Premio Combat Prize

ClaRa apaRicio yoldi - Concept, Video, Programming, Animation, Effects, Editing.
Music by Mally Harpaz © 2015
Mally Harpaz - Piano, drums, marimba, vibraphone, percussion, bass, midi, music “voices”
Eran Karniel : Guitar, voice
Anna Calvi: voice
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Technique: Video / Processing / Painting / Photoshop / Collage / Found Footage / Animation / After Effects / Premiere.
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This video reflects on the importance of images in the construction of the collective imagination. Both what is shown and what is hidden. From the Christian iconography to the saturation of images of the current iconosphere and media manipulation.
Based on the paintings that covered the walls of Romanesque churches, used to indoctrinate the faithful in a time when most people could not read, this video reflects on interactivity and the apparent freedom we have today day to choose between various options.
New marketing strategies are based on a dynamic content that claims to give us a choice and that apparently suits our needs, tastes, ideologies.
”Infinite” products, services, ideas, we are offered to choose ”freely” between them. But all these possibilities are finite and have already been chosen in advance, thus defining a space and setting limits.
The images projected on the walls of this ”interactive church” have been preselected and stored in a database. I created a program with Processing that distributes them randomly along the screen, creating the illusion of over-abundance.
Hands, as a symbol of the capacity for action and participation, no longer serve to create, build or fight; only to select between the many options that are offered to them. They all float on the surface of the walls but don’t exit the building to find out what’s outside.
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claRa is a Video Artist from Madrid based in London. She mixes video and animation with painting, found footage, digital collages and programming, to create visual poems.
Her videos reflect on the importance of images in the construction of the collective imagination, the power of mass media and telecommunications, the marketing strategies and the brands and adverts ubiquity, interactivity and hyperlinks as an illusion of the selection, the changes in the contemporary culture with the electronic distribution, the fragmentation of the narrative discourse, the information overload, the surveillance control and the loss of privacy.
She has recently received the Most Promising Video Artist Award in Madatac 07 - Contemporary Audio-Visual & New Media Arts Festival, Madrid, Spain. Her pieces have been awarded in other international Video Art festivals such as FIVAC - Camagüey International Video Art Festival (Cuba) and BANG - Barcelona International Video Art Festival (Spain) and screened in galleries, museums and cultural spaces around the world.