daniela franco

Participating artists: Ulises Carrión, Mariana Castillo, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Böl, Francis Alÿs, Carlos Amorales, Fernando Llanos, Pilar Echezarreta, Irene Clouthier , Cristian Manzutto, Adolfo Davila.

From the press release (November, 2003):
«The videos presented in this selection were chosen using two constraints, the first nationality: unavoidable, given that Mexico is the guest country in this edition of Paris Photo. The second, self-imposed, video as poetry. Not in its content but structurally, that is, videos constructed, edited as if they were poems.

The idea of using poetical construction as a curatorial criteria started after a conversation with Jorge Volpi in which we wondered: if cinema as a narrative genre evolved from theatre to novel, wouldn't videoart be the closest genre to poetry?

The title of this project comes from a poem by Xavier Villaurrutia. A beautiful play on words (a sea in which I know nothing, a sea in which I can't swim) unfortunately untranslatable to English.

As the title for a video selection, the wordplay remains valid: on one hand, it references the premise that originated this selection: a sea (that of moving image) in which you can't swim (that doesn't follow the rules of the other moving image genre, there isn't always a narrative, etc..) an abstract sea, so to speak.

On the other hand, referencing video as a sea (that of video as art, that of just video) in which I know nothing (in which little is understood, a genre still searching its place in the contemporary art world).

Finally, this is a selection of video. Period. Just in the same way that Paris Photo is just a photography fair: what kind of photography belongs in a photography fair? What distinguishes commercial photography from artistic photography? What makes a video, art? What makes a video a video, just the used media? If a photo is printed from a video frame, is it still a photo? If a video was originally made in film, is it still a video?

Even though the videos were firstly chosen by their usage of video as an end, there are some videos (like that of the virtuous Ulises Carrión) conceived at first as a performance then shot in film; videos made from snap shots, computer images... and of course, videos done without the use of a video camera.

The goal of Un mar en el que no se nada is not the search for "poetry" as an abstract concept, as a romantic vision of art that aims to transcend; but to compare poetic construction, its use of words like images, like units that can or cannot hold a meaning in themselves, to video and its use of images like words.

The above does not exclude, of course, the weak hope that keeps contemporary art alive: to find somehow, somewhere, poetry.»