Paititi videos

Our world is fast-paced. Time is of essence, we live under the rule of passing time, of time escaping. Hunted by the things to do, by the things we should have done; images come and go: today we are outraged by war, tomorrow we forget, concerned with other issues. We are disconnected from our biological clocks, suffering is abstract.

I seek an oasis, a pause, to think, to look inside and also outside, to ponder. How to create a break? How to disassociate from our surroundings?

I use repetition like a mantra. Through recurrence I seek to create an ambience, to transport the audience into a different world. The reappearance of images in different contexts, with changing pauses and varying rhythms, helps to break down preconceived notions, to lead the viewer into another plane of consciousness. My work highlights the existence of other worldviews.

Sisyphus is a video installation that consists of two large projection screens standing side by side on a sixty-degree angle. A massive stone cross behind a clear blue sky stands impassive on the screen to the right. On the second screen, a flurry of activity endlessly takes place. A group of men haul a load of plantains from shore, onto a ship and up the stairs. The video of Sisyphus extends in time. This litany of images, repeating over and over with slight variations, is what transports the audience into the world of the workers, the process of time passing leads to empathy, and only then the multiple layers and connections to ourselves appear. Sound by Damián Keller.

Vivir sin después, 2003-2004 (6:00) (To live with no afterwards) seeks to capture a specific moment in time, a moment of heightened awareness. The senses are alerted by the perception of potential danger. Vivir sin después consists of a video projected at the end of a space filled with sand. The video shows children happily at play under a dark sky, pregnant with rain. The storm is imminent. The viewer is immersed in the scene as the body tunes to the hypnotic pounding sounds which could be a drum, a beating heart, a falling axe. The changing rhythm makes us teeter between exhilaration and a sense of urgency, fear. Sound design by Damián Keller.

Amaguanece 2003 (10:00) is a dialogue between a strange setting, a jungle, and an urbanscape. The thread is the water, which manages to fill every corner. The video begins with a lyrical reflection on the cycles of Nature. A Shuar woman, the spirit of the forest, speaks as we intern ourselves in the jungle. The reverie ends suddenly with an intrusion. The video becomes progressively more dramatic as the forest protects itself. Following a brief resolution, a new drama unfolds in the city, the "cement jungle," where passers-by must deal with traffic and urban development.

Comparing the known with the unknown allows us to distance ourselves from the familiar and analyze it from a different perspective. Sound by Gonzalo Macías.

Keller and I are developing a large video-installation entitled Paititi: a multimodal journey to El Dorado

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