La Cámara Oscura (1994-2009)
Audiovisual installation, digital video, super 8 film & photography 8 min. Project: Caja de Herramientas. Directed by: Benjamín Menéndez & Francisco Viña Production: ON/OFF. Acknowledgments: ON/OFF, Francisco Viña, Documentación Centro de ARCELOR MITTAL, Matías M. Artime, Carmen Navarro, Desguaces Lezama, Infoinvest, Sr. Moret, Sr. Vega
This video installation documents a long-term, ongoing project begun years ago and still in progress. The dismantling of heavy industry in the Spanish region of Asturias is taken as a metaphor for the beginning of the end of the recent memory of a specific physical space. In this regard, Menéndez’s documentary work strives to somehow recover it, since its individual memory is kept alive through the collective memory. Yet at once, the rubble to which the impressive old industrial buildings of Ensidesa, in Avilés, have been reduced serve as a symbol of the end of the transformative power of Modernism, of collective human action aimed at the achievement of great goals and, ultimately, of the twilight of an industrial landscape associated with the 20th century.
