Video part of Casado’s series “PINK”. It has never been shown publicly before. This poem accompanies the video:
Pink / 2021
You are a kid,
and a man
who likes to play with pink,
but pinky war stuff.
Until it kills you.
Tag: jose carlos casado
Casado first created this artwork as an interactive video installation (v01, 2001). It consists of two video screens in which characters poetically “communicate” with each other’s screens via a “virtual black hole”. This version (v04, also from 2001), eliminates the physical elements of the installation and shows the two videos but in one screen.
The different versions of this artwork were shown in Casado’s solo shows at the Picasso Foundation in Spain (2002), Postmasters Gallery in New York (2004) — and more than 20 international New Media festivals.
To read more about the artwork, read this essay (winner of the MIT Excellence Award) by José Carlos Casado & Harkaitz Cano, and this one by Fernando Castro, published in Picasso Foundation’s catalog from Casado’s solo show.
(The 1080p video file attached to this NFT has been re-rendered in 2021 for archival purposes. The original videos were 720 x 480 each transferred to mini-DV and Beta tape).
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ArcticMelt
Casado created this video from footage he filmed in an artist residency in the Arctic Circle in 2014 while on board a sailing boat.
This poem accompanies the video:
Arctic Ghost / 2021
I woke up in the Arctic,
the 🐉 was still next to me.
🤷🏽♂️
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I’ll Make America Great Again
Casado’s created a video to reflect on the 2016 USA elections. He was one of the few pessimistic who thought Trump was a real possibility. Unfortunately, it happened. Based on Trump’s temperament and implausible actions, this video has become even more relevant after becoming a former President.
The video is an interpretation based on the choreography from the famous Michael Jackson’s music video: Thriller.
This poem accompanies the video:
TRUMP / 2017
He dances like a zombie, in a constant loop.
He is tired. His suit is too small.
His butt is naked.
His shadow looms large.
His hair is all over the place.
His tiny hands can’t hold his message.
He is on a stage, alone, with nothing coherent to say.
His reflection is naked, but we can’t see anything
minimally exciting.
Only his tiring message.
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Sacrifice.v01
This artwork was created by Casado during his fellowship residency at Anderson Ranch Center.
This video is the first artwork of a series titled Sacrifice, inspired by violent political events and the body in movement. Created in 3D, rendering human skin as an extreme expression—an ecstasy of the body, an explosion of colors and an exaggeration of shapes—the artworks are a combination of illusion and reality, a violent dance of the mind, and an ironic game with multiple layers of perception. Through the video we encounter the character in various states of ecstasy and prostration, pleasure and pain, victory and defeat. The body is not only violent, it is also erotic: “In essence, the domain of eroticism is the domain of violence,” said Georges Bataille.
Casado created the texture in the character macro-photographing human skin, and then processing the photos through 3D software.
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Aliens with Extraordinary Abilities.v04
Balas / 2021
Pistols, escopetas, balas, rifles, pistolas, balas.
Ruido en mis tímpanos, sheets que rebotan,
ecos de machos incansables con erected pezones.
Schools, supermercados, churches, clubs, conciertos,
cuerpos derrotados, mentes cerradas,
balas.
Para!
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Aliens with Extraordinary Abilities.v02
This artwork was created by Casado during his fellowship residency at Vermont Studio Center.
Excerpt from essay by Ona Mirkinson:
“In what seems to be a different series, but still under the same title and concept, there is a nude male figure, being shattered with bullets, accepting wounds to the back with seemingly little consequence. After the first hit, the figure evens straightens his posture in a subtle gesture that implies he is ready, willing, and able to stand firm and unscathed in spite of the onslaught.
The figure’s physical reactions, two hands reaching around to knead the unharmed flesh around the abrasions indicate a sense of self-soothing resistance—the figure acknowledges the assault but sits firm. In this way, while the nudity represents vulnerability, the hands moving over flesh communicate strength, a strength infused with self-possession and a sense of poised eroticism. In the end the figure rises up from his perch unscathed, his wounds released from his back and traveled up to a white wall. In this way, an assault on flesh bypasses its intended target and becomes art. Again Casado’s tongue teases us from the flesh of his cheek. The sheer ridiculousness of it all becomes tangible, perceptible, and undeniable.”
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Aliens with Extraordinary Abilities.v01d
This artwork was created by Casado during his fellowship residency at Vermont Studio Center.
Excerpt from essay by Ona Mirkinson:
“Multimedia artist José Carlos Casado’s Aliens with Extraordinary Abilities series positions us within the borders of a deliberately conflicted landscape. Casado presents a world in which digital video and 3D animations merge in a series that explores the discomfort of ones own nature; a world that is infatuated with the duality of disaffection; a world that challenges notions of assumed reality. Casado’s title, which most certainly refers to laws regarding non-immigrant Visas for non-citizens seeking work in their desired fields within the United States, guides these negations and prepares us for an experience of reimagining an existence beyond some privileged realm of any given. Casado’s vision operates within a set of prearranged rules, but they are in opposition to a previously agreed upon reality. An elephant could belong in front of a river in one of Casado’s frames, but—having been re-imagined by Casado’s particular sensibilities, having been slowed and relegated to repetitive languid movements— it undoubtedly doesn’t belong. We cannot help but surmise this as representative of Casado’s own conflicted tensions: between an assumptive certainty and personal truth, between an advantaged notion of belonging and a reality of alienation.”
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Aliens with Extraordinary Abilities.v01b
This artwork was created by Casado during his fellowship residency at Vermont Studio Center.
Excerpt from essay by Ona Mirkinson:
“Multimedia artist José Carlos Casado’s Aliens with Extraordinary Abilities series positions us within the borders of a deliberately conflicted landscape. Casado presents a world in which digital video and 3D animations merge in a series that explores the discomfort of ones own nature; a world that is infatuated with the duality of disaffection; a world that challenges notions of assumed reality. Casado’s title, which most certainly refers to laws regarding non-immigrant Visas for non-citizens seeking work in their desired fields within the United States, guides these negations and prepares us for an experience of reimagining an existence beyond some privileged realm of any given. Casado’s vision operates within a set of prearranged rules, but they are in opposition to a previously agreed upon reality. An elephant could belong in front of a river in one of Casado’s frames, but—having been re-imagined by Casado’s particular sensibilities, having been slowed and relegated to repetitive languid movements— it undoubtedly doesn’t belong. We cannot help but surmise this as representative of Casado’s own conflicted tensions: between an assumptive certainty and personal truth, between an advantaged notion of belonging and a reality of alienation.”
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Matrix.v00
Infamous babies were used for the first ever internet animations. Casado’s one in 2006 take it a step, or dozens forward. Based on his previous series newbody where he researches the science of clones, and artificial reproduction.