Film – art – video. All together now!

Yesterday was the opening of the festival of video art LOOP Barcelona. But it’s not the only one dedicated to this hybridisation resulting from the combination of disciplines and supports. Narrative, image, sound, aesthetics, time, shots, everything composes and decomposes in art in video, video art. At A*DESK we’ve dedicated the month of May to talking about the triad film- art – video, from different contexts and different supports.

We began the month with Pierre Bismuth, one of the very big names we consider worth bearing in mind in the programme of the Loop Festival. He’s presenting his most recent film “Where is Rocky II?” which deals with the search for the work Rocky II, a fake rock, made out of resin, that Ed Ruscha hid in the desert of Mojave. Montse Badia talked to himl , so that he would give us an account of the project.

The second week of May it was the turn of an exhaustive review at the hands of Peio Aguirre, who wrote “Becoming Screen” an analysis of the evolution of the triad film – video – art, while also considering, how with the adjacent technologies, these have evolved in nature. A small map of audio-visuals and film within the art institution.

From Colombia, but not from Bogotá, Guillermo Vanegas interviewed Julián Montenegro, an expert analyst about the evolution of video art in Colombia, and in particular the city of Cali, so well known for the influence of cartels. We get to know a context, one framed by trends of investment that, by bypassing video, enabled a huge expansion based on the technical support of public televisions and above all, on the freedom of creators to produce new codes, new discourses.

Finally Nerea Arrojería, a new collaborator, reported from Madrid on another of the festivals dedicated to video art: the IVAHM (International Video Art House Madrid). Nerea pointed out an interesting characteristic of video that we consider is worth extending; the viral capacity of the image in movement, its condition as a parasite, infectious for reality, the fluid disposition needed to exercise as a virus, to modify, however slowly, the given structures.

We could also have talked, what’s more, about DocumentaMadrid, or DocsBarcelona; of the many programmes of film and video taking place in museum institutions both in Spain and abroad; of other festivals (Punto y Raya, Bang Barcelona, Proyector…); of creators, supports, channels of funding; channels of distribution…We have the feeling we’ll talk be talking about all of this again. Until then, happy screening.