video instalacion multicanal como telar: Beryl Korot 1977-2010

Text/Weave/Line—Video: An Interview with Beryl Korot

DOESN'T GABRIELA GOLDER'S "EN MEMORIA DE LOS PAJAROS" REVERBERATE WITH KOROT'S DACHAU??

 

Posted byEvelin Stermitz | Wed Jun 30th 2010 1:33 p.m.

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Text/Weave/Line—Video: An Interview with Beryl Korot
By Evelin Stermitz, June 2010.

An interview with artist Beryl Korot on her exhibition
Text/Weave/Line—Video, 1977-2010
at The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, Connecticut, USA,
from June 27, 2010, to January 2, 2011.

http://www.aldrichart.org
http://blog.art21.org/category/artists/beryl-korot/
http://blog.art21.org/2010/04/23/beryl-korot-radical-software-1970-74/
http://www.flypmedia.com/content/beryl-korot’s-radical-roots
http://www.flypmedia.com/issues/29/#8/1
http://www.flypmedia.com/issues/29/#8/7

Beryl Korot is one of the most important innovators in the realm of video art and a pioneer of multiple channel video work. Two installations, Dachau 1974 (1974) and Text and Commentary (1977) were shown consecutively at an early exhibition of her work at the Whitney Museum in 1980 after their initial premieres at The Kitchen (1975) in New York City, and the Leo Castelli Gallery (1977) also in New York City. By drawing on the structures generated by the most ancient of information technologies, the handloom, and the first punch card computer on earth, she opened up a whole new world of possibilities in her multiple channel works for converying narrative based on visual and not literary means.

Prior to the video works, in 1970 she cofounded Radical Software with Phyllis (Gershuny) Segura and Ira Schneider, and served as its co-editor until 1974. It was the first magazine to explore the notion of alternative communication systems (to the then broadcast dominated airwaves) via video in particular. In the 1980’s she left video to weave her own canvases and to create a coded grid based language that was an analog to the roman alphabet. The works that evolved from this language, many based on translations of the Babel text, an early text about the impact of technology on human behavior, are a kind of visual contemplation of language as still life. In the 1990’s she teamed up with her husband, composer Steve Reich, to create 2 thought provoking video/music works: one about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, The Cave (1993), and the other, once again, about the impact of technology on our lives, Three Tales (2002). These works brought video installation art into a theatrical context and created a media based Theatre of Ideas. Since 2003 she has created a body of poetically expressive work created almost entirely on the computer. An exhibition at the Aldrich Museum continues and further develops her interest in the Babel text, presented now as a print and animated video work, as well as presenting 5 other new video works along with the early 5 channel video/weaving work Text and Commentary.

Evelin Stermitz: To introduce yourself and start right from the beginning - could you tell to the younger generation of artists more about your time as an emerging artist? What influenced you during these times, how was your situation as a woman artist? Did you have any personal gendered experiences and how did you evolve your strength and interest in media art?

Beryl Korot: Beginning at age 12, I wrote poetry and figured this is what I would do in the world. This belief continued into my early 20’s when I was working as an editorial assistant at The New York Review of Books helping out Barbara Epstein, one of the editors. At about that time the Sony Portapak came out, and I became reacquainted with Ira Schneider, whom I’d met in my first year of college at the University of Wisconsin. Ira had finished all his course work for his PhD and part of his thesis on the neurophysiology of the ancient brain but quit to make films. Then right before we met again in New York he bought a first generation Sony Portapak.

Ira was part of a group called Raindance (a play on words of the miitary think tank --the Rand Corporation). Raindance was a think tank media group made up primarily of artists and writers: Frank Gillette, Paul Ryan, Ira Schneider, and Michael Shamberg were members of the original group. There were no women per se until Ira and I discussed the possibility of creating an alternate television journal to present some of the new kinds of thinking about information media, and the new type of work being developed. It was in the context of conceiving this magazine, Radical Software, that Ira introduced me to Phyllis (Gershuny) Segura, who'd been thinking along parallel lines, and Phyllis and I set to work to create a forum for new media thinking at a time when there were no venues to see the new work being created.

In the early days of video, there were so many women working with the medium. And I remember we were aware of that...somehow the newness of video made the whole entry into the field so much easier. Everyone was exploring together. But again, I think that was true of many media at that time. If you look at the numbers of successful artists who were emerging in the late 60's to 70's there are many women amongst them. It was a more idealistic period. For video there were no galleries as yet, at first no funding institutions (though that changed quickly), but you had the feeling that if you could think it you could do it. Life in New York was inexpensive, and you could find affordable and decent work places. And people really helped each other out. It was a good time to be an artist in New York.

Were there gender related issues that came up?...sure. But I never got into politicizing my situation. For me there were so many fascinating ideas to be pursued. Perhaps my attraction to technology, and that I mastered the different editing and computer techniques I needed to create my work, was my way of competing with and remaining self-sufficient from the men around me. (I suppose it helped that most of the women in my family, from great grandmothers on down, worked both because they had to and because they wanted to and liked what they did. My grandmother, for example, cooked the family out of the depression and became a very successful caterer...my grandfather did the shopping.)

E.S.: You are an early pioneer in video art and multiple channel work in particular, co-founder and co-editor of Radical Software (1970), the first publication to document artists’ work and ideas concerning video, also co-editor of Video Art; how did your work as an artist come together with your work as a theoretician and researcher?

B.K.: I grew up in a family where current ideas and discussions about the world were commonplace and everyone participated, no matter how young or how old. So in the course of making work you express who you are, how you think. For me, at the beginning at least, it was by developing formal strategies in my multiple channel work, based on the multiple threads of ancient loom patterning. I was drawn to certain tools whether video or print or the loom perhaps because of the ideas that aggregated around them. The theoretical was not separate from the tools that drew me to them. I drew my sustenance from the theoretical and it framed what I was doing.

