Forty-four videos by more than 30 artists from 17 countries make up the curatorial proposal of the BIENALSUR 2023 virtual venue. These works address the problems underlying contemporary art, its different aesthetic quests and the possibilities that video art can offer as a practice and a language.
There are quite a few videos that contemplate the future through the lens of speculative fiction. Departing from a murky and turbulent present, these pieces use computer-generated images as well as archive material to depict dystopian scenarios, presenting futures in which the continuity of humanity is cast into uncertainty. This sense of doubt also extends to the environment and climate change. Several of these videos delve into the future landscape and the domestication of nature through a crossover between the fictional and the natural, the organic and the geometric.
Another group of works explores the political and social reality in various countries. Issues such as migration, racism, human trafficking and anarcho-extractivism are addressed under different poetics to account for the turbulent and ever-changing world we live in. The exploration extends to emotional memories and collective discourse, revisiting historical moments and emphasizing the wounds and traumas of the past, including the different civilian-military dictatorships experienced by Latin American countries during the 20th century.
Finally, a set of videos reflects on language in a broad sense, encompassing traditions of humour and insult, algorithmic structures, and benign discourses. In a context permeated by new technologies and the advancement of artificial intelligence, these pieces explore linguistic communication and movement. Notably, even from biographical self-fiction, several of them appeal to dance and movement as spaces of freedom and transcendence. Selected through the open call organized by BIENALSUR for all its editions, these videos address diverse topics such as ecology, dystopia, algorithms, and humour. They serve as a medium for contemplating the recent past, our present, and as an invitation to envision alternatives for the future. These are images that call attention to and propel the urgent movements of the present.
