Liliana Porter talks about her work
Saturday, February 9, 2019Translation:
My name is Liliana Porter, I was born in Argentina and have lived in New York since 1964. I’m going to talk about Solo de Tambor [Drum solo], which is my second video. I started it in September 1999 and filmed it in 16 millimeters with an old hand-held camera, then it was transferred to digital video. The work consists of 26 brief fragments preceded by titles. The themes are varied, metaphors of situations or reflections that explore how, as in reality, tragic situations and other circumstances can make us smile. They don’t form a coherent narrative, but rather a fragmented one, but this dislocation has another kind of coherence as it shows consecutive situations or references to things that in reality can be simultaneous. The music by Sylvia Meyer is an important part of this work, as the sound completes the feeling and the poetics of the fragments; the cast of characters is entirely inanimate objects, which are mostly figurines and some family belongings. Drum Solo tries to be a kind of existential tragicomedy of human situations presented through brief metaphors. The work was finished in 2000.