Laura Cabrera & Sira Cabrera
Spanish videographers
Interview: 10 questions
https://vip.nmartproject.net/cabrera-laura/
1. Tell me something about your life and training
We were born in 1947, in Cáceres, Spain. We are twins, we carry out various artistic activities: video creation, painting, drawing, sculpture, installation, engraving,
photomontage and scenography. First we studied Draftsmanship in Cáceres and Madrid. Sira obtained a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the Complutense University of Madrid in 1979, and she studied Audiovisual Communication at the CEV in Madrid, 1985-86. Laura lived in Buenos Aires for 12 years and studied at the Prilidiano Pueyrredón School of Fine Arts Teachers in two specialties, Sculpture 1972-76 and Engraving 1977-79, and at the Ernesto de La Cárcova Superior School of Fine Arts in Sculpture 1977-1981.
When she returned to Madrid, she did her Bachelor’s Thesis at the Complutense University of Madrid, 1984. We both studied four doctorate courses, 1984-86, in this university. We were Teachers of Plastic Expression in University School Teaching and Secondary Education Institutes in Madrid. And we did painting exhibitions for 25 years. Now we only do video art together since 2009.
2. When, how and why did you start shooting?
At a meeting of friends we filmed ourselves playing and we really liked it very much. Starting in 2009, we took recording and editing classes. And we continue making videos together because we feel free and joyful to express ourselves artistically; the video makes us live intensely. It is a very complete art, it handles time, movement, sound, images evolving…
3. What kind of themes do your films have?
With video art we reflect on life today, and we come up with themes such as gender and class inequality, crying for the destruction of Nature, humans as predators, the erroneous culture-nature opposition, climate change, poverty, the dance of life, dream, time, madness and death.
Laura y Sira Cabrera video – The Body Screams
4. How do you develop your films, do you follow certain principles, styles, etc.?
The images of our videos are created by us, we do not make appropriations. And the technique is not as important to us as being able to express what we need. The creative process usually goes like this: together, in the field, we brainstorm ideas, writing down each one and drawing the first sketches of images. This stage is the most enjoyable, we invent with complete freedom, we laugh at nonsense and we encourage each other. Later, in other meetings, we form a central idea and choose and imagine scenes to represent it. We are influenced by what we are experiencing, individually and by what is happening in the world. Later, that central theme grows and enriches itself with what we read, live and document. We manually create models, spaces, volumetric figures, drawings… And we film the actions. Sometimes we choose other people as protagonists or ourselves.
However, the editing is done only by Laura, but with the images filmed by both and those from the archive that we have filmed on trips and at any interesting moment. In the end, we visualize and correct the video together.
5. Tell us something about the technical equipment you use.
We use two Sony Full HD and HDR 4K video cameras, and we edit on the MAC, with Final Cut Pro X program. We use the double Chroma technique a lot to change backgrounds and images. We have installed a recording workshop with a green chromakey background and floor. We use solar lighting, and several spotlights.
6. Today, digital technology also dominates video as a medium. How is the digital aspect entering the creation of your videos, technologically and/or conceptually?
We want the technique not to be important in our videos but to express the main idea or theme. The content must be essential, and the technique be subordinate. Now reality is increasingly virtual, the human being is ubiquitous, space and time vanish, the transparency of being appears, the public and the private, the individual and the collective, the interior and the exterior, are being erased, and people feel anonymous and in solitude in a globalized world. It is the century of the self, a subject of consumption, a predatory being with nature. Now we are looking for images to express these experiences of the current human being, a human being that is also digital.
7. How do you finance your films?
We work for the love of art, we find life more intense and interesting by making videos. We do not seek funding and we do not earn income from them. We only send videos to cultural festivals that do not charge us nor the public. Video art today is not economically valued, only the videos of very famous artists are.
Laura y Sira Cabrera video – Drifts in Time/
8. Do you work individually as a video artist/filmmaker or do you work as a team? If you have experience in both, what is the difference, which do you prefer?
We both work together. However, only Laura does the editing. The protagonists of our videos are people we choose and sometimes ourselves. The sound is from musicians, who generously give it to us. We prefer to work as a team, together.
9. Who or what has a lasting influence on your video making?
We are influenced by all kinds of events, our experiences, social changes, current affairs, contemporary art, poetry, plastic arts, theater, music, cinema, flamenco, magical realism, hallucinogenic realism… The black paintings of Goya, films by Buñuel and Almodovar, art by Francis Bacon and Picasso, videos by Marina Núñez, Albert Merino and Bill Viola, dance by Nacho Duato and Pina Bausch,
novels by Juan Rulfo and Kafka, Neolithic art, poetry-essays by Anne Carson, Japanese prints, music by György Ligetti, performances by Marina Abramovich, the voice of María Callas, art by Louise Bourgeois, Kantor’s theatre…
10. What are your future plans or dreams as film/video makers?
Our plans are to continue doing what we do, investigating the technique and expressiveness of this art to transmit our experiences. Travel filming all over the countries, get to know different cultures, encourage our curiosity and expand our archive of images. And have more space and technical means to film.
11. Can your works be seen online as well as on the CologneOFF platform? Where? List some links and resources.
On our website there are trailers of our videos:
https://lauracabreraysiracabrera.wordpress.com
And also the works prior to 2009 in:
http://www.lauracabreradiaz.blogspot.com/
Laura y Sira Cabrera video
Laura Cabrera & Sira Cabrera
videastas españolas
Entrevista: 10 preguntas
1. Cuéntenme algo sobre su(??) vida y formación
Nacimos en 1947, en Cáceres, España. Somos gemelas, realizamos varias actividades artísticas: videocreación, pintura, dibujo, escultura, instalación, grabado, fotomontaje y realización escenográfica.
Primero estudiamos Maestría de Delineante en Cáceres y Madrid. Sira obtuvo la Licenciatura en Bellas Artes en la Universidad Complutense de Madrid en 1979, y estudió Comunicación Audiovisual en el CEV en Madrid, 1985-86. Laura vivió 12 años en Buenos Aires y estudió en la Escuela del Profesorado de Bellas Artes Prilidiano Pueyrredón en dos especialidades, Escultura 1972-76 y Grabado 1977-79, y en la Superior de Bellas Artes Ernesto de La Cárcova en Escultura 1977-1981. Al volver a Madrid hizo la Tesina de Licenciatura en La Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 1984. Donde ambas estudiamos cuatro cursos de doctorado ,1984-86.
Fuimos Profesoras de Expresión Plástica en Magisterio Universitario e Institutos de Educación Secundaria en Madrid. E hicimos exposiciones de pintura durante 25 años. Ahora hacemos solamente videoarte juntas desde 2009.
2. ¿Cuándo, cómo y por qué empezasteis a rodar?
En una reunión de amigos nos filmamos jugando y nos gustó muchísimo. A partir de 2009, tomamos clases de grabación y edición. Y seguimos haciendo videos juntas porque nos sentimos libres y gozosas para expresarnos artísticamente; el vídeo nos hace vivir intensamente. Es un arte muy completo, se maneja el tiempo, el movimiento, el sonido, las imágenes evolucionando…
3. ¿Qué tipo de temas tienen vuestras películas?
Con el videoarte reflexionamos sobre la vida de hoy, y nos salen temas como la desigualdad de géneros y clases sociales, el llanto por la destrucción de la Naturaleza, los humanos como depredadores, la errónea oposición cultura-naturaleza, el cambio climático, la pobreza, la danza de la vida, el sueño, el tiempo, la locura y la muerte.
Laura y Sira Cabrera video – Drifts in Time
4. ¿Cómo desarrolláis vuestras películas, seguís ciertos principios, estilos, etc.?
Las imágenes de nuestros vídeos las creamos nosotras, no hacemos apropiaciones. Y la técnica no nos resulta tan importante como poder expresar nuestras ideas. El proceso creativo suele ser así: juntas, en el campo hacemos una lluvia de ideas, que vamos anotando cada una y dibujando los primeros bocetos de imágenes. Esta etapa es la más gozosa, inventamos con total libertad, nos reímos con los disparates y nos incentivamos mutuamente. Después en otras reuniones vamos formando una idea central y eligiendo e imaginando escenas para representarla. Nos influye lo que estamos viviendo, individualmente y lo que sucede en el mundo. Después, ese tema central va creciendo y enriqueciéndose con lo que leemos, vivimos y nos documentamos. Creamos manualmente maquetas, espacios, figuras volumétricas, dibujos… Y filmamos las acciones. A veces elegimos otras personas como protagonistas o a nosotras mismas. Sin embargo el montaje lo hace sólo Laura, pero con las imágenes filmadas por ambas y las del archivo que hemos filmado en viajes y en cualquier momento interesante. Al final, visualizamos y corregimos el vídeo juntas.
5. Contadnos algo sobre el equipo técnico que utilizáis(?).
Utilizamos dos cámaras vídeo Sony Full HD y HDR 4K, y montamos en el ordenador MAC, con el programa de edicción Final Cut Pro X. Usamos mucho la técnica doble Chroma para cambiar fondos e imágenes. Tenemos instalado un taller de grabación con fondo y suelo verde chromakey. Usamos iluminación solar, y varios focos.
