Juan delGado presenting The Flickering Darkness at Fundacion Laxeiro, Vigo

The Flickering Darkness (Revisited) premieres in Spain

Last October, Juan delGado travelled to Spain to present his project The Flickering Darkness (revisited) at the Fundación Laxeiro. His artistic director introduced delGado's work to an enthusiastic audience willing to learn more about this project produced in Colombia as a result of an artist in residence in collaboration with British Council and the Colombian Ministry of Culture.

In his presentation, Juan described the methodology he followed to research ideas about the politics of food, urban territory and displacement.  His arrival in Bogotá brought him to meet a Colombian artist Lorena Luengas, who welcomed him to the Tortuga House where Juan would spend the following three months. Lorena introduced Juan to her art project called Miedo a Que? (Afraid of What..?) in which she had been working since 2006. In this project, she explored the level of fear that many people experience depending the neighbourhood they find themselves - as she was describing her work, Juan started to realise that it was a very similar project he had come to Colombia to do. This strange coincidence prompted him to leave his 'original' idea aside and... walk.

And he walked, during the following week, he walked down Bogotá's neighbourhoods of La Candelaria, Egipto, El Carmen, San Cristobal, Ciudad Kennedy... what he saw in these random hikes through mostly colonial buildings began to permeate in his perception of people and the narrative of the city he started to appreciate.

Food, a lots of food; food he has not seen before. Everywhere. 

One morning he decided to pay a short visit to Fundación Fernando Botero, where he had the opportunity to see the work of the International acclaimed Colombian artist. Botero's work is well-known for depicting people and figures in large, exaggerated volume, which can represent political criticism or humour. In his stroll around the Museum, delGado encountered several works where violence is graphically represented. It was in a room where something caught his attention: a series of small drawings where he had used food as a way to represent violence; in these sketches the characters throwing pieces of melon or any other sort of tropical fruits at each other. He was surprised that the idea had now been developed further as these narratives were nowhere to be seen in his paintings.

One of Botero's paintings about violence in Colombia

Walking through the galleries, another small drawing caught his attention. This time, a man carrying what seemed to be his possessions on a massive bag in which also death was part of the luggage; that small work encapsulated the terrible reality of thousands of people who had been exposed to the violence, kidnaps and murders that devastated many communities across the country and forced them out to seek refugee in the main cities.

Juan explained how the subject of violence and displacement was explored using food as a metaphor to investigate the social stratification and how many of the thousands of people are forced to leave their home towns. He wanted to create this three-channel installation to show the "invisibility" of this tragedy to the general population; a population which is fed by those who are not seen nor acknowledged as victims of the terrible conflict Colombia is under.

"The World has become chaos, but the book continues to be an image of the world" stated Deleuze and Guattari. In its apparent chaotic narrative, The Flickering Darkness (revisited) introduces us to the hidden world of nocturnal labourers who every night feed the city which ignore them...

delGado received an Unlimited Award in 2014 to produce this three-channel installation currently touring across the UK and beyond.

Review by

Andrea MacDonald

Juan delGado embarked on a three-month residency to Colombia in 2009, having recently watched Agnes Varda's documentary film, 'The Gleaners & I'. Inspired by Jean-Franscois Millet's painting ‘The Gleaners (Les Gleaneuses)’, 1857, Varda's film explores the history of gleaning (meaning to gather after the harvest) and its contemporary incarnations. In part it reveals the stark reality of food production, distribution and waste.

Filmmaker Agnes Varda posing as a gleaner of wheat

Food is the central metaphor to The Flickering Darkness (Revisited). Hosted by the British Council and the Ministry of Culture in Colombia, delGado’s original plan was to produce a new work mapping the level of anxiety within the context of a country so deeply-rooted in political turmoil and conflict. His preconceptions of Latin American culture were quickly dismantled and that in turn gave him a renewed freedom to undertake his residential research.

