In search of fire

Considerations on the distance that separates the observation of the contemplative from the viewing-listening of three video pieces that comprise three intentions, environments and contexts that are apparently different and distant from each other. In three acts we travel through a common background environment that fluctuates between subtle aspects, between perception and dissolution into a totality invisible to the senses and to thought.

Countless Name, CommonHeavens, 13 min, 2014.

An unrecorded name, absent from any dictionary, and time passing at a pace not measurable by conventional means. A place nestled among enormous seven thousands harbors a presence that is sustained in emptiness. Nothing in this passage of moving images is more revealing than what exists between the screen and the one who contemplates the passage of time.

Los Sures, Abu Ali, 17 min, 2008.

Los Sures is the name of a Puerto Rican neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York. Recorded in 1991 and published in 2008, this video is not so much a portrait of the neighborhood or a memory of it, but a journey of initiation through different interior landscapes that are reflected in the urban wilderness in the evocation of death and loneliness, but also in contemplation and celebration of life.

The Changing of the Guard, Alessandro Quaranta, 7 min, 2013.

After awareness-raising work, I asked the students of a secondary school in the Alps of southern France to take the place of the sentries who once guarded the border between France and Italy during the Second World War.

What do places so full of memory convey? What do they tell teenagers who are juridically and geographically alien to them? I entrust them with the task of documenting every signal coming from the bottom of the valley, with recorders and video cameras, while unbeknownst to them, other people involved secretly film their reactions to the stimuli of the landscape and to a mysterious apparition that I have announced.

Waiting, observing, listening, watching, being open to the unexpected; like the soldiers, the pupils were open to signs coming from the outside world, as well as those from their own inner world.

Activity curated by Observatori de Vídeo No Identificat - Desorg punt Org

With the participation of CommonHeavens, Abu Ali - Toni Serra, Alessandro Quaranta