carcasses of the insects they used in The Death of an Insect. Flemish theater collective Berlin talk about their cinematic theatrical work Tagfish. Dutch Panamanian video artist Antonio Jose Guzman (b. 1971) reports on the progress of his multimedia The Day We Surrender to the Air, which also features graffiti art, dance and music. And the Belgian Vincent Meessen - at Paradocs last year with Vita Nova, a documentary based on a 1955 edition of Paris Match - presents his own, contemporary version of this weekly news magazine.

Dérive on the Shadownet | Adbusters Culturejammer Headquarters

2011-10-25T12:15:00.000+02:00

Dérive on the Shadownet | Adbusters Culturejammer Headquarters

New data

2011-10-05T18:39:00.002+02:00

RYOJI IKEDA's The Transfinite

2011-09-19T15:24:00.004+02:00

One of the best art pieces last summer and that has inspired me profoundly is by Ryoji Ikeda, a Japanese sound and visual artist who lives and works in Paris, Ikeda has collaborated with such artists as choreographer William Forsythe, architect Toyo Ito, musician and visual artist Carsten Nicolai, and photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto. Shown widely in Europe and Japan, this is his first major installation in the United States.

Following critically acclaimed installations by Ernesto Neto and Christian Boltanski, Ryoji Ikeda has been selected by the Armory http://www.armoryonpark.org for its third annual visual art commission in the Wade Thompson Drill Hall. Ikeda creates a visual and sonic environment where visitors are submerged in an extreme illustration of projected and synchronized data. His work uses scale, light, shade, volume, shadow, electronic sounds, and rhythm to flood the senses. In choreographing vast amounts of digital information, Ikeda conjures up a transformative environment in which visitors confront data on a scale that defies comprehension, experiencing the infinite.

Piertopolis Today

2011-09-10T22:29:00.003+02:00

Four pictures that I made in NYC of the world trace center twin towers in 1999 have been added to the blog to commemorate 9/11. http://www.piertopolis.com/new-york/

Piertopolis Project

2011-09-08T18:07:00.003+02:00

From this coming Saturday 9/11, after 10 years of the fatal incidents that changed the world and made me take the decision to focus 100 percent on the audiovisual arts fields; I will be uploading two photos per day periodically to my ongoing project website Piertopolis.

Check out:
http://www.piertopolis.com

new shiny face of website aguzman.com

2011-09-08T17:48:00.000+02:00

With pleasure I would like to invite you to check out the new shiny face of my website, www.aguzman.com! Easier to navigate, with brighter and high definition images of all the installations, videos and photographic series of the last decade, as well information on ongoing new projects like www.piertopolis.com, just browse, bookmark and share!

2011-09-08T13:19:00.005+02:00

an evening with photographer Anton Corbijn and artist Berend Strik

September 8, 2011

Yesterday I have the honor to give a copy of our book The State of L3 Collective, to legendary photographer Anton Corbijn, one my heroes during my adolescent in Panama.

The Dutch magazine ZAM Africa Magazine organized on September 7, 2011 in the MC Amsterdam Theatre an evening with photographer Anton Corbijn and artist Berend Strik about their collaboration art work “Mandela Landscape” with ZAM magazine and their solidarity with ZAM and the African talent.

Mandela Landscape is a portrait of Anton Corbijn (1955, photographer, filmmaker, visual artist) in 2003 of Nelson Mandela in Cape Town. Subsequently, Berend Strik (1960, artist) embroidered the portrait, using a procedure in which he gained international fame. This image forms the basis of 80 prints, signed and numbered by the artists.

Piertopolis Project is in full Effect.

2011-08-10T03:05:00.005+02:00

To update you briefly.

Now days I'm busy with the presentation of my new project called Piertopolis, check the new web site online: http://www.piertopolis.com

The last months during and after my show/presentation in Norway we have a book launch for the State of L3 book in Aarhus Denmark, my film The Day We Surrender screened in San Francisco, California, Maroon in Park was screened in the Sharjah Biennial and we create it a logo and an brand image for Piertopolis.

Finally the presentation dates are the 12th of August and 27th of August at the Kromhout in Amsterdam and the Tolhuistuin Summer Festival.

The Hindu : Sci-Tech / Science : Atlantis leaves space station for last time

2011-07-19T11:57:00.000+02:00

The Hindu : Sci-Tech / Science : Atlantis leaves space station for last time

Knipsu Poster

2011-06-20T22:58:00.000+02:00

Sønik adventures this year. Panama - NYC- Bergen - Antwerp

2011-06-20T22:53:00.006+02:00

My journey this year so far.
INAC National Institute of Culture of Panama
Lecture and show at the MHKA, Museum of Contemporary art of Antwerp
Exhibition in Bergen, Norway at KNIPSU
Installation in Panama city Art Space Los del Patio
Lecture at Rush Art Gallery in Chelsea NYC
State of L3 show in Aarhus Denmark in collaboration with Mads Peter Laursen (bureau de tours) in the legendary Gallery Image, Århus Denmark.

We live in a world dominated by simulated experience and feelings and have lost the capacity to comprehend reality as it really exists. We only experience prepared realities– edited war footage, meaningless acts of terrorism, the destruction of cultural values and the substitution of “referendum.”

Jean Baudrillard

“The very definition of the real has become: that of which it is possible to give an equivalent reproduction. . . The real is not only what can be reproduced, but that which is always already reproduced: that is the hyperreal… which is entirely in simulation.” Jean Baudrillard

Yatra A Twenty Year Journey

2011-06-18T15:22:00.001+02:00

Yatra
A Twenty Year Journey
An exhibition by Antonio Jose Guzman

KNIPSU
10.06 – 26.06
Komediebakken 9

‘I wished to go completely outside and to make a symbolic start for my enterprise of regenerating the life of humankind within the body of society and to prepare a positive future in this context.’ Joseph Beuys

Future as a Dutch/Panamanian artist?

2011-06-14T00:05:00.002+02:00

I have no idea what the future as a Dutch artist means. but I guest is back to the political movement of the 60's and 70's. This will not only change the economy of us as Dutch artists but it will stop the cultural exchange and climate of the last 4 decades.

taken from the web page of Stichting Kunst en Openbare Ruimte.

http://www.skor.nl/article-5520-nl.html

Dutch to English translation
automatic translation from Google.

We live in a visual culture. Knowledge and information circulates largely in the form of images. Art and art in particular, is the main domain that teaches us to deal with what we do not know that our visions and unexpected vistas offer. Visual art is a self-conscious and critical handling of the ubiquitous image possible. It is therefore incomprehensible that a government that wants its citizens to prepare for a promising future, decides that part of civil society to bring down that the public supports this. The tough approach to the visual arts sector (from 53.5 million to 31 million) in this note are not supported by logical or factual arguments.

The State Secretary has decided to include:

- The budget of the Mondrian Fund by half.

- The number of presentation settings in the BIS drastically reduce from 11 to 6. The settings are no longer in the BIS may further NOT contact the Mondrian Fund and therefore have no chance of survival.

- Art journals no longer provide funding.

- Public support for the functions now being completed by biennial Manifesta, SKOR | Foundation Art and Public Space, the sector institute Premsela Virtual Platform, the Dutch Institute for Media Art full stop.

- The financing of the postgraduate courses the Ateliers artists, Royal Academy of Fine Arts, European Ceramic Work Centre and Jan van Eyck Academie stop.

- Over the next four years only the development of 50 artists who have proven talent and support.

- The individual basic stipends and scholarships to artists working in half. The current grant with the character of a revenue provision FULL stop.

The direct and immediate impact of these measures for the public art that now wants to see and experience, are catastrophic:

- Makers, producers and artists are the basis of the cultural infrastructure. Without artists there would be no art. No or lack of support and professional artists to full time to focus on making work, means that no innovative work can be seen.

- No post-graduate education means no recruitment of new artists who excel in the Netherlands and abroad represent. Removing this function leads directly to an attenuation of the offer in Dutch presentation settings so that the Netherlands will lose its competitive position. It leads to an overall impoverishment of the art in the Netherlands and a weakening of the Dutch in the international art galleries.

- A minimum number of presentation settings means that the new artificial hair into the public domain and will not remain locked in workshops and depots. Dutch and international public in the Netherlands can no longer see innovative art.

- The elimination of an institution such as SKOR means that the presence of art in public space - and eminently democratic "anti-elitist" for free for everyone - decreases.

- The elimination of an institution as a valuable part NMAI means that digital heritage - video art and cinema and media art - fragmentation and no longer accessible to the public.

- The innovative part of the visual arts, also the international standing of creative Netherlands provides needs a cash injection by the state exist.

The current cultural system that today was finally torpedoed has produced artists and curators currently international furore and including at the current Venice Biennale - the world championships of the art - the focus of attention.

So stands the work of Navid Nuur on the front of the official catalog of the Venice Biennale. It takes just like living in the Netherlands Amalia Pica, participate in the central exhibition "Illuminations". Their colleagues Praneet Soi, Yael Bartana Wendelien of Oldenborgh and Han Hoogerbrugge, Aernout Mik, Libia Castro and Olafur Olafsson and Edwin Driessens and Maria Verstappen play a key role in the pavilions in India, Poland, Denmark, Roma, Iceland and Drop Stuff. Dutchman Guido van der Werve is simultaneously seen in the context of the exhibition Future Generation, which the Ukrainian Victor Pynchuck the talent of future signals. Not only Dutch artists shine in Venice this year, to fellow trustees are also prominent. As many as five receivers operating in the Netherlands set a pavilion in this year: Marres director Guus Beumer acquire Dutch pavilion on his behalf, BAK director Mary Hlavajova Roma Pavilion, freelancer, Romania Maria Rus Bojan, Director SKOR Fulya Erdemci Turkish and Apple tutor Henk Slager, Georgia.

The performance of these artists and curators are made possible by the existence of a cultural system that experiment, innovation, talent and an international focus hitherto cherished and (financially) possible. They have their work and practice to develop through investment from the Dutch state. Investments that they now have cash and result in an "export product" which the Netherlands can be proud. This system is globally recognized and praised for its efficiency and future orientation.

The memo from the State indicates that the government only thinks of what is now immediate result and not what 'value for the future' generates. We all know it: there is only one today, there is also a tomorrow. We want that the Netherlands is often tomorrow and artistic heritage of today and yesterday to see. We hope the House this desire to share with us and goes against a policy that only in the sign today.

The boards, managements and representatives of:

De Zaak Nu – namens de presentatie-instellingen

SKOR | Stichting Kunst en Openbare Ruimte

NIMk – Nederlands Instituut voor Mediakunst

De postacademische instellingen – de Ateliers, Rijksakademie en Jan van Ecyk Academie

Verzamelaar Martijn Sanders, mecenassen Maurice van Vaalen, en Rob Defares

Actiegroep kunstenaars ‘Schuilen in het Rijks’

Understanding the end of art.

