8 minutes
The primary interest in the trilogy is Joskowicz’s use of cinematic space, with long tracking shots that portray resistance to habitual viewing experiences of film and television. Video plays a role in the relation between the use of her locations and the stories of actual figures depicted as central in the frame. The meaning behind these historical icons such as Che and Cassidy, speak to their stories as itinerant figures whom traveled in a preglobalized era through borders and cultures in order to escape the law or overthrow it. The camera work, and the stylistic and formal devices such as tracking and establishing shots, create narrativistic voids that offer the transference of new political or social meanings.
Claudia Joskowicz is a video and installation artist working at the intersection of landscape, history, and memory. Her works form unsettling scenes that reimagine public and private histories of Latin American individuals and communities. Blurring the line between documentary and fiction, these works often involve violent images to bring traumas to the present, and to offer a moment of catharsis for the ones who were affected by these incidents in some way. In her works, Joskowicz intentionally gives a great amount of power and agency to the camera, reminding the viewer of their passive role in the construction of history. In this way, the artist critiques technology as a medium that easily manipulates one’s interpretation of history, controlling what gets to survive in the public collective memory. As Joskowicz’s camera wanders around the landscape, or focuses on one of the protagonists in her stories, the rest of the scene—and with it, other possible perspectives—fall into the dark, constructing yet another subjective historical narrative. It’s easy to focus on the slow movement of the camera more so than the actual event being recorded, which Joskowicz harnesses to remind her viewers that history is man-made. When texts or events are taken out of their context and technology is present to create an imaginary cinematic space, any narrative is possible.
Los rastreadores is a two-channel video by Claudia Joskowicz narrating the story of a fictitious drug lord, Ernesto Suarez, whose character is based on the well-known Bolivian drug dealer, Roberto Suárez...
Empire’s Borders II – Passage and Empire’s Borders II – Workers are from the three-channel film installation Empire’s Borders II – Western Enterprise, Inc...
Empire’s Borders II – Passage and Empire’s Borders II – Workers are from the three-channel film installation Empire’s Borders II – Western Enterprise, Inc...
With Roca Carbón (Charcoal Rock, 2012) and Roca Grafito ( Graphite Rock , 2012), López plays with our relationship to inert and unremarkable objects such as rocks...
These hand drawn maps are part of an ongoing series begun in 2008 in which Gupta asks ordinary people to sketch outlines of their home countries by memory...
The threshold in contemporary Pakistan between the security of private life and the increasingly violent and unpredictable public sphere is represented in Abidi’s 2009 series Karachi ...
Herculine’s Prophecy by Juliana Huxtable features a kneeling demon-figure on what appears to be a screen-print, placed on a wooden table, which has then been photographed and digitally altered to appear like a book cover, with a title and subtitle across the top, and a poem written across the bottom...
Forest Gathering N.2 is part of the series of photographs Beneath the Roses (2003-2005) where anonymous townscapes, forest clearings and broad, desolate streets are revealed as sites of mystery and wonder; similarly, ostensibly banal interiors become the staging grounds for strange human scenarios...
For I use to eat lemon meringue pie till I overloaded on my pancreas with sugar and passed out; It seemed to be a natural response to a society of abundance (1978), also known as the Bodybuilder series, Martinez asked male bodybuilding competitors to pose in whatever position felt “most natural.” They are obviously trained in presenting their ambitiously carved physiques, but their facial expressions seem comparatively unstudied...
The Last Post was inspired by Sikander’s ongoing interest in the colonial history of the sub-continent and the British opium trade with China...
The lengthy titles in Chen Xiaoyun’s work often appear as colophons to his photographs that invite the viewer to a process of self realization through contemplating the distance between word and image...
Re: Looking marks a new phase in Wong’s work which connects his region’s history with other parts of the world...
The central point of Vanishing Point is the most direct physiological reaction of the body to the environment...
Milena Bonilla’s discursive practice explores connections among economics, territory, and politics through everyday interventions...
Visalia Livestock Market, Visalia, California results from Lockhart’s prolonged investigation of an agricultural center and community...
In the series Horizons (2010), Lipps uses appropriation to riff on Modernism’s fascination with abstract form...
Untitled (Women) (2011) presents a startlingly succinct history of violently romanticized femininity...
Primero estaba el mar ( First Was the Sea , 2012) is a system of equivalences between syllables and silhouettes of waveforms cast in cement...
Part of a larger series of photographic works, Alessandro Balteo Yazbeck’s Corrupted file from page 14 (V1) from the series La Vega, Plan Caracas No...