AA: Parts of the film remind me of sections of Loose Ends by Chick Strand. I’m sure you would know what I’m talking about. Images can be strong and we sometimes don’t realize how much violence we consume every day. What made you touch on the subject of animal violence also in this film? Were you aware of how difficult these images could be to witness by your audiences? Part of me feels that you made them even more difficult to watch by altering the found footage, repeating them, slowing them down and focusing on specific gestures using the optical printer.

It Matters What is a title that speaks so much about the materiality of the film, “it” “Matter” “What”, it all points to objects and the observation and selection of these objects. What can you tell me about this title and how it connects with the film?

The text by Donna Haraway is very powerful. The way text is introduced in this film is different than in your film Suit of Lights. Again, here you put an emphasis on materiality and this, in a way, forces us to take a harder, more conscious look at the words that appear fragmented. The voice adds a layer to the sound space and delivers a pace to the film. The sound and visuals become multidirectional and demands us to seek for a balance, one where we let go a little bit of both sound and visual in order to gather them together to make sense of the meaning. Can you speak more about your use of voice over and text and what you are looking to bring to the front as well as what it is concealed by the use of it? Also, how do you decide to work/collaborate with sound artists and musicians for your films, including those doing the voice over?

FD:The decision to take on animal violence and to make this work in the way that I did, is a response to Donna Haraway’s essay: Tentacular Thinking: Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Chthulucene, and the title comes from a quotation in the essay. I read this essay as an invitation to entangle ourselves with other beings, to include the “self-organizing powers” of other-than-human species that we share space with. To look at these relationships as we move forward. To approach work, “narrative practices’ in a way that is critical and has an active awareness of the idea of human exceptionalism. This is important because of ongoing environmental devastation, economic unrest, historic and present day genocides.

I, like you are, am interested in traces, what they might tell us. Traces and those beings left behind by political and economic systems, the relentless pursuit of progress, of capitalism and what these remains might tell us if we look closely. The two images that stand out for me from Golpes are the flamingos with their heads in the sand/water and the bullets in the walls. 

I have explored representation of animals in other works. Mr Edison’s Ear about the origins of sound recording technology and the Cold Food modules (which I showed in the call for unfinished works on corrientes last fall) repurpose the images of animals and insects in Jules Etienne Marey’s research and Eadward Muybridge’s The Human and Animal Locomotion Photographs. My new film, Vestigial, probes the Zoological Collection of Animals at Rostock University in northern Germany. 

To answer your question about optical printing and why I chose to repeat the archival footage of the woman who holds the dead owl… The intention behind my translations between mediums and the material experimentation (through copying) are meant to convey a sense of timelessness and call into question the photographer over subject, biologist’s presumed mastery over land and species, archivist over archive, perhaps even artist over their art… The ideas of “mastery over” I was talking about earlier. 

I am aware that some people might have trouble watching the repeated and transformed images. I try to include a description of what you will see in the blurb, so that people can make the choice to not watch the film.

I filmed and learned to make many of the images in It Matters What at the Independent Imaging Retreat (Film Farm)in 2018 which is an artist residency held at artist, Philip Hoffman and scholar, Janine Marchessault’s farm in Mount Forest Canada. Phil asks that participants come without a fixed idea for a project, and to be open to exploring new ways of working with moving images on 16mm, typically Kodak 3378, a high contrast printer stoch. Film Farm invites a particular way of thinking about how to make films, the “process-oriented” approach where the conventional timelines (and protocols) for filmmaking do not apply. Twelve established, mid-career and emerging artists take part every year (pre-pandemic). Filmmakers throughout the world who process their own film, have been to Film Farm. This place and all the people and beings I interacted with consciously and unconsciously are in this film.

The retreat is demanding and wonderful and the experience was life-altering. We took workshops in hand-processing, tinting etc... The year I was there, I learned how to process film using plant-based photo-chemistry which I now only do. Artist Karel Doing led a workshop in phytogramming, a cameraless animation technique he invented. A “Phytogram”is the imprint left when you overlay plant material soaked in a solution of vitamin-c, washing soda (Na2 CO3) and water, onto raw film stock (or paper) and expose it in daylight. The plants are the content of the imagery and assist the means of photographic reproduction. The results are always beautiful and unexpected. Different plants produce different colours resulting from their internal chemistry, the base colour of the stock you are using, as well as the position and quality of the sun at that moment, how long you leave the plants on etc...

