FIRST LANDING I Madrid I Kazuo Ohno. “The last year of university, I secured my first job ever in El Público magazine by the Ministry of Culture of Spain. I guess I was the youngest staff writer in national media for performing arts. I was assigned to contemporary theater including Robert Wilson, Laurie Anderson, La Fura dels Baus, and the National Center for New Performing Arts. Then I was intivied to join Bufons tour in Latin America with work inspired by Kazuo Ohno. Later, in New York, I saw Sankai Juku at Brooklyn Academy of Music, and I thought that was a world where I belonged to.
SECOND LANDING I Barcelona. Joan Brossa. I found in art books another inspiring figure: Joan Brossa. In my view, one of the most unique artists in Spain. CCCB celebrated Brossa’s “vast and fragmentary galaxy of artists that expanded enormously the poetic expression, and impacted on other creative fields.” Barcelona draw the path to the avant-garde and built a bridge to New York.
THIRD LANDING I New York. Robert Wilson. PhD dissertation Study of Robert Wilson’s Crreative Process developed as book series. I received the highest grant of the year from the Ministry of Culture (Fulbright the following year) to study filmmaking in New York, where I did the main research and writing, studying The Black Mountain College (John Cage, Robert Rauschenberg, Merce Cunningham, et al) and The Theater of Images (Robert Wilson, Richard Foreman, Lee Brauer). I worked for three years with Robert Wilson. That’s another story.” —Pedro Valiente [Text from Early Work]
Aliens Landed in My Life
BOOK SERIES Robert Wilson. Planetary Performing Arts (2005) published by Ñaque Ed. I Suspended Time Space. Robert Wilson’s Creative Process upcoming. I SITE: University I PhD I Books I Articles I Robert Wilson BEHANCE: University I PhD I Book 01 I Book 02 I Theater
[Spanish: Audiovisual I English: Film/Media] I Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain Study of Robert Wilson’s Creative Process is a PhD dissertation on director/artist Robert Wilson work (Part 1), and creative process (Part 2). DISSERTATION Original Title: Estudio del proceso de creación en la obra de Robert Wilson. LANGUAGE: Spanish. AUTHOR: Pedro Valiente. DIRECTOR: José Ramón Pérez Ornia. PROGRAM: Audiovisual Creativity and Production. UNIVERSITY: Department of Audiovisual Communication and Publicity, Faculty of Information Sciences, Universidad Complutense de Madrid. PRESENTATION: December 2000. Jury by PhD professors from four Spanish universities. Highest grade: unanimous cum laude [sobresaliente cum laude por unanimidad]. PUBLISHED: Eprints UCM.
Writing for Feature Films (on-site semester) by Loren Paul Caplin (US), writer/senior professor at Columbia University.
Writing for Film (on-site course) by Marsha Kinder (US), Emerita Professor of Critical Studies at University of Southern California (USC), and University of California, LA (UCLA)
Writing for Television (on-site course) by Doc Comparato (Brazil), writer based in Portugal
—Shared program by MA Screenwriting and MA Cinema Studies by Fundación Viridiana at Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
Books I Writing I Academic Writing I PhD I Articles
TRANSMEDIA
Transmedia Arts & Technology seminar by metaLAB, Harvard University, US I metaLAB
FILMMAKING
Introduction to Film Directing César Pesquera
Development of Fiction Series Hernán Caffiero
Directing Experimental Short Films Jiajie Yu Yan
CINEMATOGRAPHY
Advanced Cinematography Techniques David Curto
Introduction to Film Photography Direction David Curto
Cinematography With Natural Light Alvin Sjödin
Basic Lighting for Audiovisual Projects Enrique Silguero
WRITING
Screenwriting for Television HaJ House
Screenwriting for Film and Television Julio Rojas
Creative Writing Shaun Levin
Writing a Novel Cristina García Barrio
PHOTOGRAPHY
Photomontage and Creative Retouching Carles Marsal
Photography for Social Media Cecilia Pertusi I Marina Dobón
Introduction to Digital Photography Jesús G. Pastor
Introduction to Photoshop Carles Marsal
DANCE
Japanese Butoh Dance Bob DeNatale I YouTube
PhD cum laude Audiovisual Creativity and Production Universidad Complutense de Madrid [Audiovisual: Film/Media] I Eprint
