Video prototype No.1 - Transition — Estefanía Álvarez Ramírez

Video prototype No. 1 - Transition
In collaboration with Piero Ramella

A prototype is an early sample, model, or release of a product built to test a concept or process.
The video made by Piero is the consolidation of my first block of work and depicts the stage of thoughts around how to transform the desire of crafting to my performative character (the Rockstar in me). They seem really far from each other but they need one another to come to life. The unseen: what happened before took place in the workshop and relates to the design and making of the objects, the time invested there was precious and coloured them as belongings to that specific place and process. Transition tries to find a way to translate the love invested in the making into the staging of a less careful and more eccentric practice. I need my wood and boxes in order to become the Rockstar, to transform.

“Video Prototype No.1 - Transition is an attempt of producing a non-illustrative and non-explicative documentation for Estefanía's research project. Instead of standing as a “literal” representation of the artistic practice, it is a translation of the poetics of her work through/into another set of materials, another point of view. The deliberate arbitrariness of the documentation/translation exposes the artificial nature of the video, its materiality and to its partiality. Actually, craftspersonship is a central theme in Estefanía's research. To rely on a “treacherous” documentation constitutes a strategy for self-critique, a paradoxical self-sabotage against the absolutist tendency that menaces the craftsperson.
Such an operation reflects a morphogenetic approach to image-making. The material is not organized by an a priori project, but rather is the result of a continuous dialogue between the craftsperson intentionality and the materials involved. This net of relationships was preexisting and coexisting besides the documentation project, which is mainly due to the mere proximity of the agents involved. The encounter between Piero and Estefanía was not caused by the documentation project, but rather the video was a pretext: on the one hand to spend time together, on the other hand to bring new inputs and develop the research. The documented practice, actually, did not exist outside the video – yet. In a way, to analyze the process of which Video Prototype No.1-Transition is part of, means to consider the friendship agency in the artistic process.”

-Piero-