Essay Enrique Aguerre, 08/2007

What do you see when you see me?

Almost since its beginning, video as a language—and as a support—has been deeply concerned with attempting to define its specificity as opposed to other means of artistic creation, seeking the much dreamed of adulthood. This operation, which involved most of the names in the video art sanctuary, culminated in a resounding failure, crowned on the one hand by the quick assimilation of the rebellious new medium by the institutions, “museologization” and all and, on the other hand, by the arrival of video at a state of maximum spectacularization, among millionaire budgets and state-of-the-art technologies. Of its antiart nature, virtually no postulate would remain standing.

This diagnosis, which at first might be regarded as a sort of disenchanted reflection, has a positive side to it and enables us, in turn, to make new readings of the relations between video and the mass communication media, from the traditional television to the Internet. It frees up the artists who choose video as a contemporary tool of creation to focus on the uses of image, from a clearly critical stance.

Visual artist Paula Delgado is a clear example of the new generation of creators who assume a position in face of the seductive imagery instilled upon us by the means of communication, questioning, in her case, the structures imposed upon the female and their multiple stereotypes.

Delgado’s first video work was done in 2000, with the goal of being showcased at the exhibition for young artists (all under twenty-five years of age) entitled Invisible :) (2000), held at Centro Cultural de España, in Montevideo, and curated by Fernando López Lage.

The creators selected for the exhibition, along with Paula Delgado, included the artists Julia Castagno, Daniel Umpiérrez, and Martín Sastre who, later on, with Federico Aguirre, would form the Movimiento Sexy artistic collective—for “cultural healing,” as they used to call themselves—, which debuted formally at Centro Cultural Recoleta, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, with the performance Todo por Natalia (2001).

As a common denominator, it is worth noting that all members of the collective used the video tool to make several single channel productions between 2001 and 2003, each contributing their own individual knowledge, and to the recording of their incisive performances, always spiced with humor and irony. Movimiento Sexy rocked the vernacular little art world with its defiant iconoclastic attitude and, at the same time, contaminated it with a quite welcome pop behavior.

Ayer (2000) was the name of Delgado’s video screened in Invisible :), part of an installation presented in the exhibition room. It featured her alter ego, the artist Mariana, sitting on a wheelchair, alone in her room, evoking, through a photograph, her loved one—or perhaps just her desired one. The photograph would fall on the floor, out of her lap, and the object of her desire would materialize to melt caressingly into her arms. Finally, it would disappear again, and solitude would take over Mariana in a definitive manner.

In a sort of misshapen music video, Mariana sings in karaoke mode over the homonymous theme by Mexican Luis Miguel, thus exploring certain structures that are imposed upon the female role. Mariana is a passive being awaiting her beloved man—her immobility underscored by the wheelchair—, and all that she can do is keep waiting, without taking any initiative for the meeting to become a reality.

After a foray, in that same year, in a video with Daniel Umpiérrez for his Sala de espera (2000) installation, Delgado made Feliz aunque no libre (2000), which also questions certain social rites. One such rite is the fifteen-year anniversary for women, which motivates the most diverse and absolutely stereotyped celebrations, from the dress and the waltz to the hundreds of pictures, and the mandatory video.

As in Ayer, the video is built around a performance by Delgado in the Montevideo Shopping Center. Habitual customers are converted into surprised spectators watching her go down the main escalator wearing an elegant salmon-colored dress and white gloves, and carrying a bouquet in her hands, to be received by her companion, all in blue, and dance the traditional waltz with him. On their side, a video screen shows the famous comic strip Love Is…, which, by means of cliché phrases, stated what the act of loving really consisted of. After the waltz is through, the couple goes up the same escalator, kissing and hugging. To the recording, Delgado incorporated, in the subtitles, phrases taken from Love Is…: “Love Is… dreaming of wedding bells and babies,” “Love Is… doing the dishes yourself,” “Love Is… staying fit for him,” among others.

In the next year, for a solo exhibition at the Subte Municipal in Montevideo, curated by Adriana Broadway (a project by Daniel Umpiérrez), she made the video Candy. Queen of Karaoke (2001), which was screened alongside photographs of Candy—Paula Delgado herself, once again using an alter ego—and of her busy social life: by the pool, at the beauty parlor, etc.

