KEBRANTO

2021 - Film & Video (Film & Video)

15:00 minutes

Jonas Van and Juno B

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Jonas Van and Juno B’s video work Kebranto is anchored by the figure of Boitatá, a snake that is part of the imaginary Guaraní communities that live between the current nation-states of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay. The mythical figure Boitatá is a protector of jungles and forests. In GuaraníBoitatá is the union of two words: Mbói (snake) and tatá (fire). In one of the mythological stories of its existence, the body of Boitatá in flames can blind the eyes. The artists identify the porosity and power of Boitatá’s existence to speak on desire as a vital force in the human species; cyclical and transitory temporalities; gender identity dissidence within the human species; and the oneiric process to create other worlds in which we can cohabit. The video work makes use of an interplay between sound and subtitle, and adapts the virtual worlds of video games as a tool to embody these philosophical debates.

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Although Jonas Van and Juno B do not belong to a collective, this collaborative video reflects their individual practices and their complex subjectivities. Jonas Van’s work proposes monstrosity as a fictional and deeply intimate narrative, and as a linguistic and temporal fracture in an anti-colonial perspective. Juno B’s practice transits between gender disobedience, adaptive landscapes, trans-specific and climatic mutations and migrations, to create tension between human and the boundaries between aesthetics, ethics, and politics.

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