EDUCATION
“PhD Audiovisual Creativity and Production cum laude. Training in Filmmaking in New York and Visual Art in the UK. In Performing Arts, practice with Robert Wilson and Trisha Brown Dance Company. Engagements with MIT/Harvard University. Highest Fulbright grant of the year in Spain.”
University
PhD Audiovisual Creativity and Production, MA Journalism, BA Journalism at Universidad Complutense de Madrid. MA Cinema Studies at Universidad Autónoma de Madrid.
Training
Training including Transmedia Arts & Technology (online) by metaLAB/Harvard University. In New York, Filmmaking at New York Film Academy, Screenwriting at Columbia University; and Performing Arts: Robert Wilson, Trisha Brown Dance Company, Atsushi Takenouchi. In UK, Visual Art at Arts University Plymouth.
FIRST LANDING | Madrid | Kazuo Ohno
”In my final year of university, I secured my first job at El Público, a magazine run by Spain's Ministry of Culture. I was likely the youngest staff writer in national media focused on performing arts. My assignments covered contemporary theater, including Robert Wilson, Laurie Anderson, La Fura dels Baus, and the National Center for New Performing Arts. I was later invited to join Bufons' Latin American tour, inspired by Kazuo Ohno.’s work. Eventually, in New York, I saw Sankai Juku perform at Brooklyn Academy of Music, and realized I had found a world where I truly belonged.
SECOND LANDING | Barcelona | Joan Brossa
While exploring art books, I discovered another influential figure: Joan Brossa, one of Spain's most unique artists. CCCB (Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona) celebrated Brossa’s "vast and fragmentary galaxy" of works, which deeply expanded poetic expression and impacted many creative fields. Barcelona served as a bridge to the avant-garde, ultimately leading me to New York.
THIRD LANDING | New York | Robert Wilson
My PhD dissertation Study of Robert Wilson’s Creative Process developed into a book series. I was awarded the highest grant of the year from the Ministry of Culture (which turns into the Fulbright program the next year) to study filmmaking in New York. During my time there, I conducted research on the Black Mountain College —John Cage, Robert Rauschenberg, Merce Cunningham, et al—, and the Theater of Images —Robert Wilson, Richard Foreman, Lee Brauer—. I spent three years working closely with Robert Wilson. An experience that deserves its own story.” — Pedro Valiente [Text from Early Work]
Aliens Landed in My Life
UNIVERSITY
• PhD Audiovisual Creativity and Production [Film/Medial] cum laude Universidad Complutense de Madrid
[Spanish: Audiovisual. 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. Grade: summa cum laude [sobresaliente cum laude por unanimidad]. PUBLISHED: UCM Eprints.
BOOK SERIES Robert Wilson. Planetary Performing Arts (2005) published by Ñaque Ed. I Suspended Time Space. Robert Wilson’s Creative Process upcoming.
— Robert Wilson I PhD I Books I University
• MA Cinema Studies Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
• MA Journalism CM Santillana, Universidad Complutense de Madrid
• BA Journalism UCM
• Diploma Photo Journalism & Photo Editing UCM
• Diploma Filmmaking New York Film Academy, New York
Filmmaking I Media
TRAINING
• Writing Feature Films (onsite semester) by Loren Paul Caplin (US), writer/senior professor at Columbia University, New York
• Writing for Film (onsite 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 (onsite course) by Doc Comparato (Brazil), writer based in Portugal.
Shared programs for MA Screenwriting and MA Cinema Studies, Fundación Viridiana, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid.
• Creative Writing (onsite workshop) by Eva López del Pino (Spain), writer, Eugenio Trías Public Library, Madrid.
— Writing
Writing
• Digital Photography Arts University Plymouth, UK
• Life Drawing Arts University Plymouth, UK
• Postproduction Media School, New York
• Digital Art SAE Institute I Alaa Khatib, Jordan
Visual Art
• Theater of Images Robert Wilson, The Watermill Center, New York
• Visual Theater The Wooster Group, New York
• Contemporary Dance Trisha Brown Dance Company, New York I Ryuji Yamaguchi, Shireen Talhouni, Jordan
• Butoh Dance Atsushi Takenouchi, New York
Visual Theater
TRANSMEDIA
• Transmedia Arts & Technology seminar by metaLAB, Harvard University, US
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
ONLINE COURSES
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
FILM / ART PROJECT
• Projects Incubator (5 months program), Building a Film Production Company, Incubadora con Valores, Spain
SELECTED [WORK IN PROGRESS]
“In New York, I connected with artists who followed in the footsteps of the Black Mountain College and creators of the Theater of Images. Later in Madrid, I had the privilege of studying with the pioneer who coined the term ‘transmedia’ in the arts. Now, it’s time to navigate cyberspace.”
“My education is interdisciplinary, with a focus on blending film, media, and performing arts. My research, through a PhD Audiovisual Creativity and Production centered on Robert Wilson and the avant-garde, reflects a particular trajectory.
