Associação Cultural Videobrasil

Issues pertaining to identity, territory, and displacements are featured very often in your works, in many different ways. Is location a pressing issue for you, or is it something that you rationally believe should be discussed?

I think both, or rather that the first leads to the second. But then again, displacements and migratory flows are not new, they have been present throughout the development of history, and they have reached a point in which they are part of the experience of contemporary subjects. Due to the ease of information access and the ease of displacement, nowadays we learn faster about people in political exile, war prisoners, economic migrations, etc. A significant amount of people are confronted with these experiences; the spanglish phenomenon, for instance, is an emblematic case that reflects on language. Now, distance, which is also a position in relation to a place, is understood here as existential position, and that is the point in which I intend to insert my subject of enunciation.

Language, dialects, and resistances play an important role in your work. In Lugar común, texts in different languages cross the screen. Out of Place is marked by successive repetitions of the phrase “one identity, one destiny, one language.” What is the role of language in your work?

Language certainly plays a key role in my work, as do places, first off because I always make voice-over interventions (spoken word) in image sequences; this element is present in nearly all of my work, and it tenses up the other elements (image and sound). I usually decontextualize each of the elements, which are seldom subordinate to each other, and due to this autonomy, they formally conflict with each other. On the other hand, language is also marking a place, in the broader sense of the term. As for Lugar común, it is a video in three languages with no translation, in which language is an attempt to represent the notion of fragmentation of reality, or put in another way, it is reality conceived as countless fragments the totality of which is never perceived, no matter how hard one tries; there comes a point in the video in which one has to choose to read the text in Spanish, English, or German, because it is impossible to grasp the whole, even if one masters all three languages. To choose a language also means to choose where one stands. The experience of the foreigner, the emigrant, or even of the tourist, the experience of being displaced, out of phase in relation to an origin, to somewhere else, and the difficulty in understanding a new code, a language, etc. leads to the perception of this experience in a fragmentary way. Out of Place is different, although one who does not master the Arab language will not grasp the totality of what is being said, since the sequence is not translated, but the reference to language has to do with the designation of elements that form an identity. Derrida's quoted phrase-one identity, one destiny, and even one language-is about the heritage within a culture, and I place it here precisely to problematize the notion of identity as something that is designed, predestined, and immovable, and I am referring to the project of construction that is identity, fictionable and redesignable as it may be. That is why there is no translation from the Arab, i.e., there is no comprehension; language here is not so much decorative as it is something that exists, but does not assume itself.

Works such as Out of Place are examples of how you produce visual representations of memory. When did the issue of memory appear in your work, and what led you to these representations?

I believe these representations have always been present in my work, perhaps in a not too conscious and distanced manner in the beginning, but later on they became essential. From my berlin… video onwards, maybe due to the lasting character of the migratory experience, I dealt with comparisons a lot. It became a staple, the notion of being here coming from somewhere else, that is key to this video, which I made from my own experience in that city-and it appears differently in 11 de Septiembre -, I cannot help but look at these facts and think of the others. This view of events is in line with Pierre Samson's idea of a relative present (a present the existence of which precedes the existence of a relative present, since the present no longer exists as an infinite past). Deleuze too approaches the notion of relativity of the present tense: “...a continuum that unceasingly transforms and fragments itself, according to recompositions imprinted by awareness. Memory operates a movement of different strata, that sequences of travelings showcase in its permanence and metaphors.” To me, these sentences are key to understanding the type of subjectivity upon which I wanted to build my work. …which builds and rebuilds itself in a constant, ever-fragile manner, any notion of belonging, heritage, identity, memory.

Berlin, been there/to be here displays a certain sense of estrangement regarding the city of Berlin. Is this sense a driving force in your current work?

No, I think it is real specific to that work, to my meeting with the city of Berlin, and to taking a certain origin into account. The driving force in my works after berlin… has to do with the awareness that it caused a feeling of estrangement in me, at some point.

How did your partnership with Guillermo Cifuentes begin, and how has it been?

Me and Guillermo studied together, which means there is a sort of affinity due to the origin of our audiovisual questionings. When we were students we formed a workgroup, the A Cuerda collective, which was closely accompanied by Nestor Olhagaray. The group would produce videos and short films and we would switch roles, anyway, our paths crossed after the group came about. Soon after the sudden death of one of the members, and as each member went its own way, we began distancing ourselves from each other, but Cifuentes and I maintained a collaborating relationship; the lugar común/common place video installation is a good example, it developed from an exchange of letters. Within a few weeks I will be in Chile to work on my new project with him.

How do you regard the current video production in Chile?

In fact, I do not have an overview of current video production in Chile, certainly due to the fact that I am not there right now. What I can say is that video in Chile-as in other places-has finally become a player in the contemporary art scene. Some time ago, video was just regarded as a medium (as in the 1970s), but now, every self-respecting art school has included video in its curriculum, which used to be sort of monopolized by painting. This is a step forward, right?!