E.S.: Your approach to media art comes from the literally textile and haptical field of weaving, that is interesting in a female aspect, because of using this traditional material and occupation which is since centuries passed on to women, and then suddenly you are interweaving this into media of the current society; how do you explain your approach to this material mix?

B.K.: In 1974 I found myself working in 3 media simultaneously: in print (Radical Software), in video which I began to explore in 1972, and the handloom, the first computer on earth in that it programmed patterns according to a numerical structure. A silk weaver at the beginning of the 19th century invented the Jacquard loom, really the first punch card computer to create complex textile works through punch card programming, which also increased the speed with which this work could be made. I was drawn to the handloom after being involved in print and video because I was fascinated by the multiple channel genre in video and the loom offered clues about programming multiple channels. But what really fascinated me is that the information in all 3 of these media is encrypted in lines...In video the electronic camera reads an image at 30 frames a second, line by line; we read printed material line by line...pattern on the loom is laid down line by line, or thread by thread. Time is an important component of this linear structuring in terms of how quickly and effectively information is received and stored. Instant storage and retrieval systems characterize modern technology while tactility and human memory remain earmarks of more ancient tools.

E.S.: How would you define the term “Radical Software” at this time for your magazine? Are there any analogies to what would be understood as radical software nowadays?

B.K.: When we made the magazine, Radical Software was about creating a new kind of programming; for circumventing the broadcast to home one way type of information delivery system. It was about access and decentralization and for us the new Sony magnetic tape Portapak was the beginning of a new era, a new possibility...to write the medium, not just read it. To leave the livingroom and bring video into public spaces. For a relatively low cost we could buy the equipment that would allow that to happen. I was drawn to multiple channel because it forced the viewer to leave the livingroom and join others in a public space to experience new ways of receiving information. It was modular, spatial and through juxtaposition allowed an artist the ability to physically play with time. You could also take this small image as it was in the 1960’s and 70’s and expand it through the multiple screens.

Now? There is so much out there...the web sometimes seems so liberating and also so dangerous...I think radical software today is inside us. We’re bringing technology into our bodies and our ethical rootedness must be our roadmap.

E.S.: In your work Dachau 1974 you created image blocks of 18 4-channel video configurations, whereby each channel has a separate rhythm of image. The work deals with the left over tragic memories of Holocaust of World War II, please could you tell more about this sensible issue and your articulation of this in video art. (A mock-up of this work is available online at the following links: http://pbs.org/auschwitz and http://blog.art21.org/category/artists/beryl-korot/ )

B.K.: I actually arrived in Dachau in late September, 1974. I spent the day simply walking through the former camp, absorbing what I could of this now relatively antiseptic environment inhabited by tourists. In 1974 very little was being said about the Holocaust, even by survivors, and making the work was my response to traveling to Germany for the first time, where silence about that period still prevailed. What struck me was that here, in this place where memory was still so repressed, a bizarre tourist site had been resurrected literally on the ashes of the past.

When I visited the site of the former concentration camp the subject matter for this work began to take shape in my mind: a record of Dachau in 1974 with its present visitors walking amidst the structures that remained. The architecture of the place, the linearity and symmetry, the pathways, guard towers, barracks, crematoria, tourists, would be the subjects of this work.

When I returned to my studio in New York City other questions arose -- specifically, how to bring life to the static and spare images I had recorded primarily using a tripod with very little movement. And for this I turned to the ancient technology of the loom.
As already mentioned, I was drawn to the loom because it was a programming tool, I was interested in modern and ancient technologies, and I saw it as a way to understand how to program multiple channels which was the video genre that most attracted me.
The minimum number of threads necessary to bind a cloth is four. Channels (1 and 3) and (2 and 4) formed the interlocking ‘thread’ combinations of paired images as the work proceeded in time to create a non-verbal narrative to take the viewer through the site of this former concentration camp. (see configurations at http://pbs.org/auschwitz -- go to Dachau 1974)

The fours screens were placed side-by-side into cutouts in a free-standing wall, like 4 holes puncturing a film screen. Horizontally, through the juxtaposition of specific paired images, and vertically through their movement and interrelationships structured in time according to a logical sequence, a video tapestry of Dachau, in l974, is represented. Each interlocking channel is given its own separate rhythm of image and pause for the duration of the work, and these paired images on monitors create a non-verbal narrative structure which take the viewer on a journey from the mundane traffic outside the camp's wall to the inside walkways, from barracks far to barracks near, from inside barracks to tourists walking towards crematoria, and finally to a stream punctuated with barbed wire. Ultimately it is an extremely fragile work where the memory of the viewer must endow it with meaning.

E.S.: You and your husband Steve Reich have been also collaborating on socio-political issues in art, like the video opera The Cave. How did your collaboration as visual and sound artist emerge? How did you experience the collaboration? I am just curious, but find it very interesting, wonderful and rare, that two artists find themselves, while both working in different fields but then find ways to collaborate and are also a couple in their life time.

B.K.: What we shared in our two collaborations was caring about the subject matter and the formal concerns for creating a new type of documentary theatre that grew out of the folk tools of our time…samplers and video recorders juxtaposed with live musicians.

It’s not easy to work with someone you live with. It was harder for us to have dinner together than to spend the hours, weeks, months and years creating each work. Steve and I care about similar subject matter and share a formality of approach to subject matter which turns out to be a solid basis of a long, sustained and trusting friendship. When you work with someone over a long period of time, you have to have enormous respect for the other person, you have to have a strong sense of artistic territory that cannot be invaded, and you have to be willing to continue even when you feel like throwing the other person down a flight of stairs.