Candy is a sort of third-world, eighties-style Jennifer Beals, determined to triumph in the wonderful world of spectacle. The video, shot in the abandoned building of the Montevideo Hall of Justice, featured another karaoke song, now including choreography. The embryo of the work was Candy Is among Us, which was presented in the exhibition BIG. Quisiera ser grande (2000), at the Momenta Art, New York, and curated by Santiago Tavella and Fernando López Lage. The work was mentioned in no less than The New York Times, in December 2000.

In 2004, along with Julia Castagno, she was awarded a prize for young artists from the Paul Cézanne contest, organized by the French Embassy in Montevideo, for her urban intervention Expansiva. Together, they later on made the video Karina (2006), which debuted in the group exhibition Soberbia y pasión (2006), at the Subte Municipal.

According to Delgado, Karina is a watershed work between her early productions and her later work: “I have always worked with the gender issue, but I changed my focus.” Karina is a woman who, like so many others, faces the everyday violence of having her most basic rights restricted, by having to endure being hostilized in the street by some men who use words as a means of harassment, going so far as to physical contact. In this case, there is a key variation: Karina is a boxer. And if Mariana would wait, Karina will act.

Cómo sos tan lindo (2005) is a video made by Delgado in which the artist puts ads in newspapers inviting men who consider themselves handsome for a casting process. Fourteen Uruguayan men are selected to act and to answer questions about the issue of male beauty. Delgado defines Cómo sos tan lindo as a travelling project focusing on male self-perception of beauty, and its resulting images.

The video featured in the exhibition 13 x 13 - trece curadores / trece artistas (2005), held at Centro Cultural de España in Montevideo. The curator-general, Manuel Neves, invited Paula Delgado and Adriana Broadway/Daniel Umpiérrez (who had already done the Candy curatorship at the Subte Municipal) to work together. In the exhibition catalogue, there is an extremely revealing dialogue between Delgado and Umpiérrez, written in the form of a curatorial text:

Paula: …What I want is for this to be inescapable.
Adriana: What do you want to be inescapable?
P: The image of a naked young man as an erotic object. It is important that the image be large because it is not something very common, an everyday thing. Neither is it very common to allow oneself to see an image like this.
A: When did you realize that this was not so common?
P: I always did. I cannot find images that explore man from a female vantage point. Those that exist are usually made from a homoerotic view. The most difficult thing is when that absence is regarded as normal.

And that was when Paula decided, in Cómo sos tan lindo, to leave behind her alter egos and start directing her portrayed ones, to ask herself, along with them, about more than male beauty, about the production of images that are bearers of that beauty. The reason for this uneven relation between naked female bodies and naked male bodies.

After the video recorded in Uruguay, the project Cómo sos tan lindo had a second phase, this time featuring Argentine young men, fully produced in Argentina—it is a key feature of her art to elaborate the entire work in its own context—and which could be seen last year at Galería Belleza y Felicidad. With the results visible, Delgado decided to raise the stakes and record in Santiago, Chile, a third video.

Delgado’s oeuvre is developing. With each new video, she fine tunes her aim and becomes more incisive in critically confronting a state of affairs that must be revised and transformed without further ado. The images produced by Paula Delgado in this series of videos are the images that are missing, those that are hidden from us, those that we wish existed... The necessary ones.

One of the founders, in 1988, of the Uruguayan Video Art Center, locally NUVA, Enrique Aguerre (born in Montevideo, 1964) is a reference point in the Uruguayan video art scene. A critic, curator, and professor, his first video dates from 1986. From then onwards, he showed in his homeland and in countries such as Chile, Sweden, Italy, Greece, Mexico, and Argentina. In 1990 and in 1991, his works featured in the video selection screened at Arco, in Madrid. In 1993, he participated in the exhibition Video Views, at the MoMA New York, and his video San Agustín became a part of the museum’s permanent collection. He had works selected for the 10th and 11th editions of Videobrasil, in 1994 and 1996. He participated in the 3rd Mercosur International Video Festival, organized by the Museu da Imagem e do Som, and the 3rd and 5th Mercosur Biennials. He organized one of the first electronic art events ever held in Uruguay, the 2nd Muestra de Videoarte Uruguayo, at the Goethe Institut, in 1988. In 2001, he selected works for Elogio del video, an exhibition organized by Graciela Taquini for the Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, and curated the Uruguayan selection of the 52nd Venice Biennale. Since 1997, he coordinates the Audiovisual Media Department at the Museo Nacional de Artes Visuales.