6. Actualmente, la tecnología digital domina también el video como medio. ¿De qué manera está entrando el aspecto digital en la creación de vuestros videos, tecnológica y/o conceptualmente?
Queremos que la técnica no sea importante en nuestros videos sino que expresen la idea o el tema principal. El contenido debe ser esencial, y la técnica estar subordinada. Ahora la realidad es cada vez más virtual, el ser humano es ubicuo, el espacio y el tiempo se desvanecen, aparece la transparencia del ser, se va borrando lo público y lo privado, lo individual y lo colectivo, lo interior y lo exterior, y las personas se sienten anónimas y en soledad en un mundo globalizado. Es el siglo del yo, un sujeto de consumo, un ser depredador con la naturaleza. Ahora buscamos imágenes para expresar estas experiencias del ser humano actual, un ser humano también digital.
7. ¿Cómo financiáis vuestras películas?
Trabajamos por amor al arte, la vida nos parece más intensa e interesante haciendo video-arte. No buscamos financiación y no obtenemos ingresos con ellos. Sólo enviamos videos a festivales culturales que no nos cobran a nosotras ni al público. El video-arte hoy no se valora económicamente, solo los videos de artistas muy famosos.
Laura y Sira Cabrera video – Transmutations
8. ¿Trabajáis individualmente como videoartista/cineasta o trabajáis en equipo? Si tienéis experiencia en ambos, cual es la diferencia, cual preferís?
Trabajamos juntas las dos. Y en el montaje solamente Laura. Los protagonistas de nuestros vídeos, son personas que elegimos y otras veces nosotras mismas. El sonido es de músicos, que generosamente nos la ceden. Preferimos trabajar en equipo, juntas las dos.
9. ¿Quién o qué tiene una influencia duradera en vuestra realización videográfica?
Nos influye todo tipo de eventos, nuestras vivencias, los cambios sociales, la actualidad, el arte contemporáneo, la poesía, artes plásticas, teatro, música, cine, el flamenco, el realismo mágico, el realismo alucinógeno… Las pinturas negras de Goya, cine de Buñuel y Almodovar, arte de Francis Bacon y Picasso, vídeos de Marina Núñez, Albert Merino y Bill Viola, la danza de Nacho Duato y Pina Bausch, novelas de Juan Rulfo y Kafka, el arte Neolítico, poesía-ensayo de Anne Carson, las estampas japonesas, música de György Ligetti, performances de Marina Abramovich, la voz de María Callas, el arte de Louise Bourgeois, el teatro de Kantor…
10. ¿Cuáles son vuestros planes o sueños futuros como realizadoras de cine/video?
Nuestros planes son seguir haciendo lo que hacemos, investigando la técnica y la expresividad de este arte para transmitir nuestras vivencias. Viajar filmando por todos los países, conocer culturas diferentes, ampliar nuestra experiencia y conocimientos e ir aumentando nuestras imágenes en el archivo, para futuros vídeos. Y tener más espacio y medios técnicos para filmar.
11. ¿Se pueden ver obras vuestras en línea además de en la plataforma CologneOFF? ¿Dónde? Enumere algunos enlaces y recursos.
En nuestra web hay tráiler de nuestros vídeos:
https://lauracabreraysiracabrera.wordpress.com
Y también los trabajos anteriores a 2009 en:
http://www.lauracabreradiaz.blogspot.com/
Laura y Sira Cabrera
Laura Cabrera Díaz and Sira Cabrera Díaz
(Cáceres, April 28, 1947)
are two Spanish twin sisters who carry out artistic activities: fiction, documentary and mixed video creation; painting, drawing, sculpture, installation, engraving, photomontage and set production.
https://lauraysiracabrera.wordpress.com
http://www.lauracabreradiaz.blogspot.com/
Spanish Wikipedia: Laura Cabrera and Sira Cabrera
https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laura_Cabrera_y_Sira_Cabrera
1- TRAINING
Sira obtained a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Complutense University of Madrid in 1979. And she studied Audiovisual Communication at the CEV in Madrid 1985-86.
Laura studied in Buenos Aires at the Prilidiano Pueyrredón Faculty of Fine Arts School in two specialties: Sculpture in 1972-76 and Engraving in 1977-79, and at the Ernesto de La
Cárcova Superior School of Fine Arts: Sculpture, 1977-1981. She studied in the workshops of the sculptor Aurelio Macchi, 1978-80, and the painter José Moraña 1981.
When she returned to Madrid she did her thesis and obtained a degree from the Faculty of Fine Arts of the Complutense University of Madrid 1984. Both studied together for four doctoral courses, 1984-86.
They expanded their studies by taking 19 monographic courses on engraving, set design, installation, performance, philosophy, music, contemporary art, theatre, video creation and editing…, at the Reina Sofía Museum, Menéndez Pelayo University in Santander, Casa Encendida in Madrid , La Tabacalera, UCM in El Escorial, Fundación Mafre in Madrid, and in the Contemporary Art Workshops and Courses of the Círculo de Bellas Artes in Madrid.
Laura y Sira Cabrera
2- TEACHING
They have dedicated themselves to the teaching of Plastic Expression, Sira as Professor of Technical and Artistic Drawing in Secondary and Baccalaureate Institutes of the Ministry of Education of Spain, 1982-2007. And Laura was a teacher at the Plastic Arts Workshops in Cultural Centers of the Municipal Councils of Moratalaz, Arganzuela and Vicálvaro, Madrid, 1986-89.
And she at the ESCUNI University School of Teaching, attached to the Complutense University of Madrid, 1989-2012, as Professor of Didactics of Plastic Expression, and Theater Plastic Workshop.
At the same time they held painting exhibitions in galleries and institutions in Spain and Europe.
3- FILMOGRAPHY:
41 video-art in co-production, by Laura & Sira Cabrera:
-Alterations. 7’28” (2022). – Tune in with nature. 9’43” (2022). -interspecies. 9’16” (2021).
-Virulence. 5’05” (2020). -Monologue. 1’09” (2020). -Climate spasms. 6’23” (2020).
-Madrid, Christmas, Gran Vía. 8’23” (2020). -Concept and techniques. 5’53” (2019). –
Climatic disorder. 4’17” (2019). – Climatic dementia. 3’51” (2019) -Be. 7’53” (2019).
-Transmutations. 10’12” (2018). -The body screams. 7’36” (2017). -Indications. 6’59”
(2017). -Third elections. 1′ (2016). -Drifts in time. 7’35” (2016). -Poem to Riotinto. 7’58”
(2016). -Woman erased, II. 3’21” (2015). -Digital reverie. 7’50” (2015). -Approaches, III.
5’59” (2015). -Irreconcilable, II. 3’49” (2014). -Dream. 7’06” (2013). – ‘Thecno-Nature. 9’33”
(2012). -Disinhabit. 3’23” (3012). – Revolution 0. 6’02” (2012). -Revolver I. 2’13” (2012). –
Revolutionary. 14’12” (2011). -Book Absences. 3’47” (2011). -Travel Book. 3’52” (2011).
-Ritual to the trees. 6’04” (2011). -Stir. 5.39” (2011). – scramble 3’57” (2011). -Red ribbon.
5’48” (2010). -Cry-Laughter. 9’51” (2010). -CaperuZita. 4’25” (2009). -Tree-Woman-
Thread. 4’25” (2009). -Tree-Wind. 4’16” (2009). -Tree-Human. 10’54” (2009). -Self-portrait.
8’48” (2009). -Eros. 5’40” (2005).
4- STATEMENT
Our interest is artistic creation, in general. Making video art is irresistible, it is, perhaps, the richest, most direct, autonomous and free means of creation. It allows you to express
yourself and experiment with images, adding movement, the dimension of time and sound, without needing a narration. To express a central idea, we make drawings, performances, costumes, models, spaces and installations. Real, not virtual. And by mixing the filmed images, improbable figures and paradoxical, real and surreal spaces emerge. Perhaps as a hallucinogenic realism. With video art we reflect on life today, such as class and gender inequality, crying for the destruction of Nature, humans as predators, the mistaken culturenature opposition, the dance of life, sleep, time , madness and death.
Laura y Sira Cabrera
5- CO-ADDRESS
The way of working together is in several stages, the two sisters meet in a nearby field in Madrid and we brainstorm ideas that we write down each one in her notebook, also drawing the first sketches of images. This stage is the most enjoyable, we invent with complete freedom, we laugh at nonsense and we encourage each other. Later, in other meetings, we form a central idea and choose and imagine scenes to represent it. We are influenced by what we are experiencing, individually and by what is happening in the world. Then, individually, this theme grows and enriches itself with what we read and live, cinema, exhibitions, theater, poetry… We get together and continue contributing. We manually create models, spaces, figures, drawings, chromas and we film the actions with ourselves as protagonists and with other people. All together. However, the montage is done only by Laura, but with the images filmed by both, whether they are the special ones for that video or the archival ones that we have each filmed separately on trips. And in the end, we visualize it and correct the video together.
