Museum Archives, Animation, and Picasso's Secrets, with Jorgelina Orfila

Episode 9 of The Vocal Cue, with your host Tawny Ballinger, talks to Texas Tech University School of Art Associate Professor in Modern and Contemporary Art History and Critical Theory, Dr. Jorgelina Orfila. 

Dr. Jorgelina Orfila joined the Art History faculty in Fall 2008. Prior to coming to the US, she earned degrees in art history and museum studies in her country of origin, Argentina. Her Ph.D. is from the University of Maryland, College Park. Dr. Orfila has curated numerous exhibitions and published several articles in her areas of special interest: modernism and the history of art history, Paul Cézanne, John Rewald, museography in the Interwar Period, and the use of photographs for the study of modern art.

In 2014, she cofounded together with Dr. Francisco Ortega-Grimaldo, Animationduo, a collective of art scholars committed to a teaching and research project focused on the history and theory of animation and its intersections with modern and contemporary art. Drs. Orfila and Ortega coordinate the Undergraduate Certificate in Animation Studies at the School of Art, a unique undertaking that examines animation as a cross-disciplinary field of practice and knowledge that brings together music, theater/performance and the visual arts.

Transcript

Speaker 2 0:00

Hi, welcome to the Vocal Cue. My name is Tawny Bellinger, and today I am here with Dr. Jorgelina Orfila, who is an associate professor of modern and contemporary art. Will you tell me how you got into art? Why like what made you want to do art?

Speaker 0:23

Well, I was born in Argentina, and I all I mean my family was not artistic in any way, and I was really interested in uh museos, museum studies. And there is this association of museums with art museums that is not all truth. But anyway, um at the time the school where uh uh art history was taught was very complicated because of political unrest in my country. Um but I forgot ahead and I wanted to be uh uh involved in art, so I have a dual degree in museum studies and uh in art history from my country in Argentina, and I began working in the Museum of Fine Arts of Buenos Aires and uh curating exhibitions, but my passion was always to do research. So, in my in many ways, the practical aspects of art and how to communicate art with the community was always my interest. But uh my degree was both in museum studies and art history.

Speaker 2 1:32

So when you were younger, do you go look at a lot of museums just for like fun to look at all the art?

Speaker 1:37

Or yeah, I mean, and I can relate with experiences. That's the the the trick with art. I mean, to be in front of the original work of art is an experience you have to learn to have, uh especially for this generation, the the amount of attention, visual uh uh attention to a masterpiece. Uh and in Buenos Aires we have one museum, the fine arts museums of Buenos Aires, that is one of the most important in Latin America. We have a very good collection of Impressionism, we have some Renaissance, uh Art of Roder Renaissance, some pieces of medieval art and especially 19th century and contemporary Argentinian art. So that's the art I could see. After that, we have special exhibitions, itinerant exhibitions, and that's where the museum gives you the opportunity to be in touch with original works that don't belong to your collection. So yeah, I took advantage of uh whatever uh uh you know fate and uh public relations in my countries gave to me. But um that's the trick, and that's my dissertation. We have reproductions and books. And I was always curious because yes, I read a lot, and we uh, for example, the Mona Lisa. Do you know about the Mona Lisa?

Speaker 2 3:05

Have you even seen have I seen a picture of the Mona Lisa?

Speaker 3:08

No, no, the original.

Speaker 2 3:10

I don't think so.

