Jorge Rodriguez Gerada

www​.art​jam​mer​.com
Barcelona, Spain

Curbs and Stoops: What is your back­ground in art?

Jorge Rodriguez Ger­ada: Since I was a lit­tle boy I was inter­ested in cre­at­ing things. I always had a love for draw­ing and I really got involved in art when I was in high school. After that, I went to a mul­ti­cul­tural col­lege in Jer­sey City, NJ where I met the future mem­bers of Art­fux. We got together as a group and started chang­ing bill­boards in order to bring atten­tion to the prob­lem of dis­pro­por­tion­ate adver­tis­ing of dam­ag­ing prod­ucts (get drunk quick bev­er­ages and men­thol cig­a­rette brands) in poor minor­ity areas. We also staged socially charged street actions and per­for­mances. We wanted to make a change.

Curbs and Stoops: Who are some other artists (dead or alive) that you admire?

Jorge Rodrigues Ger­ada: I admire artists from dif­fer­ent peri­ods because of how they have impacted me at dif­fer­ent times in my life. Leonardo da Vinci, Jean Giraud, Mar­cel Duchamp, John Heart­field, Ana Mendi­eta, Chris Bur­den, Bar­bara Kruger, Mark Pauline, Christo and Jeanne-​Claude, Joseph Beuys and Anselm Kiefer are each a lit­tle part of me as an artist. With my con­tem­po­raries I would have to say that Swoon, Blu, and Marc Jenk­ins have impressed me not only with what they say with what they cre­ate, but also because of who they are as people.

Curbs and Stoops: Can you explain “cul­ture jam­ming”, “art jam­ming” and how that came about?

Jorge Rodriguez Ger­ada: Cul­ture Jam­ming is “The prac­tice of par­o­dy­ing adver­tise­ments and hijack­ing bill­boards in order to dras­ti­cally alter their mes­sage” (No Logo, Klein, p280). Early on I came up with the pseu­do­nym Art­jam­mer sim­ply because I was an artist and cul­ture jam­mer. I don’t use it much nowa­days except for my web­site address.

Curbs and Stoops: How did that begin and how has you work evolved since that era?

Jorge Rodriguez Ger­ada: Art­fux started as a bunch of art stu­dents that decided to join up to con­tinue pro­duc­ing con­tro­ver­sial art­work after we were spot­lighted on CNN and other national news­casts. All this atten­tion came from putting together a lit­tle col­lege art exhi­bi­tion focus­ing on the issue of flag burn­ing called “Flag­ging our Free­dom”. We real­ized that the media was very inter­ested in what we were doing. We fig­ured that there were other issues that could use this type of media atten­tion and all we had to do was “spin”. The bill­board alter­ations from this time are among my favorites because there was a very clear goal and plan of action. We would ille­gally alter or replace a tobacco or alco­hol ad with a new state­ment and image that spoke about the neg­a­tive effects of these prod­ucts. We would then send out press releases with pho­tos of our exploits. We received a mas­sive amount of atten­tion. Most of the time the press would either print our press releases directly or send a reporter. We con­sid­ered it a vic­tory every time a news­pa­per, mag­a­zine or news­cast let us stand on our soap­box to address this social ill. I like to think that we at least gave a nudge to help get rid of tobacco bill­board adver­tis­ing in the U.S. As I walked that path I became more aware and crit­i­cal of the world around me. With­out the counter cul­ture com­mu­nity that once flour­ished in NYC and the sur­round­ing area I would not be the artist or per­son that I am today.

I then started my solo phase. It was around the time that adver­tis­ers started to par­ody cul­ture jam­ming in their cam­paigns. The Cap­tain Mor­gan Rum ads which stated “The cap­tain was here” after the Cap­tain painted red mus­taches on mer­ry­mak­ers being the sil­li­est exam­ple. It was also a time when I began to feel that cul­ture jam­ming was being under­mined by peo­ple who became addicted to the media atten­tion that their jams brought them. I sensed that a good amount of these peo­ple were not try­ing to reach a spe­cific goal with their actions, they were just putting up jokes. Some didn’t even have an idea as to why they would attack ads from a cer­tain com­pany. It was just the thing to do. Bill­board alter­ation had for some become a styl­is­tic device used to bring atten­tion to them­selves and as a side effect did noth­ing more than give added prod­uct recog­ni­tion to what was sup­posed to be jammed. In my new direc­tion I decided not to allow any prod­uct recog­ni­tion at all. Rev­erend Calvin Butts had it right all along. But as an artist it was not very sat­is­fy­ing to just paint the bill­board white like Rev­erend Butts. I needed to some­how make it more poetic.

Curbs and Stoops: For almost a decade or so you have been doing large scale inter­ven­tions in pub­lic spaces called the Iden­tity series. Where did this series grow from? Where do you see that going?

