Please an Abyss /

Public Relations

Gabriel Sanceau Fuks, Brazil/Canada, 2015, DCP, B&W, 11’, no dialogue

“The architects of power in the United States must create a force that can be felt but not seen. Power remains strong when it remains in the dark; exposed to the sunlight it begins to evaporate” — Samuel P. Huntington

Fuego en el Mar

Sebastián Zanzottera, Argentina, 2022, DCP, colour, 15’, no dialogue

Images of the sea set on fire trigger a dream with photographs of my father at an oil and gas plant in the Patagonian steppe in 1982. He took these photos while he was working for the Argentine State Gas Company, before its privatization and closure. In those plants, the soundscape of the wind merges with the hum of the machines, just as the extraction of fuel merges with the damage to the land and bodies. The film proposes a dreamlike crossing of absences, marks on the body, and the construction of masculinity of oil and gas workers.

Cerro Saturno

Miguel Hilari, Bolivia, 2021, DCP, B&W, 13’15’’, no dialogue

A mountain range in fog and snow. Human absence, ancient sacred places. Traces appear: Dirt roads, antennas, transmission lines. Human faces appear, behind windows and rain. A city.

Feriado

Azucena Losana, Brazil/Mexico/Argentina, 2021, DCP (shot on 16mm), B&W, 2’06’’, english subtitles

The electromagnetic landscapes of Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro go on an irregular basis and it is possible to see what’s outside the frame. This image hacking is connected to the poem E se Jesus fosse preto (And if Jesus was black) from the brazilian poet Bruno Negrão, who proposes a new way to imagine some of our ingrained beliefs.

Quebrantahuesos

Martin Baus, Chile/Ecuador, 2021, DCP, B&W/colour, 10’, english and slovenian subtitles

Inspired by a series of poetic interventions made by Nicanor Parra, Enrique Lihn and Alejandro Jodorowsky in 1952, the film creates a collage from a series of Chilean films of the militant agit-prop imaginary prior to the coup d’état, intermingling it with a filmic record of graffiti made on the walls after the revolt of October 2019. The result is a plastic encounter between the political language of the past and the present.

Ñores (sin señalar)

Annalissa Quagliatta, Mexico, 2016, DCP (shot on 16mm), B&W, 2’45’’, english and slovenian subtitles

The film illustrates Mexico as a country where the ones denouncing corruption and impunity are silenced. The main focus of the piece is the murder of reporter Rubén Espinosa, activist Nadia Vera, Alejandra Negrete, Yesenia Quiroz y Mile Virginia, an iconic event that exemplifies the growing violence in the state of Veracruz. The use of b&w film gives it the look of another era: The context of violence and injustice are current but the issues seem to be the same as before, like an old story that repeats over and over again.

An Infinite Loop for Resistance

M. Woods, USA, 2018, DCP, colour, 5’40’’, no dialogue

This is a media-fashioned attack aimed at the disturbing omnipotence of hyperrealism and fascist banality – best symbolized by Donald Trump’s burning latex effigy. This is a violent collage – shreds of simulacral tumult, a riot in media waste. Meant to be projected anywhere – as a call to arms, a way to incite, an attempt at shaking the normalization of bigotry and authoritarianism. This is a call to #Revolt more than #Resist. This is not for photo ops. Rather than bathe in the aesthetics of nothingness, it is time to wake up and fight the active evil that radiates from the seat of “power” and alters the real through mediated nihilism.