Son[i]a #123
Manuel Huerga
A pioneer in the field of experimental video, Manuel Huerga is a filmmaker and television and theatre director. His television programs include “Estoc de pop” (1983-1985) and “Arsenal” (1985-1987) for TV3, and “Boing Boing Buddha” for BTV, the channel that he directed until 2003. He has directed feature films such as “Antártida” (1995) and “Salvador” (2005). In the course of his extensive career in the cultural world he has been behind exhibitions such as “Món TV” and projects like the Videoteca Informatizada de Barcelona (VIBA), which digitalises the city’s audiovisual heritage.
Son[i]a talks to Manuel Huerga about his experimental origins and the role that film, art and television have played in the course of his career.
Polyphonic memories for a shared present #1
In this first episode, we revisit the early days of Video-Nou and its connection with other artists who were also starting to work with video in Catalonia. Hand in hand with Lluïsa Roca, Luisa Ortínez, Xefo Guasch and Carles Ameller, we look at the collective’s relationship with the counterculture, the underground, and libertarian movements. And we consider the particularities of video as a tool for documentary, communication, creation, and protest, with special attention to its uses within the political and social context of the period of the Spanish transition. We explore strategies such as feedback and counterinformation, and we get a behind-the-scenes insight into the making of Video-Nou’s first projects: Gràcia. Espais Verds (February-March 1977) and Campanya política per a la Lliga de Catalunya (April-May 1977), better known as the Video-Bus.
Juan Bufill
In this podcast, we sit down to talk with the poet, experimental filmmaker, scriptwriter, photographer, critic Juan Bufill talkl about the foundation of the Film Video Informació (FVI) and the many different artistries that came together there. The conversation starts from the early years of the Spansih transition, when opportunities to re-make everything and to dream seemed endless. It was a vibrant period of creative cross-fertilisation, with an underground, self-managed counterculture in which the energies of conceptual art, video art, experimental film, community video, comics and performance intertwined and radiated in multiple directions.