2011-06-13T23:58:00.002+02:00

CRITICAL RESPONSES

TO BRAMANN'S

"UNDERSTANDING THE END OF ART"

After Bramann's presentation of his paper "Understanding the End of Art" during the Philosophical Forum debate on October 28, 1998, Dean of the School of Arts and Humanities Dr. Philip Allen responded with the following remarks:

(1) There is something disturbing about the suggestion that just as marginalized groups have begun to be recognized as producers of art, we now declare the end of art.

(2) Even if a case could be made for the end of art by reference to the history of two-dimensional painting, it is far from clear that a parallel case could be made by reference to the other arts.

(3) Great art is still being produced today, but it is outside the structure of the artworld and its social context. (4) The underlying purpose of art is to "make the hidden visible." It is not plausible to believe that art in this sense has (or could) come to an end.

Dr. Randall Rhodes presented his reply in the following paper::

It may be too pessimistic to contend that the cutting edge of the human spirit has far outpaced the developmental trajectory of art. That, rather than finding new modes of creation and enlightenment, art has sunken into a protracted state of disorientation and exhaustion. That, no longer purposive, art has become caught up in its own production and effete aestheticism.

Yet, considering the whole context of its historical progress, art has been only incidentally purposive. Drafted into the service of political or social agendas, art has been periodically reduced to mass illustration and the aping of nature. However, ever since Plato and the advent of critical theory, art has been characterized as neither cognitive nor moral.

Perceived as, at best, a shadow image of an imperfectly ordered planet, art has but one objective - to eschew the empirical and function as a phenomenal embodiment of dimly perceived metaphysical truths, an eternal representation of the innermost unfolding of the Idea.

Hegel's reading of art's developmental progress up the anagogical ladder, from the symbolic to the classical, and ultimately, to the romantic, locates the situs where the Idea is freed from the concrete image and the moment when it surpasses our understanding and wins our wonder.

But Hegel's theoretical fallability in regard to art's history obscures the fact that art has been romantic since its inception. Mimesists have always been consigned to the lowest hierarchical ranks, or even to Hell, and Platonists, to the highest academic ranks and immortal fame. As practitioners of le beau ideal, Platonists find that truth lay not within the worldly referential, but in the liberation from it.

For example, Donald Judd's Untitled sculpture from 1967, celebrates minimalist abstraction. In its geometrical and textural purism, it rises upward, step by step, leading our vision to its sequential conclusion. It is an aesthetic transport to the world of divine exaltation, a phenomenal leap of faith above and beyond the limits of created and physical matter.

Playing Riegl against Hegel, a certain aspect of art's historical progress operates according to its own internal demands and structural concerns. This developmental chain is animated by the Kunstwollen, a larger will that moves throughout a culture with an inner inherent necessity to generate transition and movement. Yet while this stream of art suffers through slopes and movements, genetic and geological mutations, its organic living power of apprehension endlessly flows onward and upward. For example, a Persian rug, in its balance of florettes and vignettes, embodies this historical quest for compositional harmony and virtu.

by Jorn K. Bramann

Yatra, a Twenty Year Journey

2011-05-31T15:58:00.003+02:00

Yatra  
A Twenty Year Journey 
An exhibition by Antonio Jose Guzman

‘I wished to go completely outside and to make a symbolic start for my enterprise of regenerating the life of humankind within the body of society and to prepare a positive future in this context.’ Joseph Beuys

‘Let's talk of a system that transforms all the social organisms into a work of art, in which the entire process of work is included... something in which the principle of production and consumption takes on a form of quality. It's a Gigantic project.’ Joseph Beuys

YATRA comprises the photographic work of two of Guzman’s latest projects: the Bas Jan Ader and Paul Gilroy inspired research project Piertopolis, and Guzman’s documentary trilogy The Day We Surrender to the Air. Both projects comprehend a search for a new (visual) definition of notions like migration, gravity, locality, ancestry and identity. Taking his own mixed background and his twenty-year experience as photographer and visual artist as an example, Guzman tries to conceive the causes and results of human displacement.

The exhibition at KNIPSU presents Guzman’s ongoing research into DNA, movement and replacement. Focusing on the pier as both a means for connection and separation, Guzman tries to capture the ambivalences that surround the act of traveling. A pier suggests nostalgia and contemplation, as well as hope and relief. The DNA-like shape of a pier expresses change, improvement, and site-specificity.
The tables, photographs and maps of the exhibition contain the material that Guzman gathered and created during his personal journeys to the places of his origin, including his two months residency here in Bergen.

YATRA, Sanskrit for ‘journey’ or ‘destination’ involves the pilgrimage to the sacred places that are associated with Hindu epics. A YATRA is a non-obligatory but yet desirable undertaking, in which the journey is as important as the destination.

About Piertopolis
Piertopolis, Time gate at the end of the universe.
Inspired by Babylon of COBRA artist Constant, Piertopolis features an architectural design for an installation of a life-size landscape made out of piers and walking bridges. A pier accommodates the act of leaving, of traveling and embarking – it is a place where the gone and lost are contemplated. At the same time, a pier is a place easily associated with arrival and return, with reconnection, and with the fulfillment of hopes and wishes. Besides, a pier is also a continuously changing structure. Its features are affected by wind and sea, by the people, boats and animals that use it. A pier never looks the same. The structure-like characteristics of the pier make one think of small meccano constructions, architectural fantasies and utopian landscapes in which the border between reality and illusion is blurred. The project is supported by the Amsterdam Foundation for the Arts. AFK and by the Netherlands Foundation for Visual Arts, Design and Architecture. Fonds BKVB

About The Day We Surrender to the Air (trilogy)
The concept of the documentary trilogy The Day We Surrender to the Air (2009-2010) is based on the results of Guzman’s DNA test. This DNA test, executed by the National Geographic Genographic Project and African Ancestry, shows Guzman’s extremely mixed background. In the documentary, Guzman travels to the places of his ancestry and brings to the front various questions considering ethnic identity, migration and Diaspora. The trilogy is supported by the The Netherlands Foundation for Visual Arts, Design and Architecture (Fonds BKVB). The documentary had its premiere at the International Documentary Festival Amsterdam (IDFA), the biggest documentary festival in the world, before going on international tour in 2010. The Day We Surrender to the Air, Episode Two premiered at the The Thessaloniki Documentary Festival 2010 in Greece and the Africa in the Picture Film Festival, Amsterdam.

About Guzman
Antonio Jose Guzman (Panama City, 1971) is a Dutch-Panamanian artist.
He lives and works in Amsterdam, Panama City and Dakar. Guzman’s work includes films, documentaries, photography, installations and publications. Besides his individual art practice, Guzman is the establisher and director of the Pan-African art collective The State of L3, a collective that has been operating since 2006. In his work, Guzman focuses on topics like DNA, migration and gravity.

by © Siri Driessen

THE END OF MONEY

2011-05-25T18:46:00.000+02:00

THE END OF MONEY
Group exhibition
22 May–7 August 2011

Witte de With
Center for Contemporary Art
Witte de Withstraat 50
3012 BR Rotterdam
The Netherlands

The End of Money is a group exhibition about time and value. Bringing together works by a host of international artists, this exhibition reflects upon the fears, hopes, and expectations associated with the end of money and its ominous consequence: the dissolution of an absolute standard of value.

What limits does the economy impose on our collective imagination, and how is the collective imagination responsible for the current economy? The End of Money focuses on the multiple relationships that could and those that should exist between culture and economy. Informing this curatorial project is the utopian notion that, in a world without money—a world where money has been factored out of the collective memory, other suppressed forms of value may emerge, leading to another social bond and a different relationship to time.

The works included in The End of Money range from reflections on the arbitrary ways in which value is ascribed to things to explorations of the absolute loss of representative value. Some of the featured works highlight time, which is a persistent corollary of money in our efficiency-obsessed culture.

Artists:
Alexander Apostol; Pierre Bismuth; Peter Fischli & David Weiss; Zachary Formwalt; Goldin+Senneby; Hadley+Maxwell; Toril Johannessen; Vishal Jugdeo; Agnieszka Kurant; Matts Leiderstam; Maha Maamoun; Christodoulos Panayiotou; Lili Reynaud-Dewar; Tomas Saraceno; Tonel; Vangelis Vlahos; and Lawrence Weiner.

Curated by
Juan A. Gaitán; assisted by Amira Gad.

Publication

To accompany the exhibition, a digital publication will be made available for free download via www.wdw.nl in July 2011 and will feature texts by: Dessislava Dimova, Donatien Grau, Dieter Roelstraete, and Carolina Sanin.

08.04.2011, Maya Økland

©Toril Johannessen

DESIGNING GEOPOLITICS

2011-05-25T01:52:00.000+02:00

June 2-3, 2011 · Atkinson Hall Auditorium, Calit2, UC-San Diego

DESIGNING GEOPOLITICS

An Interdisciplinary Symposium on Computational Jurisdictions, Emergent Governance, Public Ecologies

Geo-graphy, Geo-technolgy, Geo-governance

These questions are not only technology policy and standards issues, nor can they be properly addressed by extrapolating and extruding political models from past Modern eras, nor can they be fully articulated by political philosophical models, nor can they be directly diagrammed and modeled as design engineering equations. Instead variations on each of these faculties must be enrolled all at once.

The exhibition at KNIPSU will be called Yatra

2011-05-24T10:20:00.004+02:00

Some info on my plans so far in Norway.

The exhibition at KNIPSU will be called Yatra, and it will be compose of the end presentation to The Day We Surrender to the Air project (http://www.thedaywesurrender.com/)

and the ongoing Research of 2011 called Piertopolis. Inspire by Bas Jan Ader, Caspar David Friedrich and Sociologist Paul Gilroy.

Ronald Naar

2011-05-23T19:05:00.002+02:00

Leading Dutch mountaineer Ronald Naar died on Sunday while descending Cho Oyu, Radio Netherlands has reported. Naar had given up his summit bid and was heading down with his team when he reported feeling unwell and collapsed unexpectedly at 26,200 feet.

Naar, 56, was one of the Netherlands' most successful alpinists and the first Dutchman to climb the seven summits. During the 1970s, he became the first Dutch climber to scale the Alps' three greatest north faces: the Eiger, Matterhorn, and Grandes Jorasses. He later concentrated on establishing first ascents on remote polar peaks, making a number of expeditions to places like Greenland and the Antarctic Peninsula.

