Mireya Masó (Barcelona, 1963), shows her videos (Black Box - BB08) and photographies (stand 9H276) in stands of the Tomás March Gallery (Valencia).

Mireya Maso: "A22A" and "Upsouth Down"

The two videos Mireya Masó is presenting in this installation were filmed in the Antarctic during a period of two months she spent in Base Esperanza, the Argentinean base, as part of a collaboration project with the marine ecologist Mercedes Masó. Another two videos made during this period of residency were also recently screened: Antartida Experimento No. 1 at Casa América and Nanutak at La Ciudadela in Pamplona.

Here we have a new approximation to the peculiar time scale of this continent, captured on board the icebreaker Irizar from the Argentinean fleet dedicated to research and logistic tasks in the Antarctic. One of these tasks was to install a scientific research tower in A22A, the name of the huge ice floe in the background of the images on the video with the same title, featuring a group of soldiers preparing a helicopter on deck.

These almost immobile images of the soldiers were not artificially frozen or theatricalised by the players, but taken in the real time waiting period prior to the operations that take place, such as unfolding the helicopters helices or transmitting orders to the pilot, just before the take-off that is never produced (at least not in the video). Unlike a documentary where we see the culminating moment of the preceding actions and where the moments of waiting when "nothing happens" are usually edited out of the final cut, it is precisely these images that this video co-opts in order to approximate the more paused natural rhythm in which things actually happen. This peculiar "action" framed against the Antarctic landscape creates a sense of estrangement that opens up new meanings.

The title of the second video Upsouth Down turns the south upside down into the north as it changes our point of view, in much the same way as the skewed image of the prow of the icebreaker advancing among the icebergs in the Antarctic. In this night-time scene the Irizar is barely visible when part of its silhouette is separated from the dark ocean, fragmentarily projected like a shadow on the ice floes it passes by, dazzlingly bright as they are lit up by the ships' lights. In this case, the fixed image of the ship and the wake left by the floes as they move, transmits an idea of a time scale we are not used to.

In short, the time scale of the videos is that of a continent practically untouched by man, where the passing of time is marked by an unending rhythm of subtle changes that situates us on the limit of what we can normally perceive and forces us to closely observe things in order to find a meaning.

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GALERIA TOMÁS MARCH
Aparisi y Guijarro 7.
46003 Valencia.
Tel. 96 3922095.Fax 96 3915284.
gtm@tomasmarch.com