Associação Cultural Videobrasil

How did you become interested in moving images? How did you began to work as a videomaker?

The source of my first impressions related to moving images was without doubt the cinema. More specifically the films I watched on TV, mainly horror films. I used to go to a cinema where they used to exhibit films by R. Corman and an English producer company called Hammer on Friday nights, in a session called Viaje a lo inesperado (Trip to the unexpected). Figures like Vincent Price, Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing moved charmingly through suggestive, artificial environments, and so I caught myself immersed in this strange pleasure of contemplating the ugly. The horror films, particularly the Hollywood films of the 30's and also of the 60's, are truly a rich source: the love for the monstrous, the different, the destructive, for what comes to shake the basis of a rotten structure. Afterwards, I became a cinephile, and began to watch and study everything I could, old and new stuff. During this period, I discovered A Bout de Souffle (Breathless), by Godard, and, even not understanding the whole thing, I assumed the idea of destruction (I couldn't assimilate the concept of “deconstruction”), and maybe I had felt again that childish taste for the monstrous, the repulsive, everything that was against the institutionalisation of images. It was the starting point for my desperate escape, a difficult, fruitless search for everything that was produced off road: avant-gardes, experimental, outcast videoart. That “viaje a lo inesperado” of my childhood had been converted into the sign of a personal search. Maybe I began to work specifically on images a little too late, but I had already watched and read a lot of stuff, and had acquired some theoretical knowledge. I can say that, since those first impressions I had, my thoughts began to form audiovisual structures which were difficult to avoid. A kind of “romantic occasionalism” through which every external happening was transformed into a projection of a personal feeling. I made my first attempts when I went to a cinema school in Rosário for a brief period of time, but I only began to work for real afterwards, when I gave it up, and began to believe in the possibility of a solitary creation, the man, his camera (also dispensable), and his editing equipment.

The relations between cinema and video become evident in many of your works. There are also direct references to Jean-Luc Godard, an important figure in the field of audiovisual art who explored the tense relations between cinema and video in his works. How do you deal with these relations in your works?

I think Cinema and video are “members of the same family”, the same audiovisual lineage. Both express themselves (quoting Gene Youngblood) through “chains of images and sounds in time”, something that goes beyond the support. What video gives me, in its particular way, is the freedom of the solitary creator, the possibilities of appropriation, transfiguration, and manipulation. The possibility of re-creating stereotypical images, of revealing their affective potencies, their worn out beauty, of giving up the institutionalised images, of sucking their blood and leading them to a personal location where they may be filled with new energy.

You often make use of texts in your videos, sometimes in direct relation to literature, as in El Ticket que explotó (2002), based on the book The Ticket that Exploded, by William Burroughs. Sometimes the text interrupts the image, as in the video La progresión de las catastrofes (2004), in which the word “cut” appears upon the image of a couple. How do you establish the relation between text and image in your works? Is there a hierarchy, or a starting point? How is the process of creation?

Everything begins with an image. Maybe a unique inevitable image which includes the affective potencies that I want to express. Afterwards, this insufficient image establishes relations with literary texts, acquiring indispensable organic features (mainly Marguerite Duras, but also Franz Kafka, Robert Walser, W. Burroughs and Clarice Lispector). Then, the structure begins its forming process. I am interested in the poetic function of words (impersonal words, advertisement words, words deprived of an animating voice), and also in the poetics of denaturalized images and the relation sound-image. And, finally, the magical conjunction of all these elements. A poetics made of fragments, of dangerous appropriations that end up translating the sensations of an undefined pain, which might be transferred according to the personal views of the viewer. I am also interested in noises, interferences, shocks, and the difficulties of joining these elements together.

The group “Vera Baxter” (in which you take part) creates soundtracks for your videos. The group also performs live with sound and video projections. How is the relationship between your works and Vera Baxter's? Is there an exchange of references?

Vera Baxter is an independent group which has an evident relation with my works. Its music is the sonorous expression of my videos, sometimes as a support, a kind of bone structure. In the same way, my conception of images feeds the performing concept of the group. There is a continuous exchange, or more than it; they are like independent parts of the same project. Besides, Vera Baxter is creating videos independently now. We are producing a series of shorts, something like “personal diaries” or “short scenes” created and produced by the group. This is too far from my work.

“Vera Baxter” released its first album in 2003. How was it?

The album La disección de una mujer ahogada was produced by an independent record label from Rosário. It had a good acceptance in this city. Anyway, in Argentina, every art work must be accepted in Buenos Aires (the capital) by the “owners of knowledge and the truth” to be legitimated, and it got in our way. So I guess it was a bit of a failure.

You also work as a critic and a curator. Currently, you are curating the project Syndrome for the promotion of experimental video. What do you think about the current electronic art scene in Argentina, particularly in Rosário?

Rosário is a conservative city in regard to audiovisual production. Traditional features and TV documentaries form almost the entire local audiovisual production. There is no tradition or spaces for discussions and promotion of this kind of art. It is a difficult situation. There is no way for the indispensable creative audacity and reflection to spread in Rosário. We need audacity and reflection to stop feeding this production of images crushed by plainness, repetition, and lack of critical thought.