Miguel Angel Rios - Texte

 

Crudo
A dance on the edge of the volcano

A dark surface, with a lighter horizontal as the only visual anchor; it is utterly quiet. Then, in a blood-stirring rhythm like the beating of drum, two elegant black boots surmounted by white trouser legs dance into the frame. The tempo of the dance is reinforced by the rapid switching of shots: close-ups of boots, legs, the face and torso of a man. Slim, wearing a close-cut, white suit, he dances in a hybrid combination of tap and Latin American styles while holding in his hands long cords terminating in pieces of raw meat: boleadores. In a swift tempo, he swings these in wide circles, swirling them past each other.
Thus begins the film Crudo (Raw) by Miguel Angel Rios; as the credits roll – some three minutes later – the viewer wonders in amazement what he has actually just witnessed. Because after his whirling entry, the dancer is suddenly surrounded by five aggressively barking dogs. All at once, we observe the scene from his perspective: their threatening, gaping jaws, filled with glistening white teeth, also fill us with awe. They hesitate, simultaneously drawn and repelled by the whirling boleadores of meat, until their hunger wins out; when one breaks through the barrier, the rest follow. They turn, leap, snap and bark around the dancer, creating a tense and dangerous situation as he is subjected increasingly to real, physical menace.
The film’s high point is the bizarre pas de deux with a dog that is, appropriately, as pale as death! After it has raced onto the scene and seized the man’s sleeve, they perform a circling dance together. Inescapably, this evolves into a matter of wrestling against powerful bites. Nevertheless, the dancer seems to barely defend himself; he proudly accepts the confrontations and looks danger straight in the eye. He mocks and taunts with his fearless dance and is superior. He must have enormous alertness and concentration to maintain the time and rhythm while simultaneously coping with the dogs.

Crudo is a magnificent and puzzling work of art that raises a host of existential questions about life and death, power and powerlessness, good and evil, nature and culture, human and animal, individual and group, control and chaos, courage and fear.
The manner in which the scene is set makes one think of a stage without any backdrop or props. There is no context, no narrative pointers; only emptiness and darkness. This endows the film with a high degree of concentration and abstraction. The scenario, the encounter between human and animal, is artificial; the whys and wherefores of it remain impenetrable. Despite that, the events enthral us in a surprising way. Could this be because of the meticulousness and perfectionism that went into the making of the film?
In some respects, Crudo reminds one of another struggle between human and animal: bullfighting. In southern Europe and South America, the bullfight is regarded not so much as a sport as a mixture of art and dance. It expresses the superiority of the human (especially the man) over the animal, resulting in the inevitable death of the bull. (The dogs do not share this fate). Like a matador facing a bull, the dancer in Crudo is the example of cultural refinement contrasted with the instinctive, irrational nature of the dogs. He is the embodiment of control faced by frenzied aggression. A symbol of his refinement is his Armani suit, which remains immaculately white despite the leaping and biting of the dogs and the bloody lumps of meat that skim so close. The donning of these striking and easily soiled clothes in anticipation of such an aggressive encounter is an ultimate display of daring.

What makes this video such an exceptional experience is the ingenious way in which beauty and violence are intertwined. We take pleasure in the controlled movements and fast, stirring rhythm of the dancer, and in the fact that he overcomes the dogs. The contrasts between light and dark have an impressively picturesque and dramatic quality, but at the same time, we shudder at the monstrous dogs that put the man into immediate physical danger with their unpredictable aggression. Their penetrating barking torments the ear, it strikes through to one’s bone and marrow; and who knows what other dangers lurk in the surrounding darkness?
This thrill of horror is also a form of enjoyment, generated by what is known in Western culture as ‘the sublime’. Unlike beauty, which arouses a pleasant sensation, the sublime evokes feelings such as fear, fright and dread. It awes, intimidates and makes us aware of our smallness and our own physical vulnerability. But if we find ourselves at a safe distance from the source of terror and so are not personally exposed to it, we paradoxically experience a form of pleasure, of joyful abhorrence, awe and even relief.

Miguel Angel Rios was born in Catamarca (Argentina) and lives and works in Mexico City and New York. From 2003 onwards, he made a number of poetic videos using tops that spin in dark, undefined spaces. They turn and dance around each other, sometimes skimming each other, sometimes colliding and then moving apart again. The viewer easily projects human attributes onto the tops. Contact and rejection, balance and imbalance, swaying and steadiness, swiftness and slowness; brisk, lively and colliding or falling and dying; all these associations are evoked by them.
In 2008, Rios made Crudo, a film with many similarities to his previous work. All his films combine beauty and violence as an indivisible whole. They also combine control and coincidence. Although he can determine the stage management, the actors, the use of lighting and the camera angles, Rios has no control over the behaviour of the tops or the dogs. Their actions, movements and the length of a scene are determined by chance. The films are simultaneously abstract choreographies and reflections on the uncertainty and transience of human existence.

Groningen, 17 May 2009
Ankie Boomstra



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