This was a newly edited film version of "Una Mano", which was originally performed at Museo Vostel, Caceres, Spain in 2023. This film was presented at CasCaDas Artspace in Barcelona for produced for Loop Festival Barcelona. The work draws inspiration from Euro-Westerns filmed in Spain, like Navajo Joe (1966) in Cáceres. These films transformed the Spanish landscape into a “virtual American West,” creating a stage for actors from the U.S. and Europe to perform exaggerated versions of themselves. As an Australian who has watched hundreds of these films, I’ve experienced Spain through this cinematic lens. In my performance of “A Hand,” I reflect on how this sense of absurdity and dislocation remains in my body, intersecting with the actual Spanish terrain, and explore the lingering effects of this dual experience
NTRO Output Type
- Recorded or Rendered Work
NTRO Output Category
- Recorded or Rendered Work : Audio / visual recording
Place
Barcelona, SpainVenue
CasCaDas ArtspaceNTRO Publisher
Loop Festival BarcelonaStart Date
2024-11-11End Date
2024-11-24Medium
Single Channel VideoResearch Statement
“Una Mano” was a film made from the 2023 performance event of the same name, performed at Museo Vostell in Malpartida de Caceres, Spain. The work responds to the cinematic culture of the Eurowestern and its influence on how we perceive and construct landscape and “frontier” spaces. The film documents the four hours I was buried underground with only my hand protruding through the dirt.
The work brought new knowledge to discourses around landscape and responded to the capacity of cinema to construct and pervert our perception of terrain. By adopting a performance art methodology it brought a new perspective to the construction of such cinematic spaces. It’s use of a single dislocated appendage “una mano” enabled a unique experience to occur between the artist and the audience and the landscape.
The work continues to make a significant impact. The original performance was attended by over two hundred people of all ages and groups across its four-hour viewing at the Vostell Museum, Caceres. In this video iteration the work was exhibited as part of Loop Festival Barcelona, which showcased video work across the city of Barcelona in over 30 venues. Through its exhibition at CasCadAs Artspace it was exposed to over 5000 viewers across a two week period. Furthermore, the work will feature in an upcoming publication with Perimeter Books through the VCA Art Dialogues initiative. In this publication the Spanish performance artist Isabel Leon has conducted a series of interviews that discuss “Una Mano” in the context of my broader work that I have produced in Spain.Size or Duration of Work
3 hours 30 minutesAffiliation
Mark Shorter, University of Melbourne
