Opening: August 21th BIENALSUR works in each of its editions from an extensive Open Call, free and international (without predetermined themes or formats or any other limitations such as trajectory, age or origin of those who participate). In 2020, we received more than 5,500 projects from artists and curators from more than 100 countries. It is from the Open Call that the curatorial axes emerge and which organize conceptually the different routes of each edition and the works that make up the exhibitions, actions and different presentations of BIENALSUR are selected throughout its vast cartography. In this same way was the BIENALSUR Video Program also created, and presented at the auditorium of the Franklin Rawson Provincial Museum in San Juan with a special selection of works that will be screened within the framework of the Give and Give (Dar y dar) exhibition on Saturday 21 and on Sunday 22 of August (at 5pm), and thereafter on the third weekend of each month (at 6pm). The omnipresence of the traditional Western model, oriented towards success and profit, is undeniable and even inescapable in many areas, crossing multiple levels in our current global society. Without a doubt, it is becoming increasingly clear that this model has reached its limit. Yet, at the same time, and at this precise moment, we can also observe an increase in artistic approaches that contrast with the flow of global information exchange projected from the centers of power and/or the media. Through this videos cycle, the artists approach the current political situation with a captivating intensity, thus unraveling the hateful smell of truth, in all its complexity, roughness, beauty or fragility. Works: Um film para Ehuana, Louise Botkay, (BRA), 2018, Video, 30 min, is a work done with Yanomami women, on the border between Brazil and Venezuela.
The film takes place in Watorik, in a community that lives outside the world of capital and that for many years has actively worked to protect itself and to stay as far as possible from white men and the State. The film is about female care and work relationships, but also about the relationship with the film's director. Sitt Al-Koull (Grandma of All), Erdem Colak (TUR), 2020, Video, 7:51 min.
After learning of the loss of his beloved grandmother Sıdıka Çolak (92 years old) in 2018, artist and researcher Erdem Çolak returns to the abandoned country house where he spent his childhood and has kept unforgettable memories. Sıdıka, an illiterate Arab woman who spent most of her life in a village in Samandağ (southern Turkey), was the engine that drove all her children, grandchildren and relatives to seek a better education and living conditions, which made her become Sitt Al-Koull (grandmother of all). To pay her a homage, the artist decides to carry out an artistic intervention in his country house and turns it into a lieu de mémoire. YENDO, Rodrigo Etem (ARG), 2020, Video 21:28 min, can be seen as a classic road movie genre whose plot takes place along a journey. The protagonist crosses the American continent from north to south, navigating through cities, towns and neighborhoods that share a particular characteristic: their name. Another way of seeing this material is from the appropriation and use of web files with which the author creates the narrative. The piece explores a paradox of modernity through using these materials. Images captured by Google Street View, postings on social networks by residents of the visited places, local newspaper headlines, political speeches around the idea of "progress" broadcast in the American continent. These elements are extracted from their original context for their reappropiation and resignification, opening new spaces for celebration and criticism.
La soledad en tiempos de Netflix, Felipe Lozano (COL), 2019, Video.
It questions the impact that technological development has on affective relationships, looking for deep connections between the need for affection and notions inherent in human life, such as birth, desire and death. Immersed in a neoliberal, individualistic and meritocratic system, the desire for a self-sufficient life imposes on us, where we can supply our physical and emotional needs, with a click. La soledad en tiempos de Netflix consists of three videos in YouTube format that show a product that promises to help overcome loneliness by simulating company, a service that proposes a new family model through new reproductive technologies, and a company that assists people whose desire to live has come to an end. Río desborde, Vivian Castro, (BRA / CHL), 2019, Video, 15:04 min, is an audiovisual essay that follows the banks of the Tietê River, in São Paulo, Brazil, and the Mapocho River, in Santiago, Chile, in their urban perimeter. An observation and recording of the people and places affected by the waters and forgotten. River floods and the resulting environmental disasters are expressive signs of the modern illusion of man's control over nature and constant progress. The official discourse of modernization, present in both cities, contrasts with scenes brutally altered, contaminated and interfered with by motorways for automobiles. The Tietê and the Mapocho Rivers have been the subject of great and endless public works -“Despoluição do rio Tietê” and “Mapocho Urbano Limpio”-, which always promise a bright future for two of the largest metropolis in Latin America.
Cherán, Víctor Arroyo (CAN / MEX), 2021, Video, 70 min. For several decades, a silent revolution has been taking place in the P’urhépecha forest of Michoacán in Mexico. The P’urhépecha insurrection of 2011 in Cherán brought an end to political corruption, organized crime, drug industries and other forms of colonial power and extraction. Cherán is the first autonomous indigenous community in Mexico with official recognition, after its uprising in 2011 against the illegal logging of its forests and the dominant drug cartels in the area. By exploring race, geography, and class, intertwined with colonial violence and extraction, this ethnographic study focuses on various activists involved in the complex negotiation of forest protection, territorial jurisdiction, and political control between the P'urhépecha, the organized crime, and the State.
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Program:
Saturday August 21th 5 p.m.
Um filme para Ehuana, by Louise Botkay
Sitt Al-Koull (Grandma of All), by Erdem Colak
YENDO, by Rodrigo Etem
La soledad en tiempos de Netflix, by Felipe Lozano
Sunday August 22nd 5p.m
Río desborde, by Vivian Castro
Cherán, by Víctor Arroyo
The cycle will repeat the third weekend of each month. The first weekend -Saturday 21 and Sunday 22-, performances will take place at 5pm and the following weekends, at 6pm.
Photograph: Cherán, by Víctor Arroyo - 2021