E.S.: The Cave, your collaborative work about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict has been created in 1993, after a working period from 1989 to 1993, how did you find this issue at that time, and how would you see it nowadays in relation to current conflicts, are there any changes?

B.K.: At a time when religion was not in public consciousness in the basically secular West, we were interested in Biblical material and its resonance or lack thereof in people's lives. We asked 5 questions to three different groups of people: first to Israeli Jews, then Palestinian Moslems and finally westerners living primarily in the States. The questions were: who for you is Abraham, Sarah, Hagar Ismael and Isaac and how these questions were answered were a kind of Rorschach of our time...how far away from the cave we are where Abraham and his family were buried. When we were making The Cave two important political events took place: the first Gulf War and the signing of a peace treaty between Israel and the PLO. People said to us, “it’s too bad you’re piece isn’t ready yet.” And our answer to that was, “don’t worry, it’ll still (unfortunately) be relevant when the piece comes out.” Given the current state of things I’d say the works emphasis on common roots comes off almost as naive, but necessary.

Also, when I began The Cave, the computer was interacting for the first time, at a desktop affordable level, with video. Photoshop was first coming out and I felt I had some freedom for the first time visually for creating a complex canvas. I could take a video still, blow it up, cut some parts out, rearrange them, transfer it back to video. However, like Dachau 1974 and the 5 channel Text and Commentary which followed, the complexity of the work lay in the interrelationships created between channels, perfectly timed, but not so much within the image itself. By the time we began Three Tales, After Effects had been developed so that there was enormous control over many aspects of the image, and finally I had tools at my disposal which truly engaged me visually.

E.S.: How would you explain to bring video installation art into a theatrical context and creating a media based Theatre of Ideas? How would you define a video opera at all?

B.K.: As I mentioned before, Dachau 1974 was a rhythmic work in multiple channels, as was Text and Commentary (1977) which followed. By blowing up the monitors to projection screens, by placing them in an arched shape and building a set around them for placement of musicians and singers, the video actually became the mise en scene for the entire work and took what I had done in museums and placed it in the performance space.

It was also the musicality of those early pieces that led Steve to want to collaborate with me in the first place. Because these works dealt very deliberatively with measured time, The Cave drew on their structure for providing the visual matrix through which the music was set. It was easy to look at a score of Steve’s, (we shared SMPTE numbers) and to decide where to make cuts. Whenever a person appears in the course of the work they are placed in a visual and aural portrait of themselves...for me it was abstracting from the image of the interviewee a piece of clothing, or something in the background, and creating a placement of these abstractions along with the image of the person across the 5 screens; for Steve it was using the voice melodies and setting those to music.

Steve had been asked to write operas and in the 1980’s contemporaries of his were doing just that, Philip Glass, John Adams. And they were working with historical and contemporary subject matter. Robert Wilson, of course, as well. This was our response to those works, but wanting to use more contemporary tools that we were immersed in to make the work.

We’re also both artists who like to work at home, do the technical stuff ourselves, and so until we finally staged the work and got involved with Nick Mangano and Carey Perloff and Richard Nelson and John Arnone, our staging team, the work existed in my studio as a video installation and Steve would send me the music through cables connecting our studios.

E.S.: Between 1980 and 1988 you devoted yourself fulltime to oil painting, creating works on handwoven and traditional linen canvas. These were paintings based on a language you created which were an analog to the Latin alphabet. A room in this abstract language was created illuminating the Babel story, as well as other texts. Why did it come to this withdrawal from technologic media during this period of time?

B.K.: I withdrew from video technology to paint on the handmade canvas I was making on the loom, and to create a grid based language which allowed me to create a body of work which visualized language abstractly. I wanted to make a handmade work with an ancient and sophisticated technology...to see where it would lead. The language of dots on a grid were an analog to the Roman alphabet, and the finished canvases were like a language as still life, what thought looks like abstracted from meaning, though the meaning was there if you wanted to follow the code.

E.S.: Do you have a single work within your corpus of media art, which is most important to your decades of experiences as an artist?

B.K.: Well, Dachau 1974 was the most influential to my work until Three Tales which began in 1996 and was not finished until 2002 because of a lot of interruptions. From 1996 to the present, I was working then in programs like After Effects and Photoshop that allowed me to have a completely flexible layered computer based canvas that has impacted all the work since that time.

E.S.: How do you view your retrospective of your works at the Aldrich Museum, what was most important for you in the concept of this exhibition? Also your recent works about two women, Florence and Etty, are exhibited, how did you find and interpret these two females as icons?

B.K.: Textere in latin refers to web, texture, structure or translates as to weave. Throughout the years different ways of visualizing thought have been manifested in my work. I think the Aldrich exhibition gives expression to both the variety and consistency of this pursuit which has been sustained over a long period of time.
Florence (2008/9) and Etty (2009/10) - these two of the works in the Aldrich show are also my most personal works.

In 2007 when I began Florence I was playing at the computer and made a weaving out of bits of video footage of snow storms and waterfalls, some elements of which were used in another work from that period, Vermont Landscape. Having finished a long collaborative period in 2002 I wanted to get back to the studio of the painting years and the years that preceded those to the multiple channel Text and Commentary made entirely in my studio, by hand, for the camera. I wanted to keep the recorded material local, around the house or in walking distance thereof.

As I viewed the weaving I’d made on the computer the name Florence Nightingale came to mind, and I realized that though her name had become a cliché, I had no idea who she really was.

And so I sifted through hundreds of pages of her brilliant writings, which included an intense rejection of her upper class English background as she sought to find a life of meaning and purpose apart from what was designated by birth. At 30 she set off with a ragtag group of women to save men outside of Istanbul during the brutal Crimean War, and transformed what had been complete neglect on the battlefield into a system of caring for the wounded.

