This lecture focuses on the confluence of ecology and a politics of the senses in the video works of Juan Downey (Santiago, 1940–New York, 1993). Downey was an artist who developed a wide-ranging oeuvre in video art to explore his concerns on displacement, communication across cultures, histories of colonialism, mediation, and the interlacing of body and technology. Through the medium of video, Downey embarked on a nomadic movement across continents, modes of knowledge and representation, entwining autobiography with ethnography, the documentary format with its parody and deconstruction, analyses of semiotics, politics, art histories and architectures of the north and south, and a utopian vision of technology with its critique to propose new forms of cultural agency and connection. The lecture will focus on videos from the Video Trans Americas series and The Thinking Eye series.
Carla’s lecture is part of Contesting Marginality: Three lectures on recent Chilean art and art historiography, presented in association with Discipline and Ensayos, MADA, The Alderman and Gertrude Contemporary.
Carla Macchiavello is an art historian who works with Latin American contemporary art, performance, video, and the relations between art, politics, and performative practices. She has published articles and essays on contemporary Chilean and Latin American art since the 1970s with an emphasis on artistic practices aimed at social change. After receiving a PhD in Art History and Criticism from Stony Brook University, New York in 2010, she worked as Assistant Professor in Art History at Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá, Colombia, and since 2015 she has been an Assistant Professor in Art History at the Borough of Manhattan Community College, CUNY, New York. She has curated exhibitions on recent Latin American art and formed part of curatorial and editorial committees, including La Otra 2011 (Bogotá), the journal Cuadernos de Arte of Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Seismopolite, and Más allá del fin/Beyond the End for Ensayos, an art and science program in Patagonia.
Contesting Marginality: Three lectures on recent Chilean art and art historiography by Carla Macchiavello.
Discipline and Ensayos, with MADA/The Alderman, Gertrude Contemporary and the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, present three lectures on recent Chilean art and art historiography by Chilean art historian, Carla Macchiavello.
Carla Macchiavello: Rough edges or Extremadura: a brief panorama of Chilean art, from centres to margins
Tuesday, 12th July 2016, 6:30pm
The Alderman, Melbourne
Convened by Rex Butler
Carla Macchiavello: We were always fueguinos
Wednesday, 13th July 2016, 6:30pm
Gertrude Contemporary, Melbourne
Convened by Camila Marambio
Carla Macchiavello: Juan Downey’s Video Ecologies: thinking with the senses
Thursday, 14th July 2016, 6:00pm
ACCA, Melbourne
Convened by Helen Hughes