This path was further supported by an MA Cinema Studies from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, as well as a Diploma in Filmmaking from New York Film Academy, where I also coordinated International Relations. In addition to academic training, I gained hands-on experience in New York with Robert Wilson’s Theater of Images, The Wooster Group's Visual Theater, Trisha Brown Dance Company’s Contemporary Dance, and Atsushi Takenouchi's Butoh Dance."
"My background is rooted in multicultural experiences. I've lived in New York for over ten years, Mexico City for five, and the UK for nearly two. Much of my career has focused on developing new university programs. I’ve also pursued a range of specialized courses and workshops, including Visual Art in the UK, and recently completed more than fifteen online courses in Filmmaking, Visual Art, and Writing.
Selected training includes Digital Photography and Life Drawing (on-site at Arts University Plymouth), as well as Transmedia Arts & Technology (online through metaLAB at Harvard University). Most recently, I participated in Creative Writing (on-site workshop) and a Projects Incubator program (online) in Spain." —PV I Photo: White Wall
REFERENCES [NOT ALL THAT THERE IS]
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 SPAIN Valle-Inclán, Ramón Gómez de la Serna, Federico García Lorca, Sergi Belbel, La Fura dels Baus DANCE MASTERS Martha Graham, Merce Cunningham, Trisha Brown, Pina Bausch ARTISTS Netherlands Dans Theater, La La La Human Steps, DV8, Chunky Move
PERFORMING ARTS
CENTERS Arts at CERN, MIT MediaLab, metaLAB Harvard University, FabLab, NASA ARTISTS Engineering and Experiments in Arts & Technology (E.A.T), NK Studio, EK Theater, teamLab I Gustav Metzger, Anicka Yi, Angela Bullock, Amalia Ulman (Tate), Yoichiro Kawaguchi, Joshua Davis, Refik Anadol, Cory Arcangel, Petra Cortright, Daniel Rozin, Casey Reas, Ryoji Ikeda (Tiveable Library), Mike Winkelmann, Mad Dog Jones, Felix Klee, Refik Anadol, Pak, Takashi Murakami, Filip Custic, SMACK, Yannick Jacquet, Jonas Lund (RGBCORP)
TECHNOLOGY
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, 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
— Photo: © Kazuo Ohno Dance Studio I Fundació Joan Brossa I Robert Wilson RW Ltd.
FILMMAKING
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 Art, Minimal Art, 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
VISUAL ART
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, 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
WRITING
MAESTROS [ACKNOW-LEDGEMENTS]
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, invited me for an artist talk at RESAD), and Pedro Víllora (praised Tilmun Teatro). I SECOND TERM: Years later, in Crossing Stages UC3M European project, I worked with an great team including general manager Sonsoles Herreros Laviña, artistic dtor. Sergio Blanco, dance dtor. Eva Sanz, theater dtor. Abel González Melo; coordinators Alfredo Miralles, Irene Gómez, Paloma Zavala, Laura G. Cortón; artists Javier Gorostiza, Javier Chavarría, Eloy Segura, et al.
— Theater Training I Early Work I UC3M
PERFORMING ARTS
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 my application for Theater Summer Program at Tisch School of the Arts. I attended workshops by Trisha Brown Dance Company, and Butoh dance by Atsushi Takenouchi. In New York and Italy, collaborating for The Days Before DDDIII by Robert Wilson, I worked with Isabella Rossellini, Fiona Shaw, and Dominique Sanda. I met Philip Glass, Susan Sontag, and Salman Rushdie; and worked with an incredible team —Urs Schonebaum Carlos Soto, Koken Ergun, Daniela Balsamo, Anna Bortolloni, Susie Lim, Restu Imansari, María Bacardi, Inés Somellera, et al.” —PV
MADRID 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; film screenings at MoMA and Whitney Biennial. UK Digital Photo and Life Drawing courses, Arts University Plymouth.
VISUAL ART
MADRID Atttending a PhD program, work with scholars Jesús González Requena and Antonio Lara. Supervisor José Ramón Pérez Ornia was Telemadrid director, director of video art program for RTVE, and curated video art for Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía. INTERNATIONAL MA Cinema Studies program 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 me recommendation letter, coined the word transmedia in the arts. NEW YORK Writing Feature Films (semester course) by Loren Paul Caplin, Columbia University; Filmmaking (diploma) including Screenwriting by Michael Young, and Film Production by Heng-Tatt Lim, New York Film Academy.
— Filmmaking I NYFA
FILMMAKING
“The year I finished university, I met maestros in memoriam: Moisés Pérez Coterillo, who gave me my first job ever as writer for El Público; José Heredia Malla, artistic figure in Granada’s Gypsy community; 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 invited writer Vicente Molina Foix for a film festival jury in Mexico, and worked with director Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón as collaborator in New York for Fundación Autor. Thank you all.” —PV
