The video above is a 3-minutes trailer*teaser.
The whole video is more than 13 minutes long and has been shown in the events 17 Days Videos Series (USA), Lines in Between the Maze (Berlin) and in loop at the exhibition “Under Another Roof” in IA&A at Hillyer, Washington DC.
NEW • September 10-27, 2020: screening in loop at the exhibition Wild & Connected Plus, BBK-Kunstforum Düsseldorf.
A special 5-minutes version has been shown in FIVAC Festival Internacional de Videoarte de Camagüey, in the Screening der Medienwerkstatt 2018 in Berlin and in Kino Central, Berlin, on 26th June 2019 under the title LIFE-X-CHANGE.
NEW • October 15-25, 2020: Madatac IX, International Official Section, Cine Estudio del Circulo de Bellas Artes, Madrid.
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description:
This is a new, independent and amplified version of the video “Walkabout”, which was part of the installation “Under the Same Roof”. Click here to see the work.
In the culture of Aboriginal Australians, the long ritual walks in the desert of individuals who undertake the Walkabout* (as mentioned by Bruce Chatwin in “The Songlines”, 1987) play an essential role in allowing contact and exchanges of resources (both material and spiritual) between populations separated by enormous distances. In my work, I let myself be guided by the idea of the Aboriginal Australians to see a “territory” not as a determined piece of land, but as a dynamic network of paths, tracks, and songs – so well described by Chatwin.
In my video, this network is represented by a web of ropes on an underlying, slowly moving landscape. In four central spaces between the cords, areas of sand take form, in which different things happen: one hand digs a bone from the sand while another hand buries leaf, one pulls out a folded piece of paper, opens it and reads the word “life” which turns into other languages, one hand throws a stone from one panel to the other, new life is born out of things—in short, it is a ritual game of transformation and exchange of objects and words between the different areas. After a while everything is flooded by the sea water. The rope structure loses its geometrical form and the sand dissolves. When the flood retreats, a new network is generated and other scenes arise out of the sand.
* “Walkabout” has come to be referred to as “temporary mobility” because its original name has sometimes been used as an inappropriate term in Australian culture, ignoring its spiritual significance.
title: Songlines
technique: Experimental video and animation
length: 13’41” in loop
year: 2018
sound: kangaroovindaloo (earth) and Maria Korporal (water)
concept, camera, animation, effects and montage: Maria Korporal