Naar's career was marred by a number of controversies. The most notable took place in 1992, after he left an frostbitten Indian climber to die just yards from his tent on Mt. Everest. Joe Simpson, author of Touching The Void, called the incident "as pernicious an example of pragmatic, self-serving callousness as I had ever heard in the mountains." Naar, who was leading the expedition, later wrote that he decided not to go to the climber's aid because a rescue attempt could have endangered his team and would likely have ended in the victim's death anyway.

Adam Roy

The State of L3 book, published by Galleri Image

2011-05-11T19:28:00.000+02:00

In the 1980's a small Gallery in Scandinavia hosted a exhibition and published the photographic works of great American Beat writer Allen Ginsberg, the State of L3 is honor to currently have a show in Galleri Image and to announce a catalogue publication 20 years later after Ginsberg published his photo works with the same Gallery. The State of L3 book, published by Galleri Image will be print out next week and ready for distribution.

Graphic Designer Raul Balai

Head of Galleri Image Beate Cegielska

Director and Founder of The State of L3 Antonio Jose Guzman

International Exchange Wietske Langedijk

San Francisco International Arts Festival - The Day We Surrender to the Air

2011-05-05T02:45:00.000+02:00

SF Intl. Arts Festival: Zero Gravity Arts Consortium, Arts & Culture in Space

Sunday, May 29 2011 2:00p

at Fort Mason Center: SouthSide Theater, San Francisco, CA

ARTS IN OUTER AND INNER SPACE

From The Netherlands Antonio Jose Guzman offers 'The Day We Surrender to the Air (Episode Two)' where the artist uses himself as an example of the migration between the so-called Old and New Worlds tracking the evolutions of his identity through the spaces of his ancestors' traveling experiences throughout Polynesia, Eurasia, Mesopotamia, Africa and eventually to America and Europe. His work implies that his genetic identity is based on the various Diasporas of his ancestors, and thus on the decisions they made in migrating to some place or to another. Surrendering to the air means floating. His trip around the world and quest to find himself opens up a wider perspective on the countless surprising connections between the people of all continents.

This screening is produced by ZGAC in collaboration with affiliate partners including: Golden Star Productions, the San Francisco International Arts Festival 2011, the Space Arts Development Fund of the National Space Society and The STUDIO for Creative Inquiry at the College of Fine Arts, Carnegie Mellon University. A portion of the proceeds from the screening support the Space Arts Development Fund fiscally sponsored by the National Space Society. ZGAC is an international space arts organization dedicated to fostering greater access for artists to space flight technology and zero gravity space through the creation of international partnerships with space agencies, space industry entrepreneurs, arts and science organizations and leading universities.

Maroon Talking in the Park - SHARJAH BIENNIAL 10

2011-05-03T04:00:00.000+02:00

Maroon Talking in the Park
(from the series Modernity and Aesthetics of the
New Black Africa) by Antonio José Guzman aka De Akuaigar. Panama/The
Netherlands, 2010, Video, Colour, 5 mins.

SHARJAH BIENNIAL 10 - FILM PROGRAMME
United Arab Emirates. Steve Reinke film program
Programme 3: Here Comes History, There Goes Everybody
Guest Curator: Steve Reinke, 79 mins

2011-05-02T04:18:00.004+02:00

ARTIST IN RESIDENCE

May - June 2011

I'll be in a two months residency in Flaggfabrikken – Center for photography and contemporary art, Bergen, Norway.

The residency is for artists, curators and art critics working within contemporary art.

UPCOMING - Antonio Jose Guzman lecture at Rush Arts Gallery - New York City

2011-05-02T00:38:00.000+02:00

UPCOMING - Antonio Jose Guzman lecture at Rush Arts Gallery - New York City

Artist Talk: Antonio Jose Guzman - Rush Arts Gallery NYC

2011-05-01T00:48:00.001+02:00

21 April 2011, 18:00hrs - 20:00hrs
Rush Arts Gallery Chelsea NYC

”Piertopolis Mappings: Goa - Panama City - NYC - Amsterdam - Dakar. Rush Arts Gallery and Sasha Dees present the artist talk “Piertopolis” by Antonio Jose Guzman. Antonio talked about what he has been doing his past visit in New York and showed visual results of the project so far in Panama and India.
Piertopolis interventions in public spaces features photos and wooden piers on which one can walk and connect to other piers in different parts of the world. A pier accommodates the act of leaving, of traveling and embarking - it is a place where the gone and lost are contemplated. At the same time, a pier is a place easily associated with arrival and return, with reconnection, and with the fulfillment of hopes and wishes. Besides, a pier is also a continuously changing structure.

Its features are affected by wind and sea, by the people, boats and animals that use it. A pier never looks the same.

The structure-like characteristics of the pier make one think of small meccano constructions, architectural fantasies and utopian landscapes in which the border between reality and illusion is blurred.

In Piertopolis, the subjects treated in these two former projects are re-evaluated.

The installation includes different references towards the transatlantic travel of the African DNA. However, Piertopolis differs from the former projects in the sense that, instead of local heritage, unity in movement and fluidity is emphasized: Piertopolis is one place where people can move. Moreover, pictures that are taken of the installation present a new reality by means of the connection of the two older ones

Antonio Jose Guzman, Piertopolis, 2010-2012, courtesy the artist

Sasha Dees is an independent curator that works between Europe,
the Americas and the Caribean focused on international exchange and collaborations.

She works a.o. as a curator for Open Ateliers Zuidoost
Artist in Residency.” - Dutch Art Events

(the above text is directly cited from Dutch Art Events entry

http://www.dutchartevents.com/2011/04/upcoming-antonio-jose-guzman-lecture-at.html

Piertopolis · Antonio Jose Guzman
Rush Arts Gallery
Chelsea, NYC, NY | USA

Images courtesy of Ramono Martelli + Sasha Dees + Antonio Jose Guzman + André D. Singleton

A.J. Guzman Lecture at Rush Arts Gallery NYC April 2011

2011-04-28T00:43:00.000+02:00

http://brohogany.tumblr.com/post/4983842248/artist-talk-antonio-jose-guzman-rush-arts-gallery

Guzman with Spike Lee

2011-04-20T19:42:00.005+02:00

Wednesday, 20 April 2011

April 20: Spike Lee Book Signing Today at Barnes & Noble in NYC.

Spike Lee steps away from the courtside to sign copies of his new DVDs. Information inside. If God Is Willing and Da Creek Don’t Rise and the 2006 companion piece When The Levees Broke. Both films are a firsthand look of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and, in trademark Spike Lee fashion, are shot with immense respect for the urban landscape and those who inhabit it.

Artist Talk & Exhibition at Gallery Image, Aarhus, Denmark

2011-04-01T23:52:00.001+02:00

State of L3 at MHKA Antwerp

2011-02-16T20:53:00.001+01:00

The State of L3 at the MHKA

LONELY AT THE TOP: Parallel Doors of Perception The State of L3 Antonio Jose Guzman is a Dutch-Panamanian audiovisual artist who works in several media on such subjects as DNA, migration and gravity. On the 5th and 6th floors of the M HKA he will be showing The State of L3, a project he has been working on since 2008 and which is a follow-up to The Day We Surrender to the Air, the documentary he made about his quest for his DNA. The State of L3 is a project that links the continents of Africa, South America and Europe in a search for the African identity of and affinity between artists and youngsters on those continents. It is a project on pan-Africanism, on multimedia networks and on the need for a pan-African collective for contemporary art and film. The State of L3 Contemporary Arts & Film Collective: Antonio Jose Guzman (Amsterdam), Ton van Beers (Amsterdam), Abdulaye Armin Kane (Dakar), Felipe Peres Calheiros (Recife), Neil Fortune (Suriname/NL), Edduin Gonzalez (Panama/Paris), Raul Balai (Amsterdam), Quinsy Gario (NL/Curacao), Sandim Mendes (NL/Cape Verde Island), Leroy Sankes (NL) and Lars Borm (NL).

A.J. Guzman at the INAC Panama

2011-02-15T20:16:00.000+01:00

Piertopolis at the National Institute of Culture
Aguadulce, Panama
January 2011

Guzman at Los del Patio Panama City

2011-02-10T20:46:00.000+01:00

Piertopolis

2011-01-06T18:35:00.002+01:00

Piertopolis (The First Sketches)

A project by Antonio Jose Guzman
Currently working in Panama

2010 - 2012

Amsterdam is a city surrounded by water, just like Recife, Dakar and Panama, all this are cities has inspire my navigation and my way of dealing with postcolonial figures in art and has help in the develop of my Pan African aesthetics, Amsterdam is an ideal place to construct the ideal scenario for the launch and start point for my new project called Piertopolis, inspired by Babylon of COBRA artist Constant and Dutch artist Bas Jan Ader.

Piertopolis will become an architectural design for photo installations in piers, that I call Piertenventions, this installations of a life-size landscape are made in piers and walking bridges. Piertopolis interventions in public spaces features photos and wooden piers on which one can walk and connect to other piers in different parts of the world. Some of these piers are connected to each other, while others have dead ends. At these dead ends images and projections can be seen that show foreign countries and landscapes that might lie at the other side of the sea, starting from Amsterdam, finishing in the Americas. The images are literal extensions to the physical pier – the perspective of the physical pier is continued in the images – as such, the images provide a prolongation of the pier in a different environment. The installations and interventions presents the idea of timelessness, of the possibility of walking from one place to the other. The water in which the installation is built functions as a mirror, reflecting the underside of the pier, and hereby uniting upper side and underside in one look.

A pier accommodates the act of leaving, of traveling and embarking – it is a place where the gone and lost are contemplated. At the same time, a pier is a place easily associated with arrival and return, with reconnection, and with the fulfillment of hopes and wishes. Besides, a pier is also a continuously changing structure. Its features are affected by wind and sea, by the people, boats and animals that use it. A pier never looks the same. The structure-like characteristics of the pier make one think of small meccano constructions, architectural fantasies and utopian landscapes in which the border between reality and illusion is blurred.

The idea of direct movement from one place to another is not only present in the images themselves. Being an artist with an African, Latin American, and European background, my work always encompasses issues of migration and genetics and notions of traveling and movement. My two former projects (The State of L3 and The Day we Surrender to the Air) involved a search for African identity on three different continents: Africa, Latin America and Europe; by means of a documentary, a publication, a database of African art, an exchange project with artists of African descent in the three continents and several exhibitions in Europe and Africa.

In Piertopolis, the subjects treated in these two former projects are re-evaluated. The installation includes different references towards the transatlantic travel of the African DNA. However, Piertopolis differs from the former projects in the sense that, instead of local heritage, unity in movement and fluidity is emphasized: Piertopolis is one place where people can move. Moreover, pictures that are taken of the installation present a new reality by means of the connection of the two older ones.

