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THE BURIAL OF THE DEAD (2016)
Three-channel HD video installation, 2:39, color, three-channels mono sound, 90 min. sync in a loop, Peru / Portugal / Switzerland / France
Commission: Biennial of Moving Images – BIM 2016
Production: Lamaland, Centre d’Art Contemporain de Genève
Support: Fonds d’Art Contemporain de la Ville de Genève – FMAC, Fonds d’Art Contemporain du Canton de Genève – FCAC, FAENA ART, In Between Art Film, HEAD.
Produced with materials collected during the production of the feature film Eldorado XXI (2016) directed by Salomé Lamas and produced by O Som e a Fúria, in coproduction with Shellac Sud. With the support of ICA Instituto do Cinema e Audiovisual, CNC Centre Nacional du Cinéma et de l’Image Animée, Ministère des Affairs Étrangères et du Développement International – Institut Français, Eurimages – Council of Europe and the additional support of FIDLab2013 FID Marseille, Rockefeller Foundation – Bellagio Center, Berliner Künstlerprogramm des DAAD, The MacDowell Colony, Bogliasco Foundation, Yaddo
Non-Commercial Rights: FMAC’s Médiatèque, Switzerland
Video Installation Edition: FMAC – Fonds d’Art Contemporain de la Ville de Genève / Republic and Canton of Geneva Contemporary Art Collection (FCAC), collection, Switzerland
Video Installation Edition: CNAP – Centre National de Arts Plastiques – collection, France
There is no need to design or stage an apocalyptic land- scape, for the earth we inhabit is already in crisis and the apocalypse is now. Attempting to redefine ethnographic film tradition, The Burial of the Dead is a video installation set in the Peruvian town of La Rinconada, at an altitude of 5,500 meters on the edge of a gold mine; it captures a dystopian world that scarcely seems possible in the twenty-first century. The cinematic triptych conveys the extremity of its situation and the dimensions of its misery without having to resort to graphic images. Indeed, it is a Dante-esque Escher-scape of haunting beauty.
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Here is the man with three staves, and here the Wheel,
And here is the one-eyed merchant, and this card,
Which is blank, is something he carries on his back,
Which I am forbidden to see. I do not find
The Hanged Man. Fear death by water.
I see crowds of people, walking round in a ring.
Thank you. If you see dear Mrs. Equitone,
Tell her I bring the horoscope myself:
One must be so careful these days.
– Waste Land, ‘The Burial of the Dead’ by TS. Eliot.