Through the very slow, rhythmic falling of words against a background literally woven from moving video images, (winter storms, boiling water) a new sense of reading and time is created.

When I finished Florence I sought a companion for her, someone with that kind of intense resolve over a sustained period of time to dig deep inside herself to find the meaning to carry her through a difficult time. Etty Hillesum, a 29 year old Jewish Dutch writer found herself commuting for a year between Amsterdam and the transit camp of Westerbork, while experiencing and witnessing the devastation befalling Dutch Jews. What drew me to her was her ability to internally resist her inevitable physical captivity and death in an effort not to surrender her ‘self.’ The day she is shipped out, she records “We left the camp singing.”

“Weather” as the in-motion, woven backdrop to the falling words is a common element in both works.

These two works are a kind of poetry from other people’s words...also a kind of soliloquy.

E.S.: How do you see the technological changes in video art, like digital video, video on the internet? Do you think the media video changed as an artistic video during the years caused by its technology? You created your latest media works with digital video, was it a different work for you?

B.K.: In the digital realm I’ve definitely found the tools that I love working with. I still find it fascinating that in a work like Three Tales, raw material was gathered with a video camera in the field, imported into the computer where the images were recreated on a time based canvas. From the computer to a tape deck in my studio, the work premiered in Vienna on a 32 foot wide video screen. It was presented as a ‘film’ on the independent film channel, packaged as a DVD, with sections streamed to the web. And since the early days of video, this all happened within a relatively short period of time. The strategies that were employed early in my career to get a public off the couch and into a public space have been turned on their head with the access and decentralization of the internet and the powerful tools available at the desktop level. Of course, other issues are brought up with the overload of “information” people have to sift through out there, privacy issues, misinformation, a sense that technologic power is an end in itself, but that’s another interview. In the early days of Radical Software we were involved in thinking about media ecology, the relationship of media to the information environment in which we live. Now the focus is more on the information highway. I think we could be developing more of a Radical Software self-critical consciousness. But in the end, whatever tools you use, work is only as good as the artist making it.

One way street: fragments of Walter Benjamin

This documentary by John Hughes examines the life of philosopher and critic Walter Benjamin using commentary from scholars, dramatic reenactments and montage.

Alejandra Alarcon videoarte boliviano

documental peruano -Colectivo de mujeres desplazadas

Ficha técnica

Titulo : Las Otras Memorias - Mama Quilla- Arpilleras de Huaycán

Año de realización : 2010 -2011

Dirección/Cámara y edición : Karen Bernedo Morales

Producción : Museo Arte por las Memorias TV www.museoarteporlasmemorias.pe

Con el apoyo de ATA : Escuelab/ATA www.escuelab.org

Las Otras Memorias, es una serie de documentales de emisión mensual, para el canal de web tv del Museo virtual de Arte y Memorias, en los que se mostrará como diversos artistas, activistas y ciudadanxs desde distintas disciplinas y tecnicas del arte han plasmado sus memorias sobre los años de violencia en el Perú.
Esta primera entrega está dedicada al colectivo de mujeres desplazadas de Huaycán, Mama Quilla, quienes llegan a Lima huyendo de la violencia en sus comunidades de origen, en 1987 se instalan en Huaycan en donde la violencia de Sendero Luminoso y del Estado las persigue, sin embargo logran sobrevivir en la capital y salir adelante, 20 años despues vuelcan esas memorias tan dificiles de expresar en palabras en una serie de arpilleras con las que recorren muchos lugares contado su historia.

Lotty Rosenberg (x Diamela Eltit y Nelly Richard, entre otros)

video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNfOgI7PgDA&feature=related "yo lo que quiero -lo que pretendo- es que no te pasen gato por liebre, de alguna manera de decirlo. Que tu te des cuenta de que aui te estan diciendo 'vaya por este lado'. Que tu te des cuenta y de que seas capaz de reflexionar frente a eso" Carlota (Lotty) Rosenfeld, artista visual, instaladora y videísta chilena, nació en Santiago en 1943. Formó parte de la Generación del ´70, y se ligó a la Escena de Avanzada. En 1979 realizó sus primeras acciones junto al grupo C.A.D.A.

El trabajo de Lotty Rosenfeld, ligado en sus inicios al grabado, tomó luego, bajo el peso de la dictadura de Pinochet, el rumbo del registro en video de sus producciones , consistentes principalmente en intervenciones del espacio público, por medio de elementos que cuestionan simbólicamente el estatuto político y la rigidez institucional.

VIDEOARTE EN ECUADOR: transcripción de la entrevista a María Belén Moncayo, directora de la Asociación Archivo Nuevos Medios Ecuador (AANME

FICHA TÉCNICA

Nombre del proyecto: Itinerancia Nacional de Videoarte del Ecuador.

Fecha de inicio: julio 29 del 2010 en Portoviejo

Fecha de término: enero 26 del 2011 en Tulcán

Ganador del Fondo Concursable 2009-2010 de nivel nacional en la categoría Programación y Difusión de Bienes y Productos Culturales del Ministerio de Cultura del Ecuador.

El fondo fue de $10.000 y el costo total del proyecto fue de $10.600. La tercera parte del valor total se invirtió en pago de derecho de exhibición a los artistas.

Rodolfo Kronfle: María Belén, quisiera me comentes cuál fue la intención principal del proyecto que presentaste a los fondos concursables, cuáles eran tus expectativas antes de comenzar y cuál es tu balance de los resultados luego de que concluiste tu largo periplo. Leí la bitácora que llevaste, sería interesante nos compartas un resumen de las estadísticas de asistencia que llevaste y del tipo de recepción que tuviste ¿Sabes cuántos proyectos de arte contemporáneo lograron acceder al financiamiento?

