[ MÁRGENES ]
A C O L L E C T I O N O F
A B A N D O N E D F U T U R E S
H o m e | 2 0 0 8 | 2 0 0 9 | S p a c e s | P e o p l e
MORE OR LESS ANNIHILATED BY SACCADIC ENCHAINMENT BY THE SEA
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IMAGES
OF
SPECTRES
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CONTEMPORARY SPANISH MOVING-IMAGE
Curated by Albert Alcoz
Poster by Gloria Vilches.
Images of Spectres
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____________The spectral nature of the cinematographic image is funded in the elevated indexical status of the moving images. The transposition of living faces and bodies into a filmic support mantains a degree of resemblance with the object in a way that the subject can be mistaken for its image. This capability of the cinema turns human beings into spectral representations that, standing still in time, fascinate us in their intangible aura. The hallucinatory effect these imprints produce in the spectator –together with the attraction found in the never-ending flux of images- generate a fascination in a perceptual level modulated by the psychological condition affecting the observer. Very often, in cinema, there is a manifest desire consisting in replacing the outside world with its double, to embalming time in wait for eternity. In André Bazin’s words, “(in the cinema) the image of things is also the image of their duration: something close to the mummification of a change”.
Images of Specters is the title chosen to embrace an array of recent pieces suggesting in one way or another the spectral appearance of invoked images. This programme draws a perpetual search for original aesthetic forms that question the conceptual approach inherent to film practice. They raise questions and provide a few answers from their own subjectivity, reflect on the power of cinema and video to document reality and present it in a lyrical way. From the viewpoint of the structure of the image, they reveal the technical apparatus that make it function, triggering illusion, showing the artificial nature of the device.
Using found footage or manipulating old family films, these filmmakers and videoasts express ideas, transmit sensations or suggest inimical states: while some may prefer to use current technological facilities and virtual archival banks to edit images and re-elaborate the senses, others decide to grasp the camera by dive into the exterior –or into oneself. The aim: to discover what surrounds them in order to find the signals that are inscribed in their own presence. They are spectral identities invoked by the camera or the projector.
Isaac Gimeno documents a Super8 projection of a estival home movie in Eumig 80/60. In this film, Gimeno reflects his own infantile presence in a series of a old images observed experimentally from nostalgia. Fascination by Javier Otaduy elaborates a triptych to investigate, simultaneously, the poetic qualities of his sights around crepuscular landscapes. Sonia Armengol manipulates the negative celluloid of an old pornographic movie to create, in ABC Pornographique, a film made of pictorial traces and gesture forms inevitably stimulant. La Materia (The Matter) by Ramon Ayala maintains a material/objectual connection with the previous piece, distancing itself from the previous in its renounce to depict any figurative reference. Its subtitle, La Mort de Marat (The Death of Marat) introduces iconographical the physical disappearance of an emblematic character, adding some rare sound textures which in the end communicate an evidence. Propiedad Particular (Particular Property) by David d’Ors is a meditation, in the first person and through a succession of black and white photographs with the mediation of written sentences, that evokes the ghost of a beloved person. This facet could be identified with Victor Iriarte’s Cinco Peliculas Breves (Five Brief Films). The facial expressions of girls filmed on 16mm suggest an unreachable inner feeling, emphasized by slow motion and static disposition. Tabla Aerobica No. 4 by Gonzalo de Pedro finds dynamism in X-rays that represent extremities in movement. The bodies are animated in harmony with the rhythm produced by gymnastic sounds, transformed finally into visual music. El Chaleco Salvavidas esta Debajo de su Asiento by Daniel Cuberta is the narration of a voice over plotting a possible plane crash underlying continually the fragility of one own’s body and the strength of its intellectual capacities. The End by Fernando Franco dismounts fragments of preexisting film in order to witness the death of a fictitious interpretation. An autopsy hall connects the dysfunction between fiction and reality. Andres Duque questions himself and his memories in No es la Imagen, es el Objecto to elaborate a performative frame through which illustrations of picture cards from childhood in a succession. Eugeni Bonet’s A Spanish Delight makes use of the spiritual dance of an erotic cinema actress to conjure up the promotion of Spanish tourism and sexual liberation in the 1960s. Oriol Sanchez closes this programme session with a nocturnal piece in which a woman known as “Moza de Animas” develops her religious service. The spectral character of this documentary portrait captured very early in the mornings in a little village in Castilla, La Alberca, blends in an invisible manner with formal techniques such as the field sound textures and digital phantasmagorical effects.
( Albert Alcoz )
