Eliconie

VIDEOPLAY - 10 videos / 10 Artistas / 10 ciudades
LEÓN FERRARI / CATHERINE BÄY / BAGGENSTOS-RUDOLF / ADONIS FLORES /
SABRINA MUZI / ELÍAS ADASME / CARLOS MARTIEL / REGINA JOSÉ GALINDO / FRANCESCA FINI /
GRUPPO SINESTETICO
Curador: Silvio De Gracia

Celebrating 10 year of trajectory, Videoplay project is presenting a powerful selection of video-performances from 10 renowned artists. This programme will be exhibited in 10 cities around the world. If you want to be part of this project you only must communicate with the platform and propose a venue and date for the next months during 2014.
All details about the itinerant exhibition will be included in the web of the project and in a digital catalog.

Send your proposal for exhibition: interferencias00@yahoo.com.ar

Videoplay is an Argentina-based international platform for the dissemination of videoart over the world. This is a non-profitable initiative started in 2004 by the visual artist and curator Silvio De Gracia, who is an artist-run with an extensive experience of organization and curating international festivals and events in videoart.
In 2002, De Gracia began a draft exhibition of video art in an international shown. This year and the next had taken place PLAY I and II - International Exhibition of Video Art in Junín, Buenos Aires, Argentina. In 2004, PLAY has become an international festival, which main concept was to invite to worldwide curators, and create a basis for interchange and cooperation between curators and organizations devoted to dissemination of video art. This festival had three editions: 2004 [Signals of the world], 2006 [The mediatized body] and 2008 [man in transit].
Parallel to the festival, Silvio De Gracia started in 2004 Videoplay project, an instance of collaboration and exchange, and since this year he has introducing curatorial programs at various festivals and events around the world.
In October 2010 PLAY Festival changed its name to TRANSVIDEOPLAY, an nomadic festival with venues in Sweden, South Korea, Argentina, Italy and Spain [ 2010-2011] This is the last event organized by Silvio De Gracia under festival format.
In late 2010 began a new phase in which all activities are concentrated on the platform Videoplay, and the focal purpose is increase the networking with institutions, galleries and festivals interested in the field of video art.

Currently, Videoplay is focusing especially on the gender of the videoperformance and other works which, though not clearly framed within the category of art-action, reflect a deep anchorage in the performatic sphere. The main purpose is to spread the video performance made by artists from around the world, especially Latin American artists.

VIDEOPLAY Celebration (2004-2014) Selected artists

2004
León Ferrari (Buenos Aires, September 3, 1920 - ibid, July 25, 2013) is regarded as one of Latin America’s most significant 20th century artists, and his work has been given particular recognition in relation to the conceptual art practice of the 1960s and 70s.
In 1962 he began a series of written drawings, amongst which was El árbol embarazador (1964): the first of his works to be openly critical of Christianity. In 1965 he submitted the controversial sculpture La Civilización Occidental y Cristiana for exhibition at the Di Tella Institute. This work, depicting Christ crucified on a US bomber, was censored from the show. In 1976, at the start of the military regime known as La Junta, Ferrari and his family were forced into exile in Brazil. While living in São Paulo he worked on a series of acoustic metal sculpture, created architectural plans to be reproduced using heliography and began to experiment with media such as photocopy, mail art, and videotext.
From 1984 Ferrari made periodic return visits to Buenos Aires, finally settling there in 1991. His versatile practice encompasses collages made with Christian iconography, oriental erotica and camouflage, installations made with living birds in cages, board games, bottles and manikins, photographs intervened with texts written in Braille, written paintings, deformed calligraphies and electronic art. His work has been shown in over fifty international solo exhibitions and a large number of group shows around the world, including Global Conceptualism: points of Origin 1950- 1980 (Queens Museum of Arts, New York) and Heterotopias: Medio Siglo sin lugar 1918-1968 (Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid). His retrospective exhibition at Centro Cultural Recoleta in 2005 was closed following a complaint from Christian fundamentalist groups. The show was re-opened a week later by the judges on the grounds of freedom of expression.
In 2007, his most recognized work, La Civilización Occidental y Cristiana, won the Golden Lion at the 52nd Venice Biennale.
In 2009 the Museum of Modern Art MOMA in New York featured his work in a major exhibition with artist Mira Schendel called Tangled Alphabets.

