Image in movement biennial ’90

The introduction of film, video and media in artistic creation takes place in the mid-sixties, at a time of international, post-war, technological fervour. Having reached the end of the Eighties, the purpose of this exhibition is to recognise the moving image as a tool of artistic creation and audio-visual production in the context of the passage from a culture which consumes image in analogue to a digital image culture.

The exhibition highlights that audio-visual means have been progressively and naturally incorporated into creative processes, a phenomenon that has given rise to the concept of "multimedia". Artists have pushed these various means to their limits in order to exhaust these limits and their possibilities, for both the means and the image. In this way, the works of art resulting from this research offer new artistic solutions to the narrative, visual, exhibition and responsive. Firstly, new production techniques that are identified or confused with new modes of representations that are favoured are developed. In turn, these new tools have enabled and triggered new forms of storytelling, modernising the conventions (as it is transcended) of separations between fiction, reality and documentary, as well as the subjectivity / objectivity dichotomy. Also, as stated in the present works, audio-visual creations break with the traditional concept of the division of artistic genres. Instead, it brings attention to the contamination, convergence and permeability of different artistic practices: theatre, video, film, performance, literature, dance, music and painting. In addition, artists have turned art and art history into an object of analysis, criticism and experimentation in their work, as illustrated by the works Total rain (year) by Richard Foreman, La femme à la cafetière (year) by Robert Wilson, The Gaze of Orpheus (year) of Gary Hill and Histoire (s) du cinéma (year) by Jean-Luc Godard.

Finally highlighted in this exhibition is the fact that works made up of moving images dramatically affect the convention of visual perception and spatial experience which have dominated until now. This revulsion has a direct impact on the viewer, it encourages them to renew their attitude to the work of art and to develop a new way of interacting with images. The installation achieves architectural characteristics when establishing relationships with the space in which it is inserted and with the structures that compose it, being able to also present itself at this point as a sculpture.

Besides the work of sixty artists and collectives, Image in movement biennial ’90 devotes a section to the English filmmaker Peter Greenaway, in recognition of his continued attitude towards experimentation the image and produced with different media.