It was a chance encounter that led delGado to the Corabastos market, in the south east area of the Colombia's capital city, Bogota. Seemingly chaotic, vast and impenetrable, the market place imports thousands of tonnes of food from around the continent. A tremendous feet of collective physical labour takes place as daily tasks are carried out with painstaking repetition and unrelenting urgency from the hours of 9pm to 7am across 362 days a year. The overwhelming mass of produce presented a conflicting impression against the abject poverty evident in the city. With the support of filmmaker Jhon Arias, who grew up in the Carobastos, delGado began to decode and read the activity of the market place using two cameras filming simultaneously over four nights to the document the arrival, collection, assignment, sale and preparation of food, orchestrated on a colossal scale by an invisible workforce.

The artist reflects upon the Corabastos as a contained ‘universe’ within its own right. It represents a workplace where men and women and their children often work in separate areas and communities have created their own institutions including churches and schools. At large, delGado's beautifully crafted observations bears witness to a community of displaced people (add stats here). The artist heard and recorded personal stories that collectively defined trauma and alienation. These stories are not laid to bear in this work but they are implicit in the subject matter itself. The workers faces are not revealed, nor can individual voices or conversations be heard. The nature of what remains undisclosed and fragmented is a mechanism that the artist employs to motivate the viewer to register the reality seen.

There is beauty within The Flickering Darkness (Revisited) and the contemplative style of the work allows the opportunity to bring highly politicised issues of food and the nature of interdependent structures between its production and social inequalities to the fore. The artist sets up a poignant analogy within the title of the work in his desire for such ideas to manifest. Where there is darkness, there is also the flickering light. Where there is light, there is also hope.

Northern Stars

During the exhibition at the Tyneside Cinema, Juan delGado explains his project The Flickering Darkness (revisited) in an interview with Northern Stars, Newcastle. 

Invited by the British Council Colombia and the Ministry of Culture, delGado spent three months exploring the city and its territory. 

Based on the texts of Deleuze and Guattari, The Colombian curator Paula Silva describes how delGado embarks on a journey of understanding the city as a living organism that, like all living things, eats, sleeps and has physical needs. The journey begins in Corabastos, in the gut of the monstrous city, in the core that sets free all other living functions such circulation or social interaction.

The Flickering Darkness (revisited), 2014

The Flickering Darkness (revisited) registers the process of distribution of fresh produce from Corabastos to other markets, supermarkets, community dining and up-market restaurants. The work presents in three fragmented but ever dialoguing screens the hands at work, the hoards of trucks that fill up and then empty the gut, the flaying knifes and the feeding mouths in an array of colour texture, speed, silence and sound.

There is no individual in the work: the people working in the markets are shown as shadows and shapes. The people eating at the community restaurants are shown as anonymous, and the people dining at the higher strata restaurant don't even have a face but only feeding hands that tear up the food and empty the frame of all the colour and texture once presented by the specially prepared meals. The result is that there is no authorial -authorised- version of the work's meaning. It is then up to the viewer to read what moves and flickers in front of his/her eyes in an entirely individual manner. There is therefore no subject, no attribution. The number of viewers will determine the number of possible readings, rendering the work inextricably multiple.

The Flickering Darkness (revisited), 2014

The Flickering Darkness travels to the North
 16 July – 6 September 2015

A new exhibition of The Flickering Darkness (Revisited) at Tyneside Gallery & Cinema, Newcastle. 

The Flickering Darkness (Revisited) is a video installation exploring the journey that food produce takes from its arrival before dawn at the Corabastos market in Bogotà, Colombia (the largest of its kind in Latin America), to its consumption across the social spectrum. In this work, a commission resulting from a 3 month residency in the South American city, delGado creates sense out of the market’s chaos and order, while inviting wider reflections on society’s strata and how they interact.

Details of the market are revealed in close up and wide shots.  Most of the images are identifiable but the editing and juxtaposition of the work often bring out abstract characteristics.  This is combined with a haunting soundtrack that combines industrial noise, a multitude of vehicles and human voices.
Whilst centring on the topical issue of current world food politics, this installation uses a highly personal visual language that documents and yet beautifully abstracts a very factual reality.

