Movement no.7:To Appear
Transformaciónes is an artistic collaboration between Interactive Institute´s Performing Pictures and Mexican partners Proyecto Zegache and La Curtiduria. In the project, media art, traditional crafts and cultural heritage merge into new art works, and a mutual exchange of knowledge creates new contexts.
The project was conceived in Zegache, Oaxaca, which is also the arena where original image meets representation, where image meets its spectator – where an I meet a You.
The project manifests itself trough a series of nichos, which contain responsive moving images, in short, interactive videos. The motif appears while the spectator closes in, and it disappears when the viewer goes away. The content of the videos are the product of social processes, namely esthetic preparations and ritual-theatrical transformations; in itself the ground of the origin of drama.
The emigration stuck village Zegache, and its church Santa Ana, is an established arena for ongoing socio-cultural changes trough Proyecto Zegache, employing contemporary art and traditional crafts as the means of social empowerment. Transformaciones is build upon this existing tradition of Community Workshops, which has played a significant role in the development of the village.
As part of the project a series of practical workshops in microelectronics is executed for the artisans engaged in the community workshops. By adding new-media elements as additional layering to traditional media, traditional crafts and manual skills can be rendered renewed relevance as well as much needed commercial potential for the community.
The motives behind the project are artistic as well as idealistic and pragmatic: to create universal images that build upon the relation with the spectator, and at the same time uphold cultural uniqueness trough translations of a traditional expression into new media.
In Autumn 2009, the first nichos, depicting The Lady of Guadalupe was produced in Zegache with surroundings, and given the title Movement no.7:To Appear.
www.tii.se/node/5478
www.performingpictures.se
