As first glance Espinosa’s 1969 essay For an imperfect cinema might seem a world away from the concerns of some of our recent exhibitions such as Ubiquitous Authorship , Unoriginal Genius and Vanishing Mediators :
“Nowadays, perfect cinema — technically and artistically masterful — is almost always reactionary cinema. The major temptation facing Cuban cinema at this time — when it is achieving its objective of becoming a cinema of quality, one which is culturally meaningful within the revolutionary process — is precisely that of transforming itself into a perfect cinema…[read whole essay here]”
However, Espinosa’s essay, whilst linking directly to Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed and Friere’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, and despite (or, perhaps, benefiting from the challenge of) being firmly rooted in a revolutionary Marxist critique, speaks directly to our current concerns with the impact of new technologies on society, art and the role of art within society:
“Popular art preserved another even more important cultural characteristic: It is carried out as but another life activity. With cultivated art, the reverse is true. It is pursued as a unique, specific activity, as a personal achievement. This is the cruel price of having had to maintain artistic activity at the expense of its inexistence among the people.”
“It is no longer a matter of replacing one school with another, one “ism” with another, poetry with anti-poetry, but of truly letting a thousand different flowers bloom. The future lies with folk art. But let us no longer display folk art with demagogic pride, with a celebrative air. Let us exhibit it instead as a cruel denunciation, as a painful testimony to the level at which the peoples of the world have been forced to limit their artistic creativity. The future, without doubt, will be with folk art, but then there will be no need to call it that, because nobody and nothing will any longer be able to again paralyze the creative spirit of the people.”
“Art will not disappear into nothingness; it will disappear into everything.”
Thanks to http://www.ejumpcut.org for the translation.