Iván Cortázar
Synopsis
In 1958 Ullibarri’s dam in Spain, was built leaving several villages under water. This is a video installation project composed by 2 videos.
Video 1: I interviewed people that used to live in the submerged villages and asked them about their memories of the times before the dam was built. With the stories I composed “underwater” scenes in a studio, as if they were frozen in time under the water of the dam. With this video I attempt to show the darkness and ambiguity of the memories lost in time of these places that the former habitants will never be able to visit again.
Video 2: Images of water overflowing the dam, representing the passage of time, and the inability to retain memories.
Series of single channel videos that can be screened individually or as a video installation creating an uneven black and white horizon where sound and image merge together to create a unique horizon. The work tries to talk about confrontation. Black-white; sound-image; Nature-humans; Earth-Air; Reality-Imagination.
One day my mother decided to have my dog neutered. When she got home after the surgery she was still drugged and didn’t want to sit down. She also struggled to stand. I was really amazed by her willingness to overcome what she couldn’t understand and I filmed it. Months later I was still thinking of those images and I created Encantamento. I erased the background and I placed her in abandoned houses. These houses are struggling to survive, just as the dog is trying to stand against a strange force pushing her down.
“Scanning USA” is a collaboration work with artist Yaco Neches and Gerardo Frías. It contains a group of video portraits of American Citizens and landscapes made during a road trip across the United States. The video portraits were captured using a 9-foot jib.