The impact of cinema was, since its invention, the prelude to a whole discipline that continues to this day in constant evolution. The strength of the image and the appeal of the visual narrative has come to displace in many schools of arts the interest for more traditional forms of artistic expression. The world of contemporary creation did not escape this trend, and cinema, already consecrated as such, has been opening the way to other experimental forms that use the moving image as the main language.

René Magritte, “The Son of Man”, 1964

Frame from the movie “The Thomas Crown Affair”, 1999

We continue today talking about the 7th art as an unmistakable label to designate the cinema, without knowing very well where the classification comes from and what are the other previous six arts. Although classifying-tradition goes back to the time of ancient Greece, cradle par excellence of an artistic and technical wealthiness, and which also has rich mythology-stories to cover explanations for all kinds on the deeds of humanity, at that time the categorisation of the arts was based on combining both intellectual and physical aspects, resulting in enumerations that today are difficult for us to understand. Afterwards, the Romans assimilated this same tradition. Cicero spoke of three orders of arts: "Major Arts": military policy and strategy; "Medium Arts": science, poetry and rhetoric, and "Minor Arts": painting, sculpture, music, performance and athletics.

Left: Frame from “Meet Joe Black”, 1998 / Right: Mark Rothko, “Blue, Orange, Red”, 1961 (image from ©wikiart)

After many changes over the centuries, the classification handled today was established by the Italian artist Ricciotto Canudo in his treatise "Manifesto of the seven arts", of 1911, where he fixes this order as follows: 1) architecture, 2 ) sculpture, 3) painting, 4) music 5) poetry/literature, 6) dance and 7) cinema, list that has recently been enlarged with new disciplines such as photography, comics, video games, costumes or theater.

Goya, “Saturn Devouring His Children”, 1819-1823 (image from ©wikimedia)

Frame from the movie “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps”, 2010

Beyond classifications, perhaps the cinema contains the potential to be a totalising art. Its capacity to refer all the other disciplines, to self-refer as well, and to be a vehicle of expression to which many multidisciplinary artists resort at one moment or another allows numerous readings and re-readings of the works. The seduction of the image tempts everyone and offers endless possibilities to capture new audiences and play with the fantasy of fiction. At the same time, it contains an accessible language and is an excellent way to recreate what has never been seen, what is not known or what has never existed.

Kandinsky, designs for “Der Blaue Reiter” almanac, 1911 (image from ©sammlungonline.lenbachhaus.de)

Frame from the film “Double jeopardy”, 1999.

Within this path of "meta-art", we bring you some examples of films that refer to other pieces of art, not necessarily in films dedicated to the life of artists, as well as productions made by creators that ridicule the media impact of cinema itself. This is, for example, the type of work that characterises Banksy and his piece "Exit through the gift shop", a film of the genre "false documentary" that ironises about the artist's own work and has been able to generate curious spin-off beyond the work itself. So it has happened with Mr Brainwash, a sort of Banksy’s alter ego in the film, who has become an internationally renowned pop-contemporary artist.

We remind you that CaixaForum Madrid is projecting this piece within a cycle of "Art and Cinema", on Friday 29th at 7 pm.

ABIERTO INFINITO. LO QUE EL CUERPO RECUERDA. CICLO DE PERFORMANCE X ART MADRID'26

Art Madrid, committed to creating a discursive platform for artists working within the field of performance and action art, presents Abierto Infinito: lo que el cuerpo recuerda, a proposal inspired by Erving Goffman’s ideas in The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (Amorrortu Editores, Buenos Aires, 1997).

The project unfolds within a theoretical framework that directly engages with these premises, conceiving social interaction as a stage of carefully modulated performances designed to influence others’ perceptions. Goffman argues that individuals deploy both verbal and involuntary expressions to guide the interpretation of their behavior, sustaining roles and façades that define the situation for those who observe.