The work follows hundreds of people at work transporting food from one corner of the market to the other before vendors set up their stalls and the market becomes a hive of trading activity. It then turns to the preparation and presentation of produce as edible dishes, with delGado contrasting the humble consumption of simple foods at workers’ restaurants with the elaborate choreography of fine dining experiences.

The Flickering Darkness (Revisited) is supported by Unlimited; celebrating the work of disabled artists, using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England and Spirit of 2012. 

 BBC See Hear



In this interview to BBC See Hear, Juan delGado talks with Heidi Koivisto-Robertson about his project The Flickering Darkness (revisited) awarded an Unlimited Commission exhibited at the Southbank Center, London.

BBC See Hear, January 2015

delGado also introduces to us his recent project The Ringing Forest, shortlisted for the Open Forest Commission and exhibited at the Jerwood Space, London in January 2014. 

The Ringing Forest, Jerwood Space, London

This project is exhibited at the 4th Edition of the +End of the World Biennal in Mar de Plata, Argentina.

 The Ringing Forest, Espacio Asilo Unzue, Mar de Plata (Argentina)

In most western traditions, the forest has a unique character, its sense of place is a function of its history that combines with the natural physical environment to form its cultural landscape. The character of the forest, like all other ‘natural’ spaces, is in fact a product of human imagination, rooted in culture and understood in opposition to the idea of the civilized universe.

 curator: Fortunata Calabro

Rhizome, digital archival print, 2014

In the project The Ringing Forest I aim to explore the forest environment through the lens of my personal auditory experience, investigate the phenomenological perception of sound and movement and develop an integrated piece that challenges viewers to shift their perspective. Effectively disabling the audience in a subversive act of artistic sabotage, the work questions the notion of the natural world.

The Fallen Tree, Digital Archive Print, 2014

The concept of Green Noise, researched and developed throughout the project, represents the juncture between the external sound of the forest and the internal bodily sounds. It refers to the sound generated by the movement of tree trunks, leaves, wind and other natural phenomena in the forest as well as the intensely personal sound of tinnitus a physical condition resulting in permanent internal ‘noise’ (and therefore, a hearing impairment) created inside the artist head and audible only to him. This internal sound, described as the continuous crushing of glass, at times masks all external sounds, creating a barrier between the artist and the assumed world outside and rendering the sense of hearing irrelevant for an attempted objective reading of what we perceive as reality.

Responses to The Flickering Darkness (Revisited) at Unlimited Festival

We received some wonderful feedback from the visitors who experienced the work in installation at Unlimited Festival. 

Here is a selection of the responses that were written in the visitors' book that we would like to share.



“The level of intimacy accomplished with the multi-screen editing is intriguing, as well as the anonymity of workers/consumers.”

“Beautiful installation. It embraces the force and softness of a land I have started to forget: my original land. Memories of many generations.”

“Incredible piece of art. The Flickering Darkness (Revisited) shows not just a reality of an invisible community that feeds Bogotá and their surroundings but shows a true beauty, the colours, the lights, the beauty of the chaos. Thank you for this beautiful work.”

“The installation really made me feel that I was in Corabastos, experiencing it personally.”

“Absolutely wonderful. Very political. Made me wonder about the passage of the food through the body and the issues of fair trade.”

“I really enjoyed this film. It was very thought provoking and made me think about my own relationship with food, as well as how we treat food and the distribution of it in the UK. I really enjoyed the three screen format. I had never experienced that before and I liked how it made me constantly concentrate and view different aspects of the same scene.”

Artist’s talk: Juan delGado in conversation with Sandra Tabares-Duque

The Artist's Talk at the +Southbank Centre was very successful, with tickets sold out days before the event.

Juan delGado met with Sandra Tabares-Duque and a large audience in the Sunley Pavilion at the Southbank Centre to talk about the inspiration behind his Unlimited 2014 commission, +The Flickering Darkness (Revisited)

As the work explores the journey that produce takes from its arrival to its consumption at the Corabastos market in Bogotá, Colombia, the discussion revolved around food markets, politics food, displaced workers; inviting the audience to reflect on society’s strata. 