Interview Denise Mota, 2007

Ever since Candy and Ayer, in which a girl in a wheelchair sings Luis Miguel songs, your work has this music video-karaoke aesthetic. Why does the format appeal to you? What elements does it contribute to the proposal that you wish to build up?

The music video came up naturally when I dealt with certain issues. I was a child in the 1980s and I grew up watching music videos. It is a cliché-filled world, and in order to “get past” it, I had to think about it and then rethink it. Most music videos are ultimate examples of gender stereotypes. Clear, simple ideas, a good rhythm and a short time span: a good formula to appropriate. What I did in those works was repeat the formula, changing a few chips around. Instead of the classic “music video woman,” the protagonist would be a young woman in a wheelchair, or a blond who was not blond, but wore a wig that did not quite match. They should not have been there, but they were. The “should not have been there” reveals the imposed models that we incorporate.

The female condition is another element that stands out in your work. With Candy, the goal seemed to be building truth based on appearances. Ayer creates fantasy within the fantasy: it uses the formula of music videos, featuring a female protagonist, a location, and a situation that would never be in a pop music production. Disclosing not only the aggressive and prejudiced nature of stereotypes, but also their emptiness and grotesqueness: is that the objective of those works?

Promoting awareness of stereotypes is something that has always interested me. The idea is to stop for a moment and ask: “Why are they only giving me this one option, when I can have others?” In fact, there are as many options as one can imagine, the problem is that the means of communication, and culture as a whole, often curtail this ability, by tying us up to a single way of viewing things. In most cases, this “correct” way implies inequalities. When we allow ourselves to exit those schemes, we realize that other possibilities exist. But we usually live immersed in them, without realizing that it is possible to get out. 

Feliz aunque no libre delves deeper into the issue, transposing it to the domestic realm. Why do female social roles attract you, and which aspects of that condition do you wish to highlight?

The female roles do not attract me, but rather the roles of women and men. I think that the stereotypical gender roles are equally detrimental to women and men, and it surprises me that things are not perceived in that way. It is like saying that racial prejudice is a problem of black people, when it is really a problem of all people. Unless playing the oppressor’s role is regarded as something positive. Anyway, Feliz aunque no libre is a work that I built using comic strips from the 1970s, that were published in a local newspaper when I was little. The charming comics for children used to say things like: “Love Is… doing all the dishes,” “Love Is… letting her have silly conversations on the telephone,” “Love Is… letting him read Playboy,” “Love Is… not letting her go out in miniskirts,” “Love Is… cleaning up the tub without complaining after he takes a bath,” “Love Is… frowning when you hear about women’s lib,” “Love Is… feeling happy, although not free.” Those are alarming conceptions of love, women, and men. In my work, I try to exorcize the information that entered my mind when I was still too little to think for myself.

Karina, your partnership with Julia Castagno, has a different outlook, even though it also deals with a female situation. The work not only mirrors daily life, it also proposes a symbolic solution to the conflict that it presents. How did you come up with the idea of making a video about verbal harassment?

Besides being work colleagues and close friends, Julia Castagno and I share many common interests. Verbal harassment to women in the streets is an everyday thing in countries like ours, and it is a subject we cannot help but analyze. We did not understand how something as violent as “street pick-up lines” was accepted, but we wanted to know how other women dealt with it. So we went out in the streets to make interviews. What we found was that many answers were in line with our perspective: the “pick-up line” becomes, most of the times, a source of constant insecurity for women. We also went to the women’s police station to check if verbal aggression in the streets was something that could be reported, but nobody was able to answer. It was during this investigation that we met Karina. The symbolic solution that presents itself in the video is a materialization of our fantasy. We would often like to take radical action toward these aggressors. In our lives, even if we do not beat these men up, we will stop and reply, we tell them so many things that they do not know what to do. Maybe, the next time they want to say something, they will think twice.

Karina does not develop an activity that is commonly associated with the female universe, nor does it relate to the types that you had been exploring: she is not a singer, aspiring pop star, romantic, or naïve. She is a boxer. Has the work been molded by the character?

The character appeared by itself. After an entire night of interviews, we met this eighteen-year-old female who told us men usually did not mess with her, and she did not feel scared in any way. She was a boxer and that gave her confidence. Immediately, we knew she would be the protagonist of our video. Our work is a piece of fiction based on the experiences we collected. We realized the extent to which women are not prepared to defend themselves, let alone to attack, and the way in which this has them in a more vulnerable position, from the get-go.

