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CUE has originated for a lot of different reasons, but one of them, without any doubt, was this: to react against the moulding, stiffening, mainstreaming and lack of spontaneity that is to be found in most of contemporary artistic events. Or, if we dare to take a step further, to react against the overwhelming repression, disciplining and censorship on every aspect of our life, that is against the attempt of leading our conduct.

As for me, there are too many things that are just unnecessary, that I would prefer not to be there, because everything would be better without them, and what I feel is that wherever I go I always find this sort of things that I don’t like, because they are not at all related with art, they have just been added there, where you see these faces who pretend to be respected because they are holding a tuba, behaving as if you were a pseud, playing music in the pureta club of your pureta friends, hoping moreover that my behaviour will be considered respectful enough.

This is why I believe that what CUE needs more is spontaneity, actions that are direct and born out of necessity, instead of “putting art on a pedestal”. CUE does not care if you play well your clarinet, if you are good in writing music, or if you are a master of dance: CUE cares about a gesture that is able to stand by itself, with no regard to its artistic value, just because it’s free, because nobody has told you what to do, nor how to behave, nor when you should do this and that, because you give yourself your own limits, that is the importance of autonomy. At last, and this is why in my opinion art for CUE is just an excuse, what CUE is about should be nothing more than making us think: “why do we behave as we behave moment by moment?”

And what I’m more glad about is that the comment I end up hearing most often about CUE is usually: “Here I feel good, things are just good”. In the end, this the only aim of CUE: that people who go there feel good in it, all the rest is about each one’s responsibility.

Some weeks ago in a cultural supplement Angel Gonzalez Garcia wrote:

“Art has transformed into a colossal farce. A farce to which we should not be contributing anymore. Maybe we should hold a sort of strike against museums of contemporary art, or rather against museums in general. In the end, why not? They have nothing to do with art, but just with the industry of images. It’s a real pity that art, which was conceived to make the presence of men on the earth more pleasant, has now become such a source of obsessions and anxieties. As if we already had not enough of them. They make us suffer on the work place, at home, in the museum, so where can we spend a good time? I always say this: in the disco. I always repeat this to my students: as long as there will be discos there will be some hope.”

Indeed, maybe CUE is more related to disco than to art. CUE was born out of a lack, the need of a space accomplishing a therapeutic function, some sort of cathartic experience through participation rather than contemplation. The catharsis of doing and not the one of empathy. For this reason our commitment is not to restrict CUE to any type of artistic actions: in CUE every modality of creative expression is warmly welcomed.

Thus for CUE art is no more than an excuse, and whoever pretends to make some art critic out of what happens in CUE, has indeed understood nothing of it. CUE does not pretend to judge or value the artistic quality of the participants’ actions, but to provide an experience that is recreational, reinvigorating, disinhibitory/disinhibiting, just as Angel Maria Gonzalez said: “a place where to spend a good time”, without any further aim than “to make life more pleasant”. CUE is more a disco than a museum or an art gallery.

CUE is active since more than one year now, having carried out 13 editions, but I think it’s still very very difficult to find the proper words or concepts to define it. All the texts we have written for the web of for presenting CUE to the institutions are nonetheless the result of a bureaucratic need, and to be sincere, since the moment those texts have been there, their presence and visibility has just been irritating me. We have not done yet CUE Madrid, but we are already trying to explain to the people of Madrid what CUE is. With the following words, my aim is to make the point about which, in my opinion, are the contradictions implied by CUE, contradictions that need to be made clear, overall with regard to the people who organise this event.

CUE deals with a point of departure, that we could define as the basic rules of the game. For sure, these points of departure have no other purpose than allowing a context of action, a table game where who wants to participate to CUE has the possibility of deciding on his or her own what is CUE. Thus, what we call the concept of CUE is indeed nothing more than an excuse in order to make everything possible to happen, as opening a hole in the darkness to allow light to enter, but how much light and which kind of light will not be decided by CUE, because what CUE cares about is just to keep that hole as much open as possible.

