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Carlos Motta: An Interview

Video Data Bank

2014 01:00:28 United StatesEnglishColorStereo16:9HD video

Description

In the case of Carlos Motta’s career, the impetus has always been on, not adhering to particular medium or a particular style, but rather using media as it becomes appropriate tell a story that has heretofore been stifled by dominant power structures. The technical variability of his work is only matched by its potential to generate conversation and discourse in the arenas of sexuality, gender, democracy and colonialism – usually as a conflux of all four through historical excavation. This interview focuses on works that do precisely that, such as the Nefandus Trilogy, and how their operational logics open onto more activist sentiments than purely aesthetic considerations.

Uncovering the silenced histories of the past, or even the present, through archival research into colonial conquest, and dialogic engagement with Latin American countries today, defines the work of Motta as he describes it in this interview. What results are projects deeply rooted in their geographical specificity. This is something the artist describes as a way to engage more fully in the communities with which he interacts – noting that the critical frameworks of the queer studies he’s interested in applying to his works are most typically developed in American and European epistemological spaces, not those of the “Global South.” Providing ways to think through the legacies of colonialism as they relate to sexuality and gender, but doing so in a way that is tailored to the colonized space – not those of the colonizers – is at the heart of Motta’s work.

— Nicolas Holt, 2016


Interview conducted by SAIC Goldabelle McComb Finn Distinguished Professor of Art History, David Getsy

 

The Video Data Bank is the leading resource in the United States for videotapes by and about contemporary artists. The VDB collection features innovative video work made by artists from an aesthetic, political or personal point of view. The collection includes seminal works that, seen as a whole, describe the development of video as an art form originating in the late 1960's and continuing to the present. Works in the collection employ innovative uses of form and technology, mixed with original visual style to address contemporary art and cultural themes.

Founded in 1976 at the inception of the media arts movement in the United States, the Video Data Bank is one of the nation's largest providers of alternative and art-based video. Through a successful national and international distribution service, the VDB distributes video art, documentaries made by artists, and recorded interviews with visual artists, photographers and critics.