Ernesto Leal Cubano, 1971
Letter, 2022
Video monocanal, 1 min 36 seg (loop)
1.36' Length
Edition of 6
Reserved
“The Letter video is based on the same way I draw a line (in the weave of the fabric) that I use in the Gramatical series. However, I do not...
“The Letter video is based on the same way I draw a line (in the weave of the fabric) that I use in the Gramatical series. However, I do not consider it as a documentary video about this way of drawing, but only as a derivation, a visual resource. The video shows a "loop" of the moment in which two pencils trace two lines. Using a parallel montage, the video insinuates an encounter that never occurs between these two lines. In turn, each line has its own narration; in one of them a fragment of the book "Frankenstein" by Mary Shelley is read and in the other a fragment of "The Invisible Man" by H. G. Wells. Although the two lines-narratives revolve around a letter, they do so from apparently different forms in terms of the cartography they propose of the same territory of the canvas: one by aggregation (Frankenstein) and the other by elimination (Invisible Man). The letter is seen here of course as a resource that tries to function like the drawing of a line, from the circumstance of difference or separation. At first, each line is interrupted by the narration of the other in a kind of parallel ellipsis in which none of the voices is fully heard; then the two narrations join as if in an attempt to complete the line, to literally join it, from the superimposed sound. Finally, the two lines are again separated by the sound, and it all starts again. It is the story of an encounter that does not happen, and, therefore, does not transcend (another version of “horror”).”
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