María Belén Moncayo: La intención de este proyecto, como todos los que emprende el archivo AANME, fue la de construir un público crítico para el audiovisual experimental del Ecuador, en casi todo el país (Galápagos fue la única provincia que no se visitó).

No tenía expectativas muy definidas en la medida en que el proyecto se propuso en las veintitrés provincias como un evento abierto a toda la comunidad. Uno de los preceptos muy concretos del proyecto fue precisamente dejarse sorprender por lo que encuentre a su paso. Con excepción de Guayas y Azuay, fueron pocas las provincias en las que sabía con cierta anticipación a qué tipo de audiencia me enfrentaba.

El balance lo hago desde varios aspectos: El contacto con cada una de las personas que asistieron a la Itinerancia es una experiencia que va más allá de los Fondos Concursables. Viví momentos poéticos, mágicos con el público. Mi percepción sobre la gestión de la Dirección Provincial de Cultura (en adelante DPC) de las veintitrés provincias fue remitida al respectivo Ministerio en un documento que se titula Recomendaciones para el Ministerio de Cultura; si debo resumirte este informe te diré que el sesenta por ciento de las y los funcionarios de estos despachos hacen una gestión precaria, el porcentaje restante realiza una gestión digna de admiración y de todo mi agradecimiento. Lastimosamente estas últimas personas no actúan en base a una política cultural nacional que sirva como paraguas para todas y todos los Activistas Culturales; lo hacen en base a un sentido intrínseco de militancia y capacidad de resolución de problemas.

Una circunstancia que me preocupa sobremanera tanto en el público como en las DPC es su postura colonial. Escuché muchas veces enunciados de poca estima y de elogio al proyecto, no por sus objetivos netos, más bien por el mero hecho de llegar desde Quito.

El total de asistentes al proyecto en las veintitrés provincias fue de 1540 personas, cuyas edades fluctuaron entre seis meses y setenta años. La audiencia menos poblada fue de una persona y la más concurrida de trescientas. En muchas provincias de la Costa, la Sierra y el Oriente asistieron alumnas y alumnos de bachillerato, tanto de colegios urbanos como rurales.

Desconozco la cifra exacta de proyectos de arte contemporáneo que hayan sido seleccionados dentro de los Fondos Concursables, sin embargo, contando los de personas cercanas a mi entorno quiteño puedo recordar al menos dos o tres. La página web del Ministerio de Cultura provee esas cifras a nivel nacional.

RK: Bueno la pregunta ahora sería si luego de tu experiencia crees que es posible la construcción de un público crítico, sea con este mecanismo que ideaste o con algún otro. ¿Si lo volvieses a hacer cambiarias el enfoque?

MBM: Fue precisamente en Guayaquil en donde, entre muchas otras, viví una de las experiencias más enriquecedoras de la Itinerancia: El 11 de agosto, al llegar a la Casona Universitaria, donde se llevó a cabo el Capítulo Guayas, me esperaba en la puerta un amable ciudadano de mediana edad quien al verme llegar se acercó (El Universo en mano y resaltado en amarillo) y me preguntó: "¿Usted es la Licenciada Moncayo?, es que leí en la prensa sobre el evento que va a haber aquí a las seis de la tarde, me llamó la atención la palabra videoarte y por eso vine". El hombre en mención asistió al evento con total atención desde su inicio hasta su término.

Sí, creo definitivamente en que la construcción de un público crítico en el Ecuador es posible. Cada capítulo recibió una interacción positiva con la audiencia desde muchos ángulos. La compilación videográfica que seleccioné mostraba trece piezas que abordan igual número de diversos temas; todos conectados a preocupaciones contemporáneas como la ecología, el género, la identidad cultural, la colonización, los medios de comunicación, entre otros.

El público constituido por adolescentes fue sin lugar a dudas el más interesante. Al saber de sobra que venían obligados por la DPC y sus respectivos profesores; al inicio de cada encuentro los exhortaba a aflojarse la corbata, relajarse y apagar sus teléfonos celulares, no sin antes solicitar a los docentes que les asignen un merecido 20/20 por el solo hecho de haber llegado hasta el auditorio; les dije siempre "El arte no se puede obligar a nadie". Les daba incluso la opción de quedarse o retirarse del lugar luego del audiovisual y antes de la conferencia ante los rostros estupefactos de los educadores; algunos me solicitaban retractarme de esta opción, a lo que siempre respondí que las obras hablan por sí solas, que los estudiantes se quedarían por voluntad propia...así fue.

Mis años de actriz me hacen reconocer en el público sus reacciones y puedo decir con orgullo que la Itinerancia Nacional de Videoarte Ecuatoriano removió más de una consciencia sobre temas de urgente transformación social y despertó en muchas y muchos el deseo de convertirse en realizadores de audiovisual experimental (un niño de ocho años en Portoviejo, por ejemplo).

Si lo volvería a hacer, tomaría contacto directo con los grupos humanos que a ciencia cierta se que están interesados en el tema. Ampliaría el mapa hacia otros cantones y en provincias menos centralistas utilizaría el brillante recurso del perifoneo ambulante para reforzar la convocatoria; una lucha cuerpo a cuerpo con el partido de volley, con la elección de la Reina, con la reunión de Consejo Cantonal.

RK: Obviamente esta itinerancia tuvo un periplo que ya concluyó, pero tu entusiasmo me indica que tal vez ya estás pensando en algún plan para que el esfuerzo sea sostenido. ¿Tienes alguno? Si fueras Ministra de Cultura qué tipo de políticas (acciones concretas) impulsarías en relación al audiovisual experimental?

