Mabel Palacín
(Barcelona, 1965)- Paisaje Interior con Marina. Caracola, 2020
- Paisaje Interior con Marina. Pingüino, 2020
- Paisaje Interior con Marina. Aranjuez, 2020
- Paisaje Interior con Marina (installation), 2020
- The missing link, 2017
- C'era una volta (Rojo), 2000-2016
- Caracas/Bogotá 1. Circunvalación externa, 2013-2016
- Caracas/Bogotá 3. Circunvalación externa, 2013
- Outer ring road (Circunvalación externa), 2012
- 180º, 2011
- 180º, Fragmentos, 2011
- Hinterland, 2009
- Photography: Stage time, 2008
- Una noche sin fín (An Endless Night), 2006-2008
- 6 segundos, 2005
- La distancia correcta, 2002
- Sur l'Autoroute, 1998
The missing link, 2017
With this project Palacín fills the two gallery rooms with a multiplicity of YouTube channel videos through which the viewer becomes the witness of a frieze composed by 28 videos, that act as an illustrative example of the great change produced with the digitization of images and its circulation in networks. This project clearly shows how the democratization of image-production has turned each, and every one, of us (authors) into "actors for other actors" thus abandoning for good the condition of passive spectators.
By displaying the videos of the well-known website, Palacín invites us to reflect on the current omnipresent status of the image in our "multiple and portable" screens and their ability to witness a wide variety of intimacies, personalities and daily routines. The new video made by the artist takes as a starting point and, at the same time, synthesizes, the YouTube videos displayed, summarizing its procedure. "The missing link" aims to highlight a period of transition of the image, in which we abandon the already obsolete separation between the image and cinema and we enter an "intermediate" zone from which we can only sense some of its features. As the actress of the video mentions, when referring to the massive presence of cameras in our lives, "There’s no image without action and all that we do, we do it just because a camera is recording our actions."
The emphasis of this project is placed on the cinematization of the everyday life in contemporary society, or to think reality in a cinematographic way. If the fundamental function of the image is to communicate, with this project, in which “pocket-size cinema" becomes its protagonist, we realize that the priority in the contemporary DIY –image-making society is precisely to organize the multiplicity of these images and, at the same time, to define a new context in which through experimentation these images can be used in new ways in order to create stories, to activate other narrative processes.
“The camera is our body”
6-channel video installation, digital HD video, colour, sound, 39 min
