Featuring seven short videos made by artists from across the Americas, Spells Upon The Land highlights humanity’s consequential relationship to the land. Each of the artworks in this program conjures the social and political imaginaries of the earth, an awareness of animal intelligence, and the poetics of protest and play.
Programme:
Paul Kos. Ice Makes Fire, 2004. 2:53 min
Ana Vaz. Atomic Garden, 2018. 7:34 min
Elena Damiani. Intersticio, 2012. 5:26 min
Colectivo Los Ingravidos. Coyolxauhqui, 2017. 9:46 min
Minia Biabiany. Learning from the white birds, 2021. 5:58 min
Beatriz Santiago Muñoz. La Cabeza Mató a Todos, 2014. 7:33 min
Camilo Echeverri. El mato, 2023. 6:23 min
Joseph del Pesco is a peripatetic writer, curator and perennial collaborator. For more than a decade he’s been Director, and starting in 2016 became International Director of KADIST—a network-driven contemporary art organization with headquarters in Paris. He’s known for creating the first international residency for art magazines, reimagining an historic artist contract to support a charity chosen by the artist, and establishing a free-school aggregating events across the city. Working with Kadist and independently, he’s organized numerous exhibitions, screenings and projects at institutions such as Centre Pompidou, MACO Oaxaca, MACBA, moCa Cleveland, The Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The Center for Contemporary Art Tel Aviv, CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. He’s also been a guest of various residency programs including Fogo Island Arts, SOMA, Beta-Local, The Luminary, ArtPort, and Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo. His writing has been published in dozens of catalogs, magazines, and books. His sold-out collection of short stories about imaginary museums, “The Museum Took a Few Minutes To Collect Itself,” was published by Art Metropole (Toronto) in 2018.