UNCLASSIFIED
single-channel HD video (no audio)
duration: 6:02 min
2020
This video incorporates text from a 1952 U.S. government report of an unidentified flying object in Mayagüez, Puerto Rico. The work takes advantage of the inaccuracies of the optical character reader (OCR) used to convert a scanned image of the aged typewritten document into text.
Artist statement:
I am engaged in an interdisciplinary practice through which I examine the way in which we perceive and process information, often dealing with concepts of dislocation, mapping, and memory. My projects incorporate diverse strategies and approaches, including mapping and the sampling of found and collected materials such as text, maps, and data. My installation works take over the exhibition space as one to be navigated through perceptual shifts. My non-representational works are often filled with visual noise, where marks seem to amass, connect, and collide. I also explore displacement and dislocation through text-based projects that explore formal and phonetic twists, non-linear narratives, code-switching, and information overload. Just as in my installations and two-dimensional works, these text-based projects invite us to reflect on the complexities of the mind, the fragility of memory, and the fragmented manner in which we perceive the world around us. I find this to be of particular significance as we try to cope with a convoluted world in an age that is as much about data overload and hyperconnectivity as it is about distancing and dissociation.
Bio:
Nayda Collazo-Llorens is a Puerto Rican artist engaged in an interdisciplinary practice that incorporates multiple mediums, including animation and video, drawing, printmedia, and installation works. She earned an MFA from New York University, a BFA from Massachusetts College of Art and Design, and is a former Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant recipient. Her work has been exhibited at El Museo del Barrio in New York City; The Mattress Factory in Pittsburgh; Museum of Latin American Art in Long Beach, California; Frost Art Museum in Miami, Florida; Museo de Arte Contemporáneo in San Juan, Puerto Rico; Museo Universitario del Chopo in Mexico City; and The Dowse Art Museum, Lower Hutt, New Zealand, among others. Her work is featured in Relational Undercurrents: Contemporary Art of the Caribbean Archipelago, published by Duke University Press; A to Z of Caribbean Art, published by Robert & Christopher in Trinidad & Tobago; and The Dark Would: Language Art Anthology, published by Apple Pie in the UK. She currently lives and works in Kalamazoo, Michigan.
17 Days Video Series 