La Ribot
Despliegue
Video Installation - Madrid / Gèneve
Festival Complicitats 2007
︎CCCB - Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona
16/02 | 10:00-20:00
17/02 | 10:00-20:00
18/02 | 10:00-20:00
Recycling elements from all thirty-four "Distinguished Pieces" (1993-2000), the video installation Despliegue forms a kind of conclusion to that significant project. It's also an important starting point: featuring a performance by La Ribot filmed in a single take using a hand-held camera; it introduces a tactic that this artist has explored extensively in her works.
Despliegue shows La Ribot roaming a small studio space area, "painting" the floor with the various items that she uses in her Distinguished Pieces. The peppermint-green frilly dress from Oh! Compositione, 1997, appears, followed by the scarlet trappings of Another Bloody Mary, 2000. A mirror reflecting the studio ceiling, and flat-screen monitors replaying the video Pa amb tomàquet, 2000, are placed on the floor, adding further complexities to the multi-coloured composition's spatial properties. As she constructs her neo-baroque "tableau" La Ribot recapitulates the Distinguished Pieces' key gestures, poses and vocalisations.
The performance was filmed continuously from start to finish using two cameras, one fixed on the ceiling about five metres over the floor and one hand-held by the performer. In the installation, the overhead shot is projected onto the gallery floor and the hand-held footage is screened on a nearby monitor. The viewer's attention is split between a bird's-eye view that offers lavishly coloured painterly effects and a very different perspective that the artist has likened to the "eyes of the body". Tilting, swerving and ignoring gravity, this viewpoint sometimes echoes the camera handlers gaze (looking at the book she's reading, for instance). At the same time, it objectifies her body, intruding into its "defensible space" with carnivalesque disrespect.
Despliegue extracts visual pleasure from an eclectic selection of everyday objects and an eccentric repertoire of physical actions. It compresses in a video installation nearly ten years' of La Ribot's experimentation across the borders of dance and performance art.
Despliegue shows La Ribot roaming a small studio space area, "painting" the floor with the various items that she uses in her Distinguished Pieces. The peppermint-green frilly dress from Oh! Compositione, 1997, appears, followed by the scarlet trappings of Another Bloody Mary, 2000. A mirror reflecting the studio ceiling, and flat-screen monitors replaying the video Pa amb tomàquet, 2000, are placed on the floor, adding further complexities to the multi-coloured composition's spatial properties. As she constructs her neo-baroque "tableau" La Ribot recapitulates the Distinguished Pieces' key gestures, poses and vocalisations.
The performance was filmed continuously from start to finish using two cameras, one fixed on the ceiling about five metres over the floor and one hand-held by the performer. In the installation, the overhead shot is projected onto the gallery floor and the hand-held footage is screened on a nearby monitor. The viewer's attention is split between a bird's-eye view that offers lavishly coloured painterly effects and a very different perspective that the artist has likened to the "eyes of the body". Tilting, swerving and ignoring gravity, this viewpoint sometimes echoes the camera handlers gaze (looking at the book she's reading, for instance). At the same time, it objectifies her body, intruding into its "defensible space" with carnivalesque disrespect.
Despliegue extracts visual pleasure from an eclectic selection of everyday objects and an eccentric repertoire of physical actions. It compresses in a video installation nearly ten years' of La Ribot's experimentation across the borders of dance and performance art.
Written and Directed: La Ribot
Corps-opérateur: La Ribot
Technical Direction and Director of Photography: Daniel Demont
Assistant to Demont and Sound Design: Nelson Enohata
Sound Technician: Richard Rudnicki
Assistant to La Ribot: Christianne Toledo
Production Manager: Eduardo Bonito and Michel Quéré
Administration: Daisy Heath
Technical Production: Steve Wald
Produced by: La Ribot-36 Gazelles
Supported by London Arts, an Artsadmin associated project.
Collections: ARTIUM, MUSAC
This presentation of “Despliegue” in Barcelona was possible thanks to the courtesy of ARTIUM Collection.