Antoni Muntadas - La siesta, The Nap, Dutje

La Siesta, The Nap, Dutje, 1995

Author: Antoni Muntadas

Video installation.

1 armchair, white sheet, 1 video projector, 1 DVD player, 1 sound system with two speakers.

Duration: 8 minute loop.

Project created for the exhibition Beyond the Bridge: Joris Ivens; Source for Media Artists, - Netherlands Film Museum in Amsterdam - where 6 multidisciplinary artists of different ages and origins were invited to make a unique creation that referred in some way to the personality and the work of the Dutch film-maker Joris Ivens (1898-1989).

La Siesta is an audio-visual self-portrait that combines extracts of the filmography work of Joris Ivens. The common theme is the nap as a period of rest and relaxation, during which brief fragments of Ivens' filmography is inserted, the most experimental and avant-garde fragments, as if they were moments from a dream or fleeting memories. The outcome is the return to reality and to the activity interrupted. A reflection on aesthetics and the ethics of creation, on subjectiveness and objectiveness, on experimentation and communication. For example, when he starts to consider the working world and its struggles or other political issues, there is a simultaneous formal concern for the image, the strength of the composition and the rhythm of the composition.

This is one of Muntadas' performances that is most difficult to classify. It is a moment of relaxation and introspective meditation. The title at the beginning of the video states that An art work is always autobiographical and this phrase defines the spirit of the piece, although he wouldn't have thought this way some years prior. This piece is not about Ivens nor is it exactly an homage, but rather it combines fragments of several of his films in order to reconsider certain issues and attitudes that, as desired by the project organisers, may lead a modern multimedia artist to feel close to the concerns, the commitment and the various stages that characterise the profile of that great film-maker.

This video-installation that the artist created in 1995 was presented at the 7th Havana Biennial in November 2000 and formed part of a monographic exhibition titled Entre/Between which took place in the Reina Sofía National Art Center from November 22nd 2011 to March 26th 2012.