MBM: El archivo aanme siempre tiene planes. En este año se perfila a la consecución de cuatro muy complejos: 1. Libro "100 artista del audiovisual experimental del Ecuador" (Fundación Príncipe Claus e Instituciones ecuatorianas por definirse); 2. Las obras monocanales del archivo estarán en línea para ser consultadas universalmente (En coordinación con Hamacaonline.net de España y financiamiento de AECID); 3. Videoteca, espacio público de consulta del acervo, generador y receptor de proyectos del tema de estudio. En principio estaría en Quito la matriz y con el tiempo se replicaría al menos en cinco regiones del país; 4. Proyecto tec(cuador)nología/rte (TAE), que se compone de una exhibición didáctica sobre subgéneros del audiovisual experimental, muestras monocanales, talleres, actividades con la comunidad y conversatorios.

Adicionalmente el libro será entregado en cuatro ciudades de cuatro regiones distintas del país, en el marco de un taller sobre conservación de audiovisuales.

La Videoteca por su parte tendrá como objetivo principal la construcción de público, continuará siendo un acervo vivo. Iré a buscar al público a través de diferentes mecanismos, no esperaré sentada a que llegue.

Respecto de la parte final de tu pregunta me permito cambiar el enfoque de la misma en vista de que no quiero ni siquiera suponer ser Ministra de Cultura del Ecuador; por lo que humildemente te ofrezco mi criterio sobre lo que puede mejorar desde cualquier perspectiva, no solamente la del Estado:

La Cinemateca Nacional de la Casa de la Cultura requiere una atención digna, urgente y sostenido; por su convicción activista esta Institución ha logrado restaurar algunas piezas de celuloide experimental del Ecuador, siempre a través de convenios internacionales; por sus propios medios tienen dificultades hasta de poseer DVD´s en blanco para hacer copias.

Las Escuelas de Arte públicas y privadas podrían pulir asiduamente su malla de contenidos y darle al audiovisual y al arte electrónico una plataforma más conectada a la reflexión y transformación social y menos provista de novelería tecnológica. En muchas es preciso, en primera instancia, considerar el tema dentro del pensum de estudio.

Estimo también su responsabilidad la formación de Activistas Culturales convencidos de su militancia que sean capaces desde concebir proyectos hasta ser guías sensibles, informados y carismáticos en un contenedor de arte.

Los espacios expositivos, centros culturales, salones y bienales de arte -de toda índole- necesitan una política de audiencias que transgreda el efecto eventista y de engrosamiento del curriculum de quien pone las obras de arte a consideración del público y que, por el contrario, persiga la construcción de un público informado, crítico; capaz de proferir una alta estima por la creación de nuestro contexto.

En cuanto a las políticas culturales públicas en este tema, urge proveer a cada provincia de un teatro-cine-auditorio con equipos tecnológicos contemporáneos para todo tipo de actividades artísticas; los mismos podrían estar dirigidos por Activistas Culturales que hagan honor a su nombre con el apoyo de técnicos de planta. (Ni todos los artistas saben de gestión cultural, ni todos los porteros son técnicos audiovisuales).

Solo entonces, cuando hayamos hecho un incisivo trabajo de construcción de público, podemos pasar a la fase de insertar el audiovisual experimental en las cuotas de pantallas públicas. Si al momento insertamos en algún monitor de la flota Carlos Brito B. "The best of the road", por ejemplo, la pieza "Dicción" de Gonzalo Vargas o cualquier otra de las joyas del archivo aanme, estaremos ante un cuadro de vociferante afectación del honor de la señora madre del chofer.

Por último una invitación cordial a las y los lectores de este blog para que naveguen en la página web www.aanmecuador.com y tomen contacto directo con sus proyectos.

Feb / 2011

Obras presentadas en la Itinerancia:

YO SOY LA OTRA 3´43´´ MIGUEL ALVEAR
SE VE CUALQUIER COSA 3´26´´ PANCHO VIÑACHI
LA PINTA, LA NIÑA Y LA SANTA MARÍA 3´12´´ PAULINA LEÓN
ADAN Y EVA EN EL PARAISO DE JUDITH GUTIÉRREZ 6´15´´ PACO CUESTA
BRISA DE VERANO 1´25´´ JONATHAN HARKER Y DONNA CONLON
MADE IN USA 2´49´´ MA. TERESA PONCE Y FABIANO KUEVA
CUANDO TU TE HAYAS IDO 6´55´´ CARLA BARRAGÁN
LIMPIA MEDIÁTICA 6´ COLECTIVO COSAS FINAS
REQUIEM HUAO 1´38´´ SASKYA CALDERÓN
CONSTELACIÓN 501 2´55´´ DAYANA RIVERA
AMASANDO FORTUNA 4´23´´ JUANA CÓRDOVA
CAÑÓN DE CARNE 3´52´´ VALERIA ANDRADE Y PEDRO CAGIGAL
UNA MÁS 1´ DIEGO MUÑOZ

Cine & videoarte chileno (yo solita lo encontré)

1er Festival de Cine de Mujeres de Chile

"Ríos de luz" de Magaly Meneses. Chile. 2010. 50 min
"El viaje de Emilio" de Abril Trejo. Chile. 74 min. 2010
"Portales la última carta" de Paula Leonvendagar. Chile. 68 min. 2010
"La isla de la fantasía" de Magdalena Gissi. Chile. 2010. 52 min.
La mujer de Ivan, de Francisca Silva. Chile. 2011. 88 min.
"Kon kon" de Cecilia Vicuña. Chile. 2010. 54 min,
"Metro cuadrado" de Nayra Ilic. Chile. 2010. 73 min.
"Santas putas" de Verónica Quense. Chile. 54 min. 2010
"El edificio de los chilenos" de Macarena Aguiló. Chile. 2010. 95 min.
"Granada, 30 años después" de Cecilia Barriga. España. 2010. 52 min.
Bancos perpetuos, de Constanza Fernandez. Chile, 2011. 58 min.
mas información en http://www.festivaldecinedemujeres.cl/


Cecilia Barriga
Entrevista
http://blip.tv/documusac/cecilia-barriga-entrevista-4284142


Dicumental
Atrapados en el paraíso (2001)

Dirección:Cecilia Barriga

Producción:Tornasol Films

Calificación:Apta para todos los públicos

Duración:58 minutos

Sinopsis:Una viajera que recorre la selva peruana en Iquitos se encuentra con una serie de personajes que se han quedado a vivir en ella. Por alguna razón, ella los siente como extraños aventureros que permanecen «atrapados en el paraíso». Walter Saxer es uno de los que se quedó a vivir allí, después de haber producido el filme Fitzcarraldo, de Werner Herzog.

