Solar Cinematic Art Gallery

partner

Since 2018

Address

Praça José Régio 110, 1º

4480-718 Vila do Conde

Portugal

Solar
Cinematic Art Gallery
A space in Vila do Conde, Portugal,
where Cinema cross other arts
The Project
Over the last few years we have been witnessing a proliferation of artistic pieces considered by many as cinematographic, but more widely perceived as videos of any digital format, where recycling or at least re-usage, both of techniques and extrinsic processes considering that the process may be legitimised by being invented by oneself and not by someone else and of sound and image matters which belong to a borrowed memory. Some examples can be seen in the many videos made out of editing home movies and of anonymous reporting in some busy city or other: it has become common to resort to Super 8 and 16mm images, shot usually in the 1960's and 1970"s according to the inspiration of the moment of anyone who owned a camera. The use of digital archives of older films, some of which go back to the silent era, is also increasingly normal due to the availability of public servers on the Internet. These works have become possible above all thanks to the recent accessibility of digital video manipulation which resulted in the popularisation of facilities which were previously reserved for professional use, for skilled amateurs and those with financial capabilities. There is, however, a frontier territory which by definition is an area for audiovisual experimentation between cinema and video and other arts that in a certain sense broaden and reinvent them, where spatial objects are created in diverse projection contexts of sound and image. This is where we are in that territory, and this is where we confront ourselves with the different paradigms that contribute to renewal and to a permanent dialogue: an area both for reflection and for departure. Because of the experimental nature of the work that can be included in the wide spectrum of cinematic art (and without any concern for exhausting the list of questions that they certainly prompt) we have considered as fundamental, the ones that follow from the concepts that derive from appropriation, from media transformations, from space and time re-contextualisation, from the intensity and purpose of the references to audiovisual collective memories, from the ensuing reciprocity of the evolution of languages, from the dialogue between artist(s) and audience(s) whose mass culture and diversified inputs are also catalysts of artistic experimentations, from the involvement of digital technology in the (re)construction process of the pieces. This then is the primal reason for the birth of a gallery which offers definite options for the diversification of the types of exhibition venues available, on the one hand because of the permanent character of its programming - making it stand out from the seasonal events that happen around the country - and on the other, because the venue promotes new approaches and re-interpretations of the work on show.

Website
www.curtas.pt/solar/index.php