Regina_Celia_Pinto_on_-empyre-_in_March

Regina Celia Pinto (Rio, Brazil) is one of four South American featured
guests in March on -empyre- ( http://www.subtle.net/empyre ). You are
invited to join us for discussion with Regina about her work and concerns on
'The Phenomenological and Fantastic in South American New Media' in March
on -empyre-.

She has a new online multimedia work called "Viewing Axalotls" (
http://arteonline.arq.br/viewing_axolotls ), which keys on a short story by
the Argentinian writer Julio Cortazar called "Axalotls" from his collection
of stories The End of the Game. As it happens, we encounter Axalotls ("the
larval stage of a species of salamander of the genus Ambystoma"), an unusual
'game' made by Regina Pinto, and portions of Cortazar's text in "Viewing
Axalotls", which is not an adaptation of Cortazar's piece for the Web but,
instead, Regina's piece builds on Cortazar's text, takes it as an informing
departure point in a wistful meditation on "reality" and the limits of
communication between human beings.

I asked Regina about the Cortazar connection in "Viewing Axalotls" and the
apparent Kafka connection.

JA: There seems to be an odd Kafka connection in Cortazar's piece in which
the speaker turns, somewhat literally, somewhat figuratively, into an
Axalotls. Do you know Kafka's 'The Metamorphosis'? In this story, the
speaker turns into a big cockroach. There is the sense in Kafka's piece that
K's life was already that of a cockroach. But I don't really get that
'moral' from either Cortazar's story or your "Viewing Axalotls".

RCP: "Of course I know Kafka and The Metamorphosis. In fact Metamorphosis
was my first idea when I thought to do a new book. But I remembered Cortazar
and I decided to work with the Axolotl. However, I think that there is a
large difference between these books. Kafka is Expressionist and Cortazar
something related to "magic realism". I think that the story of Kafka is
much more social than the Cortazar story. Cortazar's story, I think, speaks
much more about the impossibility of communication between human beings and
animals, but more than this the impossibility to be the other, in this case
I think that it can be enlarged to human beings, the impossibility to really
understand the other. However, you will discover another fundamental
difference between Kafka and Cortazar. Gregor Samsa turns into a cockroach
and disappears, only the cockroach keeps on in the story. Cortazar's "man"
or my "woman" turns into Axolotl but keeps on being human and it is just
this that I think is fantastic because it was a notable intuition of Virtual
Reality and in this case the story is deeply social: Me and my Avatar Woman.
If you think in this way you can think about Ideology or about Media
building Ideology or you."

JA: And what is the attitude of your piece to the transformation to
Axalotls? Are you saying we are turning into axolotls via the virtual? Or
something else?

RCP: "I think it shows my deep interest in Virtual Reality and Computers. I
enter into the aquariumm computer and I am there, but I am out of it too.
Out of it I am concious that I am not really myself, that I am an Avatar
built by the media. In this case I am speaking about Anthropology and
Ideology. Perhaps it shows the difficulty of communication too. In spite of
the Internet and all the modern devices for communicating, the human being
remains incommunicado, unable to understand and accept the other - you can
see this in the lists and forums you participate in or participated in."

We will also look at other of Regina's works during March on -empyre-. In
particular, we'll look at the online multimedia works in The Library of
Marvels ( http://arteonline.arq.br/library.htm ) which she has been building
since 1999. Several of the works in Regina's Library of Marvels, like
"Viewing Axalotls", have 'games' in them of Regina's device. The notion of
'game' that she develops in these pieces comments on the relation between
games and art, certainly. We'll also hear about her vision of her site The
Museum of the Essential and Beyond That http://arteonline.arq.br , which is
surely one of the main sites on the Web concerning intermedia between
literature, visual art, and programmed work–between and amongst Americas
(and beyond that). It is marvelous in its internationalism and
cross-fertilizations between cultures.

The other featured guests in March on empyre are Alexandra Venera (Brazil),
and Jorge Luiz Antonio (Brazil), with the occassional post from Ana Maria
Uribe (Argentina). It should be fun. I hope you join us.

ja
http://www.subtle.net/empyre