Programa de televisión.

El esqueleto tatuado (2011)

Fecha de emisión: 11-02-2011
Duración: 19' 59''
Suzanne Lacy es una de las artistas más reconocidas en el ámbito de la performance. Su obra ha sido especialmente afín a todo tipo de temáticas sociales especialmente aquellas próximas a los principios del feminismo. Precisamente ha sido esta óptica interpretativa así como su sensibilidad para con las complejas relaciones existentes entre arte y género la que ha llevado a que desde el Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía se la haya invitado recientemente para llevar a cabo una performance que el pasado 25 de noviembre tuvo como objeto llamar la atención sobre la violencia machista.
Participan:
Suzanne Lacy. Artista;
María María Acha. Artista visual;
Elena Tóxica. Toxic Lesbians;
Cecilia Barriga. Cineasta y videoartista.
Producción y realización: CEMAV.

Videoarte

Downstram (2007)

For decades, two 70-year-old Swiss ladies have been walking along with each other. In summertime, their daily ritual is to swim down the river that flows through their home town. As the current carries them down the river, they meditate on friendship, love and becoming older.

What will it be like to have to live without one's partner after three decades together? They ponder the unthinkable: what will either of them do if the other passes away? Their lives are so interwoven after decades together that it's hard to imagine. We see them both literally and figuratively floating down the river of life together.

Cecilia Barriga & Claudia Lorenz
2007 6 min. Switzerland
Swiss-German w/ English subtitles

NOW AVAILABLE FROM FRAMELINE:https://cart.frameline.org/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=T782

video arte mexicano (gracias Grata)

Gracias a Graciela Taquini supe de la grandisima Ximena Cuevas. Aqui, mis piezas preferidas:

Corazón sangrante (1993)

El diablo en la piel (1998)

vimeo.com/25915585

Debajo, dos extractos de una entrevista publicada en Jump Cut.

•      “In the delirious CORAZÓN SANGRANTE (Bleeding Heart, 1993), a multi-award winning music video made in collaboration with the flamboyant postmodern performer Astrid Hadad, Cuevas parodies Mexican nationalist iconography with an intensity akin to religious reverence. Part kitsch, part syncretic baroque, BLEEDING HEART takes an irreverent perspective on the mythic masochism of Mexican womanhood in a hybrid melodramatic mix of boleros, rancheras, and tropical rhythms”

“While DEVIL IN THE FLESH may seem like a throwback to avant-garde works from the 1970s that depict self-inflicted physical torture, Cuevas' visceral imagery of the artist's rubbing VapoRub and chile in her eyes exceed the shock of emotional manipulation.The experimental documentary .”

•      http://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/onlinessays/JC43folder/XimenaCuevas.html

Lectura de Medusa en 1941, interesante!

A Note on the Medusa Symbolism, Isador H. Coriat, M.D. American Imago, 2:281-285.

“Let Medusa come, that we may change him into stone.” Inferno IX, 52. (1941).

This note on the reconstruction of the symbolism of the Medusa myth was suggested by material which appeared in the course of routine analytic work. The unexpected emergence of this material led to an investigation of the literature on the subject and to considerations on the unconscious significance of the Medusa story both in mythology and in the individual.

A young man with a schizoid obsessional neurosis, while under analysis related that for years he had had recurrent: fantasies of seeing his mother naked and her genitalia and pubic hair were very prominent. In the midst of this fantasy he would experience a feeling that he was compulsively gazing at his mother and during this time, too, he fantasied that his body became rigid and immovable. The affective reaction associated with this fantasy consisted of a mixture of love, disgust and hate.

AQUÍ PARA TI/HERE FOR YOU –workshop’ s schedule

Dear all,

I am coordinating a summer audiovisual workshop for Aquí para Ti/Here for you (APT/HFY) http://www.hcmc.org/depts/hcclinics/Aquiparatiprogram.htm, a youth development clinic based program for Latino teens and their families –most of them immigrants- aiming to achieve Health in a very integrative way, thus addressing health inequity and the adaptation to the new environment.

I put together this summer workshop in Spanish, targeting Latina teens 15 years and up, to introduce audiovisual art done by women on issues of gender roles and particularly the female role in Latino Culture. The workshop will take place in the Minneapolis Central library, from mid July to Mid august, and one of the activities is to visit the Walker Art Center.

The workshop’s goals are: 1) to explore womanhood through audiovisual production and express our situation as women 2) to help them experience art in a very inviting way. 3) to encourage them to use the Central Library and visit museums. 4) to promote self expression via art.