6- VIDEO CREATION FESTIVALS
The videographic works have been carried out together as co-directors, they have specialized in video-art, since 2009 when they combine symbolism and pictorial dynamics, within the languages of contemporary art at a crossroads of discourses and disciplines.
Together with the filmed image, drawing, sculpture, installation, performance and writing are mixed. They have obtained recognition, their videos having been screened in more than 150 international festivals, some of them are:
– V KRONOS ART BCN, at the Palau Robert of the Generalitat de Catalunya, 17-25 sept. 2022
– PEACE LETTERs u-7, from Los Angeles to UKANIE, at Torrance Art Museum. U-6 from THESSALONIKI Municipal Art Gallery Greece, U-8 from VisArt Center ROCKVILLE Massachusetts USA. Curated by Wilfried Agricola from Cologne, Germany, 2022.
– Festival INHERITANCE, Northern Visions & Latest TV. The Festival of the 4 seasons, SPRING. It was broadcast on NV TV Belfast, on Sheffield Live! and KM TV in Kent. England, 22-30 April 2022.
– Torrance Art Museum, ART SHOW L.A. Memorial to the future, Los Angeles 2022. – LES INSTANTS Vidèo Poétiques Friche la Belle de Mai Marseille France 2014-15-16-17- 18-20-21
– ALC Videoart, MACA auditorium Contemporary Museum Alicante, and Cigarreras 2021- 22 collection.
– FAENZA, Jorge Eliécer Gaitán Municipal Theater and Bogotá Theater of Univ. Bogotá 2018-20-21.
– VIDEOGRAM, Itinerancy of INTERMEDIATIONS, Santa Fé Gallery, Bogotá. 2021.
– RENCONTRES TRAVERSE, ABATTOIRS museum and Le Cratère cinema. Toulouse 2020.
-TIME is Love, Cruce, Arte y Pensamiento Contemporáneo, Madrid 2020.
– NewMediaFest, 4y7 -WOW-IAM- Institut, für Alles Mögliche / Stützpunkt Teufelsberg Berlin 2020.
– The MIAMI New Media Festival, Laundromat Art Space and Dorcam Museum of Doral 2019, 2020.
– MADATAC, CentroCentro Cibeles, C. Conde Duque, C. Matadero, Madrid 2012-13-14- 17-18-19.
– INTERMEDIATIONS, Museum of Modern Art and Palace of Fine Arts, Medellín Colombia, 2015-16-17-18-19-20.
– ENTER SPACE at TEA: Tenerife Arts Space, Canary Islands, Spain. 2013-14-15-17-19.
– CINEMÍSTICA, Corrala de Santiago of the University of Granada, Spain. 2016 -17-18 -19.
– BIDEODROME, Art House Zinema BilbaoArte, Bilbao, Spain. 2019.
– 1st IMAGE PLAY. By invitation, Municipal Theater Baltazar Dias, Funchal, Madeira Portugal. 2019
– VIDEOFORMES, Festival d’Arts Numériques Clemont-Ferrand Maison de la Culture France 2019
– EXCHANGES in MEDIA / AURIS, Museo Zapadores, Fuencarral, Madrid, 2019. And in La Tostadora, Colombia 2016, with tours in Quito, Tolula Mexico, and Cusco. 2016.
– ARS VISIBILIS IV. GENIUS, Sala MECA in Almería, and at the Museo de Almería 2018.
– WOW.14 / Ukraine, kyiv University of Arts / Say by Body Art Festival kyiv, Ukraine. 2018.
– FICE Expanded Corporality, National Library, Jorge Luis Borges Room Buenos Aires 2018.
– ARS VISIBILIS IV. GENIUS, MECA Room and Contemporary Museum Almería Spain. 2018.
– THREE TOTAL Art Space: 4 Proposals 5 Video Artists. Madrid, January 2017.
– VIDEOsPAIN, Transvisual Itinerancies, Madatac and AECID Culture in Cultural Centers of Spain in Lima, Santiago de Chile, Bogotá, Tegucigalpa, 2015. cataloged
– FIAV, Casablanca Video Art Festival 2015-16
Participant in
CologneOFF IX – 9th Cologne international Videoart Festival 2013
CologneOFF X – 10th Cologne international Videoart Festival 2014
The Wake Up! Memorial – self~imaging 2016
The W:OW Project 2018
The New AIDS Memorial 2019
The Wake Up! Memorial – Corona! Shut Down? 2020
The Wake Up! Memorial – Gandhi PPNRCD 2020
The Wake Up Memorial – Wake up! Climate Change 2021
The Violence Project 2022
Laura y Sira Cabrera
Laura y Sira Cabrera (Spain) – Drifts in time , 2016. 7:34
Laura y Sira Cabrera (Spain) – The Body Screams, 2012, 7:36
Laura & Sira Cabrera (Spain) – Between Species, 2021, 9:16
Laura & Sira Cabrera (Spain) – Climate Spasms, 2020, 6:23
Laura & Sira Cabrera (Spain) – Monologue, 2020, 1:09
Laura & Sira Cabrera (Spain) – Woman Deleted II , 2015, 3:21
Laura & Sira Cabrera (Spain) – Be/Being , 2019, 7:53
Laura & Sira Cabrera (Spain) – Transmutations, 2018, 10:12
Laura & Sira Cabrera (Spain) – Indicios / Inkling, 2017, 6:59
Laura & Sira Cabrera (Spain) – Virulencia, 2020, 5:05
Drifts in time / Derivas en el tiempo, 2016. 7:34
Time is the protagonist, a vast and abstract theme, studied in all ages and lived in many ways by human beings. It is to make visible something intangible, but that we all feel, inside and outside of us, in the universe and in our finite existence. These images do not show an event, they are presented as a scenario to be deciphered, since time, in addition to being studied by science, sounds like poetry.
It is an attempt to make visible, in the body, the evils of the mind. To materialize in plastic images the sorrows of the spirit, the body that squeaks in situations that it cannot resist.
Express the pain of a body subjected to realities that distance it from its true being. Grief, confusion, fear, lack of love, ties that imprison, the own shadow that harasses; rupture, division and multiplication of the self, ego masks that monitor and repress, obstacles and internal voices, loss of freedom, the armor that protects and imprisons…
It is a contribution to biodiversity. Human beings reject our own animal nature and we are destroying animals and the habitability of the planet every day. We are in a fracture of history that wants to banish the anthropocentrism of culture to connect without hierarchies with all living beings, with all vital forces for diverse interconnections. A passage to another paradigm. The images of the video are produced by a mixture of techniques, it is also, like the content, a hybridization, an interconnection of drawing, sculpture, filming, reality, surreality and animation.
Synopsis
They are two video-performance cut and mixed, about climate change, global warming, fires, plastics in the sea and floods… We are in a new geological era: the Anthropocene, it refers to the impact we have on the planet with human activities. Ironically, a being from medieval legends appears who represents the force of Nature, mystery, purity, spirituality, nobility, honor, eroticism, who detects dangers and warns us of our insanity for separating nature and culture.
Synopsis:
It is a monologue or perhaps a dialogue with death. It is a confrontation, a spell. It is necessary to emerge with force and beauty against this harsh reality of the coronavirus. This work contains some images from a previous video: Acercamientos, which have been modified to form this new one.
Synopsis:
A woman is being silenced and confused, alienated, erased, quartered and broken metaphorically, but that is what is happening in reality in the world right now with gender violence. The passivity of the woman is also shown, since her identity has been erased and she is not fully aware of the violence in which she lives. We can ask ourselves, do we need feminism? Since we live a scourge in all societies on the planet, which we must eradicate.
Synopsis: A woman gets into the skin of another being, an absurd and sympathetic monster, and fills herself from within, filling herself with clouds, becoming part of nature.
Plants and animals live inside, he lives between water, sky and earth, and as one more being in Nature, he feels the intrinsic connection between all living entities and the cycle of
life and death on this planet. Music and voice is the guide that imprints a rhythm and emotional content on the images.
How are we really? This video starts from the idea of being dead and how we are opening up to life, accepting ourselves as we are. An object comes to life, following the states of mineral, vegetable, animal …, showing our relationship with Nature. As in a game, reminiscent of the theory of evolution, a path is traveled with dissonance and excess, going through the irrational and awkward, with trial and error.
.Inkling wandering about space and time, looking for a new relationship with Nature. Indirectly and poetically it proposes to recreate in her, to admire her, to look for a new role for the human being feeling within the universe. Overcoming our predatory role, stop being the subject that dominates the object, stop doing what we have been doing and stop exploding and destroy life on the planet until exhaustion, to submerge us as one more among all beings.
Synopsis: A woman becomes a strange being, and enters the air, the sea and the land full of color and life; but her presence transforms the places into disasters that smell of sadness. The video stages the arrogance, lightness and arrogance with which human beings mistreat nature. It tries to make us aware that we are like viruses, destroying life on planet Earth and we are producing a climate pandemic caused by our human frivolity.
Through a fiction, this video presents the development of a hypothetical visual arts contest, whose plot background is overcoming the so-called ‘reception crisis’ of Contemporary Art. Crisis about which Theodor Adorno theorized in the 50s. For this he will use techniques typical of the mass-media, together with the proportions of a great popular event.
