Associação Cultural Videobrasil

The imaginary texture of the real

Manolo Arriola's work deserves two surprising epithets, being the work of a video artist: it is pictorial and modern at the same time. These few lines, intended to function as an introduction, may justify these epithets. 

The consideration of merely formal and perceptive aspects as the main aim of every pictorial research is one of the central ideas - maybe the most recognised - of the reflection on modern painting. This “retinalism” denounced by Duchamp is closely connected to the search of a specificity of the medium that, paradoxically, accompanied video art since its beginning. Due to technical development and the preponderance of a particular artistic programme, many pioneers dedicated themselves to researching the quality of the images generated by this particular medium, as well as the characteristics that (apparently) differentiated video art from its closest “relative”: the cinema. 

“Paseo Catódico”, one of Arriola's first videos, can be related to those adventures of the conceptual pioneers due to its tautological use of image and text. His most recent videos present a series of paradoxes of the constituent elements of image itself and moving electronic image. In my opinion, Arriola's work can be viewed as modern, for it presents an analytical dissociation of the constituent elements of image. This characteristic of his work comes directly from his interest in art history, as he maintains a dialogue with tradition. Thus, it is no wonder that Arriola is interested in documenting the work of other artists, as we can realize in this Dossier. 

I will deal with a particular video to illustrate this analytical model. At the Paris Universal Exposition, in 1900, Mexican artist Jesús Fructuoso Contreras was the first Latin American artist to be awarded the Grand Prix of sculpture for his work “Malgré Tout”. Fractuoso, apart from carrying this peculiar name, had his right arm amputated. The fact that his sculpture (a marble woman crawling on the ground) was titled “Despite Everything” has always been associated with this unfortunate event in his life. 

The “Malgré Tout” by Arriola (who is called Manolo, and whose arms are in perfect condition) displays a woman wearing black lingerie and crawling on her knees, holding a strange object (which seems to be a gas mask) in her hands. The delayed, repetitive image can be directly related to the famous Muybridge's photographs. While this body, already transformed into language, connected with many signs, is crawling rather painfully on the ground, we see some masculine silhouettes that generate a peculiar spatial effect. In spite of the fact that the video presents a narrative and a sense of duration, they do not respond to the constructive logic of the setting - characteristic of moving image - but to the position of the elements in the scene, to a pictorial ratiocination. Temporality - nullified by repetition - has no function other than highlighting the latter. 

Under a contemporary perspective - developed in times of television and hollywoodian movies - this effect is practically impossible with a truly static image. In making use of this technique, Arriola exploits the most immediate qualities of the medium, its textures and colours, its “treatment”, and force us to recognise the compositional elements of the image as they are. “Despite everything,” using as few technical resources (artificial lighting, post-production) as possible, Arriola's work is already a still life, a picture (Carmen) or a scene (men fighting or playing basketball) which always returns to what Maurice Merleau-Ponty finds in Klee's and Cezane's works and calls “the imaginary texture of the real.”

How and when did you become interested in video works?

It was when I was still at school that I became a student at Oficina de Vídeo de La Esmeralda (La Esmeralda Video Workshop). As a student, and now as a professor, this place has always been of vital importance for my development as a visual artist. I specialized in design. I believe there are many temporal vestiges, movements, and description of space in design.

The relation between space, time and movement seems to be a constituent element of your videos, as well as the simulation of typical TV noises. We can perceive it in the appropriation of Gombrich's text together with the images that are gradually extended in Passeo Catódico (1999) and in the movement of images which are mostly vestiges and noises in Malgré-tout (2001). How do you view this relation between the recording of movement and its re-creation during the editing process?

My first obsession was computer editing. The virtual space provided by the software highlights equivalences between plane and duration; with this tool, you can anticipate the movements of an image and create virtual spaces in video. The action, the displacement in space and the camera movement must be planed. “Passeo Catódico” is the representation of a temporal and spatial fragment that follows the character along an axis perpendicular to the view, while the text is the element that runs along the depth axis, bringing us to the digital surface. “Malgré-tout” and “Rey” are circular and cyclical spaces.

In Flicker (2000), it seems that you appropriate video's own typical noises in order to record a movement which does not exist in the original film La Tormenta, by Fernando Vallejo. What is your view on this relation between the recording of movement in the cinema and in video art?

This work, I believe, is mainly a graphic resolution which comes from the interpretation of a medium by another medium; the cinema is interpreted by video art, and the latter has been interpreted to be digitalized. This is a series of altered speeds organized in a way to reproduce movement. In this case, the video fields tend to disentangle themselves and produce vibration. In this work, as in Mismo, I used a peripheral with a jog that was part of the equipment. In the case of Mismo, there is a direct manipulation in real time, I mean, there are effects but there is no rendering. Apart from the technical aspect, I believe this work uses these discrepancies to figure or to speak about an experience, be it traumatic, religious or through memory. This is important because, from an expressive, artistic point of view, the standard time of reproduction is not always what we expect. Undoubtedly, much of the cinematic language is built on expressiveness and on the need to simulate reality, and our own ways to represent reality and memory come partly from cinema.

Your work moves between different genres (television, documentary, video art). Is your work “contaminated” by these genres, I mean, is there an exchange between them?

