[Installation view]
La Siesta

Video installation, color, sound, sofa covered with cloth |
09’06’’ | 1995

[Work]
Dérive Veneziane

HD video, color, sound | 38’ | 2015

[Installation view]
Alphaville e outros

HD video, black and white, sound, with subtitles | 9’18’’ | 2011

Poesie of Illusions is a special project featured in the New Movement section of the 2023 Beijing International Film Festival. It debuted on April 20 at UCCA Lab, the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing, and ran until May 15. The artist Antoni Muntadas participated in the exhibition, showcasing three representative works: Alphaville e outros, La Siesta, and Dérive Veneziane. CELA contributed to the planning and execution of the exhibition.

Antoni Muntadas is a prominent conceptual artist and one of the pioneers of international video art. His work delves into social, political, and communication-related issues, particularly examining the dynamics between public and private spaces within societal frameworks. Muntadas has conducted in-depth research on information channels and how they can be used for censorship or the dissemination of ideas. His diverse artistic practice spans photography, video, publications, the internet, installations, and urban interventions.

[Venue]
UCCA Lab, Beijing

[Date]
04/20
-
05/15/2023

“Alphaville” is a gated residential community in São Paulo and serves as the primary setting for Alphaville e outros. In this work, Muntadas seeks to examine the phenomenon of “gated communities” and how fear and the pursuit of exclusivity lead to urban isolation and exclusion. The work references Jean-Luc Godard's 1965 film Alphaville (after which the São Paulo neighborhood was named), a dystopian sci-fi film depicting a future authoritarian city. Muntadas juxtaposes scenes from Godard’s black-and-white film with the near-utopian propaganda of Brazil’s “Alphaville”, incorporating digital animation, surveillance footage, and visuals of the São Paulo community's pools, tennis courts, and gardens. The work constructs a narrative space shaped by the rhetorical mechanisms of fear and control, with recurring images of massive, continuous fences reminiscent of medieval defensive walls that once surrounded cities.

La Siesta was created by Muntadas in 1995 at the invitation of the Netherlands Film Museum and the Joris Ivens Foundation in Amsterdam. This video installation combines black-and-white footage from several films directed by Joris Ivens (1898-1989), spanning from the 1930s to the 1970s, with Muntadas’ own color imagery. Among these is an audiovisual recording of a siesta, capturing an intimate moment that symbolizes a call to dreams and utopias. The work opens with the statement, “All works of art are autobiographical,” and unfolds into a journey where dreams, history, action, and war are interwined. A recurring image of a still hand becomes a metaphor for the siesta as a pause, moment of reflection, and a space in the broader journey.

Cities are often overshadowed by stereotypes or clichés that obscure their allure. Dérive Veneziane seeks to uncover Venice's hidden, unfamiliar, and mysterious side. Through a Situationist-inspired nighttime boat drift, the work explores themes such as darkness, solitude, discovery, loss, intrigue, and illusion. As one drifts through Venice's waters at night, unexpected and unpredictable events unfold. A sequence of scenes emerges, offering a fresh perspective on the city as its environment is transformed by darkness. By avoiding the discernible daytime paths, this wandering-like stage setting stimulates new perceptions. Based on the psychogeography first proposed by Guy Debord, this journey reshapes reality by creating disorienting currents and heightened awareness of the landscape. Following the paths described by Honoré de Balzac as a “promenade” or “feast for the eyes,” nighttime Venice becomes an intoxicating experience.

[External links]

Associació Arxiu Muntadas. Centre d'Estudis i Recerca
UCCA

Antoni Muntadas at Poesie of Illusions