The body — the first territory of all representation — precedes both word and learned gesture. Human experience, conscious and unconscious alike, is inscribed within it. Abierto Infinito: lo que el cuerpo recuerda departs from this premise: representation inhabits existence itself, and life, understood as a succession of representations, transforms the body into a space of constant negotiation over who we are. In this passage, boundaries blur; the individual opens toward the collective, and the ephemeral acquires symbolic dimension. By inhabiting this interstice, performance simultaneously reveals the fragility of identity and the strength that emerges from encounter with others.

PERFORMANCE: TRAYECTORIA. BY AMANDA GATTI

March 6 | 7:00 PM. Galería de Cristal of the Palacio de Cibeles.

Amanda Gatti. Escaparate. 2023. DT-Espacio. Photograph by Pedro Mendes.

The proposal expands Amanda Gatti’s research initiated in La Plasti Ciudad del Cuerpo — an ongoing series of performance and installation presented since 2023 in spaces such as Fundación Antonio Pérez, Galería Nueva, CRUCE, and the Acción Spring(t)/UCM Congress — where she explores the relationship between her body and objects found in urban space. There, body and materials are articulated through a constant negotiation between functionality, weight, and support, generating temporary architectural compositions.

In Trayectoria, this research shifts toward the act of dragging: a gesture that makes visible the friction between body, objects, and space. The corridor ceases to be a neutrality to be crossed and becomes an operative intermediate zone, where form and content — veil and what is veiled, as Walter Benjamin points out — become confused. The space, saturated with objects turned into a mobile chain, clears and remakes itself with each step. Clearing, for Benjamin, is already an experience of space: each advance sustains this unfinished separation, always oriented toward a destination that may never be reached.

La Plasti Ciudad del Cuerpo #3. Amanda Gatti. Performance documentation. CRUCE 2054 exhibition, Galería CRUCE. Photograph by Pedro Mendes.

Displacement is not limited to material friction: it also becomes a symbolic inscription of that which every life trajectory drags along. The objects — remnants of past uses — function as metaphors for what remains attached to the body even when it no longer serves any function. The performance makes visible the condition of moving forward while carrying heterogeneous weights: material, affective, social. Thus, the gesture of walking linked to these objects turns the route into a writing in motion, where each step simultaneously activates a physical transit and a vital transit. Trayectoria proposes that every life is also a dragging: a continuous recomposing from what we insist on carrying with us.

The action operates objects as verbs: to push, to tense, to trip, to pull. From it emerges an operativity that involves the entire body and exceeds the visual. The image ceases to be representation and becomes gesture: a gesture that founds new spatial forms, that overflows, that produces an ephemeral mode of reappropriation of the corridor.

The trajectory thus becomes an affective map inscribed in the body, a way of merging with the environment by putting past and future, durability and wear, utility and obsolescence into friction. The action returns to public space what was taken from it, but now stripped of function: freed from meaning, freed from commodification, freed to be imagined otherwise.

ABOUT AMANDA GATTI

Amanda Gatti (1996, Porto Alegre, Brazil) is an artist and researcher whose practice unfolds across performance, video, photography, and installation. She explores the intersections of body, object, and space, investigating how we occupy — and are occupied by — the spaces around us. Drawing from experiences of displacement and the observation of domestic and urban environments, her work conceives the body as mediator and archive, transforming found objects, spatial arrangements, and everyday gestures into ephemeral architectures and relational situations.

She studied the Master’s in Scenic Practice and Visual Culture at Museo Reina Sofía/UCLM (Spain, 2023) and the Bachelor’s degree in Audiovisual Production at PUCRS (Brazil, 2018), where she received scholarships such as the Santander Universities grant. In Spain, her work has been presented in institutions and contexts such as Museo Reina Sofía, Fundación Antonio Pérez, Galería Nueva, CRUCE, and Teatro Pradillo, as well as in exhibitions and festivals in Brazil, Germany, Ireland, the United Kingdom, and the United States. She currently resides in Madrid, with secondary bases in Brazil and the United Kingdom.