Edited by Elena Shtromberg and Glenn Phillips
With insightful essays and interviews, this volume examines how artists have experimented with the medium of video across different regions of Latin America since the 1960s.
The emergence of video art in Latin America is marked by multiple points of development, across more than a dozen artistic centers, over a period of more than twenty-five years. When it was first introduced during the 1960s, video was seen as empowering: the portability of early equipment and the possibility of instant playback allowed artists to challenge and at times subvert the mainstream media. Video art in Latin America was—and still is—closely related to the desire for social change. Themes related to gender, ethnic, and racial identity as well as the consequences of social inequality and ecological disasters have been fundamental to many artists’ practices.
This compendium explores the history and current state of artistic experimentation with video throughout Latin America. Departing from the relatively small body of existing scholarship in English, much of which focuses on individual countries, this volume approaches the topic thematically, positioning video artworks from different periods and regions throughout Latin America in dialogue with each other. Organized in four broad sections—Encounters, Networks and Archives, Memory and Crisis, and Indigenous Perspectives—the book’s essays and interviews encourage readers to examine the medium of video across varied chronologies and geographies.
Elena Shtromberg is associate professor of art history at the University of Utah. Glenn Phillips is senior curator of modern and contemporary collections and head of exhibitions at the Getty Research Institute.
“A relevant contribution to the study of Latin American contemporary art, Encounters in Video Art in Latin America will activate discussion and a new interest in the Latin American artists who have used video as a tool of aesthetic experimentation and sociopolitical intervention. The editors have done an excellent job of generating a network of critical reflection; the book acts as an encounter (as the title says) of voices, movement, images, and sounds.”
—Gonzalo Montero, Latin American and Latinx Visual Culture
“Encounters in Video Art in Latin America has already emerged as one of the most notable publications on the historical and future paths of video in Latin America. Through essays and interviews permeated by rich images, we enter both broad contextualizations and specific case analyses. The book covers some crucial themes for video on our continent, from the importance of creating and safeguarding collections to examples of contemporary, innovative indigenous video production.”
—Solange Farkas, Director and Curator, Associação Cultural Videobrasil
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