The opening images of the plant (corn spurry) were shot frame by frame at irregular intervals and I also varied how long I held the shutter open. The images at the end are phytograms made at Film Farm and at our place at Percy Lake. The footage of the woman and the owl was on a roll of 16mm film gifted to me by my sister-in-law. She found the film reel at a thrift store. It is a home movie from 1932, the cinematographer is unknown. I do not know why the woman is holding the owl and why the camera person has asked her to smile or why or how the owl died. Some perverse idea of portraiture, performance? 

The voice-actor in the film is Luan Leonardi, the son of my collaborators, German poet and artist Andrea Zittlau, and Italian photographer Emiliano Leonardi. Luan was eleven at the time of the recording. I wanted a mature child to deliver the poetic manifesto, Haraway’s chilling words.

The text in the film came about through a lengthy process. I started transcribing the entire Haraway essay onto clear 16mm leader using Letraset (a letter transfer technology popular before computer typesetting became the norm) and then re-copying and photographing that leader. I paired the voice with type precisely to activate the relationship you mention between reading/listening and thought. 

I love words and language, their visual, tactile and aural/oral forms. I worked as a graphic designer for a number of years. A written or printed word however it was generated and displayed, is an image and has a material presence, is “matter” like you suggest. When we learn to read character based languages, meaning emerges from the patterning formed by the counterforms of the letters. So the negative spaces or absences that hold the letters, words, sentences, paragraphs together are what allow us to create meaning. That’s so beautiful. Before this those lovely shapes are “noise.” I’ve always held this thought as parallel to how film cameras and projectors work. The opening and closing of the shutter. Also moving from positive to negative images when contact printing, optical printing and processing film as neg etc… The idea that absence of sound, or silence in a soundtrack or in music, has as strong a guiding presence as the notes also plays into this. And of course sound originates as a physical, corporeal disruption yet (those of us who can hear), think of it as ephemeral, expansive.

To answer your last question, I work with sound artists because they add a level of complexity to the image/sound relationships.. I work with people I trust as humans, whose work I love, and who are open to working in a process-oriented way and therefore the collaboration is always rewarding. Since I create most of the visual material and get lost in the minutiae of processes, giving up control is hard for me. I have collaborated with musician Paul Shepherd on five projects and he composed the score for this piece. He passed recordings of insects through a beautifully complicated digitally controlled system of cassette-tape loops.

ON PRACTICE

FD: You move fluidly between methods of address, fiction, documentary and experimental. Also, I glean from our conversations and interactions which began because you programmed my first film in La Revolución del Pueblo, that your work as a curator/programmer is woven into the fabric of your practice. Is this a fair assessment?  

AA: It is fair to say that in my case curatorship is born out of necessity. From here different needs derive: the need to see what is hidden / prohibited for some; that of generating a space where you can see what represents you; and that of establishing connections between images that reveal a sense or non-sense of community, along with choral voices resounding in a theater that could well be your interior. Curating and programming film for me was born as an impulse that is difficult to ignore and is related to my queer, Latin American, mestizo identity in a country that outlined its references towards an admiration for white, Anglo-Saxon, heteronormed culture during my childhood. In this sense, the films that I have made so far have a lot to do with this impulse. I acknowledge that I myself have had trouble being programmed at festivals or being represented by experimental film distributors because my work is hybrid. I have received comments that my films are a mixture of fiction, documentary and experimental and therefore do not fit into recognized categories. This affected me for a long time because I thought that I would never find a space to show my material, but after reflecting and accepting that it would be more difficult for me to find an avenue for my cinema, today I am no longer surprised or do not question much whenever I get these responses. The truth is that I identify as non-binary and my art exists in different spaces and genres at the same time and I will not compromise this.

FD: Why do you make films and why in the way you do? 

How do you decide what structure or framework you will use for each piece?  

What does your training and background in theatre bring both to the final forms of your time-based work as well as your collaborations and your curatorial practice?

AA: From an ideological place, I make films to generate moving images that discover less represented voices. From an artistic realization point-of-view, I make films because when I transitioned from theater to cinema I connected a lot with the process of filming and then working with those images. Making movies has many stages and each one of them allows you to live very different experiences that in the end result in more complex works of art. For example, for me filming is my favorite moment in this process. Here I am in sync with what is happening and it forces me to give all my present attention to the scene I am filming, be it a prepared and trained scene / choreography or improvised and casual. The hybridity of my content has to do with this non-binary identity of which I spoke before. In my life I have seen documentaries, fiction, experimental cinema and I have liked all these categories as a set of possibilities that can coexist. Filmmakers like Frederick Wiseman talk about the impossibility of differentiating documentary and fiction and how both are part of the same. With the experimental something similar happens. I simply allow myself to expand the possibilities that the audiovisual offers.

