Artwork analysis: 1,367,400 images per minute and a kidrunning

(2018), Eduardo M.G. Orduña

Por: Julieta Toledo

 Introduction

1, 367,400 images per minute and a kidrunning (2018), by Eduardo M. G. Orduña. 60 seconds video

Eduardo Orduña is a visual artist and photographer, student of the Faculty of Arts of the UAEMéx, who has presented this installation in different states of the republic and currently continues the production and research of new projects.

It is my intention to unravel this piece, from the inspiration of the author, the implicit in its content and what is appreciable and evident in the piece as such, in my case it was somewhat simple to achieve this, due to the direct contact I have with the artist, who gave me what is necessary to understand it.

My mission is that other people can understand all the elements that this work has and that the complex content that Eduardo offers to the art world is spread in this way.

I will continue mentioning my point of view regarding two relevant aspects to begin the analysis. Which are:

Historical importance of the piece

Video art "advocates an audio-visual language that is shaped by the investigation of any alternative reason to synthesize and articulate expressive codes from various areas of audio-visual. Their productions differ from other practices such as video clip, video documentary and fiction video, because, above all, they try to create new narratives and new ways of visualizing when operating with budgets that are not restricted to the premises of these genres. So, it is a manifestation that means a break with the conventional or the manifested as visually correct, it uses completely different spatial and temporal parameters. It is precisely that other of its configurating features. " Art movement that emerged between the 60s and 70s, which gives us new techniques to express feelings and ideas as well as demonstrations and protests.

Eduardo presents a 60 second video exposing a controversial subject, but applied totally to the image, contributing to this great change of the classic and providing another example to this movement, which will serve as a reference for future generations thanks to the permanence and scope that allows us to reach this type of format.

Importance of the piece within art

Aesthetics is defined as the "branch of philosophy that analyses beauty and how it is arrived at through sensitivity" 6, art has adapted this term to define and even qualify some works, which present characteristics set by groups of people who demerit anyone who does not comply.

This piece has a very peculiar aesthetic, it is made up of several perspectives of a space, in a single image, at first glance a kind of chaos comes to your mind, a mixture of images that you do not understand, however, when you really enter into the work you fully understand what it means, I'll talk about this in detail later, but it is important to mention it at this time, since one of the main attributes that has, and what caught my attention so much, is the way to present the image, very unusual for what we are accustomed to see in terms of art, is a break from the traditional or common that is seen in art, this is something that is perceived and the history of the piece together is much more deep

Aesthetic value of the work

The piece consists of a video in which you can see different perspectives of the same place, in a single picture, a park A that is being toured by a child, which gives us the vision in the first person.

 The kid and his journey

This wants to refer to what a person lives on a common day, the speed at which we lead our lives and the instability that this can generate for good or bad in our mind. Lately, with new technologies we could say that our life has become somehow simpler, however, the practicality that they give us for certain tasks causes us to carry out more things, which simply wear us down, both physically and psychologically. ; this is being represented with a child, since they are the ones who can most touch this unrestrained update of things, they are the ones who without realizing can lose the best stage of their lives due to the reconfiguration, by means of the technology, for personal benefit in the development of social interaction, often losing even their identity for the same need to use and belong to all new means that can be granted.

At the end of the video we can see that the child is standing at the edge of a lake and stretches his hand down to later enter it in water B and move it in circles generating "turbulence" in the waters, this alludes to how we are currently immersed in a sea of ​​images, flooding our vision and mind with visual fluids. What we will analyse in the following subtopic.

Saturation of images

In the book Ways of seeing John Berger mentions that art has always fulfilled the wishes of the viewer, always working according to them, depending on what the patrons request and always fulfilling a hidden desire that you have, a morbid desire to know and understand everything that is happening in the pieces and that work from their point of view, however, lately, or at least from the avant-garde, you can see the work of the artists more from its justification and from the interest of the author himself, it is then when the term "aesthetics" becomes totally subjective and somewhat obsolete, that is when new techniques and ways of breaking with traditional and classical art are sought, to bring the public (now a little more select) a unique perspective of reality.

I think that this meant referring to the immeasurable number of images that our brain perceives day by day, we can see, even unconsciously millions of images both on the cell phone with social networks, and in our environment. The city is full, crowded completely of them, in the spectacular ones, in the announcements stuck in the poles of light, inside logos of businesses and those that are in the products that we use daily, this causes that our brain cannot analyse, to capture or retain one, producing chaos in our mind, we lose the appreciation of this content and simply generate in our mind spellings without aesthetics of form, serving as a kind of analogy to the concept of orgy that, in a sexual context, refers to the series of actions that are carried out to stimulate pleasure; This game is reinterpreted with the fixed and moving image.

The multiplicity of the image generates several dimensions in the same shot, which is linked to a present symbiosis by disconnecting from the physical world to justify pleasure, in which the sensory image is very deceptive.

We could say that thanks to all this, a very strong weight has been placed on the image, one that even affects us directly, this makes us want to be part of the consumable in some way or other, not only our physique, but also our identity to receive acceptance within society.