 Photos © from left to right @ShapeArt, @_caglark and @Dima_Sky7

 

Sandra Tabares-Duque is a producer who worked with Juan on Sailing Out of Grain in 2012 and is now developing documentary film projects 360º of Being Human (UK/Iceland) and Quipu Project (UK/Peru). 

Sandra is also part of Where there is Hope's group, a documentary film project aiming to follow and record the Mingueo project with the intention of producing a feature length film. Similar to Juan delGado, this group believes in the power of cinema to tell the stories of those without voices or visibility and calls for change and improvement among systems and communities throughout Latin America.

Sandra studied in Birkbeck College, University of London where she graduated in Spanish and Latin American studies. She has been researching Latin American cultural studies since 2003 and has been directly involved with the Latin American film activity in London gradually joining several teams such as the DLA Film Festival and Colombiage.

The talk was followed by a guided tour of the installation at the Southbank Centre, inviting visitors to debate and interact, filling the venue with activity.

 

The Flickering Darkness (Revisited) - Installation

A week after the opening of +The Flickering Darkness (Revisited) by Juan delGado, the video installation is still being talked about. It's been a mesmerising week full of events, activities and mostly visitors!

We had the opportunity to meet many interesting people from the +British Council along with project managers, directors, producers, founders, curators, publishers, writers and many others based in the UK or visiting.

It's been a real pleasure discussing the work with visitors coming from different countries, elaborating on the chore topic of the installation, how it is dealt with in their respective countries and the fact that it is a universal problematic to shed the light on.

From the Corabastos market in Bogotá, +Colombia, the discussion led to many other food markets around the world, with visitors vividly narrating stories from their native towns and markets they grew up to see changing. It was mostly noted how +The Flickering Darkness (Revisited) added colour and dynamism to these memories, bringing a beautiful picture to such a strong reality.

It would be an amazing opportunity to visit some of those other food markets and share the story behind them all over again, with a different angle and a fresh perspective.

In addition to markets and politics of food, other themes were highly debated, including workers and displacement, cities with different profiles and inspiring descriptions, the evolution or metamorphosis of markets in the UK, etc.

The professional and motivated teams from +Artsadmin, +Shape Arts, in collaboration with +Southbank Centre's production team were of a big support. And a big thank you goes out to everyone who helped with the production and promotion of this new version of the work.

Being awarded an Unlimited commission has been a nurturing experience to Juan delGado. It's been such a wonderful week, witnessing the work being presented in a leading British cultural institution as part of an inspiring programme. Juan delGado is looking forward to future collaborations and touring the work to other venues both in the UK and internationally in the next year.

Unlimited on Screen - Sailing Out of Grain

While Juan delGado's The Flickering Darkness (Revisited) installation is running at the +Southbank Centre, another work by the artist: Sailing Out of Grain, is being shown part of Unlimited on Screen.

Unlimited on Screen is a programme of films featuring profiles of the Unlimited-commissioned artists. Visitors viewing Unlimited festival - an amazing event featuring work by disabled artists - can witness films from 2014 and 2012 alongside other films made by Unlimited festival artists. The films in the exhibition are captioned and audio described.

Sailing Out of Grain is a collaboration between the London-based Spanish artist Juan delGado and solo yachtswoman Hilary Lister. Together, they have embarked on a journey, which will lead them to explore the inner world of Hilary, her life, dreams and achievements. Through an observational camera, Juan will compose an intimate portrait of this extraordinary, yet vulnerable woman whose body has steadily became paralysed due to a progressive neurological disorder.

 The project will take the artist and the sailor beyond the physical, creating a poetical moving image installation revealing Hilary’s internal, psychological experiences and motivations.
Sailing Out of Grain invites it’s audience to embark on a journey to that significant place that is the sea, a remarkable place which allowed Hilary to reaffirm herself with life.

La Tundra Magazine Interview - Juan delGado

The day we've been waiting for is finally here. The venue looks great, so much is going on. The week seems so promising and exciting.

