Stills from video
Outlines sketches the notions of being off camera and off stage. The installation in three panels comprises a triptych, evocative of a pictorial model. The camera and actors circle in sequence shot in the scene, while, in the space of the exhibition, the images move across the different sections of the tri-partite screen, a choreographic movement that seems to conjure the inverted surface of the projection, its outer wing, or negative reflection, the essence that lurks behind it. The effect is also to create a separate physical space within which figures might circulate; beyond the image it might chafe with, and even cancel out, the very notion of an outline and render permeable the bounded space. On creating a principle of continuit among the screens, that interstitial space cannot be identified strictly with the cinematographic concept of being off-camera, but rather with the theatrical concept of being off stage.
The permanent oscillation among verb tenses (from the present to the past imperfect), actants (I, he, you), and enunciative modes (from affirmation to interpellation) makes Outlines a work about enunciation and analysis of the discursive – all in unmistakable continuity with previous videos and installations of Maya Watanabe. The asynchronicity of voice and image, another formal element in the work of the artist, can also be understood in this sense. The drift of the word begins, precisely, with the separation of voice and image, a passage of subjective utterances through neutral discursive forms, among polyphony, the choir, and individuation.
* Excerpt of Inside and out, by Raquel Schefer, 2012
Credits
Director | Maya Watanabe
Camera | Julio Azcárate
Line Production | Ana Castellano
Sound recording | Juan Manuel López
Sound assistant | Aitor Soler
Sound mixing | Yanda
Editing and post-production | Maya Watanabe
Actors:
Antonio del Olmo
Carmen Mayordomo
Juan Carlos Torres
Pedro Pablo Isla
Rebeca Medina