Jorge Rodriguez Ger­ada: When I came to Europe seven years ago I started a new direc­tion. I was no longer using their logos, I was no longer using their images, I was no longer using their bill­boards. I wanted to focus on the uni­ver­sal themes and effects of adver­tis­ing. I wanted to be crit­i­cal of the mar­ket­ing that has crept into so many facets of our lives. I wanted to use the same codes used by adver­tis­ers (scale, vis­i­bil­ity) but with­out hav­ing to involve them or their infra­struc­ture directly. I wanted these new iconic images to be huge and placed in city cen­ters. The need for per­mis­sions and per­mits became appar­ent early on. After many tests with dif­fer­ent medi­ums I found char­coal. The part that intrigues me is the part that is metaphor­i­cal. The char­coal fades away and becomes a mem­ory, like the warmth after an embrace. The blend­ing of the char­coal and the wall sur­face with the wind, rain or the sud­den destruc­tion of the wall is ulti­mately the most impor­tant part of the process. My intent is to have iden­tity, place and mem­ory become one. The amount of work that I do impresses the peo­ple because they all of a sud­den have an icon that is con­firm­ing the impor­tance of their exis­tence. But it is also jar­ring because we have become unac­cus­tomed to think that it is worth doing a lot of work unless we have direct compensation.

I have recently come up with new direc­tions that I am excited about. I feel that that are com­pli­men­tary to the Iden­tity Series. The Expec­ta­tion project is the first of a series of earth works that I have planned. The Com­pos­ite Iden­tity project that was cre­ated with the help of the Uni­ver­si­tat Autonoma de Barcelona will allow me to cre­ate an inter­est­ing direc­tion in sculpture.

Curbs and Stoops: How do you pick the sub­ject of your portraits?

Jorge Rodriguez Ger­ada: It is impor­tant to choose some­one who has a sense of belong­ing to the place where they live. I wait in cafes, I approach peo­ple walk­ing their dogs, I hang out in libraries and I shop in stores. It is dif­fer­ent every time.

Curbs and Stoops: Your wife is also an artist, how does shar­ing a life with another artist affect your work?

Jorge Rodriguez Ger­ada: Yeah, I got lucky on that one. I have some­one that I can trust who doc­u­ments the work I do. She is a tal­ented pho­tog­ra­pher and video maker. We work as a team. When Ana has a project I become her tech­ni­cal sup­port. We also decided not to sep­a­rate our art careers from our daily life. Actu­ally there is no delin­eation between our cre­ative life and our fam­ily life. Our chil­dren are grow­ing up involved in every­thing we do.

Curbs and Stoops: You are orig­i­nally from Cuba, mar­ried to an Argen­tine, raised in Amer­ica and liv­ing in Barcelona. Where do you call home?

Jorge Rodriguez Ger­ada: Right now I’m call­ing Barcelona home more than any­where else, but I know New York City so well and my per­sonal growth was so influ­enced by it that I will always find rea­sons to be there.

Curbs and Stoops: It sounds like you had a hec­tic upbring­ing. Are there any par­tic­u­lar sto­ries that you’d like to share that impact some aspect of your life today?

Jorge Rodriguez Ger­ada: I come from a Cuban exile fam­ily that moved to the United States when I was three years old. My par­ents were not in the least polit­i­cally minded. I real­ized in my mid twen­ties that the main rea­son that they decided to leave Cuba when I was an infant was because they did not want me or my two older broth­ers to grow up under the then newly imple­mented sys­tem of con­trol. The Com­mit­tee for the Defense of the Rev­o­lu­tion is a one-​of-​a-​kind sys­tem that serves as the regimes eyes and ears on every block in Cuba. This sys­tem of block watch­ers is still in place through out Cuba today. My father cut sugar cane in con­cen­tra­tion camp con­di­tions for three years in order to get our visas. I thank him every time I get a chance. I was one of the first His­panic immi­grants to enroll at my local school sys­tem. Most of the kids had Ital­ian, Irish or some other Euro­pean back­ground. I was bul­lied a lot for being a “spic”. I rebelled against speak­ing Span­ish in order to fit in with the other kids. My par­ents were very upset about all this but because they were both work­ing two jobs to make ends meet, those kinds of things just sort of slipped on by. I didn’t try to speak Span­ish again until I was in col­lege. By then my Span­ish was mostly lost. The Amer­i­can “melt­ing pot” has its pros and cons. There is a good amount of writ­ing about the homog­e­niz­ing effects of the US school sys­tem and how that sys­tem leaves immi­grant chil­dren lost in a cul­tural limbo as adults. My fas­ci­na­tion with the con­cept of iden­tity (and its fragility) is not unique for artists raised as immi­grants in the US.

Curbs and Stoops: If some­one wants to find out more about you, where can they go? Do you have a book of your works pub­lished? Website?

Jorge Rodriguez Ger­ada: I don’t have a book out yet but I have doc­u­mented my work in a spe­cific way for that very pur­pose. I should have some­thing together soon. My web­site is www​.art​jam​mer​.com. There are some videos at http://​www​.youtube​.com/​u​s​e​r​/​f​i​l​m​c​h​i​c​k​p​r​o​d​u​c​t​i​ons and you can always puy my name into your pre­ferred search engine to see what comes up.

Curbs and Stoops: Famous last words? Advice?

Jorge Rodriguez Ger­ada: Empathic con­cern for one another is the most impor­tant fac­tor in steer­ing us away from disaster.