Lilibeth Cuenca Rasmussen’s anthropological studies in video art

By Lotte Juul Petersen


During the 60s video art raised itself to the aura of art. However, video art crosses often the spectator’s aesthetic expectation by automatically twisting the traditional art form.
Instead video art draws out genres like film/TV, documentary, music video, talk shows, soap opera, experimental film, montage plus adaptation of theatre, literature and visual art (Kristine Kern, Video/Film, in Passepartout, p.13).
Lilibeth Cuenca Rasmussen (born 1970, Filipino/Danish video artist) works primarily with a documentary and anthropological approach to the media. Despite of the documentary inspiration Lilibeth Cuenca seeks to twist the objective genre in her own subtle aesthetic expression by playing with splitscreens, auditory and visual repetition, lyric montage and animation. Lilibeth Cuenca deals with issues of belongings and identity, gender and socio cultural relations. She has often taken departure in her own double cultural background and her family. But some of her videos are also characterized as an anthropological study that describes with her own personal angel chosen belongings, which this article seeks to look at.


Identity and belongings

Get Your Motor Running (2003-04, DVD, 34 min.) threats the ritual and social behaviour that surrounds the milieu of bikers, which constitute a commune identity. The video is a humorous and insightful portrait of the sub cultural environment.
Lilibeth Cuenca has interviewed the married couple, Ketty and Tom Haasum, who own a motorbike shop. They explain each personally the significance of the biker milieu. The man tells especially about his passion of having technical control and how he can tame his bike like an animal. In contrast the woman’s interest is especially strengthened by the social gatherings only for women driving bikes. Lilibeth Cuenca poses questions to issues about gender difference in the environment.
The video is divided into ten chapters. It starts playing the stereotype masculine “Born to wild” written by Steppenwolf, while anonymous persons on motorbikes introduce the first scene. Surprisingly, thee anonymous persons are women.
The different chapters describe social rituals, the dress code, shows, races and competition, which create identity in the community. Many of the rituals from the men’s gatherings have been adapted to the women’s such as striptease, competition showing your strength and rock & roll concerts plus an extreme drinking culture. Lilibeth has cut these different sequences to rhythm and music. The women enjoy the social gathering, when they play, compete and celebrate together. Lilibeth Cuenca underlines ironically the social atmosphere among the women by playing the feminine pop song ”Girls just want to have fun”. The women’s gathering does not forbid anything. Everything is allowed. Although the women behave completely different when they coexist at the gatherings with the men, they do not feel subjugated in this environment.
Besides the rituals, Lilibeth Cuenca illuminates as well the great significance the dress code (leather jackets, signs etc.) has for the creation of identity and belongings.
Through the cloth you wear a certain identity in contrast to the anonymous everyday life’s ordinary casual clothes. The dress code has great significance at the gatherings, because it indicates an identity and belongings.

Lilibeth Cuenca describes also the race where men and women show their courage and compete against each other. In this connection Lilibeth Cuenca illuminates the equality between men and women. At first sight you may believe that there are many prejudices against women’s capacity of physical strength and courage, there is actually a mutual respect. Lilibeth Cuenca uses in a subtle way repetition of the filming, when they start the race. As Ketty Haasum also says: “When you start the race, the bike leaves petrol on the course. It can be seen as you mark your territory like a dog.”
In sum, the video gives an insightful and ironic description of the environment, which is often represented as masculine domain. Another video shows Lilibeth Cuenca anthropological approach to art.

Shout (2002, DVD, 4.34 min.) deals with a christen ceremony. 2-3000 people are gathered in an indoor stadium in Manila at the Philippines, where Lilibeth Cuenca has grown up in her early childhood. At first sight the gathering looks like a concert or a football match, which a lot of people enjoy together. But the ceremony is actually a religious event for the so-called “Born again Christian” movement.
Through different rituals such as movement, shout, dance and facial expression, the video shows some of the deep emotions connected to these kinds of gatherings.
As a viewer you recognize this event how each person experiences sorrow and happiness.
Via the disorientating cutting technique the viewer focuses both on the whole group but also on different persons, who repeat physical movements while going through mental states. The cutting techniques seduce the viewer as if you were a part of the gathering at the tribunes. The video is cut in relation to the music made by the Christen Filipino pop star, Gary Valenciano. The video reminds you of the music video genre but when you approach the work deeper, it opens you up for the anthropological dimension of this religious gathering.

The Christen movement ”Born again Christian” originates from American missionaries, who spread it to the Philippines. The movement’s religious persuasion is very strict in the sense that the words of God are the most important and religious iconographic representations are strictly forbidden. The only truth is the words of God from the bible. “Born again Christian” rejects the intense use of iconography, which exists in Catholicism. In the Philippines a strong catholic tradition has ruled since the Spanish Inquisition around the 14. Century. Therefore the movement “Born Again Christian” has become a huge popularity in the Philippines.

The video illustrates exactly in an anthropological way the ceremony: dance, song, shout, praying, which forms a sublime celebration to God with many different people. It is not only a private contact to God. In contrast, God is celebrated in an overwhelming social atmosphere. The socio-cultural investigation of the individual versus the mass and how this ceremony creates an existential meaning is the primary message in the video.

Identity and belongings is different from person to person depending on age, social status and culture. Religion has not the same significance in Denmark as at the Philippines. In Denmark you have freedom to choose religion or not. In the Philippines religion is seen as a necessity and support in life.
Lilibeth Cuenca illuminates this significant cultural difference; both from a fascinating point of view but also with an ironic distance in the representation of the ceremony as a music video with the religious pop singer from the Philippines. In the same way she describes the bikers with great fascination but also with great irony. But nevertheless Lilibeth Cuenca shows with these anthropological investigations the significance and the variety of socio cultural constructions. Belongings in general give existential frames and values for the individuals.