Wednesday, December 5, 2007 from 6:30 - 8:30pm

FISSURES
Works on video from Mexico

Presented by El Museo del Barrio in collaboration with the Mexican Cultural Institute of New York, this video program alludes to the legal and social gaps that allow certain artists to do pieces that deal with themes of piracy, appropriation, legality and inequality.

The selection includes:

Rinoplastia, Yoshua Okón (2000 / Mexico / 40 min.)
Rinoplastia takes on the format of a soap opera episode but portrays reality in a less idealized way. The video narrates a day of leisure in the life of two well-to-do teenagers in Mexico. Otherness, social class and misogyny are reflected in this piece by Yoshua Okon in which right from the beginning, the spectator doesn’t know if he’s watching fiction or a documentary.

Real Art, Julieta Aranda (2002 / Mexico / 4 min.)
In 2001, Julieta Aranda created Real Art, a company whose service consists in detecting if a subject is an artist or not through genetic tests, based on the affirmation by experts who testify in the video that artistic talent is hereditary. This video is the company’s infomercial, who has certified about 600 artists from all over the world.

Inverted Star, by Miguel Calderon
In 1999, Calderon placed a classified ad in a Mexico City newspaper seeking people who believed they were possessed by the devil. It did not take long for Calderon to find the "stars" of his project. He went to their homes and documented the strange behavior of the self-professed possessed. However, beneath the film's prankish humor and sensationalism is a clear-eyed commentary on society's rampant commercialism and sensationalist media.

Acapulco Golden, Joaquín Segura (2004 / Mexico / 12.14 min.)
In Acapulco Golden, Joaquín Segura, influenced by terror films and American gore, employs the aesthetic to the grotesque and tells the story of two teenagers, Jonathan Alberto and Alan, who killed the first teen’s mother to collect her life insurance and buy a house in Acapulco where they will live in happiness. The story is based on a real event published in Mexican newspapers known for their yellow journalism and is told with an ironic twist.

Apoohcalypse Now!, Artemio (2002 / Mexico / 8.26 min.)
In Apoohcalypse Now! Artemio appropriates cinematographic material from Hollywood and manipulates it to produce reflections on piracy and the use of the image but mostly, of the act of colonialism that the great film productions and his version of the story imply.

For this piece, the artist took Marlon Brandon’s monologue in Apocalypse Now in which Brando’s character speaks of the horrors of war. He then dubbed and synchronized this monologue with fragments from Winnie the Pooh films.

Bañando al bebé (Bathing The Baby), Teresa Margolles (1999 / Mexico / 7 min.)
In 1997, the collective SEMEFO was given the body of a dead newborn baby by its mother, given that she did not have the means to afford an appropriate burial. After two years of planning artistic pieces with the body, the collective made the video Bañando al bebé (Bathing the baby) in which it shows the group’s leader, Teresa Margolles, washing the baby whose body has been soaked in formol with chemical compounds, an act that alludes to the maternal act of bathing a baby.

After the screening join Aldo Sánchez Ramírez, Program Coordinator of the Mexican Cultural Institute of New York and visual artist Artemio for a Q&A session with the audience.



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