Agents external to the creative process: gallery owners, curators, official collectors, etc… analyze in third person the different contributions of the participants, which make up, at the same time, a proposal of dreams and utopias.
Albert Merino
Spanish videomaker
Interview: 10 questions
https://vip.nmartproject.net/merino-albert/
1. Tell me something about your life and the educational background
I studied fine Arts in Barcelona and Berlin , I spend as well several years in France were I filmed several video pieces.
2. When, how and why started you filming?
I start filming during mi second year of studies in the Kunsthochschule Berlin Weißensee when I was studing sculpture. I found the video media a best way to express myself.
3. What kind of subjects have your films?
I try to experiment between different genres. I make a kind of poetical and introspective work using video to describe emotional atmospheres. I use as well the video to visualize fake ‘realities’ as a way of ‘videotopies’…
Alber Merino video – Memories of Detachment
4. How do you develop your films, do you follow certain principles, styles etc?
I have a lot of references of painting and old and modern film and videomakers, such as Buñuel, Leos Carrax, Lech Maiesky, Mathew Barney, Pierrick Sorin, Reynolds Reynolds, Carles Congost…
5. Tell me something about the technical equipment you use.
I use an HDV sony camera, and a Digital Canon photo camera. For editing I use Final Cut and After Effects in a Mac Laptop
6. What are the chances of the digital video technologies for creating art using “moving images” generally, and for you personally?
The possibility of composing, that means generate different images than you registered.
7. How do you finance your films?
Principally I try to realize another jobs to economize and be able to finance my self projects.
8. Do you work individually as a video artist/film maker or do you work in a team?
if you have experience in both, what is the difference, what do you prefer?
I work alone, but I use a lot of free collaborators for acting in my video pieces. I will like to work in a team as well.
9. Who or what has a lasting influence on your film/video making?
All kind of fake documentaires.
10. What are your future plans or dreams as a film/video maker?
To find resources to be able to produce new films.
Can works of yours viewed online besides on the CologneOFF platform? Where?
List some links & resources
Interiew @ METAL Magazine
Albert Merino has a liquid but sharp gaze. This Barcelona video artist is one of those people to whom his intelligence gives them away. For him, reality can be observed from many angles, with a certain poetic but also critical. His work has participated in numerous international video art festivals and has been presented at institutions such as Arts Santa Mònica, Palais de Tokyo, Songwon Art Center in South Korea and MOCA in Taipei. Recognized with various international awards, something tells me that his greatest reward is being able to move in parallel between the imaginary and the real.
What do you want to tell me about your vital and artistic journey up to today?
I was born in Barcelona, where I lived until I was 23 years old. There I began my artistic studies at the University of Barcelona. I then moved to Berlin, where I also completed a Diploma in Fine Arts and a Meisterschüler under the tutelage of the sculptor Inge Mahn at Weißensee, the former East Berlin School of Fine Arts, which was completely reinvented in the 1990s. It was precisely in Berlin where I began to experiment with video art, since in Barcelona I had trained in painting and drawing. But it wasn’t until I moved to Paris that I began to dedicate myself fully to this discipline.
Let’s say that after a lot of searching I began to produce in this city in a more intense way, and it is at this time that some works appear that have been more widely disseminated later. Upon my return to Barcelona, I began to distribute my work and received some prizes and scholarships. Among them, some residences, especially at Casa Velázquez, Académie de France in Madrid. That is the reason why I moved to Madrid for more than a year.
How’s Madrid?
Madrid was a discovery; there is a very wide scene and things are constantly happening, it is almost endless. There I worked on several pieces as well. At the end of this period I returned to Barcelona, and later I moved to Lyon. There I am doing my new jobs. Living in various contexts has always been a source of inspiration for me. Somehow, my works are nourished by the places where I live.
Alber Merino video – The Present Condition
From what moment and how did you make artistic language yours?
During my adolescence I spent hours and hours drawing, creating imaginary cities and worlds. I had the need to capture the things I thought and that’s how I became familiar with drawing. Then you start to question everything you’ve innately learned, and you spend time experimenting and looking for a language with which to communicate what you want to say. I seem to remember that in my first years of study I started drawing storyboards. I had many ideas for visual works on video. Abstract videos close to painting, videos without dialogues that suggest a kind of contemplation, a transition of evocative images that dialogue with each other.
“Ideas are often more important than the means by which they are realized, but the formal resolution is sometimes also part of the meaning.”
Making videos wasn’t as easy then as it is now…
Exact. In the middle of the analog era it was very difficult to formalize these ideas. Producing a video was not within everyone’s reach. Recording or editing were difficult processes and the equipment was not available to everyone. My generation was born in an analog world and lived the transition to digital. It was impossible then to imagine how easily, years later, a camera and editing equipment could be accessed. My work has been incorporating all these technological changes.
I started working with analog. The process is a lot like digital; what changes, ultimately, is the accessibility to the means of production. It is about translating drawings into moving images, developing a whole visual imaginary. Perhaps the video is a way to delve into those drawings, into those imaginary worlds that come from far away in the creative process. But at the same time they are also an interaction with the things I experience and a way of interacting with the environment.
How do you remember the years in the Faculty of Fine Arts?
I have good memories of my time at the Barcelona faculty. The generation that studied with me in the early 2000s produced many artists who developed very interesting careers, despite the fact that it was said then that few students would end up devoting themselves professionally to art. What happened was not entirely like that. A whole scene unfolded that did not exist before.
I remember once that we organized a kind of art exchange market between artists. I don’t quite remember how, but a small group of people got together and went to the mountains to look impromptu for a teepee. We didn’t quite know where to find it. It was a kind of wandering. Everything happened to us, we even found a kind of witch along the way. The fact is that in the end we found a person who had one and wanted to help us. He lent it to us, and one morning in June, the faculty appeared with a teepee in the middle of the patio.
Sounds great.
There we met to tell stories and stories. I also remember another project in which we wanted to enable passage for an elephant from the sculpture workshops to the project classroom, which required a somewhat excessive architectural intervention; In the end, it ended in that, in an absurd project, which was in turn a kind of mockery.
Alber Merino video – The Present Condition
Were you freer in Berlin?
The faculty in Berlin was quite different, it was not so defined with a system of credits and hours –sometimes a bit absurd–, and you had complete freedom to develop your projects. A freedom that was even scary, accustomed to the system of Fine Arts in Barcelona. In Berlin a greater autonomy of the students was expected. There were classes, of course, but more than classes there was technical advice depending on the needs of each student.
We students had to find out how to develop our projects with the means at our disposal. Weißensee had very well-equipped workshops, and each workshop had a manager who was in charge of advising the projects. There I had a tutor, who was Inge Mahn. She came from Düsseldorf and at the same time had been a Beuys student. Also in the sculpture department was Karin Sander, who would end up working in Zurich later.
What were you most focused or focused on back then?
At that time he was writing about experimental theater and plastic arts. I did a thesis on the fourth wall and the way to integrate the viewer as a producer in the work of art. For this I worked with the playwright Roland Schimmelpfenig. At that time, the theater had a great influence on me. I was also in a project with set designer Joachin Damm, also a teacher at Weißensee. With him and other students we formed a kind of ensemble and went on tour all over Germany. The idea was to create art in movement, nomadic art.
What are your vital referents visible in your work?
If influences from other artists are understood as a vital referent, I could speak of many referents. The type of video art that interests me especially is that which contains a certain dramaturgy, that which develops its own visual universe. I am interested in the narrative that develops in works such as those of Pierrick Sorin, Carles Congost, or Dionís Escorsa, but also the visual universes in the works of Pierre Huyghe, Matthew Barney, Reynolds Reynolds, Lech Majewski or Anne Imhof.
In my works there is also a lot of influence from the cinema, directors like Pier Paolo Pasolini or David Lynch. I am especially interested in Eastern cinema, Andréi Tarkovsky, Béla Tarr, Aleksandr Sokurov, although I also have influences from mainstream cinema. Another field of special interest to me is historical painting; my work is full of allusions, from Jean-François Millet to Pieter Huys or El Bosco. And as I was saying, experimental theater was also an important reference point. One of the companies that have interested me the most is Fura dels Baus, with whom I had the opportunity to collaborate for a show in Poznan (Poland).
Alber Merino video – The City and The Other
How do you explain your creative process? Do you prefer solitude, or do you share your projects with other collaborators?
I prefer loneliness, I need to be alone to develop. But in the same way that I need to create in solitude, later I need to confront my ideas. So I often share them with people close to me. I don’t always agree with everything we talk about, but it helps me a lot; It allows me to carry out a kind of first staging, to see the reactions. In any case, it is very difficult to foresee when a project will work well. When you are creating, you don’t think much about the diffusion or the repercussion that a piece could have after the fact. It has ever happened to me that some pieces in which I did not have much confidence have worked much better than others to which I spent much more time and intensity of work.
Your videos have various readings, but there is something obvious that is the contrast between what is real and what is fictional. What motivates your desire to transform reality?
I understand video as the embodiment of a utopia or dystopia. My videos have a lot to do with sculpture. Sometimes they are formalizations of impossible projects of which the video is a record that gives it a real entity, almost a document. I am interested in the possible, to build unreal stories that change the perception of our daily life. It is still a language close to poetry, but where words are replaced by objects and actions.
What fascinates me about video is its ability to create reality. Video almost gives me a more sense of reality even than photography. We can see a photograph of something that has disappeared, but if we see it on a video, we are there, we can almost walk around and touch. That feeling of reality has always fascinated me.
In my videos there is not only the act of creating possibilities, there are also recreations, forgotten stories or assumptions. Intervening in reality through video helps me to speak from an intimate space, to the way in which I understand that the world is being transformed, as can be seen in one of my latest works, The Present Condition. I also use the medium critically in more political work or mockumentaries. I am interested in deconstructing the everyday, dramatizing space, creating friction between the real and the possible.
Your reflections have to do with the difficulty of being and existing. What meaning do you give to life?
Some of my pieces reflect on the meaning of being, sometimes reducing it to a very elementary form. This is the case of La ciudad y el otro, which talks about isolation, alienation and how we project ourselves into the other. In this video, an entire city is populated by inhabitants who always turn out to be the same character, until a chance encounter changes their perception of reality. It’s a fairly straightforward story, although seeing a world where only a single subject exists seems like a terrifying prospect to me. It works as a metaphor, and about how we recognize ourselves in what is alien to us. It questions whether it is possible to dissociate ourselves from our perception, it is a story about subjectivity.
Other pieces work in a similar way, such as one of my latest works, Bestiari, made in Madrid, where the entire urban fabric, instead of being populated by human presence, is inhabited by animals. The fact of seeing such a bustling space without human presence is disturbing. However, the testimony of the presence is found precisely in that uninhabited space. There is a whole reflection on the animal condition in the human and what separates us from other forms of life.
Alber Merino video – Compulsive Self-portrait
Do you include autobiographical aspects in your work?
Indeed, there are other works that are based on autobiographical experiences, such as Autoretrat compulsiu, which is a reflection on the image itself set against the imaginary that I develop in my creations; or Les Baigneurs, where tiny people carry out recreational activities in the residual spaces of everyday life, ironizing a certain type of epic image. I don’t know if any common reflection on the meaning I give to existence can be extracted from all these points of view. I think they raise more questions than answers.
I think they raise more questions than answers.
In any case, there is a constant that has to do with the ways of inhabiting a space. I always work with the environments that I have within my reach or with those places that have had a special significance for me, building a story that has some experience of its own. I do not give any meaning in particular, but I am interested in practices such as wandering, or the casual and fortuitous.
My perception of existence has more to do with chance than with anything definite. For me the meaning of existence is not determined by any purpose, not even by a direction. It is the product of arbitrariness, of one of the thousands of possibilities that could exist. That is why the absurd is a constant so present in my work, because the absurd is the negation of what is determined.
You are interested in various genres, from pieces of an experimental nature, videodance or mockumentary. Do you consider exploring other languages?
In recent years I have developed my own language that has to do with a deconstruction of the narrative. In my works there is no linear narrative that leads us to an end, but rather a liquid sequence where we move through the images. The idea of experimenting with the narrative has led me to other genres such as videodance or, for a time, mockumentary. False documentaries tell a closed story. I made two in total.
At the moment I am working on a third one, which will close the trilogy. It is the story of an apocryphal artist in the Berlin of the 80s who acts as a spy through his artistic practice. It is a story about the appropriation and political use of artistic discourse. I think that in future projects I consider making a hybrid. Use an abstract language but at the same time introduce a certain precise narrative. That may be the next step I consider.
You have just presented a retrospective with seven pieces at the Medialab Prado. How do you face your work after the years?
Well, I would like to have had the resources I have now, both technically and in terms of knowledge at the time I did my first jobs. When I see them, I feel like a lot of things that I would like to correct and that I was unaware of at the time. But I must admit that they are the testimony of a whole journey, and some, despite being improvable from a technical point of view, continue to inspire and suggest me.
Ideas are often more important than the means by which they are realized, but the formal resolution is sometimes also part of the meaning. At Medialab Madrid I presented a retrospective sample of works from the last ten years. There are hours of projections and almost twenty works that are reduced to just forty minutes of projection and a very brief selection, but which allow us to give a perspective on the evolution of the work.
Alber Merino video – Lot’s Shadow
Urban space and architecture are highly visible elements in your videos. What is this fixation due to?
As I mentioned, it has to do with the ways of living. I often mix the organic with the geometric, life with the inert. The architectural is the framework of the subject, and in turn, the space acquires its meaning in relation to who inhabits it. Perhaps many of my works have to do with urban landscape painting. It is often a kind of portrait of the spaces where I live. However, these spaces are not literally portrayed, but are outraged, they propose routes, new perspectives, trans-temporal layers. It is a different experience from the urban landscape.
Can you give us an example?
El gran arsenico, for example, portrays the Gothic quarter of Barcelona, but it is not seen as we perceive it, not even in its archetypal tourist image, but dramatized, revealing a whole series of grotesque characters or elements incorporated later that take us into the imagination of the time. in which it was built, in the symbolism of the sculptural elements that constitute it. Thus configures a story about the occult and morality.
The city has been so dramatized that it is difficult for us to recognize it. However, we delve into a whole symbology and an imaginary that are also part of the space portrayed and give us precisely an ‘inhabited’ perspective of it. I am also interested in the alternation of urban landscapes with interiors, the transition from intimate space to collective space. All of these are layers of urban space that coexist on the same plane.
I am especially interested in your commenting on the piece titled Sprengung, in which you highlight the act of rebuilding historical memory in our country.
Unlike other pieces, Sprengung has a markedly political character. Sprengun was born from my experience living in Germany and France and seeing the treatment that these countries have made of the memory of fascism and the Second World War, and how it differs from what has happened in Spain. Without going any further, Germany carried out a major purge of all urban elements that commemorated fascism – with few exceptions.
One of them may be the Nuremberg Zeppelinfield. However, the gigantic swastika on top of Zeppelinfield was dynamited, and the video documenting this blasting in 1945 was an important post-war propaganda item. In Spain, however, huge monuments from the Franco era that celebrate fascism survive, and they have not even been resignified. I tried to visually imagine how the Nuremberg bombing document would have been applied to these monuments and show what their visual resolution would have been.
This theme was put into question precisely shortly after the video with the change of government was released, and right now it is a topical issue. It was not, however, at the time it was released last spring. The work was recently shown at the Matadero film library in Madrid as part of the Madatac festival, and was certainly emotionally received.
Alber Merino video – The White Rain
The hypothetical is also a reason for reflection for you. What questions are you asking yourself right now?
The possible allows us to confront the present in perspective, attributes a reading to the facts. In positivist philosophy, things are as they are and there is no other possible reality; but reality can be many things – it can mutate, and not exactly in one direction. That is why I am interested in the hypothetical, the ability to imagine other possible ones. Thought does it constantly, and the visual arts are a kind of thought developed in objects and images.
Right now I wonder about the nature of representation. I am interested in how the landscape is a political construction, how often architectural symbols are located in it that precede the prosperity they aspire to represent. In this sense, I wonder about the simulacrum and human action. I also wonder about the new narratives of the world order constructed after the demise of the Eastern bloc. I wonder if the structure of a bipolar world is not projected onto today’s supposedly multipolar society, and if the aestheticization of economic discourses is not a kind of positivism that annuls the possibility of what is different.
Do you take creative risks that may be imperceptible to the viewer? How?
Each piece presents a new challenge, although it is something that can only be appreciated by looking at it in perspective. But yes, the language is defined and delimited as it develops and each new work incorporates new experiences and new challenges. There is a big difference between the first works and the last ones, but with a constant that is what identifies a work. Some works establish continuity with other previous pieces by developing certain aspects, but others start completely from scratch and even represent a break with previous lines of work. I find the body of my work to be quite eclectic and this is also the case with the new projects I’m working on.
Your imaginary is related to metaphors about the absurdity of existence. What causes you rejection of our society?
I cannot say if pessimism is a constant in my work. Personally I do not consider it so; rather, there is a fascination towards the casual, towards the small daily gestures that escape from grandiose or epic stories. For me, the absurd has a more playful than existential meaning, which is why I cannot speak in my work of a rejection of society. Although it is true that there is a persistence of the grotesque and the ridiculous in many of my pieces.
But the grotesque has to do with the mask and the costume for me, in the end it is a question about identity. Does identity reside in what we are or in what we project? Is it something constitutive or is it a construction? The question of identity is very important in my work, and not necessarily in an uprooted sense like in Samuel Becket’s theater, where the absurdity of life is emphasized. For my part, I would not speak of a rejection of society as a whole, but of specific situations, situations that I critically address or that I highlight through the videos.
Alber Merino video – Hidden Mud
Lo hipotético también es motivo de reflexión para ti. ¿Qué preguntas te haces en este momento?
