The International Videoart Festival of Camagüey-CUBA (FIVAC)

Anima of reality

Every day, art breaks away from the ties that might inhibit its freedom; videocreation arises as one of the most heretics regarding this iconoclast will. Therefore, it becomes a difficult task the static and orthodox classification of genres and subgenres within the contemporary video art production, because we know, above all, how fast they can derive into theoretical obsolescence. However, videoart- as I insist to call this vast field of so diverse morphologies- is still a magnetized challenge to those of us who approach it with other intentions rather than just pleasure.

The exhibit for this occasion –which has been structured from FIVAC's archive, specifically from the space "La Próxima Resistencia"- is intended to go over a particular imagery resulting from different animation techniques. It is very suggestive to notice how behind all artworks- despite the substantial differences among them- there underlies the dissension towards the confines of reality; a reality so many times referred to, so many times depicted, so many times documented, but that never stops being the reality itself.

This time we´re standing before realities that have been made up, dreamed of, longed for; with anarchic and self-sufficient tempos; with unreal gravities; with unlikely but convincing metamorphosis; as if the boundaries moved from one stage to another, from the real spaces to the artist´s intellectual spaces.  So far, this type of imagery may only seem to be accomplished with technological solutions, that go from the most traditional 2D animations to the more sophisticated and complex 3D ones.

Finally, I would like to make some remarks regarding something- in my opinion- revealing; and that is the ambiguous halo surrounding almost every artwork: the seeming mismatch between the "serious" topics and the "cartoon-like" aesthetics of the representations. Because- I don´t know why, or I do know why- every time we see an animation we´re prepared for the joke, for the unexpected gag that is implied in a "childish" and simple visual language. However, in most occasions, that "childish" quality is capable of conveying such harshness, sometimes cruder than the thorniest documentary. And that´s what this exhibit is about: an adult, convulsed, sometimes discouraging universe, seen from the perspective of an imagery that winks at this absurd world without the paranoia of the grown-ups.