Juan delGado who is exhibiting at +Southbank Centre met the Argentinian journalist Brunela Curcio for an interview, viewable here for La Tundra Magazine to talk about The Flickering Darkness (Revisited) and the themes around it.
 

Brunela Curcio is a columnist for La Tundra, an independent printed magazine in London and online platform written in Spanish.
The aim of the magazine is to reach new audiences in the UK showcasing well-established artists but also supporting emergent talents and festivals.

Brunela is also a journalist for EL IBÉRICO, a freelance creative writer and has worked with Pinta London as a Technical Communicator and with Aculco Radio as a Journalist and Voiceover.

'2 minutes with Juan delGado'

'2 minutes with Juan delGado' is a film directed and produced by award-winning director, screenwriter and photographer David Hevey.

HERE are both captioned and audio-described versions of the film.

David Hevey - as published by Shape Artists - is UK's leading diversity-media professional, a key creative: a filmmaker, producer, writer & digital-media professional running David Hevey Productions, based in Bloomsbury, London in the UK.

Among his outstanding array of digital films and moving-images, he created documentaries highlighting the talents of disabled creative practitioners and artists supported by Shape Arts. His contribution to the disability art sector is highly recognized, presenting a genuine perspective and touching stories of disabled people. One of his most famous works 'The disabled Century' were series commissioned by the +BBC. His Showreel speaks for itself.
Working and featuring in the work of such an innovative and creative media professional is an honor and a memorable experience. 

In this 2-minute interview, Juan delGado talks about the idea of invisibility surrounding a specific group of people working at the Corabastos market in Bogotá - the largest of its kind in Latin America. These people work at night to feed the city, a long procedure depicted in The Flickering Darkness (Revisited) project, which explores the journey that produce takes from its arrival before dawn to its consumption.

Audio Description recording for The Flickering Dakness (Revisited)

The countdown to the exhibition has started and the preparations are getting more and more busy.

We had the pleasure to record the audio description with Jenni Halton, a successful drama and theatre practitioner.
Jenni is the founder, workshop leader and project manager of Unscene Suffolk, a community theatre company for adults with visual impairment. Unscene Suffolk aims to impact positively on the lives of its participants and to create high quality work which celebrates accessible aesthetics for both audience and performers.
The company was founded in February 2013 with support from the New Wolsey Theatre and Sensing Change, has produced two performances to date and is currently planning and fundraising for another project in 2015.

Jenni has a long experience in the Arts and Theatre sector, working as an arts administrator and audio describer. In addition to freelancing as a theatre practitioner, she is also contributing to the Unlimited Festival.

The purpose of this recording is to make the video installation accessible to everyone.
Inside the White Room, where the three-channel installation will be set up, a headphone will be available for visually impaired visitors. Jenni helped make the audio-description as accurate, authentic and colorful as the moving image, making the narrative exciting to imagine and picture, transporting the listener to the scene's location.

Another plinth and pair of headphones will be placed outside the room, where the same description will be screened.

Tim Harrison, the sound designer at the Sounthbank Centre worked to bring out the power of the sound in a balanced surround system, placing speakers to help the audience experience an immersive impact of the video installation.

Tim runs Aumeta, a company specialising in feature film audio post and commercial sound design. He has a keen interest in experimental cinema, regularly working with director Luke Losey. Tims is also a member of filmmaking collective Studio Murmur and an Associate Lecturer at London College of Communication.

Room Setting Up for The Flickering Darkness (Revisited)

Monday was a productive day for the setting up team and Juan. 

It is very exciting to watch the White Room, a room usually filled with musicians rehearsing, transformed for the exhibition.

delGado worked closely with Freddie, the project manager and audio visual expert he commissioned for The Flickering Darkness (Revisited).
Freddie is supervising the painting of the room and making sure the skylight is perfectly covered with black textile. With her dynamic nature and perfectionist approach - a trait she shares with the artist - she made the process pleasant, meticulously taking measures and noting dimensions for the projection area.