Analysis of the content and history of the work

 1,376,400 images per minute and a kid running

Today our life is totally governed by the virtuality of our personality, we adopt the identity of a being (avatar) created in our favour, by ourselves, which reflects the "best" part of us, the part that we want to be seen by others, idealizing our character based on what the other wants, following trends marked by "ideals" created by other beings placed at the top of a hierarchy proposed at your convenience, in this way "the screen is a refuge" 3 that gives us a certain security to coexist in this reality outside the earthly, beyond the palpable.

This generates a need to continue updating our content and achieve that supposed acceptance that is part of an implicit promise in online social networks, which will be fulfilled with the result of the interaction and ingestion of binary material, by clicking on the words I like it. This causes a lot of images to be uploaded, which, while we consume them less, have logic to our perception, since we will hardly ever ask ourselves "At what point does the image acquire its meaning? Where does the meaning end? And if it ends, what is there beyond? "4, we simply let them accumulate in the great pile of inconsistencies in our judgment.

The number is the sum of images uploaded to social networks every minute, this is the relationship that Eduardo used:

Snapchat: 527,760 photos / m.

WhatsApp: 486,120 photos / m.

Facebook: 270,060 photos / m.

Instagram: 65,000 photos / m.

Tumblr: 25,000 photos / m.

Flickr: 2,460 photos / m.

This evidently demonstrates the point that it reflects previously.

Narration of Antoine d'Agata

In the video you can hear a narrative in the background, which is quoting "Orgy" text from the acclaimed French photographer and director, winner of the Niépce prize:

"Foetal time of the orgy. Time of generalized copulation, of silent attacks before the horror of the world. Sad and cold orgy. Humanity painful, funeral and ineluctably condemned to return to be herself. Dissolution of the image of a terrible love that redeems nobody, that does not justify anything, that does not explain or deny, a terrible love that does not atone for the cynicism of art, nor gives back its lost dignity. "

This text was used by d'Agata in his photographic series exhibited in his book "Códex: México 1986-2016" C which shows 16 totally raw pieces that "cross the oral and the performative" 5 where he demonstrates the reality of society Mexican, a reality that reveals merely instinctive acts within our nature.

As I mentioned before, the way of presenting the images shown forms a kind of analogy with the concept of Orgy and this is the reason for the use of this text. The orgy has as its aim the pure experimentation of pleasure and pleasure is as ephemeral as an image.

"We can only simulate the orgy and the liberation, pretend that we keep accelerating in the same direction, but, we accelerate in a vacuum, because all the purposes of liberation are already behind us and what pursues and obsesses is the anticipation of all the results, the availability of all the signs, of all the forms, of all the wishes. What to do then? "

In this text we can recognize a relationship between the content of the piece and a part of the aesthetic or way of representation, the speed with which we live is also one of the derivations that has the meaning of orgy, the experiences that we live also become in something momentary and ephemeral.

Opinion

Today the exchange of images on social networks is so high and the consumption of these is so frequent that they generate a detachment of their meaning, demeriting their value and function, which causes new links to terms used mainly to refer to the sexual, but in them, if we unravel them, we find many similarities with our social reality, in terms of the interaction of online users.

In addition, we currently experience a phenomenon of excessive acceleration which influences all aspects of our life, there is a constant and excessive evolution in the media, which can generate a significant imbalance at the time of the experimentation of different sensations, sometimes we just must stop a bit, stop to observe what surrounds us, breathe. This is obviously not something that happens to all of us, much less I am implying that a life with nothing to do, free of worries and abundant in procrastination is healthy, if not that I am calling for you to pause from time to time your life and enjoy, without accelerating things, what you are living, since evolution is inevitable but life is only one.

For me this is a somewhat complex work, which was difficult for me to understand with the simple fact of looking at it and listening to it, it is a piece that contains a dense investigation and deals with real, current and somewhat controversial topics, after having read the references in those that Eduardo supported, I was able to open my mind a bit and understand what he means by every detail expressed in it. It is a piece that has already been exhibited in different parts of the republic thanks to the Spontaneous Generation Network, however, I feel that there should be a greater diffusion and propagation of projects like this, which have an important and transcendental content for a generation such as ours, which is immersed in situations like the ones it deals with.

Bibliography 

1 John Berger. (1972). Modos de ver. -: GG.

2 Jean Braudillard. (1989). De la seducción. España: Cátedra.

3 Estudiantes asistentes a la exposición, Lina Marcela Lasso (Expositora), Andrés Robledo (Expositor), Andrea Rodríguez (Profesora), Jairo Lázaro (Relator) y Diego Ramírez (Relator). (Abril 27 de 2010.). LA VIDA EN LA PANTALLA. LA CONSTRUCCIÓN DE LA IDENTIDAD EN LA ERA DE INTERNET. -, Protocolo № 7, capítulo VII. ASPECTOS DEL YO. .

4 ROLAND BARTHES. (1982). Retórica de la imagen. -, -, -.

5 Eduardo Limón. (2016). Antoine d'Agata: La depravación y decadencia de nuestra sociedad en 16 fotografías. 24/11/18, de Cultura Colectiva Sitio web: https://culturacolectiva.com/fotografia/antoine-d-agata-depravacion-y-decadencia-de-nuestra-sociedad

6 http://www.portaldearte.cl/terminos/estetica.htm

7 https://hvideoarte.wordpress.com/2008/10/19/definicion-de-videoarte/