references“At the core of my creative practice lies an ongoing engagement with art research, critical inquiry, and educational outreach. Exploring the interplay between personal experience and collective memory through visual languages, it’s all driven by a sensitivity to materials, spaces, and narratives.” — PV
“Pedro Valiente’s art research combines interdisciplinary and multicultural views to explore how creative practice can engage with sustainable and social contexts. Linking content production with real-world projects, it centers on project development in cross-cultural environments.”
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 Ōhno
”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 Ōhno.’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
“Pedro Valiente’s practice is shaped by a network of influences across arts and cultures. Early study of avant-garde figures such as Kazuo Ōhno deeply informed his approach to embodiment and visual storytelling. Encounters with Joan Brossa’s work and the legacy of the Black Mountain College expanded his perspective on artistic fusion. His time in New York, studies on the Theater of Images, and collaboration with Robert Wilson built a practice that bridges arts and innovation.”
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 ŌHNO “In the 50s, Kazuo Ōhno 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, 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 I US Jim Jarmusch, Spike Lee, Joel & Ethan Coen, Wes Anderson, Paul Thomas Anderson, Todd Solondz, Todd Haynes
— Photo: © Kazuo Ōhno Dance Studio I Fundació Joan Brossa I Robert Wilson RW Ltd.
FILM I MEDIA
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]
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 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 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; editor Fernando Bercebal, and writer Alfonso Domingo. Directing Tilmun Teatro university theater company, I met talent as director Natalia Menéndez, playwrights Julio Escalada, and Pedro Víllora.
PERFORMING ARTS
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 for MNCARS. INTERNATIONAL MA Cinema Studies program shared workshops with MA Screenwriting: Writing for Television by Brazilian writer Doc Comparato, and Writing for Film by Marsha Kinder, USC Professor of Critical Studies —kindly wrote a recommendation letter. NEW YORK Writing Feature Films (semester) by Loren Paul Caplin, Columbia University; Filmmaking (diploma) including Screenwriting by Michael Young, and Film Production by Heng-Tatt Lim, NYFA.
— Filmmaking I NYFA
FILM I MEDIA
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
“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, art figure in Granada’s Gypsy community; and Marta Tatjer, arts promoter in Barcelona. I also met César Gil, RTVE producer, who took over Tilmun Teatro after me. Later, I 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
MAESTROS