Lo posible nos permite confrontar el presente en perspectiva, atribuye una lectura a los hechos. En la filosofía positivista, las cosas son como son y no existe otra realidad posible; pero la realidad puede ser muchas cosas –puede mutar, y no precisamente en un único sentido. Por eso me interesa lo hipotético, la capacidad de imaginar otros posibles. El pensamiento lo hace constantemente, y las artes visuales son una suerte de pensamiento desarrollado en objetos e imágenes.
Ahora mismo me pregunto sobre la naturaleza de la representación. Me interesa cómo el paisaje es una construcción política, cómo a menudo en él se localizan símbolos arquitectónicos que anteceden la prosperidad que aspiran a representar. En este sentido, me pregunto sobre el simulacro y la acción humana. También me pregunto por los nuevos relatos del orden mundial construidos después de la desaparición del bloque del este. Me pregunto sobre si la estructura de un mundo bipolar no se proyecta sobre la sociedad actual supuestamente multipolar, y si la estetización de los discursos económicos no es una suerte de positivismo que anula la posibilidad de lo diferente.
¿Asumes riesgos creativos quizás imperceptibles para el espectador? ¿Cómo?
Cada pieza supone un nuevo desafío, aunque es algo que solo puede apreciarse si se mira en perspectiva. Pero sí, el lenguaje se va definiendo y acotando a medida que se va desarrollando y cada nuevo trabajo incorpora nuevas experiencias y nuevos retos. Hay una gran diferencia entre los primeros trabajos y los últimos, pero con una constante que es lo que identifica una obra. Algunos trabajos establecen una continuidad sobre otras piezas anteriores desarrollando determinados aspectos, pero otras parten completamente de cero e incluso suponen una ruptura con líneas de trabajo anteriores. Considero que el cuerpo de mi obra es bastante ecléctico y sucede así también con los nuevos proyectos en los que estoy trabajando.
Tu imaginario está relacionado con metáforas sobre lo absurdo de la existencia. ¿Qué te provoca rechazo de nuestra sociedad?
No puedo decir si el pesimismo es una constante en mi obra. Personalmente no lo considero así; más bien, hay una fascinación hacia lo casual, hacia los pequeños gestos cotidianos que escapan de relatos grandilocuentes o épicos. Para mí, el absurdo tiene un sentido más lúdico que existencial, por eso no puedo hablar en mi trabajo de un rechazo a la sociedad. Aunque sí es cierto que hay una persistencia de lo grotesco y lo ridículo en muchas de mis piezas.
Pero lo grotesco tiene que ver con la máscara y el disfraz para mí, al final es una pregunta sobre la identidad. ¿La identidad reside en lo que somos o en lo que proyectamos? ¿Es algo constituyente o es una construcción? La cuestión de la identidad es muy importante en mi trabajo, y no necesariamente en un sentido desarraigado como en el teatro de Samuel Becket, donde sí se enfatiza lo absurdo de la vida. No hablaría por mi parte de un rechazo al conjunto de la sociedad, pero sí a situaciones concretas, situaciones que a bordo de manera crítica o que pongo de manifiesto a través de los videos.
https://metalmagazine.eu/en/post/interview/albert-merino-testimonio-critico
Albert Merino
Albert Merino develops a wide imagery within he intervenes and transforms reality. Using several graphic resources he explores the architecture of images and the capacity to transform them with contemporary techniques. His language often borders on absurdity and irony. Through a manipulated image he inquires the borders between simulation and truthfulness. He is interested in decompose the visual language experimenting with diferents forms of narration covering from non narrative to comedy or fake documentary. His subjects range from the condition of the individual in contemporary society to the imaginaries of collapse and the political use of symbols and images
He is Bachelor in Fine Arts from the Universities of Barcelona (UB) and Kunsthochschule Berlin Weißensee (KHB) where he specialised in Videoart. In Berlin he completed later his postgraduates studies as ‚Meisterschüler‘ under the tutelage of the artist and professor Inge Mahn
His work has been shown in a big number of international festivals and has ben presented in institutions and museums such as Arts Santa Mònica (Barcelona), Académie de France, Palais de Tokyo (Paris), Les Abattoirs (Toulouse), MEIAC (Badajoz), Nam June Paik Art Center, Songwon Art Center (Seoul), MOCA (Taipei), among others as well as in art fairs like Los Angeles Art Fair, Beijing Art Fair, ARCO, or Art Basel Hong Kong.
In his career, it is worth highlighting the individual exhibitions in the Trapezio space (Madrid), the IMA creative space (La Paz), the Chapel of Pronillo (Santander), Espai Souvenir (Barcelona) or his participation in group exhibitions at the Alternative Loop Space (Seoul), Galleria Boccanera (Trento), C1 Espace (Berlin), Sant Andreu Contemporani (Barcelona), CCCB (Barcelona), DIAS Kunsthal Vallensbæk (Denmark), Corner Gallery (Madrid) or the biennials of Wroclaw, (Poland) or Cerveira. (Portugal). His carrier has been recognized with several international awards such as ‚First Award of the videoart competition of Astillero‘ (2015) ‚First Award Videoakt 03 Videoart Biennial‘ (2013) ‚Award Madatac best videoart work‘ (2012) or ‚1st Award LUMEN EX Festival‘ (2011)
He was artist member of the French Academy in Madrid and he have realised several artist residences between France and Spain.
Participant in
CologneOFF VII – 7th Cologne International Videoart Festival 2011
CologneOFF VIII – 8th Cologne International Videoart Festival 2012
CologneOFF IX – 9th Cologne International Videoart Festival 2013
exDox – Experimemtal Documemtary Festival 2012, 2013
CologneOFF X – 10th Cologne International Videoart Festival 2014
animateCologne – Cologne Art & Animation Festival 2011, 2013, 2014, 2016
artvideoKOELN – audiovisual experiences 2015
The Wake Up! Memorial 2017
The Refugee Memorial 2017
The W:OW Project 2018
Wake-up! Climate Chamge 2022
Albert Merino is participating in total in about 50 videoart programs curated by Wilfried Agricola de Cologne shown together with networking partners all over the world.
Albert Merino
Albert Merino (Spain) – The City and The Other, 2010, 3:09
Albert Merino (Spain) – Hidden Mud, 2010, 7:42
Albert Merino (Spain) – Les Bagneurs, 2010, 3:50
Albert Merino (Spain) – The White Rain, 2010, 8:10
Albert Merino (Spain) – Le Badinage, 2010, 6:32
Albert Merino (Spain) – Lot’s Shadow, 2011, 6:40
Albert Merino (Spain) – Compulsive Self-portrait, 2011,05:46
Albert Merino (Spain) – Memories of Detachment, 2021, 18:00
Albert Merino (Spain) – Bestiary, 2018, 5:10
Albert Merino (Spain) – The Present Condition, 2020, 18:18
A character who travels through a city sees himself reflected in all the people around him. All the inhabitants of the urban space turn out to be the same person; the different and the otherness have disappeared. The uniformity is suddenly broken by a chance encounter. This final encounter with the different ends up transforming everything that surrounds the character. People stop being a reflection, to become ‘the other’.
The city and the other is a story about the relationship of the individual with the environment and how we understand the strange as a projection of ourselves. The individual faces a world where the only certainty he has is the existence of his being.
Cities hide residual spaces in the shadow of their great icons. These spaces, which often go unnoticed by the observer, are used to recreate snapshots that portray scenes of the masses of the contemporary world. Tiny scenes inspired by pictorial representations from the late 19th century or early 20th century, where the idealized landscape of the painters is replaced by a flawed environment.
The juxtaposition of everyday scenes on these out-of-focus spaces and the contrast generated by this decontextualization act as a metaphor for an urban space where experience has been displaced by simulation.
Time is deposited in layers that space accumulates in the form of sediments. Several of these temporal layers are superimposed in this video, making a domestic space coexist with its absences and its wounds.
The elements of comfort, the furniture and the objects become an oppressive scenery that is at the same time a space of confinement and confinement. The familiar symbols and the everyday are questioned through a series of disconcerting apparitions. The conventions of a certain social order are questioned within a deceptive universe where appearances reveal to us the existence of an internal order beyond what is visible.
A ballerina is trapped inside a lamppost until she manages to jump out of it. Upon reaching the ground she realizes that she cannot move her legs. After several unsuccessful attempts to get up, she ends up discovering a strange container with luminous glass inside her. These small lights, contained in her jar, will teach her the way to defeat gravity.
It is a videodance piece that in turn mixes elements of mime within a fantastic and unreal framework. It develops a story about the ability to collaborate and mutual support, when two helpless characters manage to walk together thanks to the union of their disabilities.
Based on oral narratives and collective imaginaries, ‘La Lluvia Blanca’ shows us a ‘wonderful story’ as an initiation journey. A story where linear time and logic are constantly transgressed, calling our attention to the mysterious potential of the environment that surrounds us.
Exploring those territories located between the real and the strange, different ghosts and fears appear in our path, populating an unreal universe where appearances take on unexpected forms.
An empty interior space serves as a stage for the staging of certain pictorial imaginaries. Among them is the painting of ‘Lot’s daughters’ to which Antonin Artaud alludes in ‘The Theater and its Double’. The model of gestural dramaturgy proposed is compared to the plague and to this strange painting that gives traditional history a completely new meaning and at the same time transgressive.