Video title:
Casa Blanca (White House)
Year of production: 2004
Running time: 3’
Synopsis: A mock-up of the White House and an army of earthworms that invade it. An implacable allusion to the North American imperialism and its miseries in the vision of León Ferrari, one of the best-acknowledged and controversial Argentine artists.

2005
Catherine Baÿ is a French interdisciplinary artist, who explores and mixes the fields of video, dance, performance and fine arts. The Blanche-Neige project, initiated in 2002, directs the character of Snow White, heroine of popular story, and develops through a series of artistic interventions, video and performances, which constantly revisit this character turned contemporary product of consumption. By confronting the icon with the plurality of the cultures, it creates a space of reflection and leads us to question on our singularity face to mass-culture. Like a virus, Snow White has already colonized many places, in Paris (the Cartier Foundation, the Pompidou Art Center) in Moscow (Kliasma festival), in Rome (Nuits Blanches) and in Lausanne (Arsenic Theater). She was in Madrid few times ago at the Circulo de Bellas Artes for the 12th Rencontres Internationales, and will be at the MAC/VAL, Contemporary Art Museum of Val de Marne on next September for video screenings and
performances.
http://www.macval.fr/
New York, Japan, Cuba etc…

Video title:
Snow White, Episode # 1
Year of production: 2005
Running time: 14’
Design and production: Catherine Bay.
Cast: Audrey Gallet, Maia Jancovici, Laurence Haziza, Marilyne Grimmer,
Samantha Barroero
Cinematographer: Catherine Merdy.
Editing: Thomas Courcelle, ISOTOM.
Website: www.blanche-neige.fr
Synopsis: Since 2002, the Snow White project evolves through a series of interventions: performances, lectures, performances and events. Here, Snow White invests the filmic space. Dressed in a suit and a wig latex precast designated by Roël Stassartstraat, performers beat the campaign squadrons staged containing the codes of western and war film. The use of CinemaScope size and wide angle allows to approach the square dominated by the great outdoors, where the landscape open establishes a close
communion between man and nature body.
The character of Snow White, multiplied and decontextualized, made
telescope sensations related to child magic and advertising nightmare.
“In this work, explains Catherine Bay, it is possible to reactivate a question about an imaginary figure hypermédiatisée become subject to consumer
and provide a popular show. ”
This work on the deformation of the myth gives rise to a hybrid film industry questioning the relationship between image and collective
imagination.

2006
Baggenstos-Rudolf
Heidy Baggenstos, born in Zurich in 1958. She studied BBV at Art School in Zurich; diploma fine arts at the F+F School for art and new media in Zurich. Andreas Rudolf, born 1970 in Bülach, Switzerland, was educated as an electronical engineer at Paul Scherrer Institute between 1987 and 1991 and as a goldsmith between 1992 and 1995. Diploma fine arts at the F+F school for art and new media in Zurich.
Heidy and Andreas have been working together since 2003. They currently live and work in Zurich. They use medias such as video, photography, installation and performance and participate in various exhibitions and video festivals both in Switzerland and abroad.
Baggenstos/Rudolf’s interests reach from language to forms of
communication and interrelations between collective and subjective everyday life.

Video title:
Balloons
Year of production: 2006
Running time: 3’ 48”
Synopsis: In “Balloons” the artist duo
focuses on the possibilities and the
appearances of verbal and nonverbal
aspects of modern communication.

2007
Adonis Flores (Sancti Spíritus, Cuba, 1971)
Multidisciplinary artist, who lives and works in Havana. His artistic practice includes disciplines as photography, video, performance, sculpture, installation and public intervention. After studying in a military school, serving in the Cuban army in Angola and completing a degree of Architecture from the Universidad Central de Las Villas (1997), he has devoted himself entirely to art. His main subject matters base on experiences in the army life as on the observation of society, above all since the attack on the World Trade Center, when the prevailing warlike climate flooded the news throughout the world. The war threat made him to relive
his past as a soldier, being his work a radiography at the ruling militarism, showing ironically what it hides and the appearances it takes. He has showed his work in solo and group exhibitions in Cuba, France, Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, Canada, China, United States, Germany, Spain, Portugal, England, etc. His work is part of private and public collections as FNAC (Fonds National d’Art Contemporain) in France, Fundación JUMEX in México, the Musée des Beaux Arts de Montréal and the Museo de Bellas Artes de Cuba.