Nevertheless, traces of earlier searches for my DNA and genetic background can be located in the work. Not only does the building structure of the pier refer to the structure of a DNA chain, in the installation the sounds and images from people of different descents can be heard and seen. These recordings are made on the locations that are included in my DNA-map. In this way, Piertopolis functions as a physical DNA database. In addition, the people who’s sounds and stories are recorded will be asked to write to people ‘at the other side of the ocean’. Their letters will be stored in little boxes that will be given as a present to people in other countries.

Piertopolis Mappings

Amsterdam - Goa - Dakar - NYC - Panama City

The Day We Surrender to the Air Episode II

2010-11-04T18:21:00.001+01:00

Africa in the Picture Film Festival
Amsterdam
Bioscoop Het Ketelhuis
Zaal 1
06-11-2010
18:45

The Choice of ...
This year, Africa in the Picture asked a few special people to make a shortlist from the festival.

THE CHOICE OF Giovanca
Giovanca is a talented Dutch singer and songwriter with an Antillean background.

The Day We Surrender To The Air II
"Your genetic identity, that's something I always been concerned. Sometimes in the distance, sometimes very active. Music from Curaçao, the way my hair was braided as a child, eating what my grandmother cooks. Every time what I see, hear or saw traced back to Africa or Portugal, Spain or even the Netherlands, I really do know exactly how it is. I get more and more behind that everyone has his own quest ... "

Antonio Jose Guzman’s documentary The Day We Surrender To The Air is about the director’s efforts to trace his genetic identity and see to what extent it influences who he is. An analysis of his DNA showed that the director can trace his origins to Africa, Central and South America, as well as Sephardic Jewish Europe.

This documentary, screened at the 12th Thessaloniki Documentary Festival is part of a trilogy. The first part is a video where the director presents the cultural identity of his ancestors. In the second part, he looks at the unexpected similarities he noticed in the peoples of various continents where he searched for his roots.

In the third part, which has yet to be made, Antonio Jose Guzman will continue his search into his Jewish Sephardic past, enriching it with images from Spain, Portugal and Israel. “The fact that I end up in places that have been marked by a strong Sephardic community presence such as Amsterdam and Thessaloniki is interesting”, he commented. He believes that “descent influences what every person is: what we are in reality is ‘international individuals’. We must remember our common descent, which is from Africa”, he stressed. As he explained, in spite of the fact that there have been many films made in the past about multiculturalism and identity, “there is always room for one more film which essentially

Africa”, he stressed. As he explained, in spite of the fact that there have been many films made in the past about multiculturalism and identity, “there is always room for one more film which essentially says that all people are one family – especially in our time, when extreme right-wing elements are increasing in societies all over the world”.

Having grown up in Panama, a country which has lived the dominance of the USA for almost a century, the director admits that his country is: “now nationalistic and chauvinistic”. However, he remains optimistic, saying: “in Europe and Latin America people are struggling to become European. Perhaps this is why they are more European than those who are born in Europe”.

Thessaloniki film festival 2010

About Visuals Arts
NRC Next Summer Issue 2010

In Smart, the collective has arranged a multimedia presentation. There is an inverse boat that serves as a traveling cinema and streets sounds for far away places tingle the ears of the visitors. But by far the most impressive subject of this exhibition is L3 founder Guzman himself with his video work. The film The Day We Surrender To The Air is a gripping report about the search for his own genetic roots.

For the project The Day We Surrender To The Air, Guzman went to the United States to analyze his DNA. The results brought to light that his early family assembled European Sephardic Jew and Muslim peoples of the Sahel, but also Indians and people from Panamanian indigenous tribes belonged to his family tree.

The film became a road movie, which followed the tracks that his ancestors thousands of years ago previously have taken. Guzman walks through the snow in Siberia from where his ancestors once crossed the Bering Strait. He stands on the edge of the Grand Canyon, which his family traversed on their way to Mexico twenty thousand years. And he looked straight through the gate in Senegal, where the slaves were driven towards the ships, taking off to an unknown destination.

Who are we and where do we come from? These are the questions that Guzman's movie again and again emerges. And what does nationality mean if your genetic material can be attributed to almost all parts of the world? Guzman actually say in this movie that the world is one big family. And this is an important statement, in a time where right wing ideas more and more prevail in a growing number of parts of our world.

Sandra Smallenburg
Art Critic

Photo Imaginery
The Day we Surrender 2009-2010

L3 at the M HKA

2010-10-26T22:54:00.001+02:00

2010-08-17T01:40:00.000+02:00

State of L3 Collective Fragment

from State of L3 by A. J. Guzman on Vimeo.

Kunstbeeld : The State of L3 @ SMART Project Space

2010-08-04T15:46:00.000+02:00

Kunstbeeld : The State of L3 @ SMART Project Space

L3 Rocking the News like a bullet in the blue sky.

2010-07-30T01:57:00.000+02:00

foto by: Flo Blijenberg

One of the re-occurring visual elements in the State of L3 is the boat – referencing the migratory state of the imaginary of the project.

Guzman set up a website as a platform for exchange between the twenty members of the collective, as well as a series of exhibitions reflecting the process of becoming of The State of L3. ‘Modernity & Aesthetics of the New Black Atlantic’ is one such visual report. The title of the project is loosely based on Paul Gilroy’s well-known book ‘The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness’ (1992). In this book Gilroy, a sociologist at Goldsmith’s College in London, describes black identity in Europe and the New World as an ongoing process of travel and xchange across the Atlantic that tried to understand its position in relation to European modernity.Often the search for African roots stems from feelings of disregard and oppression but Guzman and his flexible group of collaborators take a different starting point: a ‘new’ black atlantic. They do not ignore the burdened past – the project started for obvious reasons in Senegal, during ‘Dak’Art’, with a clear view on the infamous slave island Goree – but they mainly focus on what it is that interconnects them and on presenting themselves to ‘the world’ in an outmost confident manner. It is an attitude that allows a new turn to the Pan Africanism of illustrious predecessors like Marcus Garvey.

Imaginary State of L3:
Gallery 23
Smart Project Space
Galerie Sanaa
June/July/August/September 2010

3 months of L3 in Images

2010-07-21T21:33:00.000+02:00

3 months of L3 in Images

Paris, Dakar, Berlin, Recife, Amsterdam

It was to busy to move and to post and to update, time was fast and L3 need it to create an Imaginary, so crucial as the development of the State of L3 Utopian conception. Finally we are sharing with you 3 months of L3.

SMART Project Space: Modernity & Aesthetics of the New Black Atlantic
Galerie 23: Mémoires de la Négritude

In 1914 Pan-Africanist Marcus Garvey (1887-1914) initiated the Universal Negro

Improvement Association (U.N.I.A.) as a means of uniting all of Africa and its Diaspora into one grand racial hierarchy. The Black Star Line was the teamship company operated by the U.N.I.A. It was to be the vehicle for promoting worldwide commerce among black communities. In the 1920s and 1930s Garvey became unique in advancing a Pan-African philosophy to inspire a global movement focusing on Africa. Apart from the more political idea of Pan Africanism throughout the State of L3 project, the concept of Afrofuturism also plays a key role. Thinkers and artists of this African diaspora subculture see technology and science-fiction as a means of exploring the black experience and finding new strategies for the future.

2010-07-11T01:28:00.000+02:00

Antonio Jose Guzman, initiator of the The State of L3, found a different, more contemporary way to ‘obey’ his African DNA. With The State of L3 he searched three different continents for artists, collectives and youngsters with an African background. L3 stands for a network between three continents but also refers to the L3 DNA group very common under people with African ancestry. Through this collective platform Guzman tries to bring a ‘new’, virtual and transcultural state into existence. Once potential collaborators are identified Guzman works collaboratively on resentations and exhibitions exploring cultural affiliation by mapping and documenting a joint ancestry. Through these projects The State of L3 is looking for a new shared (visual) language resulting in a highly eclectic aesthetics expressed in a variety of media.

State in Dakar

2010-05-26T20:55:00.000+02:00

Dakar Biennale State of L3

The Day We Surrender to the Air in the Massive Thessaloniki (Greece) Film Festival

2010-03-26T20:37:00.000+01:00

Surrender was Selected for the Thessaloniki Film Festival

(March 2010). It was a home run. Greece was amazing! the Public, the venues. The TDF is a leading European Documentary Festival, carried out every March in Thessaloniki since its inception in 1999 under the artistic direction of Dimitri Eipides. Its main thematic sections are: Recordings of Memory, Portraits-Human Journeys, Stories to Tell, Habitat, Planet in Peril, Music, Views of the World, Greek Panorama. Through its tributes and retrospectives, the TDF focuses on filmmakers with unique cinematic voices, internationally renowned for their contribution to the documentary genre. The Festival’s side events host exhibitions, masterclasses, round table discussions, publications, concerts and parties.

Picture of the Day

2010-03-03T02:56:00.000+01:00

One of the pics taking on the road of many years of impromptus in public spaces and theatrical mystery tours.

As I move forward with HD videos and installations, it's becoming more nostalgic and complicated to realize aesthetics that produce public spaces impromptus, however we will be doing so and jumping once again into this.

Dizzle Duzzle Missing a Lovely night in Frisco.

2010-02-24T01:06:00.000+01:00

Lately, I've become accustomed to the way
The ground opens up and envelops me
Each time I go out to walk the dog.
Or the broad-edged silly music the win
Makes when I run for the bus...

Things have come to that.

And now, each night I count the stars,
And each night I get the same number.
And when they will not come to be counted,
I count the holes they leave.

Nobody sings anymore.

Amiri Baraka

Found a book a year ago in City Lights bookstore in Frisco.
I was missing my folks down in L.A, my melted face broke down in pieces and then I saw this poem with Big letters under books about Dylan and Ginsberg.
Ella was wispering my ears and Baraka was Dizzeling my spirit.
good night folks!
gr.
The Akuaigar
The Dizzle Duzzle

Surrender Selected for the Thessaloniki Film Festival (March)

2010-02-21T16:11:00.000+01:00

Surrender Selected for the Thessaloniki Film Festival (March)

The TDF is a leading European Documentary Festival, carried out every March in Thessaloniki since its inception in 1999 under the artistic direction of Dimitri Eipides. Its main thematic sections are: Recordings of Memory, Portraits-Human Journeys, Stories to Tell, Habitat, Planet in Peril, Music, Views of the World, Greek Panorama. Through its tributes and retrospectives, the TDF focuses on filmmakers with unique cinematic voices, internationally renowned for their contribution to the documentary genre. The Festival’s side events host exhibitions, masterclasses, round table discussions, publications, concerts and parties.