‘Lot’s Shadow’ is an interior journey through this imaginary and a way of inhabiting space based on a gestural narration where all textual aspects have been omitted.
Self-portrait made as a commission for the celebration of the Flux Festival of author videos during the year 2011.
A strange tunnel inside a sea of cotton appears before our eyes; when we enter fantastic elements of a plant world come our way… in this way we enter an interior cosmology created from the accumulation of residual thoughts… An introspection of the person where we find different postcards of everyday life together with random drawings and recreations fictional dreams Thus, a symbolic exchange is established between the person and their environment, revealing dark regions along with other bright ones.
In bestiari we observe a great city where all human presence is only an architectural and symbolic reminiscence. We necessarily associate these symbols and the urban landscape with a human presence, but now this is emphasized precisely by its absence. However, this space is not empty, but is inhabited by the “other” by the beasts. Apocalyptic echoes suddenly appear in our heads, as if it were a post-war landscape or the result of a collapse… images that resonate familiar to us through the imaginary of cinema or the mass media. However, what we see is life, without any sign of destruction… life that takes other forms and establishes a continuity.
This substitution of the human leads us to the question about the relationship with the other, with what is alien to us, with the “beast”… Nature ceases to be a contained element, and now flows within the human space, also evoking the possibility of its finiteness…
Detachment refers us twice to the material and the affective, linking the emotional with the physical at the same time. Detachment can be a painful but at the same time necessary gesture in the same way that the imaginaries of collapse do not necessarily imply an end but rather a desired beginning.
In the Memoria del desprendimiento, the collapse is shown as the appearance of non-specific elements that appropriate the urban space and that respond to collective imaginaries; imaginaries that reveal details of the behavior of a society.
These cultural imaginaries are built from real or modified images that have been socially agreed upon and are directly related to the evolution of image registration and manipulation technologies. Images taken or produced that articulate political narratives that in turn serve as supporting documents. The former have been selected and the latter produced and disseminated as consumer objects in the construction of a story. What is the role we attribute to the images of the collapse and how are the control devices justified? In the architecture of imaginaries, the fantasy is replaced by the possible
The elements in the video serve as metaphors for the accumulation of information and knowledge, as well as the increase in entropy or decline, through a plot that reveals contemporary spillover scenarios.
The present condition is a reflection on the political use of the territory and the concept of collapse applied to the social and the political. In the present there is an aestheticization of economic and social discourses that is also projected through architecture and urbanism. , acting as the staging of a supposed prosperity. Architectural symbols often precede even the prosperity they aspire to represent: Representation becomes simulacrum. The symbol anticipates its function, and in a collapse situation, it is the testimony of a failure.
Ausin Sainz
Spanish videomaker
Interview: 10 questions
VideoChannel Interview Project
1. Tell me something about your life and the educational background I am a Spanish artist.
I studied Fine Arts at the University of Salamanca. I have studied three specialties Graphic design and visual communication, painting and sculpture. Art has become my passion, but it is not my livelihood. I am a “teacher” of drawing in secondary education. This is my livelihood. My hobby and passion is art. I started painting, then I introduced the sculpture, when I exhibited I also began to paint the floors with colored adhesive tape, introducing the installation. Then carry out urban interventions, to directly influence citizens who do not go to art centers. To document them, I introduced the video. In this way, and without abandoning the other artistic facets, I have focused on this medium. I find it the funniest and most interesting of all. Without the video, my artistic facet would not be the same.
2. When, how and why started you filming?
When I was a student, I had a subject, video, in college. They forced us to record. We didn’t have devices as accessible then as we do now. For a few years I couldn’t do any work, since I didn’t have a camera or a mixing table. With technological advances, I was able to have a still camera that also recorded video. The first recordings were of my interventions. They were very simple. Little by little I made the execution more complex. In this way, videos with their own identity emerged. To achieve more interesting effects, apply what I had learned working in photomontage, using image editing software. So I started to play with the incorporation of still images in the videos. Then I also incorporated moving images. The execution is always simple.
3. What kinds of topics have your films?
I almost always work on issues of social denunciation. They come naturally to me. They are very linked with the news of the moment. Over time I have been opening up the possibilities, including more aesthetic, documentary and fictional themes, always within experimentation. All of them are subject to lack of resources. It is an incentive to exercise more imagination.
4. How do you develop your films, do you follow certain principles, styles etc?
At first I let myself go. Since I only work with my sister, Ana María, I have a lot of freedom and flexibility. The improvisation is continuous. They are very free jobs. I only have the condition of the language. As I do not speak the English language, I am limited. I resort to alternative sounds and expressiveness. On many occasions it gives more information than verbal language.
5. Tell me something about the technical equipment you use.
It is very basic. Fortunately, technology has come a long way in recent years. With a mobile we can record with an acceptable quality. I have a small video camera with which I make almost all the recordings. A tripod and little else.
Ausin Sáinz video – Spain Catalonia_Russia
6. These days digital technology is dominating also video as a medium. In which way the digital aspect is entering the creation of your videos, technologically
and/or conceptually?
It is the basis of the work. In the editing process is when I give shape to the recorded material. I play with still images, combining them with moving images. They are very simple executions, although later they are integrated into a somewhat more complex reality.
7. How do you finance your films?
I don’t finance my films. They are very simple jobs and I resort to my reality, so as not to generate expenses. Without means, worthy results can also be obtained. I’m not looking for commercial results.
8. Do you work individually as a video artist/film maker or do you work in a team?
if you have experience in both, what is the difference, what do you prefer? I have individual works and others I do as a team with my sister Ana María. She also does a lot of artistic work and exhibitions. She plays a very important role, since she has a very peculiar feminine look. She is very creative and hardworking.
9. Who or what has a lasting influence on your film/video making?
I have no notable influences. I let myself be carried away by intuition and actuality. My evolution is given by the challenge that the execution of each one of the works supposes, and the needs that I impose on myself.
10. What are your future plans or dreams as a film/video maker?
I would like to have more free time to be able to do more work. I would also like my sister to be able to move to our city, to be able to work as a team on all projects. I would also like to be able to continue evolving in video editing, experimenting with images and sound. my dream would be that they could reach many viewers and could modify inappropriate behaviors or thoughts.
Ausin Sáinz painting
Ausin Sainz
Spain.
1. Tell us briefly about your career in art?
Briefly I could tell you that after spending my adolescence painting as an autodidact, I managed to access the Faculty of Fine Arts in Salamanca, where I began to take the first regulated notions. I specialized in Painting, Sculpture, Graphic Design and Audiovisual Communication. My works have been seen in numerous spaces and locations, both in Spain and abroad such as London, New York or Cuba. Although this seems very grandiose, in reality my works have not been shown in large spaces.
2. What is the motive that drives an artist to become multidisciplinary?
In my case, it has been the result of a natural evolution. I use the technique that best allows me to convey the idea I wish to communicate. This circumstance contains many difficulties since I am obliged to control a little of everything, being my best ally ingenuity. I started painting. It is the most accessible and cheapest technique. I soon became interested in sculpture. Without realizing it, I began to paint the floors with adhesive tape, producing a fundamental transformation in my work, both in concept and in execution. The spectator was forced to step on the installation, producing his involvement. Later I introduced works in which the spectator ceased to be a passive object, seeking his interaction. This need to involve citizens made me leave the exhibition hall, carrying out urban interventions. To record them I had to resort to video and, incidentally, I introduced video art. Everything is spinning, I’m missing the photomontage. This arose accidentally, when I had to make a poster in B/W to promote one of my exhibitions. I liked the idea of making a poster as a work in itself. After a lot of work I have managed to acquire great quality in the photomontages, being the pieces that currently interest galleries the most because they have a less aggressive character. Actually, for its execution I have to resort to painting but with photographic bases. It involves more WORK than the pictorial technique but impressive results are obtained.
3. What is your motivation when creating and choosing the themes?
My work is mainly based on social denunciation. It is not something that I have decided in advance, but that has been forged inside me without realizing it, the result of a natural evolution. Themes knock on my door. I am not conscientiously making sketches of the works but while I am working on one, I already have another in my head. Unintentionally he matures alone. It’s like it’s parked in front of me. As I can’t cope, the ideas that current events offer me pile up and, little by little, a selection is produced as a result of oblivion, or they take shape. Once the idea is clear, it is time to execute it.
The ultimate goal IS to move consciences. To attract the visitor’s attention I resort to a language that is not unknown to him and a pleasant appearance. Once the viewer stops, I try to turn mere contemplation into a process of reflection.
Ausin Sáinz – photo-montage
4. Is there a recurring message, or several, that you are interested in communicating through the work? Tell us about it.
Throughout my long career I have been developing various topics such as eating disorders, traffic accidents, personal image treated as an ephemeral good, personal identity, violence as a counterpoint to love. I have also made a comparison between our behavior with pets and with other humans, sexist violence, the lack of objectivity of the mass media, corruption, the crisis, urban speculation… There are many always open topics in which I can introduce a work at any time always depending on the interest that arouses me.
