The show aims to deconstruct certain problematic terms like identity, diversity, territory and border. I mention the difficulty of these concepts, because despite that they are necessary for the future of contemporary culture, the same need has often become cliches downloaded from critical potential and poetic dimension.
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Deconstructing a concept does not mean destroying it, but put it on contingency and anxiety, submit to the sway of language games, I uproot foundation. Therefore, to deconstruct the territory and margin figures, the exhibition Clorinda lots multiculturalists stereotypes, exoticism of borders and the metaphysics of identity and to suggest various third spaces, intermediate; unstable positions, "areas of agreement" crossing sites and paths step in any territory.
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The sample was developed around Nelida Mendoza facility that develops the idea of "membranes sudan" timbó clear timber and container / terracotta pots full of water; the surfaces of both elements transpire, exude moisture vapor and mist. The "membranes" white wood act as mobile screens; on these video images are projected.
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Filtration refers to the border, not as established place of transit or territorial marking, but as oscillating link between the interior and exterior, expressible relationship in the figure of Deleuzian fold, which involves movement gather either side. Everyone drags other in their advance or retreat. This folding movement and retract a flexible line means, a non-border, which mediates between the two sides without risking unlike each.
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From this continuous movement, the first proposal refers to two others. Both point to the points between which passes without borders, Nelida Mendoza's work: the Italian context and Paraguay.
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The first context is worked by Alessandro Aiello Sicilian collective CANECAPOVOLTO, reinterpreting images of the artist from a line drawn from Europe and their own eyes perspective. Five monitors project based video acceleration movements, detention, closeness and distance, as well as blur and displacement devices. These racking fall, impressionistic manner but from a conceptual reflection on a theme also fluctuating sounds, rumors, reflections and appearances of water, light and color: accelerated in its demonstration landscape, arrested in analyzing causes.
The second corresponds to the curator Fernando Moure, which presents a selection of works by filmmakers / artists. According to the curatorial concept, these productions would not be presented in festival format or sample of national cinema, but as a batch articulated panorama, a landscape perhaps. The filmography includes two historical pieces and an important list of works carried out over the last decade. These mark the emergence of a powerful production that is gaining a privileged place in the field of visual arts of Paraguay, thanks to enthusiastic promoters, among whom is undoubtedly Moure.
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As background, the poetic word of Josefina Pla, connoisseur of the interior landscape of Paraguay and its strange complicity with the EU.
Ticio Escobar - 2013
We can, with regard to "Pais / Paisaje, el arte del cine y del video de Paraguay", maintain that geographical space projects the strong presence of both the physical and cultural landscape. The slowness of time, austerity and debt, the use of the Guarani language or the intense presence of nature could all be demonstrations illustrating the peculiarity of the Paraguayan territory.
The etymology of the word "landscape", strongly connected to that of "land", suggests the need to offer a space for Paraguay in the world, something that politics, perhaps, cannot give but which art and the public who believe in its symbolic potential can. These recent works outline a "live and let live" situation by critically facing up to the reality and challenges of this South American country.
The whole show has an intense interest in identity, a kind of human landscape developed on the cultural, social, and political borders. The selection aims at bringing the public into contact with this concrete place, the composition of its physical and temporal world, and its soul.
The works attempt to tell of a period, the one generally known as the "transition to democracy", which began in 1989 after the fall of Latin America's longest dictatorship. Today times are once more rather dark after a return to a repressive and conservative political order. This audiovisual project aims at making the public think critically about Paraguay's current situation.
We believe that the cosmopolitan and multicultural vocation of Palermo and Sicily is favourable for connecting with the Paraguayan "land island": this was the metaphor created by the writer and artist Josefina Plá (1903 - 1999) in order to describe this interior and isolated territory.
Finally, the show highlights the fact that cinematography by and about Paraguay is still developing in a fragile and emergent context, and that it has become a reality thanks to the tenacity of its creators. Only at the end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first have film, video, and digital media thrown a first permanent light through moving images, however insufficient the stimuli.
The fact of generating new circuits and spaces for the diffusion of audiovisual creations favours sensibility towards and from our country, arouses stimuli that integrate us with and connect us to the world, and offers a channel for this symbolic output. An experience and transit of ideas and images in order to construct images of a distant situation, however similar it might be to our own.
Fernando Moure - June 2013
* Short Film Stills Ahendu nde Sapukai / I hear your cry , Pablo Lamar, 2008 .
The shorts , feature films and video art pieces that make up the program of "El arte del cine y el video de Paraguay" comprise a filmography conducted in the last decade with two historical pieces, which were exhibited in numerous festivals and exhibitions . The Italian public was able to see them on the Venice Film Festival , the Festival di Popolo in Rome or Turin . The program consists of a body of fiction, documentary, experimental film, video art and animation with English subtitles, and brings together the work of these filmmakers and artists.
Federico Adorno, Pedro Barrail, Gustavo Benítez, Fredi Casco, Luvier Casali, Hugo Cataldo, Enrique Collar, Edith Correa, Renate Costa, Martín Crespo, José Elizeche, Juanchi Franco, Dominique Dubosc, Pablo Lamar, Javier López, Juan C. Maneglia, Marcelo Martinessi, Erika Meza, Ricardo Migliorisi, Mauricio Rial, Joaquín Sánchez, Tana Schembori, Salla Sorri, Valentina Serrati y Patricia Wich.
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Alessandro Ajello
It 's always a complex experience mount images and sounds recorded by another person in places where we've never been and probably we will never go; is like entering in 'someone else's house and live there for a while and for some mysterious reason been forced to bring order,
Assemble all the material recorded by Nelida Mendoza has meant to me not only to restore order and catalog but also interpret her travels, talk with her at a distance through images and sounds that chose to collect and store for various reasons, to share her meetings, her emotions connected with the border and travel but also make arbitrarily, selecting and irreversible choises.
Usually we are afraid to go inside the memories of others for fear of betraying them, to rock the precious that there are hidden ... we know that they can not fully understand the images and sounds that we recorded but we believe this is precisely the condition ideal that allows us to get inside these memories and to testify to the priceless value.
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​Alessandro Aiello_june 2013