Past

Sights and Sounds: Argentina

Sep. 15 – Oct. 29, 2015

Sights and Sounds: Argentina features new work by Fabio Kacero, Leticia Obeid, Sebastian Diaz Morales, and Juan Renau, selected by Inés Katzenstein.

These four works explore some of the themes and obsessions of interest to contemporary Argentinian video artists. Their subjects include cinema and its narrative codes, the integrity of film and television in translation, behavioral standards on social media, and the construction of images.

Operating in very different registers, methods, and aesthetics, each subverts cinematic codes to disorient viewers. Fabio Kacero abandons the classical narrative tradition by presenting a nonlinear representation of time. Juan Renau upsets the assumptions of intimacy and privacy that govern our use of social networks by making his online actions public. While these artists work within an amateur aesthetic, Sebastian Diaz Morales employs highly sophisticated cinematic techniques that explode our perception of a scene; his slick production values are reminiscent of television ads or science-fiction films. Meanwhile, Leticia Obeid severs the connection between iconic television characters and their voices in a series of interviews with Spanish-language voice actors.

Together, these works encourage new ways of seeing in our media-saturated world.

Inés Katzenstein
Curator

Inés Katzenstein (b. Buenos Aires, 1970) received a Master’s degree from the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, New York, in 2001. From 2004 to 2008 she was curator at MALBA, Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires— Malba—Fundación Costantini. Currently she is director of the Department of Art at the Universidad Torcuato di Tella in the same city. She has written extensively on contemporary art and has curated a number of exhibitions.

About Sights and Sounds: Global Film and Video

This long-term series offers a rotating selection of vigorous film and video works by contemporary artists from around the world — with a particular emphasis on work being made outside western Europe and the United States.

Sights and Sounds: Global Film and Video is a long-term presentation of new film and video works made in the sphere of the visual arts. The series offers a rotating selection of vigorous works by contemporary artists from around the world. It introduces New York audiences to the latest developments in filmmaking within the art context and underlines the Jewish Museum’s holistic and global approach to the understanding and presentation of art and culture.

Sights and Sounds takes advantage of the straightforward way film and video travel: shipped on discs or streamed online, these works provide an instant connection to new creative practices from even the most remote locations.

Twenty-five international curators have selected new film and video work from their respective regions of the world—ranging from Argentina to Vietnam, Nigeria to Romania, New Zealand to China, and many places in between. Their picks are screened for one month each in the museum’s media center, which has been turned into a miniature cinema for the occasion.

The works in Sights and Sounds touch on themes significant to both Jewish culture and universal human experience: spirituality, exile, language, conflict, family, humor, history. The series creates a broad network of artistic expression and curatorial perspectives that takes stock of what is happening in film and video art at this moment in time across the globe—with a particular emphasis on work being made outside western Europe and the United States.

Sights and Sounds will culminate with a selection of highlights from the series. One work from each country will be presented in the gallery from February 5, 2016 to June 30, 2016.

Jens Hoffmann
Deputy Director
Exhibitions and Public Programs

#sightsandsounds

Installation view of Sights and Sounds: Global Film and Video in the Goodkind Media Center. Photo by David Heald.

Exhibition highlights

Sebastian Diaz Morales, still from Insight, 2012, video, sound 11 min., 30 sec. Artwork © Sebastian Diaz Morales, provided by the artist, Carlier | Gebauer, Berlin, and Catherine Bastide, Brussels