State of L3 live at Delicatessen.

2010-01-10T20:31:00.000+01:00

Amsterdam 9th of January 2010

State of L3 new Years Art happening.

2010-01-07T15:24:00.000+01:00

State of L3 new Years Art happening! Saturday 9th January Atelier Space Delicatessen in Sumatrastraat 32 Amsterdam, Zeeburg. Come by and brainstorm with us your state of L3! from 17 hrs. till 21hrs

Road to the Stars

2009-12-13T17:54:00.000+01:00

Дорога к звездам
Pavel Klushantsev's
1957 film
Road to the Stars

2009-12-13T15:18:00.000+01:00

The next meteor shower is the Geminids and it’s strongest right now. You probably heard all the buzz about the Perseids Meteor Shower in August and the Leonids Meteor of November, but during December the Geminids Meteor Shower is King.

On the Shadow of your Family Tree by Antonio Jose Guzman

2009-12-10T19:41:00.000+01:00

The State of L3 Confirm Dates 2010
MHKA/

Museum of Contemporary Art, Antverp, Belgium

Galerie 23, Amsterdam, Nederlands ... Colors of Africa: Contemporary Art from The Continent

Biennale contemporary african art,african art Dakar,Dak'art,Dak Art Senegal

I am trying to consolidate this project to the higher grounds of existence. We just want to fly our domains and be real without the contrast that we have as Afro resistance collective.

The Taumako of Polynesia has inspired our rainforest of boats flying in the memories of your secrets and ours. Papa Adama from the Rijks Academie will support us as new African Art specimes of action. Isha Stuart one of rainy heavens best theater designers of the Netherlands will make the balloons that will shadow your free souls to surrender. Keep that in mind. Artist Ton Van Beers will devote his State of L3 boat to us and be part of the collective. The young State of L3er’s in Amsterdam will brainstorm their family tree in heart and soul. If you don’t get my words mail me to zeroguzman@live.nl and I will help you reach another state of Mind. State of L3.

We will have a small happening in which we will make a prototype of the exhibition. This will be in Delicatessen a shop that hosts art experiments. Sumatrastraat 32 Amsterdam Zeeburg. The 20th of December.
Your are welcome to come by.

Also the first episode of the trilogy of The Day We Surrender to the Air is going to be screen again as part of:
Amsterdam Film eXperience presents: CINE TRANS EUROPE

Presented by Amsterdam Film eXperience in collaboration with SMART Project Space
Single screening entrance: 5,-
Passe-partout: 12,-
Free with Cineville pass

December 19, from 14:00 – 24:00
SMART Project Space
Arie Biemondstraat 101-111
1054 PD AmsterdamTel. 020-4275951

IDFA 2009 Surrender Q&A

2009-12-01T19:58:00.000+01:00

IDFA 2009 Surrender Premiere

2009-12-01T19:56:00.000+01:00

IDFA 2009 Premiere

2009-12-01T19:51:00.000+01:00

Book Surrender for IDFA Sales

2009-12-01T19:29:00.001+01:00

IDFA opens with Living Legend Award for Frederick Wiseman

2009-11-20T09:27:00.000+01:00

IDFA opens with Living Legend Award for Frederick Wiseman
The 22nd IDFA just officially opened in Pathé Tuschinski. At the opening, American director Frederick Wiseman, one of the main festival guests, received the Living Legend Award. This is the first time that IDFA has presented this special oeuvre award, worth € 5,000.
Festival director Ally Derks dedicated the evening to Wouter Barendrecht, the founder and director of Fortissimo, who died unexpectedly at the beginning of April this year.

In her opening speech, Ally Derks revealed that the festival received 2,600 submissions this year, of which 306 were selected for the festival’s various program sections. For the first time, there is also an award for the best Dutch documentary. Ally Derks expressed the hope that this will contribute to the rich documentary tradition in the Netherlands, and will also act as a signal to the network managers of the public broadcasters to broadcast documentaries at an earlier, more audience-friendly time.

Live Blog IDFA 2009

2009-11-15T12:40:00.000+01:00

I'll be posting every day blogs and info from the 22nd International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam 19 / 29 November 2009

Surrender at the IDFA Link

IDFA 2009 Invitation Flyer

2009-11-15T12:38:00.001+01:00

Invitation IDFA 2009

2009-11-15T12:28:00.000+01:00

The State of L3
Very cordially invite you to
the premiere of Antonio Jose Guzman’s
“The Day we Surrender to the Air”
during the Paradocs program of the 22nd International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam 2009

22 of November Tuschinski 5
Movie Starts at 22.00 hrs

Surrendering to the air means floating. It means unlimited movement, and this is precisely what director Antonio Jose Guzman does in his project The Day We Surrender to the Air. Guzman got his DNA analyzed in the United States and discovered that he is of African, Central and North American, and European lineage. His genetic identity is based on the Diasporas of his forefathers. So how did his parents end up in Panama? Starting with Guzman's own DNA, his "atom," as he calls it, the film opens a window on the world.
IDFA 2009

Nollywood L3 Senegal

2009-10-12T12:10:00.000+02:00

We are currently working in Senegal Producing a series of Nollywood Senegalese TV Series for the State for L3 in Dakar and The Day We surrender to the Air (Episode two). The State of L3 team.

Air Matters

2009-09-12T19:55:00.000+02:00

An airplane jet swarmed by birds; photographer and location unknown, from bldgblog.blogspot.com

Few Matched Control of the Past

2009-08-06T11:24:00.000+02:00

Fire in the Sky - Virus Control

virus (from the Latin virus meaning toxin or poison) is a microscopic infectious agent that can reproduce only inside a host cell.

Pandemic (from Greek πᾶν pan "all" + δῆμος demos "people") is an epidemic of infectious disease that is spreading through human populations across a large region; for instance a continent, or even worldwide)

It looks like life is full of viruses, online and in real life, is like a pandemic a way of life to get us back? I'm saving my words to better days in the cosmos. Days were u and me follow only our hearts and disable viruses with nanotechnology. Virus is like an abstract word of the universe pushing itself into our inner self-asking us to stay home, meditate. Dehydrated and what else?.

If you have a virus and you got to stay home the options of modern life are multitasking online, TV, radio, cable, more options of getting more viruses, your body is infected and then u go online to have your social network update of your virus days, getting the change of getting more viruses from online hackers that are probably home having the virus, have nothing else to do than create infectious Trojan stuff and spam emails, with virus of course. Virus after all, it’s almost seems that few of us matched control of the past.

The Day We Surrender to the Air

2009-07-26T00:48:00.000+02:00

Open publication - Free publishing

Filming till the end of warps!

2009-07-24T00:47:00.000+02:00

At the end of the warp there was a film machine!
no academy just one movement in zero.
no distribution only magic and Ginsberg.
Can you see the eyes of zero.
Decadent zero
how can you turn into glory.

How to Jump with Gravity

2009-07-22T12:21:00.000+02:00

We jump because gravity is a gift to mankind.
Live, Fly!

We have found that jumping leads to laughter...
It is our hope that the jumping will be passed on
and that others will feel the joy of the jump.

www.jumpbecause.com

New Images.

2009-07-22T12:14:00.000+02:00

New images for a new time!

Who owns the Images that owns the World. New Images and Old Pictures, Collages, gif-Animations, is never enough, Kunst and Art also no Kunst and no Art.

World Citizens

2009-07-21T15:05:00.000+02:00

Rogier Fokke is making a book on Amsterdam people, He made this pic! Earlier this year.
The day he made this photo I was unaware of my Fulani and Mandinga African heritage, it took months of research to get in to that. I just been so busy and found this picture on my desk, it remember me of a past not so distance but distance in 15000 years of dna globetrotting.
I went from the day I found my heritage back in time. back in the real days. I wondering how can people forget about who they actually are.
So much confusion and fake pose everywhere. I guess is difficult to get inside yourself and see who you are.

Moon landing of the apollo 11.

2009-07-20T12:51:00.000+02:00

The video of the very first moon landing of the apollo 11 mission in 1969! Neil Armstrong was the first man to set foot on the moon with his now legenday words "One small step for man, a giant leap for mankind." Real or not this is a truly amazing video and it was in 1969!

2009-07-18T14:05:00.000+02:00

New Website www.aguzman.com is in full effect!

African DNA

2009-07-18T04:09:00.000+02:00

It's almost as time has taking control of my dna!
Scientists now trace the origins of both of these people-and of all human beings who have ever walked the face of the earth-to Black Africa, to the region around what is now Ethiopia. As Spencer Wells, the director of National Geographic's massive Genographic Project, puts it: "Our species evolved in Africa, and a subset of Africans left that continent around 50,000 years ago to populate the rest of the world. Our earliest ancestors probably looked very much like modern Africans."

This would have been news to "Bull" Connor and Orval Faubus and countless other racists from our past. It is also news to most of our brothers and sisters today all around the world. But it is an undeniable fact. We are all, in a very real sense, "Africans." The only question is how recently did our ancestors leave the Motherland? For the 35 million of us who are African- Americans-and for Black people in the Caribbean and Latin America-the answer is: very recently.

The first enslaved Africans arrived in the United States in the 17th century. So, in historical terms, our ancestors arrived here from Africa virtually "yesterday." This means that we are among the oldest Americans; but it also means that our relation to our African ancestors is recent.

This also means that we have many genetic "cousins" walking around the African continent today-a fact that has long obsessed me. Like 130 million other people, I watched every episode of Alex Haley's Roots when it first aired in 1977. And like many other African-Americans, I have yearned ever since to trace my own roots, to identify where in Africa my own ancestors came from, what tribe they were part of. Why is it important to do this? Two reasons. First, almost as soon as an African-American steps off a plane in Africa, he can't help but realize how "African" our people still are. Despite the horrors of the slave trade, African slaves brought their culture with them: their music, dances, religious beliefs, the way they cooked food, the way they walked, the way they lived--and loved--even the way they buried their dead. And many of these customs and traditions have been preserved, or subtly transformed, by our African- American ancestors. Indeed, if you go to a dance club in Africa, attend church, or eat a meal with an African family, you will be surprised at how much you can feel right at home, as if you have just met long lost relatives. The feeling is uncanny-and intensely pleasurable.

Web Surrender is Ready!

2009-07-08T00:01:00.000+02:00

www.thedaywesurrender.com

Website Surrender is almost finish! Laurent have done from Chamonix France a great deal of work on putting this together!

A Journey between borders.