Karina portrays various situations and rude pick-up lines. What was the preparation and “field investigation” work like regarding this aspect of the video?

First of all, we interviewed women in the streets of Montevideo. Then, we made a very long list of the phrases most commonly heard in the streets. Afterwards we had a selection process. The entire team working with us (production, photography, editing, make-up, costume, casting) was comprised of women, and all had, at least once, heard a phrase similar to those featured in the video. Still, my boyfriend could not believe we were told those things. In many cases, they live absent from our everyday reality. They have no idea how walking the streets is different for a man and a woman. That is why we did not want to ‘tone down’ the rudeness, so people would perceive it the way it really is.

The series Cómo sos tan lindo brings about a new change: it investigates the construction mechanisms of female beauty by transferring their codes to the male universe. Based upon which perceptions, reflections, and observations did you build the concepts for the series?

In fact, Cómo sos tan lindo does not transfer female beauty codes to the male universe. What it does is put a man in front of the camera, thus inverting the classic order (the woman is always the one who is looked at). The starting point for the work is a newspaper ad seeking “attractive men for photographs.” From then on, contents are supplied by the men who present themselves: the definition of what is attractive, the gestures, the poses, the self-perception with regard to beauty. If you perceive those as a code of the female universe, it is probably because the only referential of beauty that we are used to seeing is the female one. Whenever we see a man posing seductively, it makes us think of a woman, because we are used to seeing women in that position. This tells us a lot. The image of the “seductive man” that exists in our imaginary is an image constructed by the eyes of another man. The way in which a woman looks at the man’s body is not something that we are used to seeing. I felt that the image of man as a beauty object to women was a great absence, and that I had to seek it. When I see people watching my videos, I realize that my work touches people deeply, judging from the reactions that it elicits.

You have a project of investigation, conducted through a grant from the Uruguayan government, on the issue of gender in arts. How is that work structured, and what specific aspects will you focus on?

I received support from the Ministry of Education and Culture, through its Contestable Funds to participate in a meeting in Vienna, organized by Museum Quartier, featuring contemporary artists from various countries who deal with gender issues. Each artist develops a project and, in parallel, conferences and roundtables are held. I was invited to develop Cómo sos tan lindo in the city of Vienna. Cómo sos tan lindo was conceived as a travelling project, because it attempts to investigate how the construction of beauty varies in different cultural contexts. It has already been made in Montevideo and Buenos Aires, and soon it will be made in Santiago and Valparaiso.

The pop, the film-and-television-fashion language, irony, and critique are present throughout your entire body of work. Is manipulating the tools and codes that contemporary audiences are accustomed to the best way to attract their attention to the dysfunctions in the cultural discourse of our days?
T

he thing is these codes and tools are precisely what creates contemporaneity. It is difficult to think about the reality that surrounds us without taking them into account, without making references to them.

Simulation is the filter that presents itself to reflect a world very similar to ours, only with less recurrent alternatives. To theatricalize reality, to reproduce the reproductions that we are accustomed to (through Hollywood, advertising, television, etc.), but introducing discordant notes: is that the guiding thread of your work?

I like the expression “theatricalize reality.” Yes, there is some of that. It has to do with approaching art as a way of life. Living life as a “work in process.” I seek to originate experiences in order to multiply the possibilities given to me. These are situations that would not happen in reality, but which end up becoming real through art. And from those situations, analyses and reflections emerge. I always try to include action in my work. I think it is a shame to let people contemplate artwork from a distance. It is important that they get involved, that the work becomes their reality for that moment. For example, in Cómo sos tan lindo, it seems of utmost importance for me to include, in the exhibition, an instance with the men who participated in it. That is a very rich moment.

In what other places would you like to do Cómo sos tan lindo and why?

I would love to do it in India and in China or in Japan, key countries to the Eastern culture. I understand the fact that aesthetic patterns, gestures, and poses repeat themselves in Western countries, and I wonder what the reach of globalization in that sense is. In the two cities where I did the videos so far, Brad Pitt was mentioned as an example of beauty. I find that funny. Will the same happen in China? It will certainly have an impact. I intend to do the series in Mexico and in Paraguay, two countries that are traditionally very strong and sexist. What I am interested in about this work is the fact that men themselves defeat the sexist structures with their discourse. There is no need to add anything.