MA Cinema Studies Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
MA Journalism Universidad Complutense de Madrid
BA Journalism Universidad Complutense de Madrid
University Expert Photojournalism & Photo Editing Universidad Complutense de Madrid
Diploma on Filmmaking New York Film Academy
PERFORMING ARTS
New York: ‘Theater of Images‘ (residence) with director Robert Wilson, Contemporary Dance (classes) at Trisha Brown Dance Company, (residence) with Japanese Butoh master Atsushi Takenouchi
VISUAL ART
UK: Photography I Drawing (workshops) at Arts University Plymouth I Jordan: Contemporary Dance, Digital Art (workshops), 2D Animation (studies)
[THIS SECTION IS WORK-IN-PROGRESS]
ROBERT WILSON The Black Mountain College with John Cage, Robert Rauschenberg, Merce Cunningham. Theater of Images Robert Wilson, Richard Foreman, Lee Brauer JOAN BROSSA “Poet, playwright, graphic designer, and visual artist, one of the founders of the art group Dau-al-Set, and leading early exponent of visual poetry in Catalan literature.” [Joan Brossa] KAZUO OHNO “In the 50s, Kazuo Ohno met Tatsumi Hijikata, who inspired him to begin cultivating Butoh, originally called Ankoku Butoh, the Dance of Utter Darkness.” [Kazuo Ohno]
VISIONARIES Alfred Jarry, Adolph Appia, Edward Gordon Craig, Oscar Schlemmer THEATER OF THE ABSURD Eugène Ionesco, Samuel Beckett THEATER MASTERS Anton Chekhov, Arthur Miller, Henrik Ibsen, Oscar Wilde I David Mamet, Sam Shepard POETS: Antonin Artaud, Bertolt Brecht, Peter Brook ARTISTS La Fura dels Baus SPAIN Federico García Lorca, Sergi Belbel, Juan Mayorga DANCE MASTERS Martha Graham, Merce Cunningham, Trisha Brown, Pina Bausch ARTISTS Netherlands Dans Theater, La La La Human Steps, DV8, Chunky Move
CLASSICS Shakespeare, Cervantes MASTERS George Orwell, J.D. Salinger, Virginia Woolf, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, Jack Kerouak, Tom Wolfe I William Blake, Walt Whitman, Edgar Allan Poe, Sylvia Plath, T. S. Eliot, Percy B. Shelley I Mark Twain, James Joyce, Arthur Miller, Albert Camus, Franz Kafka I Aldous Huxley, Lewis Carroll I Haruki Murakami IN SPANISH Julio Cortázar, Jorge Luis Borges, Gabriel García Márquez, Juan Rulfo, Vicente Huidobro, Pablo Neruda, Dulce María Loynaz
LUIS BUÑUEL with financial assistance from his mother and creative assistance from Dalí, made in Paris his first film, An Andalusian Dog.” [IMDb] FEDERICO FELLINI “Women who both attracted and frightened him, and the Italy of Mussolini and Pope Pius XII, inspired the dreams that he in the 60s.” [IMDb] DAVID LYNCH “Born in the small-town American pictured in his films, he spent his childhood from one state to another.” [IMDb] PEDRO ALMODÓVAR “The most internationally acclaimed Spanish filmmaker since Luis Buñuel, born in La Mancha, arrived in Madrid in 1968, and bought a Super 8 camera.” [IMDb]
EARLY CINEMA Lumiere Brothers, George Méliès, Serguei Eisenstein, Fritz Lang, DW Griffith, John Ford MOVEMENTS German expressionism, French nouvelle vague, Italian neorealism, American direct cinema MASTERS Ingmar Bergman, Francois Truffaut, Akira Kurosawa I Jean-Luc Godard, Alfred Hitchcock I Stanley Kubrick, Martin Scorsese SPAIN Víctor Erice, El verdugo by Luis García Berlanga Berlanga, Julio Medem MEXICO Alejandro G. Iñárritu, Guillermo del Toro, Alfonso Cuarón, Guillermo Arriaga KOREA Kim Ki-duk, Bon Joon-ho, Park Chang-wook ASIA Wong Kar-wai, Hayao Miyazaki WORLD CINEMA Latin America, Africa, et al US Jim Jarmusch, Spike Lee, Joel & Ethan Coen, Wes Anderson, Paul Thomas Anderson, Todd Solondz, Todd Haynes
PABLO PICASSO ”From Naturalism through Cubism, Surrealism and beyond, Picasso shaped modern and contemporary art.” [Pablo Picasso Museum] CLASSICS Fra Angélico & Pre-Renaissance Art, Leonardo da Vinci & Renaissance Art MASTERS Velázquez, Goya MODERN Surrealism, Dada. Marcel Duchamp, Francis Picabia CONTEMPORARY Frida Kahlo, Richard Serra, Jean-Michel Basquiat ARCHITECTURE Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Lloyd Wright, Antoni Gaudi I Rem Koolhaas, I. M. Pei, Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid PHOTO Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Capa, Man Ray, Dorothea Lange, Tina Modotti, Cindy Sherman, Annie Leibovitz, Cistina García Rodero VIDEO ART Nam June Paik, Wolf Wostell, Bill Viola, Bruce Nauman, Matthew Barney INSTALLATION ART Damien Hirst, Ai Weiwei, Olafur Eliasson, Kayoi Kusama, Chiharu Shiota
