Menu

As Soon As If It Was Not

—A video selection for the Centro Nacional de Arte Contemporáneo Cerrillos (CNAC)

Curated by Pedro Torres

  • La visión de los vencidos (The Defeated)
    La visión de los vencidos (The Defeated)
    Carlos Motta
  • El origen de las piedras
    El origen de las piedras
    Mauricio Sáenz
  • A dream from before history (Futuro memories)
    A dream from before history (Futuro memories)
    Joan Bennassar
  • Waiting Search (end to time)
    Waiting Search (end to time)
    Daniel Monroy Cuevas
  • "So What 2012": Mayan Calendar Edition
    Michael Joaquin Grey
  • Melancholic Drone
    Melancholic Drone
    Igor Simic
  • Land of The Sun
    Land of The Sun
    Niklas Goldbach
  • Volva
    Volva
    Édouard Decam
  • The Scale of Signs
    The Scale of Signs
    Gabrielle Le Bayon
  • taH pagh taHbe
    taH pagh taHbe
    Maria Antelman
  • The God of the Labyrinth
    The God of the Labyrinth
    Yoi Kawabuko
  • Complex Systems
    Complex Systems
    Desirée Dolron
  • Loading video, please wait
    Loading video, please wait
    • 00:00

    Carlos Motta, La visión de los vencidos (The Defeated), 2013.

  • Loading video, please wait
    Loading video, please wait
    • 00:00

    Mauricio Sáenz, El origen de las piedras, 2016.

  • Loading video, please wait
    Loading video, please wait
    • 00:00

    Joan Bennassar, A dream from before history (Futuro memories), 2014.

  • Loading video, please wait
    Loading video, please wait
    • 00:00

    Daniel Monroy Cuevas, Waiting Search (end to time), 2012.

  • Loading video, please wait
    Loading video, please wait
    • 00:00

    Michael Joaquin Grey, "So What 2012": Mayan Calendar Edition, 2012.

  • Loading video, please wait
    Loading video, please wait
    • 00:00

    Igor Simic, Melancholic Drone, 2015.

  • Loading video, please wait
    Loading video, please wait
    • 00:00

    Niklas Goldbach, Land of The Sun, 2015.

  • Loading video, please wait
    Loading video, please wait
    • 00:00

    Édouard Decam, Volva, 2016.

  • Loading video, please wait
    Loading video, please wait
    • 00:00

    Gabrielle Le Bayon, The Scale of Signs, 2016.

  • Loading video, please wait
    Loading video, please wait
    • 00:00

    Maria Antelman, taH pagh taHbe, 2006.

  • Loading video, please wait
    Loading video, please wait
    • 00:00

    Yoi Kawabuko, The God of the Labyrinth, 2016.

  • Loading video, please wait
    Loading video, please wait
    • 00:00

    Desirée Dolron, Complex Systems, 2017.

About this programme

This video selection was initially curated by Pedro Torres for the Cabina Audiovisual of the Centro Nacional de Arte Contemporáneo Cerrillos (CNAC, Santiago de Chile).

Carlos Motta, La visión de los vencidos (The Defeated), 2013, 6’46”
Mauricio Sáenz, El origen de las piedras, 2016, 5’31”
Joan Bennassar, A dream from before history (Futuro memories), 2014, 14’44”
Daniel Monroy Cuevas, Waiting Search (end to time), 2012, 8’12”
Michael Joaquin Grey, “So What 2012”: Mayan Calendar Edition, 2012, 10’17”
Igor Simic, Melancholic Drone, 2015, 7’06”
Niklas Goldbach, Land of The Sun, 2015, 11’35”
Édouard Decam, Volva, 2016, 24’39”
Gabrielle Le Bayon, The Scale of Signs, 2016, 5’15”
Maria Antelman, taH pagh taHbe, 2006, 4’2”
Yoi Kawakubo, The God of the Labyrinth, 2016, 15’38”
Desirée Dolron, Complex Systems,  2017, 2’36”

As Soon As If It Was Not gathers together twelve videos by international artists, while it explores the relationship between the past and present, different time scales and real or fictional imaginaries. Twenty-first century science, with the affirmation of the Theory of Relativity and the consequences brought about by the emergence of quantum physics, has put into question the causality between the past and the present/future. Although our daily perception of time is still grounded in a linear flow of events that unfold from the past into the future, time is now appreciated from multiple perspectives and no longer understood as an absolute entity.

At the same time, the present (or future) consequences of an action do not simply or directly result from an immediate past event. In fact, a remote past or a distant future can equally affect and alter the present. The imaginary of the future of different eras is revealing to grasp the way of thinking of that specific moment, and to understand how some realities of the present are actually built on an idea of a future that has already turned into (natural, cultural and urban) ruins. Archeology (of the past) and speculation (into the future), thus, position ourselves within a present tense from which we can signify our own temporal experience.

In this circumstance, the image and language are crucial to interpret time and its possible developments, being them real or fictional. Science fiction gives us the tools to create other possible (or visible) worlds, while it also allows us to play with time. Reality, instead, makes it difficult for us human being to escape from the so called arrow of time, with its inherent irreversibility.

While you watch these videos, minutes–your minutes–run forward, yet as they do, you will have travelled to other times or you could go back to the same point again. Or maybe, you could get lost in time, be indifferent to its flow, be within a flock of birds, inside a labyrinth or an observatory, waiting for the end of the world or talking alone to the rocks.

_______

This video selection was initially curated for the Cabina Audiovisual of the Centro Nacional de Arte Contemporáneo Cerrillos (CNAC, Santiago de Chile), where it was on view from 9 November 2019 through 26 January 2020.

Opened in 2016, the Centro Nacional de Arte Contemporáneo Cerrillos is dedicated to approaching contemporary art practices, through the collaboration with institutions, artists, collectives, other exhibition and creative spaces at a national and international level, as part of the Executive Secretary of Visual Arts of the Ministry of Culture, Arts and Heritage.

As part of the CNAC, there is the Cabina Audiovisual, a space with a programme primarily dedicated to video art as a practice through which experiment with the moving image. Since the early 1970s, video art has played a crucial role in questioning mass media, censorship and centralism as they contributed to the construction of a highly-critiqued imaginary by contemporary art. Today video art is a key resource to retrieve performance, the archive and urban intervention, as well as a tool to rethink landscape, nature and community in contemporary Chile. The Cabina Audiovisual has presented six curated proposals to showcase different artworks from the collection of the Centre for the Documentation of Visual Arts, as well as documentary projects or experimental archives. Finally, it has also been deployed as a platform where to foster encounter between the local scene and international events such as Videobrasil or LOOP Barcelona.

Pedro Torres

 

A proposal made in collaboration with: