They/Them
2023 - Film & Video (Film & Video)
9:40 minutes
Juan Obando
They/Them by Juan Obando is a video essay and deepfake that uses Adobe Stock clips, maintaining their branded watermark, but animating the scenes underneath with a narrative of self-critical awareness. It’s a meta-narrative that uses the staged scenarios (as evidence) to talk about the variable politics (and mercenary capitalism) of the stock footage industry and the misinformation dilemma we’re facing with the arrival of AI technology. In a surprising reversal, a deepfake is used to tell the truth. Using voice-cloning scripts to cast a variety of voice-types (most borrow the voices of well-known actors) Obando’s racially diverse characters articulate a critical monologue, one written by the artist but projected onto pan-international identities. The characters speak directly about their nature as stock videos, reflecting on their condition and influence. Stock footage is created by media companies and independent videographers worldwide and distributed by a small group of stock banks (aggregators). In most cases, their use is commercial—appearing in advertising campaigns for example. But in a troubling twist, more recently they’ve also been used in documentaries and other non-fiction programs, even the news. In the context of this phenomenon, Obando’s project asks: do we make our media, or does our media make us? A growing subset of stock footage featuring protests has appeared within the biggest stock data bank in the world, Adobe Stock. Scenes depicting social unrest in the US are mainly produced abroad, from Milan, Ukraine, Latvia and Spain (among others). Only one of the clips in Obando’s video is actually shot in the US. Stock video creators have recognized a demand for this footage category, and have set out to meet that demand. Accordingly, these creators invest in professional actors, props, and locations that replicate—and potentially amplify—US-specific conflicts from the past few years. Political causes such as #blacklivesmatter, #defundthepolice, and #notmypresident appear in these staged videos. The implication here is that nothing is sacred, even committed positions worth of public protests are subject to absorption by global capital, and for the citizens of the US, it comes as no surprise.
As a Colombian who studied and now lives in Arizona, Juan Obando has a non-native perspective on the media-obsessed culture of the US. His projects critically intervene in social systems, often addressing key issues of the moment. In recent years, he’s explored digital objects and screen-based installations—recognizing the screen as a site where ideology confronts aesthetics and new worlds are imagined and formed through speculative technologies.
Colors:
Related works sharing similar palette
© » KADIST
Eileen Quinlan
2016Eileen Quinlan’s abstracted images, like Swipe , rely on the manipulation of photographic materials inside the studio itself, and reject the exterior world for complex interrogations of the medium....
© » ARTS EQUATOR
Transgression, triggers, and the thousand cuts of “Blunt Knife” | ArtsEquator Thinking and Talking about Arts and Culture in Southeast Asia Articles Photo courtesy of the artist June 25, 2019 By Corrie Tan (2,700 words, 13 -minute read) Content Warning: Mentions of a sexual relationship involving a teenager This response contains major spoilers for Blunt Knife by Eng Kai Er and A Doll’s House by Theatre of Europe...
© » BROOKLYN STREET ART
buZ Blurr, One Telling of the “Origin Story” at Straat Museum Amsterdam | Brooklyn Street Art BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY In the shifting culturescapes of urban contemporary art, STRAAT Museum’s latest exhibition, “Moniker: An Origin Story,” emerges as a poignant narrative that bridges the transient heritage of hobo monikers with the vibrant pulse of today’s street art scene...
© » ARTS EQUATOR
ArtsEquator's Top 10 Picks at the Performing Arts Meeting 2019 | ArtsEquator Thinking and Talking about Arts and Culture in Southeast Asia Articles José Maceda, Cassettes 100, 1971, Photo by Nathaniel Gutierrez, Courtesy of UP Center for Ethnomusicology and Ringo Bunoan January 10, 2019 Established in 1995, the Tokyo Performing Arts Market (TPAM) was created to be a platform to network Japanese artists with producers and funders...
© » KADIST
6pm – Les Statues Meurent Aussi (1953) 7pm – It for Others (2013) The second in a monthly series of double features exploring the relationship between cinema and contemporary video and performance art, Kadist screens Chris Marker and Alain Resnais’ 1953 film, Les Statues Meurent Aussi (Statues Also Die) (1953) and Duncan Campbell’s Turner Prize -winning film It for Others (2013)...
© » KADIST
Matt Mullican
2018Mullican’s Stick Figure Drawings depict characters reduced to their most basic graphic representation...
© » ART PIL
A Pick Gallery | ARTPIL MAIN ARTICLES PROFILES ANNOUNCEMENTS EXHIBITIONS WORKS COLLECTIONS ABOUT MAIN ARTICLES PROFILES ANNOUNCEMENTS EXHIBITIONS WORKS COLLECTIONS ABOUT ARTICLES art photography film + video culture + lifestyle exhibits + events features prescriptions PROFILES artists photographers filmmakers designers/architects fashion organizations/mags museums/galleries Search for: Search Button newsletter | facebook fb | instagram insta • Esmeralda Kosmatopoulos A Pick Gallery Turin Founded in June 2019, A PICK GALLERY is a contemporary art gallery that, as its name suggests, focuses on the research and selection of artists, emerging and established, on the international scene...
© » KADIST
Jason Dodge
2007In Algeria, Djidjiga Meffre has woven a fabric with a string, a length equal to the distance from the earth to troposphere...
© » KADIST
Margo Wolowiec
2015Wolowiec’s textile work Not This Time (2015) translates pixelated images into sensuous fabric and ink based forms that are at once beautiful in their abstraction and anxiety-ridden in their visualization of a malfunctioning digital world...
