Guillermo Cifuentes’ Video-Art: Language of Rootlessness

Authors

  • Romina Arata de Nordenflycht Universidad de Chile
  • Natalia Cabrera Figueroa Universidad de Chile
  • Catalina Donoso Knaudt Universidad de Chile

Abstract

In Chilean transition to democracy, video cameras, formerly used by artists in their quest for social and political denunciation, have been taken by a new generation of audiovisual artists, mostly trained in colleges. Influenced by conceptualist trends, they develop a common rhetoric, different from previous generation because of their experimentation of technical possibilities that this format can provide. Within this generation Guillermo Cifuentes appears as a somewhat diffuse figure, who suddenly died in 2007, not well known by public audience. This paper aims to list Cifuentes' works in video format and identify its characteristic features. W estate that, as he developed a particular language, he is an important author in Chilean art video.

Keywords:

Guillermo Cifuentes, video art, experimental video, Chile