Mexico Noir: Rethinking the Dark in Contemporary
Narrative and Photography, tendrá lugar el 24 de abril, en el Centro de Estudios Latinoamericanos de la Universidad de Cambridge (UK). Toda la información puede consultarse en
http://www.latin-american.cam.ac.uk/events/mexico-noir
A continuación un resumen del tema que trataré ese día.
Blink:
The connectivity of Darkness and the conceptual framework of the Expanded Image
Theory is the result of a daily
practice.
I understand darkness in two ways: in an indexical and in an aesthetic-narrative sense. Both are interrelated, but while the first occurs on the surface of the image and it’s evident to the viewer, the second one exists in a meta-place, not always recognizable. Much of my work has to do with darkness. I mainly work in black and white; less in white and much more with black, reinforcing the mood of the obscure, the bizarre, the unknown. This resource helps me in the construction of a structure that leads the viewer through the specific story. In my narrative system, darkness is a space-time of disconnection, a void or an interstice between visible (audible or readable) sections.
Let’s have a look at a sky full of stars: a universe of tiny lights. When we raise our heads we trace virtual connections between dots in the void. We fix lines in the darkness to model a system: we imagine constellations. In my work the viewer does the same, he uses blackness to build possible connections. He works on the invisible to connect the visible. Darkness is an infinite place, like the Borgesan Aleph, a point that contains all possible points.
Those spatial or temporary empty places are like blinks in a continuum. They are interstices of disconnection where the viewer can enter and fill the emptiness with his own experience. Paul Virilio talked of picnolepsy, an altered state of mind, a temporary disconnection that sometimes is related with glimpses of creativity. The principle of my thesis on the expanded image is: in order to permit the expansion, there has to be a void. I call this void a blink.
Within my conceptual framework, an image is a technical image; in the sense Vilém Flusser defined it. In this sort of images I distinguish two particularities, one related to objectivity and the other to subjectivity. And, to put it simply, the objective facet of the image is permanent and never changes, while the subjective aspect suffers continuous metamorphoses. In this logic, me as the producer, or the viewer as the consumer, load the images with subjectivity. At this stage of recreation of the image, we may refine the narrative and push the viewer into darkness.
Gerardo Suter
April, 2015
Wren Library ⎮ Trinity College ⎮ CAMBRIDGE
Parallel to the Symposium, I had an installation with published material where I connected my work to the concept of darkness. For the exhibition, I had the chance to use the library's cabinets were Newton's books on Mathematics and Physics were presented.
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| Installation view of the cabinets with the printed material, Wren Library, Cambridge, UK |
