To celebrate 50 years since the emergence of the medium, Universo vídeo [Video Universe] approaches current production and distribution of images to open a reflection on the central importance that these hold in the contemporary world.
Video is a device for recording the reality that shapes our way of seeing. Throughout its history video has developed a specific language, albeit mutant, which due to its nature as an image has been linked to cinema, photography, television, painting and also performance, having been used to record different performances during the sixties. What is, however, really unique about the medium is its capacity to expand the idea of linear time. Ultimately, this is a technology which allows the image to be simultaneously produced and reproduced. They are images which are consumed live at the service of communication in our global village.
For the last four years, LABoral Centro de Arte has held filMO, a pocket film festival made with mobile devices. Its purpose is twofold: to foster the ability to produce images, while at the same time, encourage a certain critical spirit.
Universo vídeo_filMO brings together a selection of works from the proposals submitted to this edition and the winning pieces of the last competition.
The premise for both editions has been to build bridges towards the tradition of the image, seeking to understand it as a continuum that would span from the first experiments with the phenakistoscope in the 19th century to the photographic plate camera and finally lead to the digital image of mobile telephones; or even, the Gijón International Film Festival, which was used as an improvised set in its most recent edition.
The presented pieces show the more conventional idea of narration on one hand, and have an experimental approach on the other. In other words, at one end, we have documentary and reality – the most recurrent perspective to tell stories whether fiction or non-fiction – and at the other, investigation into forms and ways to represent movement and time.
In collaboration with:
