In Suspension a young man is hanging in the air, falling, or perhaps drifting through time and space. There is no special or definite way to understand it. And it is in this construction where Morales envisions the world as an endless void, or timeless gravity, that we fall deeper and deeper into our own humanity.
Raised in an isolated location between the Atlantic Ocean and the Patagonian Desert, Sebastián Díaz Morales believes his upbringing led him to a very particular way of perceiving the world around him. Using different filmic techniques, from narrative film-like works to found-footage, he explores the relationship between large-scale socio-political power dynamics and individual objectives. His films are often surreal, include no dialogue, and create a tension between reality, fiction, and representation in a visually abstract way. Morales’s films and videos are oftentimes surreal where social reality is reflected in a form that is visually abstract and fantasy-based. Most of his works study the relationships between a large-scale socio-political power and the actions of individuals; they reflect the interactions between people and their environment and social structures. The methods that Morales uses are twofold – in his works he uses both prepared scripts and the uncertainties of real life. His camera is focused on capturing documentary material, but he also uses footage that is experimental and that comes from the realms of science fiction.
In Perpetual Motion (2005) the seemingly erratic flight of the bright orange Monarch butterfly—filmed in its winter habitat of Michoacán, Mexico—is intensified by the artist’s editing in which frames are randomly dropped and the film is sped up...
The image is borrowed from protests during Civil Rights where African Americans in the south would carry signs with the same message to assert their rights against segregation and racism...
For Immersion , Harun Farocki went to visit a research centre near Seattle specialized in the development of virtual realities and computer simulations...
In Onde quer que voce esteja (2011) Accinelli sets up a row of cardboard shipping tubes of varying heights and inscribes on them in black ink the words of the title, which translates in English as “Wherever you may be.” The words, while legible, seem like fragmented lines and shapes—almost but not quite a deconstruction of the text...
Pasajes I is the first in a series of Sebastián Díaz Morales’s four videos Pasajes , which focuses on a solitary man walking through Buenos Aires...
In Onde quer que voce esteja (2011) Accinelli sets up a row of cardboard shipping tubes of varying heights and inscribes on them in black ink the words of the title, which translates in English as “Wherever you may be.” The words, while legible, seem like fragmented lines and shapes—almost but not quite a deconstruction of the text...
SEE WHAT SEE (Feb 2021): DESIRE | ArtsEquator Thinking and Talking about Arts and Culture in Southeast Asia Articles February 18, 2021 By Joel Tan Welcome to my new column 1 Does “column” still make sense in the context of a website? for ArtsEquator, where every month I’ll be giving you a little line-up of Singaporean and other Southeast Asian streaming content that I think is interesting and worth talking about in my typically TLDR, long-winded way...
Ranging from Baudelaire to the Koran, each of Hassan Massoudy’s drawings are titled with a quotation from a text...
Bonn Phum: Cambodian Village Festival | ArtsEquator Thinking and Talking about Arts and Culture in Southeast Asia Articles July 26, 2018 By Sunitha Janamohanan Bonn Phum, the Village Festival , now in its fifth year and attracting hordes of young Cambodians, took place from April 6 – 8 2018, in the grounds of the Kok Ampil pagoda...
Pasajes I is the first in a series of Sebastián Díaz Morales’s four videos Pasajes , which focuses on a solitary man walking through Buenos Aires...
“While taking the picture it was challenging to make the boys sit properly without moving...
“The two men were relatives and both were in the Lebanese Army.” Hashem El Madani...
“In the 1980s I started using coloured paper backdrops, one of which was yellow...
When Need Moves the Earth is a three-channel video that combines elements of documentary footage, archival material and abstract aerial shots to encompass a painterly yet forthright exploration of a coal mine and a water dam in Thailand...
Poised with tool in hand, Jeffry Mitchell’s The Carpenter (2012) reaches forward, toward his workbench...