2009-06-26T01:24:00.000+02:00

Editing Surrender

2009-06-15T22:50:00.000+02:00

Finishing Web Details and Editing Surrender Short Movie.
When we watch a film, most of us have great difficulty in consciously perceiving the editing. Of course we know that every time there is a shift from one image to another, it is an edit, and we know that editing in general has to do with the establishing of rhythm in film. But we are often not sure of the concrete function of editing, and likewise of the contribution the editing process makes to the final film.

Therefore it is difficult for us to define what we mean when we discuss film editing in a specific film; when we try to categorise the different functions of film editing, we tend to mix up the issues.

For a film editor it is a cause for frequent amusement and/or irritation, that film reviewers are never able to point out the editor's contribution. If a film is described as very effectively cut but otherwise long and boring, the editor knows that the film may have contained conspicuous transitions of scenes that were invented during the shooting or in the scriptwriting, but that the editing was ineffective or even sloppy.

On the other hand many editors tend to ignore the fact that the concrete process of editing is not identical with film editing in general, and that film editors are not the only ones to contribute to the editing of the film.

The phenomenon of editing deals with all aspects of filmic rhythm - from the transition of one image to another or the detailed musical rhythm in a small sequence of edits, to the most general balancing of pace and rhythm in the overall narrative structure.

Major aspects of the editing of a film are created outside the editing room. The editor may be primary contributor in some areas of the editing, but the scriptwriter, the photographer and of course the director are also involved in determining the editing of a film.

Editing is a means of expression, with its own language. This language is created in the editing room as well as in the script writing process and on the set. And the editing usually works best if it is completely integrated with the other means of expression used in the given film.

2009-06-15T14:25:00.000+02:00

This month!
The Miracle Screened at at the Bete Noir Nuit
Blanche International Art Festival Amsterdam
and at Smart Project Space
Identity in Transit Film Programme

NYC Vibes

2009-05-22T22:52:00.000+02:00

Last month, I went up to NYC to film for my new project "Surrender" .

I fell in love with NYC the first time I visited in 1995.

Fast forward 14 years to now, and NYC still has a special place in my heart. While staying at the Ganzevoort Hotel we check out some clubs at super trendy lounges in Soho and around the lower Eastside.

I miss the good old days in NYC; I feel like the City changed a lot in the wake of 9-11.

The last night we saw The Kills in concert, that was a rocking night.

BANG INTO थे YEAR

2009-05-13T20:30:00.000+02:00

2009 Oct. Production for Installation L3 State of Surrender in Dakar, Senegal
Four Continents Documentary, Performances & Research for Installation
of Genovideographic DNA Art Project “The Day We surrender to the Air”.
Feb.Production of Documentary Surrender according to Kerouac Diaries
in Grand Canyon, San Francisco, NYC and Panama
March. Production of Documentary Surrender in Los Angeles according
to Bas Jan Ader Diaries
Grant by The Netherlands Foundation for Visual Arts, Design & Architecture
State of L3 grant by The VSB Fonds of the Netherlands
June.
Lecture at the professional Master's Programme in Preservation and
Presentation of the Moving Image - University ऑफ़ Amsterdam
July
The Miracle screened at the Bete Noir
Nuit Blanche International Art Festival Amsterdam
The Miracle screened at Smart Project Space
Identity in Transit Film Programme

बुक Surrender

2009-05-13T03:26:00.000+02:00

Finally after all the struggle is the book finish!

Dates for upcoming events in California and Panama are coming soon!

Grand Canyon

2009-04-28T23:34:00.000+02:00

Arizona is a wonderful place, is a sacred place, my ancestor passed the Grand Canyon on their way to Panama thousands of years ago. Not long after I left Arizona I found this note on the net.

For 11 remarkable days, April 18-28 of 2009, indigenous spiritual Elders and leaders from around the world met in northern Arizona. The gathering, entitled Return of the Ancestors, was sponsored by the Institute for Cultural Awareness (ICA) and based upon the vision of Adam Yellowbird which he received as he sat with Mayan and Inca Elders in Peru in 2007.

This was not some typical New Age gathering where a couple of Elders speak to a mostly-white audience. This was a step up and step out working meeting of real Elders and spiritual wisdom keepers from nearly every continent in the world.

Yes, there was a large international audience during the day although many were often also participants or volunteer workers than simply audience. Additionally, there was a sizeable number of spiritual young people who had come to learn. Moreover, many in the audience were spiritual leaders in their own countries who had come to learn from the Elders, too.

There were people of every color and nearly every spirituality, belief system, and politics in the world coming together in a sincere effort to learn from each other and work to help humanity survive these troubling times.

DNA Completed

2009-04-26T02:27:00.000+02:00

It was tragic but it turn into a beautiful development.
After heard of my European ancestry my world collapse.
I knew about it but my interest was my Afro ancestry.
After months of logical family tree research I got the analysis I was looking for
thanks to the sister of my Grandpa. L1 Mandinga / Fulani.

A aboriginal American

R1b European, probably Jewish Sefardi

What a trip has been.
Thanks to National Geography!

5 Years Representando

2009-04-25T16:41:00.000+02:00

Celebrating the 5 Year anniversary of the Spoken Word
production Representando.

Afro Panamanian Encounter

2009-04-15T23:46:00.000+02:00

The Encounter with my family in Panama bring me close to a distance past.
Thanks to them I got the results of my African Ancestry. L1!

Haplogroup L1 is found in West and Central sub-Saharan Africa

Sub-Saharan Africa

Sub-Saharan Africa is a geographical term used to describe the area of the African continent which lies south of the Sahara, or those African countries which are fully or partially located south of the Sahara. It seldom appears in eastern or southern Africa. It has two branches- L1b and L1c. L1b is most frequent in western Africa. L1c is more common amongst the Bantu

Bantu languages

The Bantu languages constitute a grouping belonging to the Niger-Congo languages family. This grouping is deep down in the genealogical tree of the Bantoid grouping, which in turn is deep down in the Niger-Congo tree....
and Semi-Bantu speakers of west-central Africa.

Haplogroup L1 arose with Mitochondrial Eve

Mitochondrial Eve

Mitochondrial Eve is the name given by researchers to the woman who is defined as the matrilineal most recent common ancestor for all currently living humans.

Los Angeles

2009-03-14T22:19:00.000+01:00

Bas Jan Ader is both well known and little known as an artist. He died, or disappeared in 1975 at the age of 33, in a boat somewhere off the coast of Cape Cod. He was attempting to cross the Atlantic Ocean in a 13 foot sailboat. Why? For Art; as a performance that would challenge the boundaries between art and life.

I'm in LA for my DNA project, but also to encounter the landscape of Dutch artist Bas Jan Ader, one of the big inspirations of my work. I really understand now why he fell in love with this continent and the amazing landscape of California.

Ader was born in Holland in 1942. He settled in Los Angeles in 1963 after sailing across the ocean from Morocco. This journey took eleven months. Once in Los Angeles Ader studied art and philosophy and became an active member of the Los Angeles art scene, exhibiting his works in numerous exhibitions and teaching at UC Irvine among other places.

Many artists working in Los Angeles during the 1970’s were interested in the relationship between art and life; between performance and photography; and the difference between the art object and documentation of an action. Ader's work fit within this conceptual framework. His performances and actions were well documented and presented as finished films or photographic works. Although conceptual in practice they were also visually sophisticated. He was aware of and interested in the work being made by contemporaneous artists such as Ed Ruscha, Gordon Matta Clark, Robert Smithson, and Chris Burden. Like many of these artists, Ader was interested in his presence and alterations to his surroundings. His body, face or shadow figured prominently in his works as subject and the object.

A Chat with Frank in Frisco

2009-03-14T15:35:00.000+01:00

A chat with Frank Pietrogrino.
San Francisco, California

He was the one who introduced my film last year to Yuri's night!
NASA Ames Research Center Festival.

Frank Pietronigro is Co-Founder and Project Director of the Zero Gravity Arts Consortium. The organization was Co-Founded in 1999 by Laura Knott, Lorelei Lisowsky and Frank Pietronigro. Zero Gravity Arts Consortium (ZGAC) is an international space arts organization dedicated to fostering greater access for artists to space flight technology and zero gravity space through the creation of international partnerships with space agencies, space industry entrepreneurs, arts and science organizations and leading universities. ZGAC is the first organization of its kind, based in the United States, that is facilitating parabolic flight projects that will help in the international effort to set the stage for teams of artists to have permanent access to space transportation systems including the International Space Station. ZGAC supports arts, humanities and culture in space education, international outreach and conference programs that are being organized as a way for artists, from all over the globe, to affiliate with us and experience the possibilities of collaborating with space flight technologists.

2009-02-20T22:45:00.000+01:00

Alps Expedition for Surrender. With Performances

Chamonix Mont Blanc

2009-02-16T00:00:00.000+01:00

Chamonix, what a wonderful place to recreate and fell how hard most has been for my ancestors to travel to the Americas during an endless winter.

Human migration into the Americas

Archaeologists are perhaps all too familiar with the long debate over the pathways and timing of human migration into the Americas. Based on oxygen isotope records from deep-sea cores, during the last major stage of the Pleistocene epoch (10,000-50,000 years ago), a land bridge formed across what now is the Bering Strait. With Siberia and the Americas connected, conventional accounts suggest nomadic peoples tracked the big game herds that migrated to modern-day Alaska. From here, this group (or groups) subsequently traveled south and east across America through an ice-free corridor. A 2007 study examining the genome of indigenous people from North and South America and two Siberian groups found one unique genetic variant across all populations, suggesting Native Americans descended from a common ancestor.

2008-12-19T00:31:00.000+01:00

Presentation at La Casona Panama of the
Prototype Surrender.
Satellite event of the Bienal de Arte de Panama

The ways of the State of L3

2008-09-19T14:18:00.000+02:00

The ways of the State of L3

"No man can know where he is going unless he knows exactly where he has been and exactly how he arrived at his present place." Maya Angelou

When I started to think and write about the L3 project back in 2006, I had no well-defined idea about the status and form of the project two years later. During this two years the L3 project has taken its own direction and still continues developing, due to all the different people and organisations in The Netherlands and abroad that got involved with the project. The project has inspired so many people even before the different foundations have given their final word about the funding. At this moment we are not sure when we will start with L3, the funding is not yet complete and we are still fund raising to make this dream come true. We appreciate all your interest and co-operation during all this months of research, please fell free to send us any new ideas and tips for the project.

With this paper I try to inform you about my travel to Senegal and Brazil, where I went to see the possibilities of organising the L3 project. I contacted different creative organisations involved with African issues and met persons that can help me getting the project started.

