Screening: Thusday November 23th 5pm
Experimentation lies at the core of video art and the processes in the Argentine art scene are no exception to this birthmark. Explorations of the medium, the quality of the images, their sources, and distortions are some of the possible directions. Video performance and video collage are further keys to identifying a possible itinerary through video art in Argentina. This selection is not comprehensive but indicative, and like all selections it is inevitably biased. In this case, only seven women artists and eight short works in total were specifically chosen.
Graciela Taquini, a pioneer, facilitator and activist of the video art scene since the early 1980s, opens the show with Roles, her 1988 debut work marking the first biographical video performance. In The Sublime and the Banal, made in 2004, Taquini presents another video performance in which the mundane and the literary weave into a unique narrative in which everyday dialogue, the epistolary genre, travel, and the figure of Julio Cortázar are the protagonists.
Video performance plays a significant role in much of this compilation. After Taquini’s introduction, the progression leads to the metaphysical stylization of Silvia Rivas in Momentum, followed by the irruption of veristic and precarious everyday life in Ana Gallardo’s work Caravan. Alicia Herrero’s work Suite Auction Drawings culminates de sequence. From Rivas’ liminal approach to Gallardo’s existential perspective or Herrero’s critical examination of the system, these works present a range of powerful conceptual expressions.
The selection then moves on to other narratives constructed through the appropriation of images from other filmmakers, originally intended for other purposes (including classic feature films from Hollywood or Argentine cinema), which result in cohesive video collages such as those by Leticia Obeid and Gabriela Golder. The programme concludes with Breaking News, Liliana Porter’s animation project.
Diana Wechsler
Image: Liliana Porter, Theriddle