One of the basic points of CUE is the one of interaction. We announce CUE as a place of meeting where the participants have to face each other in order to keep open a communication channel. During the last CUE Berlin (4th April 2008) I realized a very important thing, just in the moment of going to the bathroom. Although I was inside it, I could still feel the sounds that were generating into the main room, even if I didn’t know exactly if that sort of interaction and communication was really taking place, nor I knew if the participants really cared about it at all, for sure in some unexplainable way I understood better than ever what CUE is. Words don’t help me to express what I got to realize when I went out of the bathroom and I found myself again with all that people “making things together”, without any apparent order nor regulated interaction, just a chaotic structure of small, multiple actions.

Maybe what I realized is that interaction and communication are not about looking to each other and trying to find a common point of balance where everything can sound as better as possible: indeed, maybe it’s just the opposite. The interaction and communication produced during CUE is in fact about chaos, disorder and simultaneity, that CUE itself ends up putting together in some kind of relationship. There will always be this kind of unity which is CUE itself, no matter what is happening, or if the participants are indeed trying to communicate or not, CUE always ends up putting all the small pieces together into itself. CUE is as much order and free communication, scrupulous interaction and chaos and disorder, anarchist party, explosion of individualities, ability of disregarding the others and tolerating chaos.

On the 9th of May CUE Madrid will start: thus, one month before that start, I would like to draw some further attention on the issues I’ve been telling until now. We still don’t know what is CUE and even less we know what it will be in Madrid, where it has not taken place yet, and where it will for sure be different from what it has been in Berlin.

CUE is the project of a space open to spontaneous expression and interdisciplinary improvisation. It was born out of a lack: the need for places where to experiment new ways of expressing oneself, within a performative context where the actions have not necessarily to deal exclusively with artistic practises, but where instead all sorts of expression can be more than welcomed.

Why do we behave as we behave? CUE invites its participants/users to set aside all codes of behaviour that use to censor, educate and repress, while trying to take out or produce a much more spontaneous and hazardous behaviour. The aim of CUE is not to communicate a result to a public, nor to create a product, but to make available the necessary tools for the participants to enjoy their time. To enjoy while doing. CUE invites its participants to get disinhibited from whatever restrains the potentiality of our gestures.

SPIELPLATZ, ANARCHIC PARTY

Participation in a collective game where what is sought is an immediate communication, that is new and always unstable.

Enjoyment, disinhibition, loss of one’s fears, creation of an environment that allows people to feel comfortable (without any pressure of judgement). Autonomy.

To liberate expression from its being in a merchandise condition, that is about show business and consumption.

A problem: people who arrive with the expectation of “attending a show”.

The society of CUE: related to the last chapter (named “to compose”) of J .Attali’s book “Noises”.

CUE is an open project, in constant search of its own meaning. Being aware of its utopian aspiration and the conditions where it actually takes place, it’s still to be understood if this project could somehow be considered as a proposal for another possible social organisation, where to shape new relationships with oneself and the others. In which kind of society would we like to live? How to make community through the principle of cultural autonomy?

To conceive CUE as the project of an ideal society based on the values of autonomy and tolerance: acceptance of the others and ability of set them aside (that are the only rules or principles of CUE). To make community: new relationships with oneself and the others.

Enjoyment, disinhibition, loss of one’s fears, creation of an environment that allows people to feel comfortable (without any pressure of judgement). Autonomy.

CULTURAL AUTONOMY. Subversion, To create differences.

PROBLEM: How can cohabitation be possible in a society where there are no given rules nor a director, and the individuals guide themselves only through the principle of individual enjoyment? How to integrate what takes place in CUE? When two individual enjoyments shock between each other and interfere? To say it with Attali: the answer is autonomy and tolerance. For CUE the questions are: How to make participants’ actions not to crash into each other? How to stir up the communication when there are no rules for it?

¿ How to understand the interferences? Different actions take place at the same time. What happens if one or more participants do not agree with the decisions/actions taken by other participants?

There are two kinds of interferences: positive and negative (in both cases it’s CUE)

• the positive ones are the result of a simultaneity of actions, that is the result of an intentional or unintentional communication, or just the fact that at the same time different actions take place without provoking any sort of problem on both sides: harmony of differences.
• the negative ones: when at least one participant gets to feel uncomfortable with the actions made by someone else.

SOLUTION: communication, to find an agreement with the other participant. How? It depends on the autonomy of every participant, that is everyone is responsible of stimulating this sort of communication.

How to understand tolerance?

Practical examples: generally it happens to involve music, complaints because its volume is too high, or maybe just unpleasant.