Speaker 3:11

Okay, so you when you finally are in front of the Mona Lisa or a Monet or a Van Gogh or whatever, you will check your memory and your information about the piece with the original. We are never uh, or uh in general with historical art, we are never in front of the uh uh objects without already information. And we are in front of the object because of the information and the curiosity, and that's why we go to the loop, because we know that the Mona Lisa is there. So I always have this experience of the originals through the mediation of text and reproductions. Uh and you know, this is one of the things that I write about. Uh, but in with contemporary art, or when you are dealing with film of animation, you are in front of the original. So when we bring with my colleague Francisco Tega, when we bring animation here, and when I teach history of the animation, this is the only opportunity I have the opportunity to bring to my students the originals, because they were created to be disseminated through reproductions. The problem began with photography. Um so, yes, I saw a lot of art, but I read a lot of art. And perhaps if you compare me with American students working in New York, where they have the Metropolitan and the MOMA, or a French student in uh Paris, that they have the Louvre and all those things, I have uh not so I mean less opportunity to go and be in front of the original than others. Uh so the breakthrough for me was an exhibition organized by the MOMA, no, the Whitney Museum in collaboration with the MOMA that was contrast of form. It was an itinerant exhibition of contemporary of modern and contemporary abstract art that came to Buenos Aires, and I finally was in front of the Picasso, a Cubis Picasso, and I was like, oh my, I can talk about this. And this is the first time I am in front of an original Picasso from 1912. So I was like, okay, I have to think of this. What is art? What is the work of art? So I pride myself of having a perspective that is unique, all perspectives are always unique, but is a reflection about what is art based on the original, the reproduction, and the text about art that introduces us to the liking of art. Um because you know, especially for problematic art, modern and contemporary art, uh it's not so natural that you in front of a completely abstract Kandinsky, you are like, whoa, this is great! Kind of, you know, how do we get to abstraction? Why abstraction? Why not representation? And so that's our history. So it became my passion because of the particular circumstances I was in.

Speaker 2 6:21

That's awesome. Um, where did you see Picasso? Like the original Picasso for the first time. Where was that?

Speaker 6:27

Uh it was at the Museum of Fine Art. The exhibition was organized by uh the Whitney, the Guggenheim, and MOMA, and it was contrast of forms, I don't remember the year. Um, but after that I die, I dug in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, of the Museum I was working at, and there was a Picasso, 1931. And there was this Robert Rosenblum, is a specialist, uh, it was an specialist in modern and contemporary art, very famous art historian NYU, and also our critic. And uh they came to my country with an exhibition organized by the Chase Um Manhattan Um Art Branch. They have a very important collection. And they came to my country, and I was like, Robert Rosenblum, I want to show you something. And he was like, This is the first work of art where Picasso deals with Marie Therese and it's 1931, and I said, okay, let's revive the thing, let's put it there. It was considered a secondary Picasso because it was not um, it was not Cubism from the time of Cubism, uh, but it was a surrealist Cubist Picasso, but it was very important because of the private life of Picasso. If you want to know some gossip about Picasso, you are in front of the person that can tell you about every single marriage and love affair he had in his life. Uh anyway. So, anyway, so he is convinced that the museum, the work of art that is in Buenos Aires, uh, is the first Picasso where the first work where Picasso represents his lover of the time.

Speaker 2 8:11

Wow.

