LOS FIGURANTES
(VIDEOINSTALLATION), 2020

Los figurantes (video installation) seeks to capture the image of childhood through the act of orality, that image that always evades and alters, and which we can only barely perceive in a thousandth of a second, before it disappears before our eyes. To capture it, Los figurantes (video installation) delves into the popular imaginary of oral tales, questioning the image of childhood that we project from the adult world.

The audience will enter wearing a multi-channel headset. They will find a set of glass panels onto which veiled, black and white faces of boys and girls are projected. On each channel of the headset, they will hear something different: children who, while modulating their voices, tell made-up stories, cry, yell and sing...

Los figurantes (video installation) explores the tales that arise from a child’s imagination (a game mechanism) and those that they have apprehended, perhaps from a popular infra-discourse (a copying mechanism). In this project, the vocal sound and the image of the child (the phantasmagorical performer) will produce discourse without any prior intention or specific content having been deliberately 

programmed. Meanwhile, this listener-observer who enters the space will hear in their own silence that voice from elsewhere, letting his or her waves resonate, and gathering their modifications,

with all “reasoning” held in abeyance.

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In this project, we aim to work for five days with a group of seven to ten-year-old children based on storytelling. The material that’s generated (always in the form of improvisation) would form part, in both video and audio format, of the video installation. There is also the possibility of showing an existing version (available languages: Spanish, Catalan and English).