Film & Video (Film & Video)

Maya Watanabe’s video installation Bullet unfolds within the context of the Peruvian justice and forensic systems. During the Peruvian internal armed conflict that occured between the subversive group Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) and the Peruvian military from 1980-2000, approximately 21,000 people, civilians, and guerilla fighters were killed. Most of the killings that were perpetrated by the military during this period of political upheaval were later deemed extrajudicial acts, and almost all of them were carried out with firearms.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

Three men with their backs to each other, dressed similarly in dark colors, stare straight at the camera. They individually deliver sacred lines from the Torah, New Testament, and Qur’an in their representative languages: Old Hebrew, Greek, and Old Arabic. As the camera slowly rotates around the trio, the men begin to perform traditional manifestations of each religious cult: Torah Cantillations, Gregorian Chants, and tilawat of Al-Qur’an.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

In Escenarios (Sceneries) Maya Watanabe films forgotten wastelands through a series of 360° camera movements that highlight the dramatism and visual richness of terrain that would be otherwise forgotten. Her choice to depict these lands is a reference to the devastated geography that now grips her Peru after decades of destruction from a grueling Civil War—the second largest internal conflict in the history of Latin America. Through the videos of this post-conflict territory she alludes at once to the sombre episode in Peru’s recent history, as well as her memory of it: fragmented and contused.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

El Contorno (Outlines) is a three-channel video installation that features five actors performing a script—at times individually and at times in unison—choreographically moving across an indistinct urban space. As the view shifts from one performer to another we notice that they are all in close proximity and that the feed from all three channels was simultaneously filmed. The scene unravels with actors moving in and out of view in an elaborate negotiation between their bodies and the camera’s movements.