Speaker 8:12

But he was married, so yeah. The divorce was contentious, so we have to hide that. How many museums have you worked at? Uh I worked at the Museum of Fine Arts Buenos Aires, and there I got the opportunity through a unique uh scholarship that was the Tarea Group. Um, that they have a um uh a set it wasn't a special fund that came with a limited time. Is that uh it's a foundation that they have to spend all the funds in certain projects, so Tarea doesn't exist anymore. But one of them was created uh was to create uh um uh internships at the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC. So I was working at the Museum of Fine Arts in Buenos Aires, and I won the uh uh scholarship to come to the National Gallery of Art as an intern at the curatorial uh work to work in in 19th century art because I have kind of re-studied the collection of the fine art museums and discovered certain things that were hidden, and uh I was taking advantage of my degree to uh to use the latest American scholarship on modernism and especially impressionist and post-impressionist art. So I came to the National Gallery of Art to work with Dr. Connisby, Philip Connisby, specialized in the 18th century and 19th century. So I came to the National Gallery of Art. And there, when I was there, they told me about the Chesterdale Collection, that is a collection, it's not the most famous or you know uh agreeable uh trustee of the National Gallery of Art. He was a difficult personality, but he was a collector of Picasso's Cezans and Monettes, and it's a wonderful collection, and no one had studied it because again it was not centered on the important period, the 1870s or Cubism. He was more a classical taste. So I began to work on that collection and I saw, hey, Philip, Philip Connisby, if you study this collection based on the taste of Impressionism and Post Impressionism, you are wrong. You have to situate this collection in the 1930s when Impressionism and Post Impressionism and Cubism was not the fashion of the day. They were more into the classicism and go back to the roots. So if you understand the collection as created in the interwar period, you will notice how uh uh uh important and how uh contemporary it was. So he they invited me to stay another year at the National Gallery of Arts. So I they repeated the the scholarship, and by then they told me, Hey, you need the PhD. If you want to be, I mean, if you you want to work at the level you are working, you have to get a PhD. So I resigned to my position in the Fine Arts Museum in Buenos Aires, and I began from zero to work in my PhD. That's awesome. Yeah, so I stay working summers at the uh archive of the National Gallery of Art with the Chesterdale papers, and after that with the papers of a German-American art historian who wrote the first art historical book in uh Impressionism, uh John Rewold, and that became the topic of my dissertation. How John Rewald, by taking photographs of the sites where Cezanne had painted, changed the way uh Cezanne was understood because everyone was using this crammy, very small photograph to judge works of art they had never seen. And so that that that's the topic, how the use of reproduction for the study of uh of art changes and shape our understanding of the art as a formal um product.

Speaker 2 12:41

That's pretty cool. Um so at the archive, like what exactly did you do? Do you like the archives? Yeah, do you write stuff yourself too?

Speaker 12:51

I work in the archives. Okay, that's fascinating. So um every single uh uh museum has a history. Okay, so there are two kinds of archives. You can have, for example, archives uh like the National Archives where you have all kinds of information and documents, like you know, the Constitution of the United States. Uh uh, but uh there are archives at the Louvre that they have, for example, the correspondence with the artist. Can you loan me this? Can you give me this? Sometimes the curators write to the artist, or uh, you know, or the papers of the artist go to the MOMA or take the geti. So those are the general archives. The archives of the National Gallery of Art. Uh well the National Gallery of Art was created in 1941, the same month that the United States declared war to Japan and the Axis, December 1941, so it's after uh uh Pearl Harbor. Okay, so um it's the Mellon Collection. Collection uh Andrew Mellon had been the Secretary of State, Secretary of Commerce of the United States, and he gave the collection to the nation. So it's a hybrid museum uh that belongs to the Smithsonians, so it's the only national museum. All the other museums in the United States are private. Okay, so this is the only one that is federal, it belongs, the collection belongs to the United States. Uh um, okay, so uh they have the papers of the time of the creation of the museum. But also, this is interesting, the curators of the National Gallery of Art were the monument men. Because, you know, they were the ones going to Germany uh, you know, to study what the things are. I mean, they didn't look like George Clooney, but no. Uh anyway. So you have the curators that are Frederick, that they know that they are specializing the Mellon Collection, that is a wonderful uh collection of artists of the Renaissance. And so the papers are important because it's federal. I mean, the first collection, the pay building, uh the um opening of uh the uh uh uh of the building uh at the mall, you know, this is important. So they have that collection and they have been accrued um uh, you know, for example, the documents about the creation of uh the Vietnam Memorial. Well, the director of the museum at the time was part of this committee. So they have been growing with material about the work of art. The National Gallery of Art is the place where they, if, if, if you go to the site, is um the provenance project about the um uh Nazis, the works of art that was expropriated by the Nazis. So they do they did research about the collections to sponge the collections of any single work that could have been part of the looted art. And so they have all those uh uh works and they have um papers about their collections, and we are talking about uh the only Da Vinci in a public collection in the United States, and um the works of art that were uh uh purchased from Stalin when he was selling the collections of the Hermitage. So we have, and and you have all the records of the exhibitions. For example, they organize a huge Cézanne exhibition or a Mondrian exhibition, so all the work is there, the study, and uh you know the catalogs of the museum have new knowledge about all the things. So all those records and the photographs are at the archive of the National Gallery of Art. So the place is very interesting because uh the archives are in the old museums. So when you have to go, I will say, okay, the guards. So how do you get? Well, you go, you are in front of the Botticelli, and you turn to the right, and when you are in front of the Rembrandt, you turn to the left again, and there there is a door, knock, and we will open to you. So every single day was going, you know, and and then there you have five fabulous people. I mean, with uh studying how to archive them the material and and you know, um archival stuff is you have to know what to keep, and you have to know what to uh get rid of. How do you how do you know what to keep? I am not the archivist, I am the art historian, but you cannot have repeated things, but you have but it's important to know that the collection came with 15 copies of the same material. So it's important, but you cannot keep 12 because there is a moment that you know the archive will be the size of the museum. Um okay, so what is important and what's not important for the future is always it's it's a whole discipline uh to know what will be important in the future because the archives shape the memory of the future. Okay, so that's my critical theory thing. Uh but anyway, so we know the things about which we have documents about, all the other things were closed and we don't know about it. So the archives shape the memory of the future, and and it's interesting too because we will end up working off uh uh dealing with digital uh material and animation because the national when I was there we discovered that we knew more about the exhibitions taking place between 1941 and 1990 than we know about any new exhibition. The moment the curators move to email, if they don't print out an email, it's gone. The information is gone. So we know more about the Vermeer exhibition or the Chesterdale exhibition than all the contemporary exhibition. Okay, the emails are somewhere. But how far back? Yeah, and with what machine? Because yeah, because perhaps you know, a curator, you know, uh download everything in a floppy disk. Do you know what a floppy disk is?

