Associação Cultural Videobrasil

Andrés Denegri (Buenos Aires, 1975) is part of the powerful Argentinian electronic art scene, alongside artists such as Marcello Mercado, Mariela Yeregui, Gabriela Golder, Ivan Marino, Gustavo Romano, and Gustavo Gallupo, among many others. The prominence of electronic art in Argentina is not only due to the quality of the artwork but also to the tireless action of curators, professors, and theoreticians such as Jorge La Ferla, Graciela Taquini, and Rodrigo Alonso, who have been mapping out the local production through exhibitions and publications. 

Like other Argentinian artists, Denegri travels through the many possibilities of the audiovisual realm. The holder of a degree in film direction from Universidad del Cine, he splits his time between an intense artistic output (of videos, installations, documentary films, and experimental TV shows; Denegri does VJ work, as well, for the Tekhne electronic group), plus academic and curatorial activities. He also works on fostering independent video and new media productions in Latin America. Together with Gabriela Golder, he runs Continente - Investigation Center for the Development of Audiovisual Creation, a branch of Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero. 

Denegri started experimenting with audiovisual production development early on in his career, between 1997 and 2002, a period during which he managed the cinema, video, and multimedia department at Centro Cultural Ricardo Rojas. He began producing even before he earned his degree. Ever since his early works, such as Yo estoy aquí, colgado de la ventana (1997) or Cuando vuelvas vamos a ir a comer a Cantón (2001), Denegri stood out for his unique use of editing tools. Often oriented towards formal research, either based on photographs, or almost still images similar to those of surveillance cameras, Denegri's videos restore movement to photographs through editing, thus providing them with new meanings.

The photographs shown in the Cuando vuelvas...hide a face, while a whispering voice reads a love letter, widening the meaning of the image, creating tension between the intimate and the public. This confrontation would later reappear in other works, in many different ways, juxtaposing near and far, public and private, reality and fantasy. Acerca de Bony (2004), about artist Oscar Bony, a central figure in 1960s Argentinian artistic production, once again uses almost still images, associated with noise (shots and projection sounds) and a series of contradictions and paradoxes, building up a complex situation that is very much in keeping with the world of Bony. 

The work is also exemplary of Denegri's strong ties with documentary film production, and of the way in which he operates transitions between various genres. His documentary films and TV shows (Duchamp; Buenos Aires no existe, 2005) incorporate formal aspects typical of his more experimental, video art-oriented works. Juego de Manos (1999), done in partnership with artist and Professor Matilde Marín, and winner of the best audiovisual work award presented by the Argentinian Art Critics Association, Viridiana (2001), and the feature film Luján (2004), about the annual pilgrimage of followers from Buenos Aires to the Basilica of Our Lady of Luján, patron saint of Argentina, are increasingly mature, but no less experimental forays into documentary work. 

The experimental fiction Uyuni (2005), the subject of this edition, resumes the tension between different places and spheres, which Denegri reinforces by associating each of the two main characters with a different image quality (video, film). Photography reappears in El ahogo (2006) with another purpose, more linked to the exploration of memory. In this delicate video, Denegri works with domestic, family images, restoring their motion through sophisticated editing, which seems to retrieve the dispersive motion of memory itself. By overlapping images of Argentina's political memories, once again he seems to use formal and conceptual procedures in order to borrow elements from distant realms and create tension, in this case, between collective and family memories. 

Personal and collective memories-of a same nature-are the theme to one of Denegri's most important curatorships ever, done in partnership with Gabriela Golder: the recent Ejercicios de Memoria - Reflexiones sobre el horror a 30 años del golpe (1976-2006), which featured the work of eighteen artists regarding their personal memories of the military dictatorship in Argentina, and was carried out at the Museo de la Universidad de Tres de Febrero, Buenos Aires.