Método Ludovico

The Ludovico method is a fictitious technique of aversion therapy famously depicted in Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange. Oscar Muñoz’s work Método Ludovico is an artistic interpretation of the psychological phenomenon known as classical conditioning, a process initiated by the Russian psychologist, philosopher and physiologist Ivan Pavlov. With this technique, one is exposed to a high physical and psychological aversion to the stimulus he is forced to see.

The artwork consists of a single channel projection, based on a historical film document —Entrega de armas de la guerrilla del Llano, by Marco Tulio Lizarano—, recording the acts of delivery of weapons by the first Liberal guerrillas of Colombia in 1953. The video is projected on a custom screen: a whitish and translucent membrane that is hold tight in place by two small ophthalmic forceps called Blepharostats. These medical devices were used in the treatment of the protagonist of Kubrick’s movie, in order to keep his eyes open and force him to look, without blinking, the images that appear before him. Beside some adjustments in color and contrast, Muñoz has done few alterations to the original material. While contemplating the images, which could be confounded with the recent disarmament of the FARC, the viewer can experience a feeling of deja vu, the sensation of the past repeating itself amidst the menace of broken promises.

Editor solitario

Experimenting with photography and video, Oscar Muñoz has concerned himself with images and their power to fix memory. Editor Solitario II is a video projected onto a table showing a hand placing photographs from court records and newspapers, and portraits of literary and artistic figures, icons from the 20th century. The result is a kind of album in constant modification. The randomness and the rhythm in which the anonymous hand edits the element of our visual culture, seem like a solitaire, a memory game whose image associations are beyond us. The artist here highlights the fleeting, accidental and interchangeable character of images and their superabundance in contemporary society.

“The title references the card game ‘solitario’ (solitaire). Someone who is playing cards, but in this case, they are replaced by photographic images. I am also alluding to the ways in which the past can be thought and reconfigured, as in Aby Warburg’s Mnemosyne Atlas, which explores the idea of our innate memory through art history, or on a more personal level, the structure of family photo albums. In both cases, the order is not chronological, but particular and subjective.”

Oscar Muñoz

Intentos I y II

“A hand attempts to outline the identifying features of a portrait, but the medium used (water) and the support (a slab of cement on which direct sunlight falls) ensure that this simple task cannot be successfully carried out. By the time the brush has rendered part of the fleeting portrait, the rest of it has already evaporated, but the hand continues, oblivious, in its ceaseless process, seemingly motivated by an obstinate tenacity. A memorial is an object that functions as a focal point for commemorating a person or event, while the term is usually employed to refer to a monument through which an event or individual from the past is commemorated. The memorial proposed by Munoz is closer to the second sense of the word in that it presents images of individuals condemned to disappear into oblivion, using the on-going existence of the image as a ‘record of offences’ presented to the State by society: extracted from the great body of statistics, these individuals refuse to disappear from history.”

José Roca in Oscar Munoz, Protographies, Jeu de Paume, Paris, 2014

6 intentos (Biografías)

Biografías is a vast artistic journey that has manifested in several photographic and audiovisual projects. It is based in found negatives from anonymous street photographers — known as “fotocineros”— in the city of Cali. They used to take pictures of passers-by and provide them with a reference number to pick their portrait at the photo laboratory. Oscar Muñoz was able to acquire some unclaimed photos before their permanent destruction. Each of the selected portraits was intentionally refocused on the face. The artist developed the image using a screen-printing process, sprinkling coal dust over the surface of the water in a kitchen sink. Then he filmed the portrait, as he emptied the water of the sink, showing how the features slowly mutate and disappear into the movement of the liquid.

The work invokes a cyclic interpretation of personal histories, acting as an archival register of each portrait where the image, although unstable, is reactivated, suggesting an eternal remembrance through a metaphor of memory. The series of recordings that integrates 6 Intentos, were filmed before the main series of Biografías (2002), and are presented without further post-production. The images float on the surface of the water and seem to be detached from the photographic paper as they vanish down the drain.

Intento del jueves

Amongst Oscar Muñoz’s Intentos one can find pieces functioning as an anchor between different bodies of work that are linked through their creative processes. This is the case of Intento del jueves, recorded almost a decade after Narciso (2001) and Lacrimarios (2000-2001), yet profoundly connected to these seminal works.

In this video, a picture is printed in the surface of a water tank using coal dust. Over time, the small particles begin to drop to the bottom, thus reproducing a second image: like a reflexion or a mirror that stays still, immutable and iconic, while its referent wavers in the surface.