Some of the subjects I have investigated and am interested in are: archives, prehistory, construction workers, rotoscoping, bacteria, loops, and personal diaries.
Degree in Plastic Arts from the Universidad de Chile. Master in Visual Arts UNAM, México. Gonzalo Aguirre works mainly with video and installation, where he explores the technical resources of audiovisual image production. The system of construction of its visuality is based on the transfer of images from one medium to another, administering the loss and the profit generated in that transit.
Gonzalo Aguirre has obtained on three occasions the National Fund of Culture and Arts of Chile, his work is part of public and private collections. He has presented his work in different emerging and renowned places in Chile, Brasil, Argentina, México, Bolivia, Colombia and Suiza.
Un animal sin importancia
HD Video / 01:52 min / 2018
A video executed with a defective printer. Numerous video sequences are printed, intervened, and re-digitalized. By means of a particular encounter between nature, human nature, and landscape, this animation proposes a prehistoric situation, both in its media and iconographic dimensions.
Tiempo libre (un episodio en la vida de Enrique Pradenas)
HD Video / 02:40 min / 2017
This piece is based on the handicrafts and drawings made in prison by the artist Enrique Pradenas Zúñiga, who was a political prisoner during Pinochet’s dictatorship. The video proposes a reflection with regard to time, material precariousness, and Pradenas’ introspection during his detention.
Video Papel: subversión de archivos audiovisuales de dominio publico
HD Video / 29:21 min / 2014
The film essay Video Papel: subversión de archivos audiovisuales de dominio publico poses a reflection regarding the use of audiovisual archives from the past in the present, addressing the sinister and melancholic dimensions that their intervention and remounting implies.
The main audiovisual sources used in this short film are from the University of Santiago’s Audiovisual Archive (formerly known as UTE) and CINEPATA.cl. All of the images were shot in Chile between 1960 and 2012.
Video Atlas
HD Video / 15:53 min / 2013
This work is organized by taking the figure of the atlas in its editorial dimension, as a space of collection, presentation, and synoptic understanding of a totality, a compendium of visual knowledge that is constructed through fragments. Related in some ways to television programs about nature, culture, and travel –to modern-day atlases–, this project features images, sound, and texts “of the world,” which are distorted through a personal gaze.
Lente máscara
HD Video / 06:03 min / 2012
A couple of friends went on a camping trip in Pisco Elqui. They got up one morning and went out on a hike. When they returned to their tent, they found that their photo camera was missing. They looked for it, but it didn’t turn up: the camera had been stolen. On the last day of their trip, after they returned from another hike, there was the camera: sitting on a rock two meters away from the tent. Back in Santiago, the photographs were developed, revealing the image of a couple of masked boys posing and holding up a dead bird.