Video title:
Honras fúnebres
Year of production: 2007 Running time: 3’ 14”
Synopsis: Dressed in camouflage, the artist
embodies the character of a soldier dancing
the hula with a funeral wreath. The dance
has as background a funeral party.
When that death is inevitable turn around,
no other recourse than to play with it.

2008
Sabrina Muzi S.Benedetto Tr., Italy, lives in Bologna. She works with video, installation, performance, photography, videoinstallation, and site specific projects. She took part at Film Art-in-Residency, Atlantic Center for the Arts, Florida, 2001; in 2007 she spent three months at IASK-Changdong Art Studio program, National Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul. In 2010- 2013 she participated in various international events including: 943 International Studio Residency Program in Kunming, China; Instants Vidéo Numériques et poétiques, Kiev and Centre Culturel Français, Oran; LabYit- the Italian Contemporary Art Platform in China, Beijing; La dimensione del contemporaneo, Palazzo Arnone, Cosenza, Italy; Oslo Screen Festival, Visual Container, Oslo; Video Art Verona/Playtime” Art Verona; Terra/Film Lounge Programme Stills Gallery, Scotland’s Centre for Photography, Edinburgh; Terna Prize 04, Rome; Taipei Artist Village, International Fellowship, Taipei.

Video title:
Remote Body
Year of production: 2008
Running time: 5’
Synopsis: Set in a rural enviroment this video
show an imaginary transformation of the human
body in a tree. Electronic sounds are mixed with
an archaic imagery that recalls to the primeval
ritual of the humanity- nature relationship.
Evoking a mytical and surreal imagery Remote
Body looking for a state of empathy but also
suggests an apocalyptic vision in which the
human being is ever more far from the natural
landscape.

2009
Elías Adasme (Illapel, Chile, 1955). He explores a variety of conceptual proposals, through installations, performances, digital graphics, visual poetry and mail art. He lives in Puerto Rico since 1983. Currently he is an artist of the Museum of Contemporary Art of Puerto Rico and professor at the Art League of San Juan.
Some of his works are part of the permanent collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art of University of Chile, the Museum of Contemporary Art of Puerto Rico and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain.
His recent exhibitions include: “Crisis… América Latina, arte y confrontación. 1910-2010”, Palacio Nacional de Bellas Artes, Mexico City, Mexico (2010); “Chile años 70 y 80: memoria y experimentalidad”, Museum of Contemporary Art of Chile (2011); “Perder la forma humana. Una imagen sísmica de los años ochenta en América Latina”, Centro de Arte Reina Sofía National Museum, Madrid, Spain (2012). “Perder la forma humana” at Lima Art Museum (MALI), Perú (2013) and Centro de Arte Contemporáneo MUNTREF (Museo Universitary Museum of Tres de Febrero), Buenos Aires, Argentina (2014); “Insurgencias urbanas” Document Art Gallery, Buenos Aires, Argentina (2013); “América Latina 1960-2013”. Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, París, France (2013) and Museo Amparo, Puebla, Mexico (2014).

Video title:
Immolation art / Arte a lo bonzo
Year of production: 2009
Running time: 44”
Synopsis: A visual reflection on the relationship
between the act of creating and commodification
in the postmodern context.
The word art, but in its Anglo-Saxon sense (”art”)
displayed in a cover image of dollar bills, leads
us to face a univocal reading, where the art system
falter in their aspirations as an area of freedom,
purifying its essence creator, via a ritualistic act
of self-immolation.