Speaker 2 19:27

Yeah.

Speaker 19:27

Okay. Okay. Or an apple with the USB of the old format. So as we change, uh the information gets lost and is formatted in a new way. And so, yeah, the information is somewhere. And because it is the National Gallery of Art, it should be a mine inside a mountain somewhere with all the secrets of the Pentagon's art. So the image of the curator should be there, you know, waiting for someone. But but I mean, having everything is having nothing, so uh the information is lost. But the information that is on paper, and you go, I mean, you don't know, but you have paper and you have the onion skin paper, and you see the copies, and you get the different things, and you're like, But sometimes with my art historians, I got to know things about him that I don't think he wanted the people to know. There are two kinds of papers, okay? So you have the papers the art historian is working for the archive, and it's like personal, personal, personal. You know, it's like, oh god, my love affair, no, no. Um but when they were there at the apartment of these art historians that uh, you know, he had donated the material on Cezanne and Pissarro to the National Gallery of Art, suddenly they open a closet, and there are all those papers that had not been classified. And the director of the uh of the library of the museum uh of the National Gallery of Art said, we wanted two. So that that was the material I was organizing, because they have all those things. So the art historian kind of didn't know about those things that were there, but were was very interesting because it was the moment John Rewall was one of the first art historians to devote his whole career to modern art. So art history is the history of art, and it was created as a discipline to study the past. And the past is easy, you see, it's like you know, it's not personal commitment here. And the history is gone. The war between uh uh you know England and France, it's like or Germany and France, you know, or or the religious world. I mean, it's that it's kind of easy, you know, to but with contemporary art, you are like there. I mean, you have a personal commitment. So are he Rewald was kind of a hybrid art critic, a friend of the family of the artist, and trained art historian in pre-Hitler Germany. So he moved to Paris from Germany one year before Hitler came to power. He couldn't go back to Germany. He was in love with modern arts who began interviewing people who had known Cezanne and he was able to go and find things, you know, that Cezanne had left, that no one had been curious to search for. So he had this, you know, the French, they had the impressionists, but they didn't have the distance to know how important they were. But the Germans and the Italians were going to Paris, Lionello Venturi, they were going to Paris to look for information. So he's a transitional art historian. He's trained in the study of the past with curiosity about the recent past. And so he moved from our history, he began to use the camera, he began to do interviews more in the way of an art critic. And when he comes to the United States, because Hitler sooner or later got to Paris. So when he left, he was in an internment camp. It was a French one because he was German. But after that he came in one of the last votes to live from Marseille. And he came, I think, with Breton and Levi-Strauss. And here he was an art historian with that material. And he wrote in 1942 the first history of impressionism, published by the Museum of Modern Art. So I was dealing with that material that Reward hadn't had the time to classify. And I was organizing this material about how, in you know, during the Second World War he was writing about Impressionism in the United States with the knowledge he had gotten in German with the material he had harvested in France. Okay, so that that that was my work on the archive was the finding aid. That's still today you can go and read, and it's my name.

