Hacer tiempo

Through the analysis of contemporary three pieces based on time (cinema, art, theater and video installation), this book explores different ways in which art is capable of making time, interrupting, delaying and suspending productive flows with its criticism and thus overturning the viewer towards the possibility of action. The text extends the proposals of W. Benjamin on criticism and those of B. Brecht on didactics, distancing and the epic, to locate strategies where contemporary art affects the construction of time in politics. "I analyze three works that problematize the rethinking of gesture and stage, each in an artistic medium that proposes to the viewer an objective duration of the work. In the theatre, with"Optimistic versus Pessimistic" (by Esperanza López and Oskar Gómez Mata, dir. Oskar Gómez Mata, Geneva: Compagnie LþAlakran, 2005); in the movies, with"Dogvill"e (Dir. Lars von Trier, Denmark, 2003); and in the video installation, with"Re-enactments", by Francis Alÿs (in collaboration with Rafael Ortega, 2-channel video installation, 5:20 min., México, 2000). Each of the works also gives rise to discussion with a category of Brecht; such as "Optimistic versus Pessimistic" you will be given the notion of a didactic piece; "Dogville", estinement; and"Re-enactments", the epic fabulation." (HKB Translation) --Page 13.