Regarding the structure or frame of each piece, I also mentioned this before, and it is that I am guided a lot by the physical space in which I find myself. My method of filming is camera and body in unison. That is to say, I am discovering spaces as I move in them. This is also applicable to my more narrative films like Beneath The Light in which I saw relationships, moments, episodes within specific spaces that existed in my memory (of my life in Chile).

The concept of “embodying” a character or of “enaction” that I first understood through Richard Schechner and Francisco Varela when I was in theater school allowed me to extend my theatrical and performance experience towards audiovisual production. Today I embody and enact every time I use the camera. It is a performative moment in that sense. Performance is often confused with the idea of ​​representation. From the point of view of Schechner and Varela, the performative is the experience in the present body and full consciousness. That is, to be in plenitude of mind and body during any action that is carried out. The body is actively and completely attentive, also in sync with the mind. It is an act similar to meditation in motion and constant flow. For me there is nothing more active than filming, acting in theater and directing in cinema.

On the other hand, film programming has a poetic aspect that when presenting these selected works in the public space live or virtual appears integrating each part as a whole.

For many years too, I worked at the Santiago a Mil theater festival in the production area. Here I was able to see the curatorial work of women who have lived in theater for many years, such as Carmen Romero and Evelyn Campbell, influenced by the curatorial force of André Pérez, a queer icon of Chilean theater in the 90’s. That energy to bring theater from all over the world and present these works in a single festival during the month of January gave me tools and inspiration for my own curatorial practice.

LAST THOUGHTS ON PRACTICE

FD: Making art is a necessity for me. Making art is full of contradictions. I am aware that it is impossible to have an environmental moving image practice for instance. Analog filmmaking releases toxins and in digital media there are massive data server farms to think about… 

Experimental filmmaking is a marginal pursuit. You cannot make money from it, you need a “day job.” Most festivals and screening venues do not pay artist fees and they charge submission fees as a way of financing themselves. You need money to participate. The audiences will be small, specific, insular. When the content is “political” and representation of artists’ work is diverse (if programmers choose to show it), we are still showing work to the same types of audiences.

In the academy, the canon of experimental work that students see remains predominantly male and white. If you want to pay artists and follow exhibition regulations, you need to show what is available. Few departments in Canada create rental budgets for films. This year has presented a small opportunity to change this a bit at York University where I sometimes teach as sessional faculty. The library has been purchasing digital streaming licenses for artist works because of online teaching, and they have bought everything I’ve asked them to buy which means artists get paid for their work. Otherwise it is very hard even for full-time faculty to purchase works that will only be seen in small classes.

I asked you the question about why you work in doc, experimental and fictional forms because I am interested in how artists whose work is political in content and theme address the above challenges.  I think you do that exceptionally well as an artist and as a programmer. It gives me hope for a more equitable future. It is crucial to continue to open spaces for diverse voices and to find ways to “normalize” this into the future of moving image media. I wondered too if this impulse came from your experience with theatre. In Canada, at least, people are more open to trying experimental theatre than they are experimental film. 

It seems to me that making use of conventional methods of address, even when the form is challenging, is a better approach if you want to also make change. In the early 1990’s festivals presented programmes that combined different forms. It was terrific, unexpected. Some still do, Zinebi in Bilbao for example. Documentary and category festivals too will combine programming, Planet in Focus Environmental Film Festival is one, as well as human rights festivals. Alucine Latin Film and Media Arts Festival has shown most of my work, and when experimental festivals wouldn’t. 

AA: I agree with many of the points you made in your last reflection, Franci. I think that making experimental film or experimental video is a practice that leads you to marginalization as an audiovisual maker. In this marginality there are millions of possibilities in terms of experimentation. You have the freedom to do what you want and try all possible forms of moving images. But this autonomy also entails the difficulty of surviving economically as an artist. Your audience is more specialized and reduced. Originally finding this freedom is what attracted me so much to the practice of experimental arts. In the political sense, this possibility of doing and undoing is quite anarchic and in many cases you will find experimental film and video makers who are in opposition to the sustainable economic system of industrialized cinema.

