PROCESS
Exploring Boundaries and Sexuality
CANDELA CAPITÁN | Performance artist based in Spain
X JULIET DOHERTY | Actress and Dancer
JULIET How do you feel your environment (cultural, social, communal) influences the work you do? Is there any originating moment or memory in mind that sticks out as something that was a seed for the work you do today?
CANDELA My work summarizes what happens in my daily life from a cultural/social point of view inside my community. I am from a small city in Andalucía where no one thinks anything is going on, but growing up in those streets of Cadiz is where everything started for me.
JULIET You’ve described your work as “a supreme state of detachment” - I have to say that sounds fantastic. Would you be willing to explain what you mean by detachment and the process you undertake?
CANDELA Opening minds and borders. Detachment from what stays the same due to habits and conservatism. It is time to open ourselves up to other disciplines and thoughts and bring them together.
JULIET As with any way we identify - gender, sexual orientation, occupation, etc. society seems to want to give us definitions we either have to work with or against. Do you feel that you actively reject cultural dictates or norms through your art?
CANDELA You have to reject in order to open new horizons, but also affirm and support.
JULIET I have personally felt that my creativity is somewhat limited by a culture that has stigmatized something like my body for example. Do you ever find that comes up for you in the creative process? What was the process for your own liberation? Or is it still unfolding for you?
CANDELA One does not feel fully liberated, we walk with social and cultural weights all of our lives, but I do work with them.
JULIET: I’m going to quote you again - you’ve said - “The greatest pleasure is to do what you feel.” I interpreted this as impulses. There is something so simple and yet radical to act on impulses. Is there something you’d rather say?
CANDELA: I think this is a quote from when I was very little, but it surely meant that the most rewarding thing is doing what you like, without thinking about the rest. Of course, you always have to fight to get to do what you like to do. The impulses serve to have energy and illusion.
JULIET I come from a pretty classical lens. Going back in history a bit - I consider the courts of Europe and when ballet became a more formal discipline. I’m wondering what your take is on the need for discipline today in the modern era for dance. Back then it certainly had its pros, creating a platform for professional performers to replace aristocrats — but I’d like to know if you’ve ever thought about or envisioned a space for dance that exists outside of its standardization.
CANDELA I love classical dance. It is a discipline that makes all of our history and I like to still take classes as a training. To this day, it is lacking in experimentation, it's full of rigidity that does not go along with the present time.
JULIET Certainly the standardization of dance creates a set of limits or boundaries for the artist to exist within and an expectancy from the audience that may be restricted or informed by that process of making things conform to a standard. Just wanted to speculate with you what a space might look like free from the expectations of the standard model of training or within a professional company. What are your thoughts on dance being a narrative art vs simply a spectacle?
CANDELA Personally the dance that is not narrative doesn't need to be simply… spectacle.
JULET I envision a kind of artist utopia would be creating work that exists for a mutual satisfaction, not just for the pleasure of others or for the pleasures of that artist, themself. Do you have a different distinction? How often do you think about the audience or viewer when creating something? Do you think there’s a trap we can fall into if we set an intention for how we’d like our work to be perceived?
CANDELA No pienso en la satisfacción del espectador ni en la mía cuando estoy preparando un proyecto, pienso en lo que requiere el proyecto para expresar lo que quiero expresar. En la performance hay una parte del trabajo en la que hay que graduar lo que sucede en el bucle de retroalimentación, entre espectador y actor. La pieza necesita graduarse a nivel de intensidades, si quieres que sea más intensa o contemplativa, aburrida o grotesca.
I do not think about the audience's satisfaction or mine when I am preparing a project, I think about what the project requires to express what I want to express. In performance there is a part of the work in which you have to graduate what happens in the feedback loop, between the spectator and the actor. The piece needs to be graduated to the level of intensities, if you want it to be more intense or contemplative, boring or grotesque.
JULET How do you think we can use dance or art across mediums to transgress traditional portrayals in the media? It’s my point of view you play with this edge a lot!
CANDELA Los Media son pantallas que reproducen la sociedad real, no hay diferencia entre lo que sucede en un perfil de instagram y en la vida real, solo estamos hablando de diferente medio. Quizás hay que cuestionar un poco más el arte tradicional desde dentro!
Media is just a screen that reproduces real society, there is no difference between what happens in an Instagram profile and real life, we are only talking about different media. Perhaps we must question a little more traditional art from within!
JULIET Maybe this isn’t something we can categorize but - do you see dance as something secular or spiritual in pursuit?
CANDELA I think we should not confuse the art of dance and social dance.