Documentary and television came after video art and derive from it, though lately I have produced Escribe en mi, which is basically a documentation of an artistic project. I am interested in documenting manual and artistic processes, as well as the work of art. In doing it I find many meanings. I have a fantastic video recorded in Brazil which shows the preparation of some dishes. This process is extremely beautiful and expressive. I hope to edit this material in 2005.

In 2003, you were in residency at ZKM, in Germany, in order to develop video projections for an opera. How was your experience at ZKM, and how do you view the work you have done with Iván Edeza?

The most important was to achieve an agreement that could satisfy Iván Edeza, the director Renate Ackermann, and me. The understanding of the stage necessities and the working with documents which were unintelligible to me like plots, scores or the software in German were extremely stressful and exciting at the same time. I believe my one-month stay in Germany with Iván was very useful to my project, for we had the opportunity to contemplate many works of art that we both like and that influenced both of us.

How do you view the electronic art scene in Mexico today?

It is too intellectual and hermetic, as much as the multimedia scene, with artistic values and objectives that are not well-defined. Video art has its place within a pre-established idea of art which is still based on (an altered) conceptualism, using different media in a restricted way, according to the art market system. Video art has not been extending the idea of artistic objects and traditional goods. The concept of electronic art, I believe, is misunderstood in regard to its mediatic possibilities of generating communitarian concepts of society and media.

Arriola studied at La Esmeralda - National School of Painting, Sculpture and Recording of the National Centre for Arts in Mexico City.

Arriola began working in video in 1998, when he created the video Navarte, which presents a peculiar view of Mexico City. In 1999, Arriola produced Paseo Catódico, a reflection on the perceptions of movement and time in video. This video was awarded Best Editing and Second Place in the “experimental video” category at the Video and Electronic Art Festival - Vid@rt. It was also screened in festivals like Videoformes (Clermont Ferrand, France) and Interferences (Belfort, France).

That same year he was awarded a scholarship by the National Fund for Culture and the Arts (Conaculta-Fonda 2000-2001) to produce the video Malgré-tout (2001).

Between 2000 and 2001, he exhibited Props, his first videoinstallation, in the collective exhibition Actos de Fe - imágenes transfiguradas, at the Laboratório Arte Alameda, in Mexico City.

In 2001, he created the video King, which was screened in festivals like Interferences (Belfort, France) and the 13th Videobrasil International Electronic Art Festival (São Paulo, Brazil). That same year he produced his first solo exhibition, in which he exhibited the videoinstallation Juego Diferido at the Museu Universitário de Arte Contemporânea of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma, in Mexico City.

In 2002, his videos were screened in a retrospective exhibition (coordinated by Mike Kwella) at the House of World Cultures, in Berlin. That same year his video Still Life was selected for the 10th Bienal de Fotografia organized by the Centro de la Imagem in Mexico City. Still in 2002, he produced the documentary Mona Hatoum, about the Lebanese artist and her stay at the Laboratório Arte Alameda during an exhibition in Mexico City.

The following year, he worked together with Ivan Edeza on the video projections for the opera La Conquista de México, by Wolfgang Rhim, which was performed at the Teatro Juarez, in Guanajuato, and at the Palácio de Bellas Artes, in Mexico City. This project was developed while Arriola was in residency at the ZKM, in Karlshure, Germany. That same year he curated the 1st Bienal Nacional de Arte Universitario, organized by the School of Arts of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma, in Mexico.

In 2003, he created the video Carmem, which was screened in 2004 at the Forum on Contemporary Latin American Arts of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma, in Mexico.

He also created the video Escribi en mi (2004), and a documentary on the works of the artist Pablo O´higgins, to be screened in the painter's exhibition at the Museo del Antiguo Colegio de San Ildefonso, in Mexico City.

Some links to websites In this section we list some links to websites related to the artist and his work. We also list some links to other websites about other artists, media centres, and cultural spaces that aim at promoting electronic art in the countries of the Southern Circuit.

Laboratório Arte Alameda is a cultural centre located in Mexico City which aims at promoting contemporary art. Priamo Lozada, curator of the Laboratório, is a frequent collaborator with Videobrasil and proposed Manolo Arriolo for the Dossier.

http://www.artealameda.bellasartes.gob.mx/index.php?option=com_content&view=frontpage&Itemid=128

Short video works by Mexican artists can be found on the website of Mexican artist Fernando Llanos. 

http://www.fllanos.com/

Website of the launch of the book Pola Weiss: Pionera del videoarte en México, by Dante Hernández Miranda. The website features information on the Mexican artist, who passed away in 1990.

http://www.design.com.mx/pola/

Website of Video Data Bank with information about Ximena Cuevas, one of the most important Mexican video artists.

http://www.vdb.org/artists/ximena-cuevas

CUEVASX - Minerva Cuevas is a talented young artist of the new generation in Mexico. Her work deals with political and social themes, and she has taken part in festivals and exhibitions in many countries. She participated in the last edition of Emoção Artficial (2004) at Itaú Cultural, a cultural centre in São Paulo, Brazil. Her website “Mejor vida corporation” features some of her works.

http://www.irational.org/minerva/resume.html