The resistance to colonial domination, and racism have been the struggles of the sons and daughters of Africa in the Diaspora since we were taken to the new world. African resistance began on the slave ships and Continues up to the present. The list of martyrs for black liberation are many, and the struggle for complete freedom and self-determination have come in all shapes and forms. One of the most glorious moments of our struggle was during the organisational work of the honourable Marcus Garvey. which linked the effort and the continent of Africa for majority rule, equal rights and justice and the struggles in the Diaspora with the now famous words: "Africa for the Africans, those at home and those abroad. We should move forward also with one God, one aim and one destiny".

During the period of the slave trade (African Diaspora), we people of African descent spread all over the world, carrying the L3 gene with us. We had to redefine a new identity based only partly on our African descent. After the alienation we experienced, It’s important to develop new ways to bring together the community in an international way, acting local and connecting global. This might be a solution to repatriate ourselves to a mental African existence. The L3 project wants to be a stage for this mental repatriation. L3 wants to bring us all close to each others by gathering all the black cultural heritage together in a comprehensive database with all the heroes, leaders, music, inventors and idealists of the Pan African world.

As an African descendant living in different parts of this global community, my life has changed in many ways. In every city and in every surrounding I travel, my colour speaks for itself, generating different reactions to my person by people of African ancestry or Europeans. In general life in Amsterdam as an Afro Panamanian can be amazingly more relaxed than for an Afro-Brazilian living in Brazil ghettos, were police brutality and violence reign in the streets.

I think that in Amsterdam people of African descent are in need of more projects that make them aware of their heritage, history and identity, in for example neighbourhoods like Zuidoost, which has a huge black community.

The history of Amsterdam as the European harbour to the Americas and in general Holland colonialist' past make the African Diaspora here an important issue. Nevertheless, the last decade few projects have been organised about this subject. L3 tends to fill in this gap, on a creative and artistic way.

The reason of this trip to Senegal and Brazil was to see the commitment and vision of both organizations in each sides of the atlantic.

SENEGAL
My days in Senegal proved a series of scenarios and circumstances that made me realise the strong connection that we have to Africa and to our ancestors. Since the day I arrived in Dakar, and Artist Oumar Attakoso welcomed me to the continent, I was feeling at home with all the billboards full of African people. A trip to Senegal has since for me become a trip that every African descendant should do once in a lifetime to get to know more of his origins.

I've spend my days in Dakar in the nice neighbourhood of Medina where we had the possibility to interact easily with the real inhabitants of Dakar, and not the middle-class ones with asphalt streets and security in every house. I saw the spirituality of this people and the specific way they carry their Africaness. In the Senegalese media, the relation with the Senegalese ancestry is continually emphasised in radio shows and on television, for example on Diaspora TV.

The first day we visited Goree Island, one of the many places in Africa where thousands of slaves were shipped to the Americas with no return. The atmosphere on the island itself immediately makes you aware of its history: once landed, it is very difficult to forget what happened hundreds of years ago. Goree is a beautiful and paradoxical place; and not comparable to anything I have ever experienced in my life before. The people from Goree welcomed me as a member of their family; they are very conscious of their own history. Several Diaspora related festivals are being held on the island during the year. The visit to the Dutch House of Slaves made me very aware of the history and struggle of my ancestors.

In Goree we had the opportunity to meet one of the important persons of Enda Senegal, an organisation that helps integrating young people to the labour market and realises exchanges with international countries. From Favrizio, who works for this organisation, we learned a lot about his perspective of Senegal and the way to work with the different organisations. Our project needs to consider lots of social aspects in order to be a success. We cannot just pick out persons to join the project, but really have to embed the project in a specific neighbourhood, because this will strengthen the project.

Favrizio's contacts and expertise opens our door to organisations that are linked to Enda, like Ville de Piquena, Bless en Gore and Enda Ecopol, places where the infrastructure and the projects were professional, artistic and social. In these places exists a lot of creativity like the Hip Hop coalition in Piquena, with an amazing and surprising studio and a radio.

Dakar is a vibrant place for the arts. I met Abdoulaye, a Dakar-based artist who recently participated in the Dakar Biennial and would be part of the L3 crew. He told me about the large attention for Diaspora related art at this biennial and we talked about the importance of creating a transatlantic community based on the history of African descendants. We agreed about the emancipatory repercussions that L3 can have, Creating an artistic and socially virtual state for young people. We need to work in these places where L3 can open to doors to a better understanding of the exchange of ideas between both sides of the Atlantic.

BRAZIL
Two weeks after my trip to Senegal I travelled to Brazil. I started in Sao Paulo, where I spent my first week. There I got the assistance and expertise of Joelke and Leticia from the Platform Brazil Holanda, which is the organisation that is going to help us with the co-ordination of the project in Brazil. They introduced me to JAMAC, an NGO that works with communal projects like painting murals, graffiti, film and digital productions, and that is located in the favela Jardin Mirian.

In JAMAC I met the artist Monica Nador and her crew, Daniela, Tais, Leo (Founder of JAMAC) and Paolino, after listened to their histories and understanding of the Favela situation, race, politics and social problems in Brazil, for me it's clear that most of the governmental organisations don't care of the situation of the millions of Afro Brazilians who live in the favelas.

In Sao Paulo I also met some other great persons who are fighting for a better situation for the people of the Favelas, writers and poets like Allan Santos Rosas and the Coperifa Favela Poets Organisation. Sao Paulo is one of the most exiting places to work for L3. In Jardin Miriam the levels of violence are not like in Rio or other places in Sao Paulo. Sao Paulo also have a great art platform, galleries like Vermehlo and museums like the Afro Brazilian.

Rio de Janeiro was a different experience than Sao Paulo, the streets of Ipanema feel like another Brazil. Rich, middle class and European. All the images I had of a mixed Rio de Janeiro got completely destroyed when I walked through the streets of Ipanema.

People from the favelas only come down to Ipanema to work and don't have access or money to enjoy the sun and the social life of the centre of Rio as much as they would like to.

Most Brazilians of African descent live in the favela's, with bad education and police brutality, the elementary schools are so bad that when they want to go to free universities it is almost impossible to pass the exams or to pay for expensive books.

Because of this system it is difficult for afro Brazilians to find a way out of the favela's. All the universities have 80 % of white Brazilians studying in them.

In the favela of Sampaio in Rio I saw the work of NGO's as Mi Camichula, an organisation that works using clothes as a vehicle to provide new ways for an independent economy, and the work of Dutch organisation Caramundo.

I really admire the effort of this organisations for creating a better future for the people in the favela's.

After Rio de Janeiro I travelled to Recife, Pernambuco, where I met documentary maker Felipe Pacheco. We visited two religious groups that showed us their Afro Brazilian ceremonies and traditions, and it was interesting to realise how there is a strong connection with Senegal and the west African coast. The ceremony for Shango was incredible, it was almost like I was in Africa. Brazil has a great African tradition, and a strong history of resistance. Religion was the way to go back to the roots and fight again the oppressors. Most Brazilians are conscious of their African ancestry trough traditions like the Maracatu, the Carnival, and Afro Religions like the Candomble.

My last days in Brazil I spent with Monica Nador in Sao Paulo. We visited her gallery Vermehlo. We talked with Eduardo, one of the Directors of Vermehlo and looked for a curator who can represent us with our project, somebody who will give the guide to make L3 a successful art project. Vermehlo was impressive, is one of the most interesting galleries I have seen, almost like a museum, it would be great if we can work with them.
In Brazil advertising and the media are killing the society everyday with their European stereotypes and standards. The good thing is that there are more groups of intellectuals, artists and politicians with African background creating new ways to make a positive image of the black Brazilian population in the media. Magazines like Raca are working as a catalyst in a process comparable to the civil rights movement in the USA of the 60's.

L3 is a resource of resistance and awareness for the community, thousands of broken families in both sides of the Atlantic, fighting everyday to keep their dignity with few food on their tables and violence in the streets, people trying to be somebody, trying to get out of the misery, trying to reach the kingdom that has been stolen from us, it is a history of survival, families who went through the fire, storm and negligence of the government, a system who acts as if the ghettos of the world don't exist. But there is dreams, resistance, poetry and cultural movements. In Brazil and Senegal there is a new movement going on. These are interesting days to work in the new African world; To close the gap between the lands and all this people is to give the strength, solidarity and belonging to the transatlantic black experience, an experience as powerful as the future of the black nation worldwide.

The State of L3 is a state of mind as well as a new online state, that's going to link us in a transatlantic experience and help us for a better understanding of the Diaspora and the afro community world wide.

Finally I would like to acknowledge that the L3 project is also of importance for people that live in places with a big Afro community, like Amsterdam, to link them to their ancestors.

L3 will tie people through a collective world, tied together by roots, by genetical pull. L3 will create an utopian community. People are programmed by cultural heritage. L3 will be part of a bigger perspective.

L3 in action, Panafrican action.
Antonio Jose Guzman aka Shango's Son
Pan African and Afro Latin Americanist
Audio Visual Artist since 1990
http://www.aguzman.com

The Miracle in NASA - Las Vegas News

2008-04-27T02:03:00.000+02:00

Presentation of the Miracle in NASA Festival
LAS VEGAS – NASA has chosen Zero Gravity Corporation (ZERO-G®), the first and only FAA-approved provider of commercial weightless flights, to manage and operate an aircraft to perform parabolic flights for NASA-operated experiments and personnel. The relationship marks a key milestone for NASA’s parabolic operations, which have been previously operated using government aircraft and personnel. This represents the first time a commercial operator has been contracted to provide weightless flight services. ZERO-G’s flights will primarily initiate from NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston and NASA's Glenn Research Center in Cleveland.

http://www.gozerog.com/

Zero Gravity Arts Consortium

2008-02-27T02:00:00.000+01:00

2008 Affiliate Organizations (Partial List)
Space Generation Advisory Council
Symbiosis
Golden Star Productions
Zero Gravity Arts Consortium

Yuri’s Night World Space Parties celebrate humankind’s first venture into space by Russian Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin on April 12, 1961, and the launch of the first Space Shuttle on April 12, 1981. The event is a unique convergence of artists, scientists, astronauts, performers, technologists, and musicians to pay tribute to our shared global heritage in space exploration. Through simultaneous celebrations worldwide, Yuri’s Night is a collaboration of creative thinkers from all fields to ignite excitement about what is new on the horizon in space exploration and to remind us of the inspiring possibilities that humanity can achieve. In 2008, NASA's 50th Anniversary, the NASA Ames Research Center will host the largest Yuri’s Night event ever held.

We invite artists and scientists to investigate and demonstrate our culture’s radical new technology, art and vision for sustaining our future.

http://www.pietronigro.com/zgac/

The Grateful Dead

2008-02-26T23:12:00.000+01:00

Cycling back home with the Ipot on shuffle, crossing the schellingwouder bridge on the road back home to my room in a boat in the out of skirts of Amsterdam town.