In my case, it is not only this element of freedom that attracts me to experimental cinema, its flexible quality and even breakable limits often does not apply to festival programming or the world of academia. Personally, I did my best to convey the idea of ​​free research to my students. But just as there were limitations in universities, nowadays I also receive comments that my films are hybrids of categories and do not fit into the "traditional experimental". These comments seem to me a betrayal of the idea and origin of avant-garde cinema.

There is “another attraction" that moves me and that is that the experimental is much more suggestive than traditional cinema. Cinema is very much like dreams due to its structure and editing techniques that allow you to see entire universes in just one or two hours. Flexible, poetic or experimental audiovisual productions are true portals to other dimensions. There are many filmmakers who have discovered a certain spirituality or rituality through this cinema as well. Without going any further Nathaniel Dorsky wrote about it and my friend Almagul Melinvayeva, experimental multimedia artist, used to work on shamanic video art.

I recognize that there is an art and a mastery that the French cinema of the new wave perfected very well and that today continues to impact me through new French filmmakers who execute this art to perfection. This auteur cinema that broke its own traditions at the time has its simile in the opera. I have always considered opera as a highly complex art and rupturist in its time. However, experimental cinema for me has its simile in atonal and electronic music that still lives in underground or cult worlds and finds inspiration in lesser known arts and cultures. It is the possibility of remaining as an alternative to escape and question our economic systems, social structures and dominant languages. The formats often make it more difficult to generate a critique of a social nature because the form also involves a commitment to traditions. That is why today I have appropriated the terms used by programmers who have had a hard time understanding my cinema and, as I said in a previous answer, I call it "hybrid", "no-binary" or not according to any genre because I believe that only by breaking certain traditions can I continue to explore as an experimental filmmaker.

Regarding theater as a channel for experimentation, I consider that it has given me exploration tools similar to those given by teachers of experimental media in film schools. For example, the studies of phenomenology by the French Maurice Merleau-Ponty or the Chilean Fransisco Varela have intersections applicable to the study of the moving image that at the time I used for my personal research as a performer. Merleau-Ponty was a recurring author for Rob Todd, who was my professor of experimental film at Emerson College. Kathryn Ramey, also my teacher at the time, and her crossovers with ethnography and anthropology led me to reconsider Richard Schechner and Phillip Zarilli in my analog 16mm projects. Many times I feel that I am filming with analog cameras as if I was performing Artaudian or Grotowskian exercises. But this is also due to my years of experience practicing japanese martial arts.

From theater I also carry a lot of the rebellious and political sentiment present in some of my films. One of my favorite authors is Jean Genet, who on the one hand caused controversy with his works and with his queer, homosexual, transsexual and non-binary cinema and its Mise-en-scène. Genet also had a strong discourse against the system of imprisonment and abuse of power that at the time affected immigrant groups and marginalized people in France. In Chile, theater has always been political, because it is a free space in which we can criticize the ambiguities of our governments and the entire social scheme. From here derives performance, which is much more disruptive and marginal, and which is a format that I studied in my last years while in theater school. It is not surprising that artists such as Carolee Schneemann and Barbara Hammer used performance as part of their multiple methods of artistic realization and were influenced by these practices in their cinema. Or that Chantal Akerman and Chick Strand had a strong fixation on dance and physical execution of their characters. Recently I have also seen the work of Akosua Adoma Owusu that has struck me precisely because of her observation of the Ghanaian culture through movement and a few years ago Arthur Jafa left me almost breathless in his audiovisual interventions using Bridge software to make compilations of a futuristic afro imaginary made up of millions of gestures. His work is closely related to your films Traje de Luces and It Matters What where there is also a study of the gesture that causes a profound impact on whoever observes it since you turn your audience into witnesses of a real act or enaction ( as in performance), in this case, of violence. On the other hand, the actions carried out by characters and captured in the cinema of Kevin Jerome Everson and Ben Rivers are always on the edge of anthropological observation, enaction and acting but from a more playful place and these are other spaces where performance is mixed with experimental cinema. These investigations also expand to the world of independent cinema with the works of Miranda July, João Pedro Rodrigues or Eduardo Williams or even careful documentary observations of human behavior, like the early work of Frederick Wiseman. That is why it is extremely interesting for me to research different genres and not to limit my cinema to categories dictated by festivals. When you see my work you will find all this and many other things, I hope.