Speaker 2 24:28

That's the classification of all the material. That's really cool. Do you know how far back the dates go in the archives?

Speaker 24:34

Uh uh well, I mean, they the uh history of the museum they go 1941. Uh but um you know after that they have been dealing with artists, and they uh they have a limited space and interest, so the scope uh of the material is about the collections they own, and they own collections that go back from the Middle Ages. So the center of the archives of the National Gallery of Art is about the history of the museum, institutional history, um, and it's something that our dean and our colleges are doing. What is an institution? It's the people, but it's also the memory of what is essential for the institution. So institutional memory is what allows an institution to progress and to have uh and to change, but to change according to the times based on a certain idea of what the institution institution is about. Because if not, you are only fashion. You know, it's like, okay, so where is the academic wing coming? Okay, let's go there. And we you forget what the center of your, let's call it, spirit or the soul of the institution is. So archives of the archives of the National Gallery of Art keeps this institutional memory. This is how we do things, because this is what we are. And based on that, yeah, you change, you adapt to progress, but you keep a certain identity. There is no way to show an identity or to write an identity, something that is, but is ineffable. And well, that's what we we believe memory is. It's like we are the things we remember. Even as an individual, you are the things you remember about yourself. Although your family reminds you, but you change. I mean, you don't think like your mother, do you? Okay. Good. Okay, that that's that's anyway. So that's the idea of identity or uh uh uh of an institution or as a human being. It's a thing that change adapts, but keeps a certain consistency or coherence. Uh at least for you is is is consistent and coherent because you feel it. So it's ineffable, but it's important to have it and not to begin anew every time you know you have a new director, every time there is a new curator, anyone, every time you have a new professor of modern and contemporary art. Ah I changed. And now we say so.

Speaker 2 27:25

Um okay, so how was the transition from moving to from Argentina to Texas?

Speaker 27:30

Oh, it was Argentina, Washington, DC. I spent 12 years in Washington, DC working on my dissertation. Two as the um two uh as as as intern in the um curatorial division, and uh after that were seven or eight to get my my dissertation. When you write a dissertation in in our history, generally, if it is not about American art, you use two or three different languages. In my case, I might I was lucky because I was the German, the French, and Italian that was writing together with Rival, so I have to go to Italian too. Anyway, so it takes uh you have coursework, that is four years, and after that three years. Writing a dissertation in art history is really it's it's around seven years. And after that I worked for one year at the Corcoran Museum of Art. It was a museum in Washington that now um disappeared, and I got uh um yeah, the the job offer from Texas Tech. And yeah, everyone in in DC is well like you're committing suicide. And I was like, no, I mean it's great, let's go have the adventure. It is an adventure. Oh yeah, um but now one of the things that it has in common, Argentina is famous for the beef and the soccer. Okay, so I am a vegetarian. So to come to the can to the state of the barbecue is kind of similar, you know. Being a vegetarian in Argentina is like being a vegetarian in Texas, it's like, okay, so and here the football you have is not, I mean, you call my football soccer. Uh that it's I tell my students the real football is soccer anyway. So yeah, here you have your mahomes and I have my messy. So sports and food, there is something similar between the uh between Argentina and Texas. But I learned, I mean, I you have to be where you are and enjoy where you are, all the advantages and that business. If I compare DC with Buenos Aires, if I compare Paris, I I uh to write the dissertation, if you compare and you think what is not there, you are not happy. You are where you are, and you see all the advantages uh of the place where you are. If you spend your day comparing and missing things, uh yeah, and it's not my style.

