Son[i]a #290
María Ruido
María Ruido is an artist, filmmaker, writer, teacher, and researcher. Her film essays are the result of intense processes of documentation and personal introspection, because every single one of them draws on experiences from her own life. The personal is always political in Ruido’s work, which reflects on the role of the family and motherhood in neoliberal societies, on the relationship between production and reproduction, on the construction of personal and collective memory, and on the need to conquer strongholds of visual sovereignty, as well as exploring representations and new modes of work. To this end, she uses a kind of conceptual palimpsest in which archival materials, appropriationism, and collage coexist with documentary, video art, and performance.
In this podcast, María Ruido talks about the political power of images and the subversive potential of cinematic strategies such as off-screen, voice over, and editing, which help us understand and imagine the world in new ways. She also reflects on the always contradictory relations between the critical and experimental power of culture on one hand, and its institutionalisation on the other. And she sheds light on the creative processes behind works like “Mater amatisíma”, “Tiempo real”, and “Plan Rosebud”, as well as the more recent “Estado de malestar”, which analyses the social symptomatology and psychological suffering that stems from capitalist realism.
Deleted scenes
We dig up some unreleased fragments of our conversation with video artist, activist and researcher Marina Gržinić, which we were unable to include the first time around. Marina reflects on her trajectory, together with Aina Šmid, in the field of video art and new media, from the eighties to the present day, from a feminist and socialist perspective.
Deleted scenes
We dig up some unreleased fragments of our conversation with writer, researcher and curator Maite Garbayo-Maeztu that we were unable to include the first time around.
Deleted scenes
We dig up some unreleased fragments of the interview with María Ruido that we were unable to include the first time around.
Marina Gržinić
Marina Gržinić talks about amnesia, aphasia, and seizure, about biopower and necropolitics, about borders and volumes, corpus and corpses, about deathscapes, intestines, and holograms, and about the disturbing miniaturisation of affect and empathy, as a process that runs parallel to technological acceleration.
Martha Rosler
Martha Rosler analyses and questions the proliferation of surveillance systems and self-representations in contemporary society, while telling us about artistic circles in the seventies, the seminal video art scene, and the need to keep chasing utopias.
Dora García
Dora García works on projects that tend towards infinite growth, resorting to practices such as invisible theatre, footnotes, and serendipitous exploration. In FONS AUDIO #38, she talks about her projects, her working methods, and the countless historical transfers between psychoanalysis and literature.
Franco "Bifo" Berardi
Bifo talks about mass killings in relation to cinema, mental health, neuroplasticity, friendship, irony and, ultimately, hope.
Mark Fisher
The cultural impact of Mark Fisher's work continues to grow years after his death in 2017. His tough but always accessible dissection of the system and its endemic problems was captured in essays, posts, and books, such as Capitalist Realism, which gave rise to this conversation. The book explores the dangerous connection between neoliberalism and mental health, almost as a tragic portent of his death, although it is much more than that. In the podcast, Fisher talks about the avalanche of repercussions of the 2008 financial crash, particularly in relation to the idea of capitalism as the only possible framework.