Explorations and Exchange in Peruvian Audiovisual Media

As peruvian curator Jorge Villacorta once mentioned, the idea of the “hybrid” refers to the product of a crossbreeding of different species that translates into interdisciplinary, and is often the core of creative explorations. Since the 1960s when some artists moved away from conventional forms, the field of experimental visual arts in Peru gained momentum and audiovisual projects became a means of integration, taking resources from various disciplines that connect agents from the visual arts, music, performance and dance, to create aesthetic experiences.
Hybrid Creations seeks to take this period as a starting point to present an interdisciplinary and cross-generational perspective, bringing together pioneering work from the 1970s to the early 2000s, with the production of young artists from different regions of the country, who have developed video pieces in 2020 and 2021. Between the different works there is a latent correspondence related to recurrent themes and forms around the relationship between image, movement, sound and the body, but at the same time, they share a reflective approach on the historical heritage and new media, which leads them to rethink traditional elements in their current local context.

First section:

• • Mario Acha
    Mito de Inkarri (1977)
    8:29 min
    Black and white animated short film based on the 16th century drawings by the chronicler Felipe Guamán Poma de Ayala. It reproduces scenes from the myth of Inkarri, in which it is narrated how Inkarri is decapitated by the Spaniards and his head is buried in Cusco, but this head is alive, and when the parts of Inkarri are put together, the new Inca will be formed. Text selection by poet José Watanabe, script and plate design (photographic collages),stop-motion with acetates by Mario Acho, music by Manongo Mujica.

 

• • Gonzalo Pflucker
    El perfil de lo invisible (1985)
    9:55 min
    Influenced by Oriental mysticism, this video animation piece is the result of a reflection on the concept of duality, as a circumstance that possesses opposing characters which have their origin in the same nucleus. The interaction between antagonists is represented by figures of birds, felines and other animals that relate and link up with animated characters, entering into a constant struggle in which there is no visible winner.

Credits:

• • • TELECINE (Production)
    • Gonzalo Pflucker (Direction, animation, script and drawings)
    • Victoria Chicón (Sound edition)
    • Javier Zapata (Editing and camera)
    • Arturo Ruiz del Pozo (Music, synthesizer and clarín)
    • Belisa Salazar (Voice)
    • Juan Luis Pereira (Guitar)
    • Raúl Pereira (Winds)

 

 

• • Rafael Hastings
    Cuerpo pintado (1992)
    14:47
    Rafael Hastings was invited to participate in the Cuerpos Pintados Experimental Workshop in Santiago de Chile, where painters from all over Latin America were invited to replace painting on dead canvas with the intervention of living bodies, as if they were canvases. In Hastings’ case, he turned his intervention into a distinctive video-recorded performance. To this end, he worked with Cuban-North American dancer Bertica Prieto (Chilean) and managed to produce a composition of audiovisual scenes that features many of the recurring elements of his plastic work, which merges with his interest in the moving image, choreography and color.

 

• Giuliana Migliori
  Eau de Sarita Colonia (2002)
  The conceptual proposal of this multimedia project, which plays with the format of a fictitious TV commercial, revolves around the meaning of Sarita Colonia as an icon and representation of gender and race, an aesthetics of the marginal that is not included in the canon, and much less used as an advertising reference. This was one of the winning projects at the II National Biennial (Perú, 2000).

Second section:

• • Irma Cabrera
    Cruces (2020)
    20:48
    Sound improvisation with instruments from ancient Peru, digital synthesizer emulator and soundscape from the Las Cruces de Porcón Festival in Cajamarca, Peru. Every year, the faithful come to the call of the festival’s godfather in honour of Cristo Ramos, patron saint of Porcón.The whole community gathers and performs a series of rituals and roles for several days; praying, thanking and asking the saint for a year of abundance. Cruces is a sound improvisation inspired in Quechua songs and on the ritual meeting to expand the tradition, beginning with a free interpretation of the festivity.

 

• • Krizia Zurita
    La postura que no caduca (2020)
    02:31
    Based on a surveyof Pancho Fierro’s work, the artist draws attention to the similarity between the misunderstanding of her own characters and those in the tabloids; the implicit image of the eternal witness to the conflict and the movements of the body in confrontation.
    Fierro’s watercolours and more than 200 drawings taken from sketches for other videos were used in the making of this work. These were randomly and synthetically augmented with digital animation tools and artificial intelligence.

 

• • Fabrizzio Yabar
    Precolombina (2021)
    Video animation that presents characters reconstructed from the fusion of iconographic elements of various Peruvian pre-Hispanic cultures, which playfully reveals a graphic reflection on the continuous processes of constructing a Peruvian identity. The piece includes a musical composition by Teté Leguía.

 

• Frank Soria
  Shenán pikotai/ Sacando memoria (2021)
  Led by the singing of icaros produced by Kené design, the video takes us on a journey through animated images with geometric patterns that condense essential aspects of the cosmovision of the Shipibo Konibo people, their deep relationship with nature and the visions experienced with master plants. In addition to their great aesthetic value, the designs express a body of knowledge and a memory that integrates art and science, connecting the material with the immaterial, linking traditional roots with contemporary expression. The song of the icaros is performed by Shipibo artist Miriam Soria Gonzales.

Credits

This programme brings together the projects of the following Peruvian artists: Mario Acha (DE), Irma Cabrera (PE), Rafael Hastings(PE), Giuliana Migliori (PE), Manongo Mujica (PE), Teté Leguía (PE), Gonzalo Pflucker (PE), Arturo Ruiz del Pozo (PE), Frank Soria (PE), Fabrizzio Yabar (PE) and Krizia Zurita (PE).

Co-curated by Sairah Espinoza (PE) and Almendra Otta (PE)
Museo de Arte de Lima – MALI/ Alta Tecnología Andina – ATA