Transmission

Beatriz Santiago Muñoz

05 Apr - 22 May 2014

Post-Military Cinema
BEATRIZ SANTIAGO MUÑOZ
Post-Military Cinema
5 April - 22 May 2014

Transmission are delighted to present the first exhibition in Glasgow of Beatriz Santiago Muñoz, included as part of the Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art. Post-Military Cinema follows Santiago Muñoz’s six-week residency at the gallery last year.

Post-Military Cinema consists of objects, recordings and moving-image works pertaining to Ceiba, a coastal town in Puerto Rico. Ceiba was home to Roosevelt Roads, a US Naval Base which remained operational until a decade ago, having occupied Puerto Rican land for over sixty years. Many animal and plant species have begun to return to the base, reclaiming the landscape transformed by oil tanks and bombing. Through entropic forces and life without us, it is becoming something else. The works presented look at the indeterminacy of what that elsewhere might be, how it behaves and what images it creates. Having been accustomed to thinking of Ceiba as a place where an event (the event of the bombing, warfare, military industry) has ceased, we might behave as if we were waiting for another event of the same scale and form. In reality, there are an infinite number of events taking place, the majority of these outside of politics or ideology, free of symbolic weight. Post-Military Cinema engages us in looking at these events taking place right now: what do we see and how do we see them?

The project hopes to examine the various connections between the phenomenon observed in Ceiba, and still-existing military bases in Scotland, in particular Faslane, a naval base located 25 miles north-west of Glasgow. There will be a 12’’ vinyl publication accompanying the exhibition with recordings from both Ceiba and Faslane available from the 17th April. Recorded and edited by Bradley Davies (Faslane) and Joel Rodríguez (Ceiba).

Based in Puerto Rico, Santiago Muñoz often works through long periods of observation and documentation, in which the camera is present as an object with social implications and as an instrument mediating aesthetic thought. Her films and videos focus on specific social structures or events that she transforms into collaborative work, performance and moving image. Santiago Muñoz’s recent work has been concerned with the material and physical trace of abstract political ideas, particularly post-military spaces, and the relationship of new landscapes to social forms.
 

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