FCAM colloquium - SERGIO RIGOLETTO (UG): 'The Screen as a Border: Video Art Viewership, Relational Aesthetics and the Queer Refugee'

Film and Contemporary Audiovisual Media colloquium

Abstract

What collectivities and relationalities may be imagined and practiced via screens in the late capitalist museum? What limits may be imposed on their formation by the institutional conditions and socio-economic forces under which screen installations are built and displayed to the public these days?

This presentation takes as a case study a screen installation titled The Crossing by Colombian artist Carlos Motta. Commissioned by the Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam) in 2017, this installation features a series of video portraits of LGBT+ refugees seeking asylum in the Netherlands. The paper considers three intersecting contexts informing this installation: 1) the proliferation of screen-reliant works and moving images in art venues in the last three decades 2) the transformation of museums away from exclusivity and elitism in the direction of more horizontal, inclusive forms of participation 3) the recent emergence of the figure of the queer refugee in visual culture and humanitarian discourse.

Focussing on the installation’s engagement with the aesthetic of the face-to-face encounter and with the confessional mode, I examine the collective act of self-othering that informs the encounter with the figure of the refugee. I argue that, in enabling contextual, self-conscious viewing experiences, screen installations are ideally suited to interrogate the false universalism of liberal imaginings of collectivity, public-ness and participation, making especially palpable uneven forms of access to and mobility in global space under contemporary globalization and in the era of border security.

About the speaker