Andy, the master carpenter was also present, putting all his energy into building the frames and screens, deciding with Juan on their placement and hanging as a pre-rehearsal, moving and testing projectors. The final rehearsal will take place on the 1st of September, right after the end of the Festival of Love and the Big Wedding Weekend when the team can be fully dedicated to the Unlimited event. Andy will be also making shelves for speakers.
the exhibition room is starting to look more and more like a part of the upcoming installation.

Interview on Disability Arts Online

The conversation with my friend and video editor Juan SOTO, produced by the Colombian writer Manuel Angel MACIA, is now published.

You can read it here on Disability Arts Online website page.
I hope you enjoy it.

Interview for Disability Arts Online

Last week, I had a beautiful conversation with my friend and video editor Juan SOTO at the Geffrye Museum. The interview was produced by the Colombian writer Manuel Angel MACIA.
The full text will be soon published by DAO, Disability Arts Online and available to read.

Here's a preview of the interview.

In a dimly lit room at the Geffrye Museum in East London, Spanish artist Juan delGado talks about The Flickering Darkness (Revisited) with his friend and the film’s Editor, Colombian filmmaker Juan Soto. The semi-dark interior serves as an apt setting—surprisingly akin to the moody textures that this piece so vividly portrays. The following is a semi-fictional reenactment of this conversation, one that tries to capture its organic development. As such, it aims to portray the emerging discourse on the film as the main character. The names of the two interlocutors have been intentionally treated ambiguously, in order to portray the vivid and intricate conversation that took place that day...

PODCAST 'En conversación con el artista Juan Delgado'

PodOmatic: Episode live

on artefactomagazine.podomatic.com

Radio Aculco Interview

The Flickering Darkness in TINAG

Observing and interpreting the social mutations of the city environment, delGado aimed to explore Bogotá neighbourhoods, focusing on those so-called no-go places that somehow stand out as a consequence of the briskness of economic and social change as well as its sometimes harrowing human costs. Trauma itself is a concept that can appropriately bridge the gap between the individual and the surrounding society in understanding the impact of conflict and displacement; trauma threatens the individual’s sense of self and the predictability of the world. Consequently, basic beliefs in trust, confidence and connectedness with other people are undermined.

In his research, delGado takes into account what sociologist and philosopher Henri Lefebvre said: “thinking about the city is to hold and maintain its conflictual aspects of urban and suburban life: constraints and possibilities, peacefulness and violence, meetings and solitude, gatherings and separation, the trivial and the poetic, brutal functionalism and surprising improvisation.” His project reflects on the idea of belonging, to the need we all have for positioning, for locating ourselves in an environment; in other words, in a context that makes sense to us.

Being an artist in residence, the video artist Juan delGado accessed Bogotá as a foreigner. He embarked on an journey to explore the city as a living organism that eats, sleeps and has physical needs. The three channel installation The Flickering Darkness serves both to show fragmentation and connection, silence and sound, movement & stillness.

The camera seems to follow the food from the gut of the monstrous city, as it is processed by night workers at the market of Corabastos, to community dining and market restaurants. People here are shown as faceless beings who are part of and cause the dynamics in and of Bogotá; moments are immediately opposed on the three screens instead of being imposed as a fixed storyline.

This Is Not A Gateway

Première The Flickering Darkness

After three months of endless work and wonderful experiences, I eventually finished the project that brought me to this city, Bogotá. It's been a very challenging experience after all, having decided to produce a audiovisual work with almost no time for research, development and production! However, I was very fortunate to have the support of many people that join my project or just helped me through essentials such as getting to know the city, sometimes in places that not many Bogotans would dare to go to.

The enormous support from Andrès Duplat and the entire team at PROPONGO will be something that I cannot thank enough. Without their patience and enthusiasm I would have eventually dropped of exhaustion. Andrès organised the production of my exhibition at the Chamber of Commerce at Ciudad Kennedy Headquaters supervising budgets, equipment bookings with such attention to detail that made this last stage of my project a delightful time towards the end of my residency in Colombia.

Première The Flickering Darkness at Chamber of Commerce, April 2009