In 2003, you and Julia Castagno carried out a public art project, Ciudad ideal, in which works of art occupied the place of outdoor advertisement. You said at the time that the goal was to think about the use that is made of the public space for creating “nonexistent needs.” Is that restlessness still present in your work?

Maybe not in my current work, but in me, it is. The main objective of this work was for us to become aware, as citizens and artists, that we too have the right to generate imagery in the public space, instead of just consuming it. In the last few years, the city had become covered up with lighting fixtures for outdoor advertisements that only convey commercial values. It seemed like a waste for us not to use up those spaces, so visible and lightened, for other purposes. The work consisted in managing to insert new content into those supports.

You work with advertising production. That is, you have an “inside” view of the power, techniques, languages, and idiosyncrasies of advertising, designed to elicit “nonexistent needs.” How does that activity feed your artistic creations?

They feed my creations in two different ways. On the one hand, it serves as a training process: the relationship with a crew, the time management, the systematization of work. On the other hand, it keeps alive my need for creating images that strike a balance with the advertising content. I dedicate myself specifically to art production, I am not involved with the ideas, but I cannot keep myself from questioning what is really being said in order to sell a product. It is quite terrible.

Martín Sastre is your cousin, and together with him and other artists, such as Dani Umpi, you were part of the Movimiento Sexy collective. What have you retained from that experience? Do you still use something from those days in your work?

Julia Castagno and Federico Aguirre were also members of Movimiento Sexy. I work with Julia until this day. The way we found for self-managing and projecting ourselves abroad was to unite. When we showed in New York in 2000, before we were in Movimiento Sexy, everyone would tell us that our works had a special dialogue between themselves. We had much in common. The idea of Movimiento was never to lose sight of the individual proposals. At an exhibition, we might present one group work, or five solo ones. The important thing was that, together, those works proposed something more than just the sum of the parts. Uniting made us independent from the medium. We gained strength.

Comment biography Denise Mota, 2007

After the economic crisis of 2002, in the aftermath of the institutional tsunami that hit Argentina in the previous year, dawn came upon an emptier Uruguay. Emigration reached alarming levels: according to estimates, over one hundred people left the country everyday in that year, most of them between twenty and twenty-nine years of age. Those who stayed did not “turn the light off.” They struggled to find a way of remaining in the country.

Thus, an enterprising generation flourished, disconnected from expectations of government benevolence, and in tune with global trends and discussions. Over the last five years, Montevideo witnessed an eruption of publications, businesses, and ideas that revitalize various fields of activity, ranging from fashion events to independent centers for selling the work of young authors. Within the embryo of artistic creation, a sector that represents “global postmodernism,” as the Artnet magazine put it, surprised by leaving its offices to entertain a dialogue with society.

This structural “good wave,” which resisted the hurricane of the early century, includes Paula Delgado. Holder of a degree in economics, the artist—who, as a child, like many other little girls around the world, would read the delicate comic strips of the Love Is... series and who, as an adolescent, would hum to the tunes of George Michael, Madonna, Roxette, and to the sound of MTV—was born, as a creator, in the early 2000s.

She got started with theatrical experiments in college. From there, she moved on to performance: “The theatrical structure was too rigid for me, and the freedom allowed by performance, in terms of timing and physical space, would enable me to be more specific with regard to the contents and ideas that I wished to convey.” Soon she incorporated other forms of expression, such as photography and video. In her quest for languages and discourses, she was a member, alongside her cousin Martín Sastre and other artists, of the Movimiento Sexy, a critical, debauched collective, intent on laying bare the structures of the local art market.

“I think that there were better expectations at that time, in 1999, 2000. Lots of proposals seemed to be arising, but then they disappeared,” she recalls. “The economic crisis probably had much to do with it, because a whole lot of people went away. This led the artistic panorama to become frozen once again.”

Nevertheless, the Movimiento Sexy collective heated up the Uruguayan scene and projected Delgado, most of all on an international scale. Candy, her first creation, formulated around that time, visited the pages of The New York Times upon landing on Manhattan with a modernity as carefully constructed as it was passé, based upon an “American Way of Life” remodeled under Latin American conditions, anachronistic and displaced.

