Esperanza Collado
edited by Lamosa Lab.
Esperanza Collado is a Spanish artist-researcher. Her performance-environments, site-specific works and critical texts investigate the dematerialization of film in art practices, the performativity of writing and the figure of the artist as metahistorian. Often focusing on the phenomenological and situational aspects of cinema and projection, her interdisciplinary works explore the conditions and paradoxes of the performative materiality of the film apparatus at the end of the film age. Recent works revolve around the spatial, sculptural, political, social and choreographic dimensions and potentialities of a cinema by other means. Her book 'Paracinema: la desmaterialización del cine en las prácticas artísticas' (Paracinema: the dematerialisation of film in artistic practices), a short version of her Ph.D, won the Spanish Writings on Art Prize from Fundación Arte y Derecho in 2011. Together with sound artist Rafael Martínez del Pozo, she founded and manages the editorial project LEVE, which released 8 records on 45rpm vinyl of site-specific field recordings by invited artists. Between 2011-17 she was a film programmer of DocuMUSAC, Museum of Contemporary Art of León, and between 2008 and 2014 she programmed regularly in Experimental Film Club, which she co-founded in Dublin (Ireland). She lectures in Cuenca Fine Arts College and in Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola (San Sebastian). She is currently on a Fellowship in Taiwan researching expanded cinema in East Asia.
Evenly Balanced, Almost
Film action / Cinéma performè
16mm film (14 mins., black and white, silent, Spain/UK), variable costumes (fancy dress), electric toothbrush
A textual film that addresses directly and playfully the projected image, the relationship between the film and the audience, and the defining features of the space of projection. The projection of the film is complemented by a number of live actions performed by the audience and the projectionists. Evenly Balanced, Almost is a site-specific work for the dark theatre made in the age of its imminent disappearance.
Video documentation of exhibition at Close-Up Cinema: https://vimeo.com/236582399
A review from Tom Matchett (FAD Magazine) after the premiere at Close-Up, in London:
"Spanish artist Esperanza Collado's film didn't so much break through the fourth wall as demolish it. Out of the four pieces presented*, hers perhaps was riskier than any other. A minimal film that played with the idea of cinema's primary roots as a medium for words and images, where the success of the work was entirely subject to the participation of the audience. There was in this respect a thread of Flux art running through the artist's gamble. As with Yoko Ono's Cut Piece, it was down to the audience to choose to pick up the scissors or in this case, rather more playfully turn to look behind or choose to scream. It was a refreshing, witty and intelligent piece of work."
- Tom Matchett, FAD Magazine.
*As part of Unconscious Archives Festival curated by Sally Golding at Close-Up Cinema, London.
Evenly Balanced, Almost was premiered at Close-Up Film Centre in London as part of Sally Golding's Unconscious Archives Festival on September 30, 2017. It was later shown at Kino Moviemento, Berlin Experimental Film Festival.