2010
Carlos Martiel (La Habana) Graduate of the National Academy of Fine Arts, Havana, in 2009. His work was included in the Havana Biennial (2009) (2012); Biennial Pontevedra, Galicia (2010); Liverpool Biennial (2010); Bienal de La Otra, Bogotá (2013); and International Performance Art Biennale, Houston, (2014). He has had solo exhibitions at the Contemporary Art Center Wifredo Lam, Havana (2012); Nitsch Museum,
Naples (2013); Axenéo September, Montreal (2013); LUX, Guatemala City (2013); and Steve Turner Contemporary, Los Angeles (2014). He has received several awards, including “Arte Laguna” in Venice (2013) “CIFOs Award”, Miami (2014); “Premio Close Up” in Vallarta, Mexico (2012). He has exhibited his performances in Cuba, Canada, Italy, Estonia, United Kingdom, Spain, Senegal, Argentina, Mexico, Guatemala, Colombia, Ecuador, Brazil, Venezuela, France, Germany, Greece, United States, among others.

Video Title:
Prodigal son
Year of production: 2010
Running time: 2’ 28”
Synopsis: On his bare chest, the artist
places all condecorations belonging to
his father, granted by the Cuban State.

2011
Regina José Galindo Born 1974 in Guatemala. Lives and works in Guatemala. Since she was invited by Harald Szeemann to the 49th Venice Biennale with the work El dolor en un pañuelo and made on the occasion the performance Piel, Regina José Galindo has presented her work in numerous international exhibitions. Awarded the Golden Lion for best under 35 artist two editions later for Himenoplastia, in the 51st Venice Biennale where she also presented Golpes and ¿Quién puede borrar las huellas?, Galindo has also participated in the Prague and Tirane biennials, as well as in major international institutions such as PS1 in New York and Le Plateau in
Paris. Her work is also present in important private and public collections, such as the Museo Rivoli in Torino, or the Miami Art Museum and Cisneros Fontanals Collection in Miami.

Video title:
Marabunta
Year of production: 2011
Running time: 13’ 14”
Synopsis: It is known as “marabunta” to the mass mobilization
of army ants that are known for their aggressive behavior, their
nomadic nature and their incursions or raids on devouring
everything in their path.
Marabunta makes us reflect on human aggression. A metaphor
between the insect and man to prove that man also happens
and all-consuming ago destroys everything. Marabunta shows
the individual act collectively because that is how the individual
consciousness is inhibited and walks through life dismantling
it all without taking any responsibility.

2012
Francesca Fini Born in Rome in 1970, living and working in Rome.
She is an Italian artist working with new media, video and performance art. Primarily interested in video and live art, she also create artworks assembling performance art ‘relics’ or manipulating video stills.
With a deep training as a digital artist, she worked for 15 years in the field of television authoring and production. In 2000 she met American artist Kristin Jones and collaborated with her on the project “Tevereterno”, creating installations for the city of Rome. With Kristin Jones, Kiki Smith and other artists she attended the 2008 River to River Festival in New York,
projecting her animation “Moon Loop” on the trees of the Hudson River. Among the art events in which she took part in the last few years, can be mentioned the 2011 WRO Biennale in Poland, ADD Festival at MACRO Museum in Rome, the finals of Laguna International Art Prize in Venice, CINEMED Film Festival in Montpellier, Taormina Film Festival, Berlin Directors Lounge, IKONO TV Film Festival, FILE Electronic Language International Festival in Brazil, FONLAD Digital Art Festival, Cologne Off and Magmart Video Art, among others. In 2012 she was invited to the first “Venice International Performance Art Week”, curated by VestAndPage, featuring among the others the work of Valie Export, Jan Fabre, Yoko Ono, Boris Nieslony and Hermann Nitsch. In 2013 shewon the “FONLAD Performance Art Residency” in Coimbra and was invited in Chicago for the Rapid Pulse International Art Festival.
In 2014 she has been selected for the Margaret Guthman Musical Instrument Competition, organized by Georgia Tech in Atlanta, Usa. She was invited in Kolkata, India, for the “Ghosts of Shakespeare” Performance Art Festival and she has been selected to participate to the International Watermill Center Summer Program, directed by Robert Wilson in New York.