“My work was always better received abroad than it was in Uruguay, without exception, from the first works I exhibited to my most recent project. While here the specialized public would be still discussing whether what we did was art or not, out there, each work would be quickly processed, and there would be some feedback. This is something that annoys me in Uruguay: the lack of feedback. The reality in Buenos Aires, Argentina, for example, is totally different. Everyone has an impressive capacity of absorbing what is being presented. They understand it, process it, and give you something back. It is fulfilling to present a work in Buenos Aires, the energy is very strong.”

To the bold Candy followed the melancholy Mariana, a girl in a wheelchair who, in her quite gloomy bedroom, filled with medication and old furniture, fantasizes about the romantic encounter with the man of her dreams, as a hit song by Mexican pop icon Luis Miguel, sung by herself, serves as the soundtrack to her reverie.

Next up, Delgado would emerge as a Pollyanna-cum-debutante/bride, her character in Feliz aunque no libre. In the work, she brings back the little naked couple from the Love Is… series in order to purge away its sexist messages that inebriated generations. Afterwards, she quit acting in her videos, abandoned her personas, and started proposing reflections about the themes that intrigue her—especially the social roles ascribed to men and women—by means of situations and people culled from real life.

This crop includes the recent works Karina and Cómo sos tan lindo. In the former, the protagonist was discovered at 1:30 a.m., in downtown Montevideo, as Delgado and her friend and collaborator Julia Castagno were walking and taking statements from women on how they felt and reacted to sexual harassment in the streets, which is often regarded as a natural thing, and usually not discussed. The work was screened in Uruguay and Argentina, and was selected to represent the artists in Spain, during the 1st Bienal São Paulo-Valencia, held in 2007.

In Cómo sos tan lindo, the aim was to break another taboo: to put a group of men in front of the cameras, liberating them from the role of almighty males, and putting them in a position of people who were willing to make a self-assessment of their physical condition, with no preconceived discourses or roles. “The way in which a woman looks at and portrays a man is not the way that we are used to seeing. In terms of imagery, the representation of a male body is always created by the eyes of another male. This project is a tribute to male beauty, and a space in which to discuss it with the men themselves,” says Paula Delgado.

The author keeps an eye out for many different fields. In addition to the visual arts, she is a professor at the Universidad de la República, the Uruguayan federal university, and she also works with art production in advertising, an activity that provides her with elements for artistic creation. In the academic field, she published in 2005 La industria audiovisual uruguaya. ¿Realidad o ficción? Su impacto sobre las PYMES, written along with three other researchers from Uruguay.

In 2008, she presents, in Vienna, an Austrian version of Cómo sos tan lindo, with support from the Ministry of Culture of Uruguay. “Europe has a very large art market. They are eager for new proposals. There, art that deals with genres has an important place.”

Bibliographical references

Bienal São Paulo-Valencia
Paula Delgado participated in the 1st edition of the Encounter Between Two Seas, Bienal São Paulo-Valencia. Under the theme Tolerance and Solidarity, the Iberian-American contemporary art exhibition was held between March 28 and June 17 this year in the Spanish city. The video Karina, by Delgado, featured in the section Other Contemporaneities – Activating a History (Urban Frictions), which includes videos by fourteen other artists.


Artnet
Entitled “Young Uruguay,” this publication outlines an overview of the art that emerges in the country, based on works by authors under thirty years of age. The video Cómo sos tan lindo, by Paula Delgado, is described as a “disarmingly honest” work that “shows that ‘masculine beauty’ remains a contested field in contemporary society.”


Cómo sos tan lindo in Argentina
At the time of the debut of the Buenos Aires segment of her oeuvre, at Galería Belleza y Felicidad, the artist talked about the concepts behind her artistic investigations to the blog VisualMente. Focusing on journalism and publishing design, the Argentine Web site also includes images of her work.


25 years of video art in Uruguay
A news report by the La República newspaper reviews La condición video, 25 años de videoarte en Uruguay [The video condition, twenty-five years of video art in Uruguay], the first inventory of its kind in the country, screened in February 2007 at Centro Cultural de España. Curated by Enrique Aguerre, the exhibition was divided into four sections: Los inicios [Beginnings] (1982-1987), Núcleo Uruguayo de Videoarte [Uruguayan video art hub] (1988-1994), El video como herramienta [Video as a tool] (1995-1999), and De ceros y unos [Of zeros and ones] (2000-2006). The curator’s blog also addresses La condición video.