A song hit my Ipod, then there it was a flashback to 1971, I was born, flashback to 1993, I was a dead head on the road to California. Hitch hiking Costa Rican lines and desires, but how 15 years later this song still makes me fell in heaven, makes me fell like nothing compare with this universe; I you never listen to the Grateful Dead in your life then you been missing an experience of a life time, this music is not been made on this planet, this is from far beyond anything ever been play, Hendrix and Sun RA are the only ones who are on this line. But still is an enigma for me on why a Latin american black kid like me still run this dead head felling, why was this band so important in my life?; My life has change so much. This will remaind a question without answer, the Grateful Dead seem to be part of my individuality and philosophy. Maybe those days in the 60's are part of a karma or some celestial energy that is beyong my comprehension. The Dead is still on my soul. I fell alive when I hear this music.

Antonio Jose Guzman
on Saint Stephen

"St. Steven will remain...Enlightened folks have always been present in every generation. Prophets, poets, etc. .. They are traditionally social "losers" yet are traditionally revered long after their deaths. I also think I am not alone in deriving support and inspiration from the sea."Children of the garden when they sigh about the barren lack of rain and droop so hungry 'neath the sky.... I see the hopefuls of today (today reamins a constant notion, even though the song was written forever ago) as being these children, and as corny as it sounds, I see the dead scene as providing the water we need to nourish and support one another..."William Tell has stretched his bow... Is an image of critical mass...an observation that significant change is the only possible outcome of the current state of affairs. As significant today as it was when it was written."--Julie Ellen Anzaldo.

INTERPOLAR POETIC ARTCONVERSATIONS

2008-02-26T14:41:00.000+01:00

INTERPOLAR POETIC ARTCONVERSATIONS TOWARDS POLAR ETHICS • MULTIMEDIA EXCHANGE INSTALLATION
In the framework of the International Polar Year - a global awareness-raising event on the urgent need of respecting the ecological balance for the survival of planet Earth- the 1st Biennial of the End of the World has been inaugurated. The Argentine National Secretariat on Cultural Affairs has declared both the International Polar Year and the Biennial of the End of the World - which will link Argentina to Canada and Finland through the City of Ushuaia- of Cultural Interest to the Nation.
Within this framework we launch this project, which fosters cultural exchange among the younger generations of the Tierra del Fuego province. To that effect we made up a multidisciplinary group, composed of freelance artists and teachers from the provinces of Tierra del Fuego, Río Negro, Chaco and Buenos Aires.
Above: "Origen" by Elina García Garrido
The overall idea relates to a poetic dialogue between both poles South and North. We shall work on raising awareness and comprehension about the polar areas and their fundamental role in the environment, the ecosystems and societies of the Earth, as well as in those endangered species that travel all throughout America and other Continents from Pole to Pole, like the “Black-browed Albatros” (Thalassarche melanophrys), “Spectacled Petrel” (Procellaria conspicillata), among others.Left: "Estalagtitas" by Roberto Pujana - Photographer
The idea of the multimedia installation is based on the concept of Exchange, thought out as the possibility of having artists from Ushuaia and other cities of the Northern Pole take part in the work with the aim of exchanging experiences. It will also enable visitors to actively participate in the space, or simply tour around it.
The Educational and Cultural Axis, lead by Marcia Alvarado, Adriana M. Dos Santos and Elina García Garrido, offers an open proposal of “Mail Art” and “e-mail Art” (electronic artistic exchange) at workshops with children and young people in the province, held at public libraries in Ushuaia (province of Tierra del Fuego) as Southern Circumpolar Area, in Resistencia (province of Chaco) as Non-Polar Area, and Toronto (Ontario), Yellowknife (Yukon) from Canada as the Northern Circumpolar Area.

http://polarartists.com/poetic_art.html

Representando and History of Cuban Hip Hop

2008-02-25T20:28:00.000+01:00

The documentary Representando makes history the day this letter was published.

Letter from January 8, 2008:
"…I am a firm supporter of the united vote (a principle that preserves the unknown merits), which allowed us to avoid the tendency to copy what came to us from countries of the former socialist bloc, including the portrait of the one candidate, as singular as his solidarity towards Cuba. I deeply respect that first attempt at building socialism, thanks to which we were able to continue along the path we had chosen."
And I reiterated in that letter that "…I never forget that ‘all of the world’s glory fits in a kernel of corn."
Therefore, it would be a betrayal to my conscience to accept a responsibility requiring more mobility and dedication than I am physically able to offer. This I say devoid of all drama.
Fortunately, our Revolution can still count on cadres from the old guard and others who were very young in the early stages of the process. Some were very young, almost children, when they joined the fight on the mountains and later they have given glory to the country with their heroic performance and their internationalist missions. They have the authority and the experience to guarantee the replacement. There is also the intermediate generation which learned together with us the basics of the complex and almost unattainable art of organizing and leading a revolution.
The path will always be difficult and require from everyone’s intelligent effort. I distrust the seemingly easy path of apologetics or its antithesis the self-flagellation. We should always be prepared for the worst variable. The principle of being as prudent in success as steady in adversity cannot be forgotten. The adversary to be defeated is extremely strong; however, we have been able to keep it at bay for half a century.
This is not my farewell to you. My only wish is to fight as a soldier in the battle of ideas. I shall continue to write under the heading of ‘Reflections by comrade Fidel.’ It will be just another weapon you can count on. Perhaps my voice will be heard. I shall be careful.
Thanks.
Fidel Castro Ruz
February 18, 2008
5:30 p.m.

Migration and Gravity.

2008-02-19T12:05:00.000+01:00

Migration and Gravity.

Gravity is the force of attraction between all masses in the universe; especially the attraction of the earth's mass for bodies near its surface; "the more remote the body the less the gravity"; "the gravitation between two bodies is proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them".

In Theory Post-modern art takes advantage of gravity, by freeing itself of ‘mechanical’ forms and pursuing iconographies that evoke ‘energy,’ which is a mark of dematerialization. Art breaks out of fixed frames and spreads itself in space. It is produced and received by way of intermediate electronic equipment such as videos.

For many years as an artist, I been trying to deal with my migration as part of a most controversial migration like the Diaspora from people from African descent in the entire globe.This Diaspora that affected my life and still runs in me becomes part of a new Diaspora.

My migration to America and then to Europe have drastic repercussions on my way of seen the world and my art. I try to explore these relations and focus in the relations of all this factors as an Afro Latin-American artist. Portraying me and using myself as a performer on my work give me the opportunity of explore with my body and all the elements that surround my life in new places and new environments.

Gravity is an elemental factor for all relations humans have on earth. I believe that Diaspora and gravity have a relation with each other. On my installation Circles & Teletransportation in the oude kerk (Old Church) in Amsterdam, I explore this relation that goes back to thousand of years in human history. Circle of life is a series of installations in which you see me jumping from my origins to a different world, different dimension in space and time. These installations study my situation, On how I got here.

Some of my falling series explore this daily life situation and the closeness to gravity. The most brilliant moment is to see all this basic points of my work as migration, gravity and the decisive moment put together in one palette.

Antonio Jose Guzman

Listen a series of A.J. Guzman interviews at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam

Click here Guzman at the Stedelijk One Guzman at the Stedelijk Two Guzman at the Stedelijk Three

Zero Guzman

Piertopolis at Gemak, The Hague 2012

IDFA Starts 16th - 27th Nov 2011

Dérive on the Shadownet | Adbusters Culturejammer Headquarters

New data

RYOJI IKEDA's The Transfinite

Piertopolis Today

Four pictures that I made in NYC of the world trace center twin towers in 1999 have been added to the blog to commemorate 9/11. http://www.piertopolis.com/new-york/

Piertopolis Project

new shiny face of website aguzman.com

an evening with photographer Anton Corbijn and artist Berend Strik

Piertopolis Project is in full Effect.

The Hindu : Sci-Tech / Science : Atlantis leaves space station for last time

Knipsu Poster

Sønik adventures this year. Panama - NYC- Bergen - Antwerp

Yatra A Twenty Year Journey

Future as a Dutch/Panamanian artist?

Understanding the end of art.

Yatra, a Twenty Year Journey

THE END OF MONEY

DESIGNING GEOPOLITICS

June 2-3, 2011 · Atkinson Hall Auditorium, Calit2, UC-San Diego

DESIGNING GEOPOLITICS

An Interdisciplinary Symposium on Computational Jurisdictions, Emergent Governance, Public Ecologies

The exhibition at KNIPSU will be called Yatra

Ronald Naar

The State of L3 book, published by Galleri Image

San Francisco International Arts Festival - The Day We Surrender to the Air

SF Intl. Arts Festival: Zero Gravity Arts Consortium, Arts & Culture in Space

Maroon Talking in the Park - SHARJAH BIENNIAL 10

UPCOMING - Antonio Jose Guzman lecture at Rush Arts Gallery - New York City

Artist Talk: Antonio Jose Guzman - Rush Arts Gallery NYC

A.J. Guzman Lecture at Rush Arts Gallery NYC April 2011

Guzman with Spike Lee

Artist Talk & Exhibition at Gallery Image, Aarhus, Denmark

State of L3 at MHKA Antwerp

LONELY AT THE TOP: Parallel Doors of Perception

The State of L3

A.J. Guzman at the INAC Panama

Guzman at Los del Patio Panama City

Piertopolis

The Day We Surrender to the Air Episode II

L3 at the M HKA

Kunstbeeld : The State of L3 @ SMART Project Space

L3 Rocking the News like a bullet in the blue sky.

3 months of L3 in Images

State in Dakar

The Day We Surrender to the Air in the Massive Thessaloniki (Greece) Film Festival

Picture of the Day

Dizzle Duzzle Missing a Lovely night in Frisco.

Surrender Selected for the Thessaloniki Film Festival (March)

State of L3 live at Delicatessen.

State of L3 new Years Art happening.

Road to the Stars

On the Shadow of your Family Tree by Antonio Jose Guzman

IDFA 2009 Surrender Q&A

IDFA 2009 Surrender Premiere

IDFA 2009 Premiere

Book Surrender for IDFA Sales

IDFA opens with Living Legend Award for Frederick Wiseman

Live Blog IDFA 2009

IDFA 2009 Invitation Flyer

Invitation IDFA 2009

Nollywood L3 Senegal

Air Matters

Few Matched Control of the Past

The Day We Surrender to the Air

Filming till the end of warps!

How to Jump with Gravity

New Images.

World Citizens

Moon landing of the apollo 11.

African DNA

Web Surrender is Ready!

A Journey between borders.

Editing Surrender

NYC Vibes

BANG INTO थे YEAR

बुक Surrender

Grand Canyon