Working on these themes contains an added complexity and is not widely accepted within the commercial world, since they prefer white, friendlier work. But the worst experience that I have had to overcome has been in the month of February of this year 2014, with the censorship of my exhibition “Not suitable for all audiences” in an exhibition center of the Salamanca City Council as it contained two works that were not suitable for them. they liked. On the one hand, Bárcenas doing the potato dance with Rajoy crowned with shit on his head, and the other work dedicated to Infanta Cristina with another comb shit. Coincidentally, the same week coincided that the Infanta had to testify before the Judge for the Noos case. It is curious that other much more aggressive works go unnoticed, for the mere fact of being smaller or requiring a greater degree of understanding. Maybe I have to introduce new topics to denounce… since my goal is to achieve a slightly fairer world.
5. Do you feel identified with any artistic movement?
In this globalized world we receive information from the other part of the world at the moment, but despite that immediacy, I do not identify with any current artistic trend. The temporal distance to determine clear current trends is lacking. I feel isolated in my provincial world and at the same time virtually connected to other artists. It is curious that in my daily life I have no personal relationship or with artists, curators or people directly or indirectly linked to the art world of my town. Luckily, thanks to the internet, I can give projection to my work, overcoming the apathy that I cause in the crazy artistic circle.
Ausin Sáinz video – The Unborn
6. How is the process of creating your work in terms of technique and materials that you use?
Not only do I develop an artistic facet, but I work with many techniques, linking each other to generate a global work, as I mentioned before.
I started painted on canvas. Since I felt the need to cover large surfaces, but did not have adequate means of transportation, I resorted to juxtaposing several canvases. As the backgrounds did not contribute anything to my work, I eliminated them, outlining the figures and distributing them on the wall. Finally, I resorted to industrially printed fabrics, selecting the motifs based on the theme to be developed and painting on them the essentials of the representation. In the final result I look for the integration between the two elements. In the small formats, I work on the backgrounds, experimenting with different techniques based on earth, varnishes and various paints. With the desire to extend myself in space, I substituted the sculpture for the installation. Later the installation itself will acquire its own identity. In video art I apply notions of photomontage in very simple executions without great technical fanfare but endowed with great creativity.
Tomorrow who knows if I will use other techniques. Everything will depend on the possibilities that they offer me, since in my case, the idea that I want to transmit is the most important thing and the technique is a mere means to reach the viewer.
7. Finally, a very subjective and open question. What is your personal vision of what Art means?
Duchamp already showed us that everything can be art…
All you have to do is go to any contemporary art museum. One does not know very well if a fire extinguisher is what it is or pretends to be something else. Its location will be a determining factor to include or discard it from the sample. It generates great confusion among the population disconnected from the world of contemporary art, as it has not evolved at the same pace. If we were all aware of this… we would all be artists and artists would have to call ourselves something else. In the end we do not stop being a tiny speck of dust in a vast universe.
From Salontanteo we thank Ausin Sáinz for giving us the opportunity to learn about his work.
Ausín Sáinz
Trained at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Salamanca where he completed the specialties of Painting, Sculpture, Graphic Design and Audiovisual Communication, Ausín Sáinz has come a long way from his beginnings to his latest video creations and urban installations. His work, with its figurative and baroque aesthetics, disturbing and not at all accommodating, has been seen in numerous spaces both in Spain and in other countries.
I’ve always been a non-conformist, I think it’s in my genes. Carrying this personality has generated more than one problem for me. Luckily I can channel all my vital anguish through the artistic path. I transform the work of art into a loudspeaker that to a certain extent frees me. With my works I seek the reflection of the observer, since sometimes I cannot understand the blindness that surrounds us. If at first my work was more introspective and egocentric, little by little it has been transformed into a work that develops global themes, turning my figure into a mere means to tell stories, my personal connection being less. All this process has emerged unconsciously, the result of a natural evolution.
Regarding political criticism, I am only interested in its social implication. I do not belong to any political party. I am free to denounce everything that I consider irregular regardless of the subject that causes said injustice. After my controversial exposition censored by the Popular Party, certain sectors have tried to pigeonhole me as if I only had eyes to see and attack this party, ignoring previous works in which, for example, the former president of the Socialist Party government, Rodríguez Zapatero, and the ministers of his government were protagonists.
Ausin Sainz
Participant in
CologneOFF IX – 9th Cologne international Videoart Festival 2013
CologneOFF X – 10th Cologne international Videoart Festival 2014
The iTERROR Memorial 2015
The Refugee Memorial 2016
The Hiroshima/Fukushima Memorial 2016
The Wake Up! Memorial – self~imaging 2017
The W:OW Project 2018
The Wake Up! Memorial – Corona! Shut Down? 2020
The Wake Up! Memorial – Gandhi PPNRCD 2020
The Wake Up Memorial – Wake up! Climate Change 2021
The Violence Project 2022
Collective shows
Ausin Sáinz video – Passport
Ausín Saínz
Ausin Sainz (Spain) – Peaceful Protest,, 2020, 5:00
Ausin Sainz (Spain) – Walls, 2020, 8:17
Ausin Sainz (Spain) – Today,, 2019, 5:00
Ausin Sainz (Spain) – Infecto, 2016, 2:55
Ausin Sainz (Spain) – Security, 2015, 06:25
Ausin Sainz (Spain) – Passport,, 2015, 04:36
Ausin Sainz (Spain) – Fidelity, 2015, 6:12
Ausin Sainz (Spain) – Dictator,. 2014, 03:47
Ausin Sainz (Spain) – The Unborn,, 2014, 4:43
Ausin Sáinz (Spain) – Spain Catalonia_Russia, 2022, 07:48
´In Spain there has been a lot of violence, due to an independence movement in a region, Catalonia. Now it has been discovered that Russia encouraged this revolution in different ways. In this video I imagine what could have happened. If a war had broken out, the most important monuments in the small cities of the interior could have been destroyed. irrecoverable damage would be produced to the artistic heritage of the rest of Spain. The source of wealth for these small towns, tourism, would have disappeared.
The Dictator is emotionally mighty, big, free, eternal. He is believed the the Almighty. Reality has invisible borders. His empire asks a strength that he is not sure have. He knows he is fragile, small, and is accompanied, but he feels watched and questioned. He defends his fears without overcome.
the unborn. Nature is not perfect. Men can not give birth. It reflects the female submission for religious reasons. Women’s identity is destroyed the pretext of some texts written by
men. That is a big weight the woman has to deal with to evolve.
Dürer was the first artist who introduced the self – portrait as a defining element of his art, using the most modern of its time technique. Today’s self – portraits have become popular thanks to digital images. In this video I emulating a self – portrait self – portrait Dürer youth where it appears as boyfriend with thistle flower between his fingers, German symbol of fidelity. It arose following the statement that his father sent him when he was forming outside Germany, which confirmed its commitment to a young rich. That hard faithfulness little time as quickly came the first marital discord. This liken it to the fidelity to which we submit today. Our daily struggle for stability at the expense of whatever, in a globalized world.
An identification document can mark our destination. In this video I reproduce my Passport and what could happen if it were deleted. In the end, insects as insignificant as flies can enjoy more freedom than human beings themselves.
I propose a reflection on the idea of “ownership of the land” in the face of the wave of refugees and immigrants arriving in the most advanced countries. Citizens who are poor and want to improve in another country, have great government difficulties to achieve it. Rich people have total freedom of movement.
With the world so little evolved, it is inevitable that refugees will continue to exist. The demonstrations that Adolf Hitler made on November 16, 1940 about homosexuality, continue 78 years later.
The death penalty for homosexual relations is valid in eight states: Iran, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Sudan apply it throughout the territory; Somalia and Nigeria, in some provinces.
In addition, the Islamic State terrorist organization punishes those sexual minorities with death in the territories it controls in northern Syria and northwestern Iraq.
In five other countries – Pakistan, Afghanistan, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Mauritania – the death penalty is technically permitted by an interpretation of Islamic law (Sharia), although it does not apply.
The daily abuse of man on planet earth has become something everyday. We have spoiled the earth, the air and the water. Now they make us sick. Either we take it seriously or lose our planet.
The epidemic disease of the coronavirus that has spread throughout the world, has left many dead. It is still attacking us, forcing us to take measures to defend ourselves, based mainly on changing our lifestyles. To represent this very atypical situation that we are experiencing all over the world, I have resorted to the recreation of four walls in physical space, structuring the temporary space in various paintings as a theatrical representation. Each of these units represent different problems that we have had to face throughout the forced seclusion in our homes over the past few months. Being confined within four walls can generate uncontrollable situations. Covid-19 has put us to the test.
Títle:
In democratic societies we are used to peaceful protests. They are only attended when the media broadcast them. The powerful do not wish to have a bad name. In Spain democracy is relatively recent. During the Franco dictatorial regime all kinds of barbarities were carried out. They were silenced by the regime itself and the countries that supported it. Currently there is still a worrying social and political sector that denies that reality. They idealize it and prevent those affected from being honored.
f) 2 screenshots
Caligram by Apollinaire