TENTATIVE SCHEDULE

jul17 tue. @ Central Library RKMC. Library related issues with Aaron. Computer based activity.

jul19 th  @ Central Library -Teen central. Introduction. La cámara oscura (María Victoria Menis, 2008).  

jul24 tue en Central Library RKMC. La teta asustada (Claudia Llosa, 2009)

jul26 th en Central Library N270. Fotomontajes de Grete Stern y  Videoarte de GracielaTaquini y Ximena Cuevas–

jul31 tue. @ Central Library RKMC. A- Documentaries 1. Que se Callen las Metrallas,que Quiero Oir un Bolero, . 2. Ana Mendieta. Fuego de Tierra,  3. Bloodwork, the Ana Mendieta Story, B- start projects

 

ago2 th Walker Arts Center  http://www.walkerart.org/

ago7 tue @Central Library RKMC. Independent work on final projects.

ago9 th @ Central Library RKMC. Project presentation plus blog coordination. http://comomeveo.blogspot.com/ . Final evaluations. 

ago 17- @ Nash Gallery, U OF M. Closing event, blog presentation and Octopus/Pulpo video-installation by Yoshua Okón, https://art.umn.edu/nash/

Panel: Barbara Zecchi y Carla Manzoni -II simposio Internacional Simposio UNED-Santader

Encuentre debajo dos de las tres ponencias del panel. Puede hacer preguntas y/o comentarios tanto sea para la Prof. Zecchi como para mi. ¡Gracias por su interés! 



Barbara Zecchi: "Violencia a flor de piel: el cine filoháptico"
Barbara Zecchi propone llamar ("dar un nombre," según las propuestas de Ruby Rich) al corpus fílmico que condena la violencia contra la mujer, argumentando que se trata de un género cinematográfico en sí mismo. En esta charla Zecchi describe cuales son las características de dicho género, que se acercaría a un "body genre" (según la definición de Linda Williams) y explica las razones por llamarlo cine "filoháptico".







Decapitaciones poderosas: para-espacios surrealistas y poder de gestión femenina. on Vimeo.
La decapitación de la mujer como denuncia de la disparidad de género bajo la mirada hegemónica es vital para el programa feminista, tal como lo articulan Hélène Cixous y Teresa de Lauretis. Como contracara, la propuesta de vanguardia imprime un gesto desafiante a esta carencia mediante la cual el no tener cabeza parece más una posibilidad de rebelión que un aspecto limitante, tal como se aprecia en Abaporú (Tarsila do Amaral, 1928), Susana y el viejo (Antonio Berni, 1931) o Hundred headless woman (Max Ernst, 1929).
El proyecto de Manzoni propone la recuperación de esta lectura vanguardista para abordar la decapitación de la mujer bajo la luz del nuevo milenio y con ella, la apertura de un espacio propio “a room of one´s own” en palabras de Virginia Woolf. Inspirada en el Cine Expandido (1970) de Gene Youngblood pongo en diálogo estas heterogéneas producciones de Lucrecia Martel, descubriendo en estas acefalías el paso de la victimización al poder de gestión de la mujer.

Tejido urbano: nota de color

Simposio UNED-Santader: Decapitaciones poderosas: para-espacios surrealistas y poder de gestión femenina.

El 4 de julio participo asincrónicamente del II SIMPOSIO INTERNACIONAL SOBRE IDEOLOGÍA, POLÍTICA Y REIVINDICACIONES EN LENGUA, LITERATURA Y CINE EN ESPAÑOL. UNED, Santander Julio 4-6, 2012. Tengo el gusto de compartir el panel electrónico con Prof(s) Zecchi y Heneghan.

Decapitaciones poderosas: para-espacios surrealistas y poder de gestión femenina.

EL LINK PARA VER MI PRESENTACION ES https://vimeo.com/44013489

Detalle de la Mesa
4 de julio 2012 (horario central USA)

11:05-11:25. Carla Manzoni. Universidad de Minnesota: “Decapitaciones poderosas: para-espacios surrealistas y poder de gestión femenina.”

11:30-11:50. Barbara Zecchi. University of Massachusetts: “Violencia a flor de piel: el cine háptico”

12:55-12:15. Dorota Heneghan. Louisiana State University: “The Working Woman’s Body in Emilia Pardo Bazán's La Tribuna"

12:20-12:40. Debate en el foro.

Abstract: Decapitaciones poderosas: para-espacios surrealistas y poder de gestión femenina.

 “Una mujer atropella algo en la ruta -supone que un niño-y desde ese momento actúa en shock como si hubiera perdido la cabeza”. La mujer sin cabeza (largometraje de ficción,2008).

 “La ruta muta en estanque de peces koi, con sonido de trance y estética de loop generando una sensación hipnótica”. Pescados (cortometrajes de trance para festival en línea Notodofilmfest,2010).

“Múltiples pantallas, danzantes foco-fuera de focos y abundantes vocablos aborígenes enrarecen y escinden los espacios para la representación”. Nueva Argyropolis (cortometraje de la convocatoria oficial del bicentenario de la Republica Argentina, 2010).

“Ya sea por su exuberante cabello, por las tomas o su postura o por las máscaras de oxígeno, nunca se ve la cara de ninguna mujer-insecto que habita el barco”. Muta (cine-artepublicitario 2011).

La decapitación de la mujer como denuncia de la disparidad de género bajo la mirada hegemónica es vital para el programa feminista, tal como lo articulan Hélène Cixous y Teresa de Lauretis. Como contracara, la propuesta de vanguardia imprime un gesto desafiante a esta carencia mediante la cual el no tener cabeza parece más una posibilidad de rebelión que un aspecto limitante, tal como se aprecia en Abaporú (Tarsila do Amaral, 1928), Susana y el viejo (Antonio Berni, 1931) o Hundred headless woman (Max Ernst, 1929).

 Mi proyecto propone la recuperación de esta lectura vanguardista para abordar la decapitación de la mujer bajo la luz del nuevo milenio y con ella, la apertura de un espacio propio “a room of one´s own” en palabras de Virginia Woolf. Inspirada en el Cine Expandido (1970) de Gene Youngblood pongo en diálogo estas heterogéneas producciones de Lucrecia Martel, descubriendo en estas acefalías el paso de la victimización al poder de gestión de la mujer.