Speaker 2 30:07

You're missing out.

Speaker 30:08

Yeah, no, I it's not my style. Wherever I am is where I am. You know, it's like I so you know, Lavak has its own attractions, and I love the rhythm, and I love um the fact that there are no many distractions. Uh, you know, uh my students or it's things sometimes in the National Gallery of Art who are so working and saying, it's the last day of the Art Nouveau exhibition. Let's go! So we have been like three months with the exhibition upstairs, and we never had time to go there. But to go to the National Gallery of Art took me one hour with the traffic at the time. Here I am in ten minutes. Days are longer, you see. So I I love the rhythm of being able to do a lot of things. The practical aspects of the uh uh of the work in animation I am engaged now in, it it is to, you know, to go to the to the high schools and to take the material. And you can do this in Lavac. In New York, it would be impossible to be teaching and to have workshops in animation. The time is impossible. It would have been impossible, you know. I go home, I put everything in the car, we go to the school, we go back to you know our lab or to Dr. Ortega's lab. So in Lavac that's possible. We can do a lot of practical things and to study. Our library is just incredible. Interlibrary loan, they bring material from all over the world. So you have the opportunity to concentrate on your work, to do your scholarship, to expand your scholarship. Uh the university is very supportive to us, you know, to work in different fields. Um I'm happy. Um, you know, it's like I am in Lavak.

Speaker 2 32:06

Um, the library, I didn't know this until about like a couple months ago, but our library has archives. Oh yeah, they have the archives.

Speaker 32:13

And you have the um Southwest Collection? I've never been in that. Oh yeah, no, no, they have wonderful. And one of our uh the the uh professors at the the uh at the School of Art, Rick Dingus, was fundamental in organizing this collection of photographs and taking photographs of West Texas before, you know, big changes and to look for those queer uh spaces. Yeah, it is very important. And our one of my colleagues, um the uh Dr. Therese Flanagan, they were to work with the facsimils of manuscripts they have here. So you have the whole experience of the white globes and looking with the manuscripts and and uh working with original books from, you know, and and even a collection of artist books that also are part of the archives. Uh you have an artist like Picasso working on books, even though there are 1,000 copies of the book, it's a unique. And those books they go they don't go to the general collection, they go to the archive. Because they are unique in a certain way, they are very expensive too. So there are works of art because the artists engage themselves into thinking of what is a book. And when they create the work of art, it was as a book. So it is an original that was reproduced. Uh but the artist knew about that, so he had it's not the same as a reproduction. If I you get a reproduction of a painting, the artist didn't know about the photograph and was not considering the photograph, especially before the 1950s. So they were thinking of the size, the the wall, the colors, thinking of an spectator that was in front of a painting. And someone took a reproduction, and that's what you find in a book. But if the same artist is thinking about creating a book, they know they are thinking about your size, they are thinking about the distance, they are thinking of looking at the thing, you know, uh on a desk. So part of the conception of the work of art is to be in the book format. So when you go to the archive here of the Southwest Collection and you ask for an artist's book, you get the white gloves, uh, but you get experience as the artist wanted it to be.

Speaker 1 34:46

That's it.

Speaker 34:47

You engage with the book. So it's very important when you have a library with an archive and they have that kind of work of art.

Speaker 2 34:55

Can you tell me about the exhibit that you're doing?

