(Re)visionats, (Re)visitats
2 — 27 May 2017
— An approach to the pioneers of Spanish video production
- Artists
- Antoni Muntadas, Eugènia Balcells and Carles Pujol
- Curators
- Albert Alcoz
- Venue
- Arts Santa Mònica
- A project by
- LOOP Barcelona
- Contributor
- produced by Arts Santa Monica
- Price
- Free admission
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This retrospective, curated by Albert Alcoz, will feature three pioneering video artists whose work is emblematic of the discipline's emergence. It will consider how rapid technological development influenced the form's early days.
In the mid-1970s, video technology was a novel tool whose artistic potential had yet to be discovered. A generation of video producers complicated the process of capturing sound and the moving image. It represented an ideological shift that, due to the existing political situation, involved the debating the conceptual practices linked to the dematerialization of the art and calling into question the conventions conventions of audiovisual communication that had become standard at that time. Analyzing the almost seductive strategies of cinema and television; Demanding the critical involvement of the spectator in the processes of perception; Pointing the need for feminist perspectives in the field and investigating the aesthetic possibilities intrinsic to analogue video are some of the approaches present in the work of this brief selection of pioneers of video production in Spain. Revising and revisiting their work allows us to appreciate, from a contemporary perspective, the value of some of the pieces that are already part of the cultural video-artistic heritage of this country.
Antoni Muntadas
- Artist, Speaker
1942, Barcelona
Muntadas works with photography, video, publications, Internet, multi-media installations and public intervention. His work addresses social, political and communication issues, the relationship between public and private space as well as the different channels of information. In 1971 he moved to New York where he created most of his video works and installations, and made prototypes for experimental alternative television, such as Cadaqués Canal Local, 1974 and Barcelona Distrito 1, 1976. Since 1995, Muntadas has grouped together a set of works and projects titled On Translation. Highly diverse in their contents and features, they all focus on the author’s personal experience and artistic activity in numerous countries over a period of thirty years. By grouping such works together under this epigraph, Muntadas places them within a body of experience and concrete concerns regarding communication, the culture of our times and the role of the artist and art in contemporary society. His most recent projects are About Academia (2011-2017) and Asian Protocols, (2012-ongoing). Currently he lives where he works and works where he lives.
Artists: Eugènia Balcells, Carles Pujol
Albert Alcoz is a filmmaker, teacher and film curator of experimental film and artists’ video. PhD in Media Arts from Universidad Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona and Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Barcelona where he teaches cinema and video. He writes about avant-garde cinema, documentary film and video art for various print media as well as his website Visionary Film created in 2006. Since 2005 he has made several works in film and videographic formats, some of which are distributed by HAMACA or included at the Xcèntric Archive. He has been part of audiovisual platforms like Angular –a publisher of DVDs of international experimental film–, Venusplutón!, Blogs&Docs, Found Footage Magazine and curated the screenings series Amalgama, Cinema Anèmic and CRANC. He has written the books Resonancias fílmicas. El sonido en el cine estructural (1960-1981) (Shangrila, 2017) and Radicales libres. 50 películas esenciales del cine experimental (UOC, 2019).
Last update: July 17th, 2019
