MASS-MEMORIA: Revisiting Argentina and Chile’s Political Histories
The Camden International Film Festival and Asymmetrick Arts present the third annual PANOPTIC,
an exhibition of new media installation and experimental documentary shorts. DISCORDIAFILMS was invited to partner with PANOPTIC presenting Mass-Memoria, a video installation, and the U.S. premier of a Una Identidad en Absurda by Guillermo Gomez.
Installation + Opening Reception: Wednesday, September 28, 6:00 PM, Asymmetrick Arts
DiscordiaFilms presents in MASS-MEMORIA a selection of video art that addresses the political and economic histories of Argentina and Chile. The artists on view, employ documentary tactics and intervene footage from the mass media to reflect on their countries dictatorships and contemporary global capitalism.
Alejandro Cohen Arazi (Buenos Aires, Argentina)
AS USUAL, A NARRATIVE OF COMICS (LO DE SIEMPRE, UN GUION DE HISTORIETAS), 2006 Video (color, sound) 10 minutes
H. G. Oesterheld was a journalist and writer of graphic novels and comics who was “disappeared” during the Argentinean dictatorship. He has since come to be celebrated as a master in his field. With artwork by Francisco Solena Lopez, his most remembered comic, “El Eternauta” (1957-1977) was a subversive commentary on Argentinean politics that passed as science fiction. Here, Cohen animates these images and scripts, walking us through the darkest years of Argentina’s history into the political unrest of today.
Eduardo Menz (Montreal, Canada)
LAS MUJERES DE PINOCHET (PINOCHET’S WOMEN), 2005
Video (color, sound) 11 minutes
Confronting societal trauma via the repetition of text, sound and image, Menz intertwines television reports on two significant women during Pinochet’s brutal regime in Chile. The video examines class structure, state-imposed violence, and the mass-media’s construction of public memory.
Magdalena Jitrik and Christian Wloch (Buenos Aires, Argentina)
MANIFIESTA, 2004
Video (color, sound) 7 minutes
In late 2001 the Argentinean peso was devalued, causing a deep economic crisis that spawned rampant poverty and protest from the middle and working classes. Jitrik and Wloch filmed Manifiesta on Super 8mm film during the one year anniversary of the uprisings and deaths that occurred during the collapse. This work is both a historical document and an aesthetic comment on the intersection between art and politics.
Manuela Viera-Gallo (Santiago, Chile)
UNFINISHED BUSINESS, 2007
Video (color, sound) 3 minutes
Viera-Gallo reacts against the lasting consequences of dictatorship in Chile, using Clorox to dissolve the emulsion of photographs downloaded from the Pinochet Foundation website. Made soon after Pinochet’s death, and also around the twenty-year anniversary of a failed attempt to assassinate him, UNFINISHED BUSINESS is in her words a “raw but essential revenge to his portrait.”
Friday September 30, 2:00 PM, Farnsworth Museum
A musical-ethnographic documentary exploring the representation of the inconsistencies of being “Puerto Rican,” both in the island and abroad. The film is a study on the contradictory behaviors—social, political, and cultural—of a people divided on the search for a country. The movie is intertwined with another observational documentary on the soundtrack recording of the movie itself at Monopolio Records, an independent studio. Followed directly by a panel discussion featuring the Filmmaker Guillermo Gomez and the curators of DISCORDIAFILMS at Asymmetrick Arts.
Followed directly by a panel discussion featuring the film maker at Farnsworth, and then a panel discussion with the curators of Discordia Films at Asymmetrick Arts at 3:45 pm
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