NK Studio, EK Theater CENTERS: NASA, Arts at CERN, MIT MediaLab, metaLAB Harvard University, FabLab
MADRID Two terms in Madrid as a media student/junior theater writer, and years later as filmmaker/lecturer. I FIRST TERM: “Right before graduating from the university, I collaborated with Bufons theater-dance company, and with Guillermo Heras at a national theater. In my early career at El Público theater magazine, I worked with Gerardo Fernández, Argentine opera expert; poet Juan Abeleira, writer Rosalía Gómez; also, playwright José Ramón Fernández, editor Fernando Bercebal, and writer Alfonso Domingo. Directing Tilmun Teatro university theater company, I met talent as actress director Natalia Menéndez, playwrights Julio Escalada (later recommended my work on Robert Wilson to RESAD) and Pedro Víllora (praised Tilmun Teatro). I SECOND TERM: Years later, in Crossing Stages UC3M European arts project, I worked with an incredible team: General manager Sonsoles Herreros Laviña, artistic dtor. Sergio Blanco, dance dtor. Eva Sanz, theater dtor. Abel G. Melo; coordinators Paloma Zavala, Laura G. Cortón, Alfredo Miralles, Irene Gómez; artists Javier Gorostiza, Javier Chavarría, Eloy Segura, et al.
NEW YORK Anne Bogart, theater director/professor at Columbia University, accepted to supervise my PhD dissertation on Robert Wilson. Richard Schechner, theater director/professor at New York University, accepted me for Theater Summer Program at Tisch School of the Arts. I attended workshops at Trisha Brown Dance Company, and Butoh dance by Atsushi Takenouchi. In New York and Italy, working for The Days Bofore by Robert Wilson, I worked with Isabella Rossellini, Fiona Shaw, and Dominique Sanda. I met Philip Glass, Sussan Sontag, and Salman Rushdie. Above all, I worked with a great team: Urs Schonebaum Carlos Soto, Koken Ergun, Daniela Balsamo, Anna Bortolloni, Restu Imansari, María Bacardi, Inés Somellera, Susie Lim, et al.” —PV I Visual Theater I Early Work I Theater Training
“MADRID For PhD, I worked with scholars Jesús González Requena and Antonio Lara. My supervisor, José Ramón Pérez Ornia, was dtor. of Telemadrid, dtor. of video art program for RTVE, and video art curator for MNCARS. INTERNATIONAL For MA Cinema Studies, we shared two workshops with MA Screenwriting: Writing for Television by Brazilian writer Doc Comparato, and Writing for Film by Marsha Kinder, USC Emerita Professor of Critical Studies. Prof. Kinder, who wrote a recommendation letter for me, coined the work transmedia in the arts. NEW YORK, I attended a semester for Writing Feature Films by Loren Paul Caplin at Columbia University. For Filmmaking Diploma, Screenwriting by Michael Young, and Film Production by Heng-Tatt Lim at New York Film Academy.” —PV
MADRID BA Journalism, MA Cinema Studies. Design awards including Arts (Aula 7) and University Theater Festival (El Corte Inglés). NEW YORK Artwork and projects including ’Cuba in New York’ exhibition at Williamsburg Art & Historical Center; and film screenings at MoMA and Whitney Biennial. UK I Attending Digital Photo and Life Drawing courses at Arts University Plymouth. JORDAN Attending Visual Art courses at SAE Institute, Amman.
“The year I finished university, I met three maestros in memoriam: Moisés Pérez Coterillo, who knew more about theater than anyone, gave me my first job as writer for El Público. José Heredia Malla, writer/director, figure in the Gypsy community in Granada. And Marta Tatjer, arts promoter in Barcelona. Later, I met César Gil, RTVE producer, who took over Tilmun Teatro when I moved to New York. I also met writer Vicente Molina Foix when he wrote Don Juan Último directed by Robert Wilson, and invited him as a jury for a film festival in Mexico. I worked for film director Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón as collaborator in New York for Fundación Autor. Thank you all.” —PV