Speaker 34:57

Oh yes. Um uh one of the things when I came here, we have an interdisciplinary PhD program, and one of the classes was a team talk class. And so I paired with Dr. Francis Cortega, who is uh graphic designers and teacher graphic design and is also animator artist, and we began a project about studying the history and theory of animation, and also we have a practical part that is we study the use of animation as a didactic and therapeutic tool. So we have a practical component that is the animation making workshops. Um we have been working together in several projects related with animation, and we are part of the Society of Animation Studies, and we have been around in Spain, in the UK, presenting and studying and presenting masterclasses. So the idea was to create an exhibition on animation as art. So uh we teamed or partnered with Dr. Christine Veras, who is an UT Dallas. We we have met in different conferences, and she has a lab in animation. And so we have the idea, and we uh uh presented the idea of organizing an exhibition of animation as art, a multisensory experience that allows you to see the animation, but also the the pro the process animation was created, the objects and how the uh the animation artists deal with objects and create objects and manipulate objects in time in order to create the animation. We didn't want only the animation with the screening, the animation, that you can see that your living room, um, but also the object to show and to remember of the relationship of the digital image with reality. And so because we have been working for 10 years on that, we made a call, international call, we got 60 proposals, we accepted 30 in entries, and we will have workshops by international artists and by American artists that will engage the community, children, grown-ups, and school children, uh, in different aspects of the animations. And so um that's what we are working on bringing the world to Labok because there are um artists from all over the world, from South Africa to Indonesia to Europe, UK, um yeah. Uh and um they are they uh send the objects and also we are screening the animations so the public will have the opportunity to perceive uh uh the objects and the animations. Um animation is audiovisual, so animation uh deals with the word and also sounds and also music, but it's also about the perception of the materiality of the objects. Animation uh deals with what is an object when it moves, when it changes form. And so we want the uh public to engage their body because uh we also have a collection of pre-cinematic animation objects. It's like animation precedes film, so you have optical toys that you have to move in order to create the movement, and that's the idea that that's uh the genealogy of animation precedes that of cinema. Cinema officially is born in December 1895 when the Lumiere brothers present the camera, and so you have photographs that move, but before that, you have animators creating cellulose with cartoons, and you have digital toys with people moving them, and contemporary artists are very interested in all that material. You have psoetropes and fenas ketoscopes and uh contemporary artists. You go to the art fairs, and they are dealing with that you know, movement that is created with your body, embodied action. And so we have collections of that, and we have contemporary artists, animators that are dealing with the idea of what is movement and how we perceive movement, and how movement is life. Because in general, when you see something moving, it's alive. And animation comes from anima and animus that since the Greeks is the soul and life. And so we want to engage the public with that mystery of how movement is created in art.

Speaker 2 40:10

That's really cool. Um, so there's 30 participants?

Speaker 40:15

More than 30, because one of the projects is a project that Dr. Veras engaged with Belgium, a group of artists that created an eschitoscopes. So it's 30 plus.

unknown 40:28

Wow.

Speaker 2 40:29

Wow. Um you'll definitely need to come check out the exhibit.

Speaker 40:33

Exhibit, yes, it will be open from March 23rd to the end of June. And uh be on the lookout because we will have important, we have uh uh Steven Wolochen, an art an artist from Canada that practice cameraless animation. He's actually in France, he will come here to Lavak, and after that we lose we'll lose him again. He goes back to um uh to to Europe, but he will be here uh giving master classes and teaching the public how to do um cameraless animation. And uh we will have Aldo Murillo from Mexico coming to create, you know, with the uh with the table. Oh turn table? The turntable, you know, you put the images and when it rotates, you have animation. Okay, so with the turntable and we have uh you know uh a set of different workshops for the public to engage. And what they create in the workshops will be part of the exhibition with the screen. Um yeah, and we will have uh all the objects that is it's a participatory exhibition. Public can you know interact uh with uh some of the objects, and yeah, it will be here for three months.

Speaker 2 41:50

That's awesome. Where is it gonna be at?

Speaker 41:52

Museum of Texas Tech.

Speaker 2 41:54

Oh, okay, so that's literally right here. Yes, it's not far around.

Speaker 41:58

But it's easier to park.

Speaker 2 42:00

It's easier. What do you say? Parking. Parking?

Speaker 42:02

Parking is easier than in campus. Free parking in front of the parking on campus is very difficult.

Speaker 2 42:11

Um but I had a great time talking. Okay, thank you for talking about it.

Speaker 42:16

It was great to talk to you.

Speaker 2 42:17

All right, that's gonna be all for today, guys. Thank you so much for watching, and thank you for being here today.