Video title.
Fair and lost
Year of production: 2012
Running Time: 05’ 24”
Synopsis: I’m wearing electrodes and I try to wear makeup. Involuntary muscle contractions caused by electric shock are very strong so that I cannot control the hands and the makeup spreads all over my face. We hear the chorus of Nabucodonosor by Giuseppe Verdi, which has a very strong symbolic value in the history of my country, bringing along the ghosts of old struggles for freedom that no one remembers anymore. “My country, fair and lost”. The hysterical, uncontrollable, movement of the hand represents the disease of social habit, which reveals its fragility when the system appears on the point of collapsing: the deep conflict between a
conscious behaviour and external social conditioning. Even crying is involuntary, caused by the black pencil and mascara entering my eyes since I cannot calibrate the movement of the hand. A mechanical cry that is automatically transmitted to the audience, in a sort of empathic conditioned connection, unconscious and therefore completely useless.The performance is part of a larger project: withanhelmet.blogspot.it

2013
Gruppo Sinestetico Group founded in 1999, with an outstanding participation in the most important festivals, exhibitions and art biennials, as 49th Biennale di Venezia (2001), Manifesta 4 (Frankfurt, Germany, 2002), Biennale Kyoto (Kyoto, Japan, 2003), 50th Biennale di Venezia “Extra 50” (2003), Open International Performance Art Festival Beijing CHINA (2009), Fluxus Museum # 4 Forth Woth Texas USA (2010) - Lost & found - Internationales Festival der Fotografie-Duisburg Ruhr Biennale, GERMANY (2010), Independents Liverpool Biennial, Gallery4allarts, Liverpool UK (2011), - Prix du livre d’auteur Les Rencontres d’Arles in photographie, Parc des Ateliers, Arles FRANCIA (2011); 6th Biennial Museu do Olho Esquisito Latino, Stay Antibaia, SP BRASIL (2012); Flyers (collateral event) 11th Biennial of Havana CUBA (2012); London Biennale (pollination VISUALIZZARTE) Museo del vetro Montegrotto (Pd) ITALY/UK (2012); 2 Ruhr Biennale, Duisburg GERMANY (2012); Triennial Estended Media, Belgrado , SERBIA (2013); Video Festival Natures 11 (Naraves 11) Bezigrad Gallery 2 , Ljubljana SLOVENJA (2014).

Video title:
Synaesthetic wall
Year of production: 2013
Running time: 8’ 23”
Synopsis: Facing the wall and the book
as a joint transmission of thought tools,
synesthetic Group gives us something
tangible revering their physical and tactile
relationship.

Videoplay’s curatorial screenings

2014
Celebración (2004-2014), Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Argentino MACA,
Junín, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Videoplay “Visions of the edge” FONLAD #10 Online Digital Arts Festival,
Portugal’s Center Pavillion, Lisbon, Portugal

2013
9 hundred project, Peras de Olmo - Ars Continua, Buenos Aires, Argentina
“Luta Perpendicular”, Perpendicular Festival, Belo Horizonte (MG), Brazil
“Beyond fragility” Video Art Festival Miden, Kalamata, Greece
TPA latino america, Torino Performance Art Festival, Torino, Italy
Videoplay-videoperformances, FONLAD #9 Online Digital Arts Festival,
Coimbra, Portugal

2012
“Beyond fragility” International Multimedia Art Festival, Yangon, Myanmar
“Out of limits” (version 2) Torino Performance Art Festival, Torino, Italy
“In excess/En exceso” FLYERS - Collateral Program XI Havana Biennial,
Cuba
“Out of limits” FONLAD #08 Online Digital Arts Festival, Lisbon, Portugal
“Argentinian Dreamers” - CEC 2012 The 7th Annual Carnival of E-Creativity,
India
LATINOS DE ACCIÓN Selección Latinoamericana de Video-performance,
Weber-Lutgen Gallery, Sevilla, Spain

2011
“Argentinian Dreamers 2”, 4th International Video-Art Festival Camagüey,
Cuba
“Insurgencias del cuerpo” – Mostra de vídeo performance da América
Latina, Lisbon, Portugal
Urban Disturbance (Hyper Body 2), BIOS Art Centre, Athens, Greece
“Argentinian Dreamers” – Cologne OFF / Waterpieces Videoart Festival,
Riga, Latvia
(Hyper Body) Video Art Festival Miden, Kalamata, Greece
TRANSVIDEOPLAY. Fase 5. Galería La Clínica Mundana, Valencia, Spain
“Argentinian Dreamers” – Cologne OFF Videoart in a Global Context, City
Art Gallery Kharkiv, Ukraine
TRANSVIDEOPLAY. Fase 4 – “More Than Bodies” VisualContainerTV, Milan,
Italy
“Urban Disturbance” Videoperformance in public space –(.BOX) Gallery,
Milan, Italy

2010
TRANSVIDEOPLAY. Fase 3 – International Video Art Festival, Argentina
TRANSVIDEOPLAY. Fase 2 - Project Space Lab 39, South Korea
“More than bodies”, Örebro International Videoart Festival, Sweden
MAGMART Festival - under the volcano, Italy

2009
“Ar Detroy en Retrospectiva”, II International Video Art Festival, Camagüey,
Cuba
“Electronic and sensitive”, ExhibitContainer on-line Gallery, VisualContainer,
Italy

2008
PERFORMANCE PRESENTE FUTURO, Río de Janeiro, Brazil
AMAZE Event, Bau-huis, Belgium
man in transit PLAY V International Video & Performance Festival, Junín,
Buenos Aires, Argentina

2007
2da Muestra Internacional de Video Performance EL CUERPO Y SU DOBLE,
Valdivia/ Santiago, Chile

2006
NIVAF – Nagano International Video Art Festival, Japan
“El cuerpo mediatizado” Muestra de Videoperformance, Performance
Biennial DEFORMES, Santiago, Chile
PLAY IV International Video Art Festival, Junín, Buenos Aires, Argentina
VideoChannel – Selection 06, Cologne, Germany
VIII International Digital Art Exhibit and Colloquium, Centro Cultural Pablo
de la Torriente Brau, La Habana, Cuba

2005
INSTALARTE III – Arte Contemporáneo, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Proyecto “República de Artistas”, Galería Wifredo Lam, La Habana, Cuba
VII International Digital Art Exhibit and Colloquium, Centro Cultural Pablo
de la Torriente Brau, La Habana, Cuba

2004
PLAY III International Video Art Festival, Junín, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Curator’s biography
SILVIO JAVIER DE GRACIA
Born and live in: Argentina

Silvio De Gracia is an independent curator, writer, visual
artist, performer and theoretical based in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Between 2002 and 2010 he was director and curator of several events of video art and performance art en Argentina, among others: PLAY – International Video Art Festival (2004/2006); INTERFERENCIAS – International Action Art Encounter (2005/2007); man in transit - International Video & Performance Festival (2008) and Transvideoplay Festival (2010).

In 2004 he founded Videoplay project, an international platform for the dissemination of video art, initiating an intensive activity of collaborations and exchanges with several international galleries, museums, private foundations and public institutions around the world. He is also curator of The Videoplay Digital Video Library, an archive of different genres of video art by renowned and emerging artists, which the main concept is to create a basis for interchange and cooperation between curators and organizations devoted to diffusion of video.

As specialist and researcher in performance art, De Gracia has been co-curator of the First International Biennial of Performance DEFORMES, in Santiago, Chile (2006) and “Performance Presente Futuro”, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (2008). In 2012, he was one of curators of the most important event dedicated to video art in the Collateral Program XI Havana Biennial, in Cuba, with the project “In excess - FLYERS”. Currently, he is focused in collection and diffusion of video-performance genre, especially from Latin American artists.
His theory production includes articles and essays that have been published in specialized magazines, in different websites and books. Also, he is member of international commitee of magazine Inter art actuel, a publication from Canada, specializing in performance and action art. As artist and curator he was guest in the XI Havana Biennial, Cuba (2012); 3th Thessaloniki Biennale, Greece (2011) and X Havana Biennial, Cuba (2009).

videoplay
www.videoplay-platform.weebly.com