2022
Flux Club Mondays

ARTURO BASTÓN

FLUXCLUB

Monday, April 25th at 8 pm
Duration: 90 min
Free entrance

Organized by HABITUAL VIDEO TEAM

fluxfestival.org
www.habitualvideoteam.org

Session 6

ARTURO BASTÓN

Born in Mexico City (1967), he studied photography, motion graphics, 3D animation and film in unorthodox and non-academic ways. He began his career in audiovisuals at a very young age, working in the production departments of various advertising production companies, and followed this with collaborations with the arts departments of various feature films, notably El Patrullero by Alex Cox and Beat by Gary Walcow, among others.

In pursuit of a youthful romance, he moved to Barcelona in 1995, where he met the founders of La Fura dels Baus. With them he worked creating interactive video models for the devising of their first operas. Through this collaboration he met Manuel Huerga, who incorporated him into the team for his television project, the (at the time) just breaking BTV (Barcelona Televisió), a local avant-garde channel that, for a few years, broke with preconceptions of what television should be. 

By the end of BTV’s golden period (1997-2003) and after creating, together with Kikol Grau, Félix Pérez-Hita and Andrés Hispano Gabinete de crisis. Un programa de televisión que no verá en televisión (special mention at the Zemos98 Festival and winner of the 1st Animalario Festival in Seville, 2007), he began working as a freelance editor, eventually acquiring his current and adored addiction to making videoclips for international bands.

presentation

This latest session brings together a selection of videoclips made by Arturo Bastón over the past few years. In addition to his technique (based on manipulation, rotoscoping, animation and the recontextualisation of videographic material from a varied range of sources) the common denominators for all these videos could be, perhaps, his visceral, relaxed aesthetics, his latent d-i-y spirit, a lack of respect towards (or rather an ignorance of) traditional videoclip formats and, perhaps also, a certain nostalgia for psychedelia. 

 

programme

Renaldo & The Loaf_Optimism
2018_4:52 min_UK

This video is about the kind of people who are always strangely happy for no apparent reason.


Frankie and the Witch Fingers_Michaeldose
2021_2:20 min_USA

The song title refers to the consumption of microdoses of LSD. The video attempts to portray a society where this practice has become common and universally accepted.


Oh Sees_The Daily Heavy
2019_7:53 min_USA

Earth is hit by an alien bacterium that forces its inhabitants to dance, fornicate and fight, with the latter causing the collapse of all established systems. 


Lastryko_Firmament
2020_5:22 min_Poland

A faraway planet is invaded by electromagnetic waves that eventually alter the brains of its strange inhabitants. 


Gale forces_Fly Agaric
2020_4:11 min_USA

A short incursion into the nearest woodlands to enjoy some Amanita Muscaria (Fly Agaric).


Death Valley Girls_Hypnagogia
2020_4:58 min_USA

Hypnagogia aims to portray a mystic dream but also a universal enchantment. Perhaps best understood as an audiovisual Totem.


Yo No Se_TerraformÇ
2021_5:57 min_UK

By juxtaposing Ivan the Terrible and Etheria (the planet of He-Man), Terraform posits the idea that evil and tyranny come from outer space.


Brigid Dawson & The Mother’s Network_Is the Season For New Incarnations
2020_5:58 min_USA/UK

Graphic devices common to occult sciences, sacred geometries and meditation designs, adapted and mixed, help to illustrate the relation between the forces of nature and human beings’ stupid lust for power. 


Capsula_Esferas
2021_4:20 min_Spain/Argentina

The members of music band Capsula become shamans of the future and celebrate a musical ritual to penetrate into the multiverse.

A Place To Bury Strangers_Ringing Bells
2022_2:57 min_USA

The story of a neural experiment that went wrong leading to fatal and irreversible consequences.  


Dirty Sound Magnet_Sunday Drama
2022_5:45 min_Switzerland

The seed of life goes on an epic journey that begins with the Big Bang, puts forward the Panspermia theory, covers the evolution and subsequent annihilation of life on planet Earth and ends with the search for better luck in some other galaxy. 


FLUX CLUB celebrates its 13th season at the Antic Teatre and the 22nd anniversary of its creation in 2000.

This is a fortnightly video programme that reflects the vitality of video creation in Barcelona. It hosts all kinds of sessions with screenings, video performances, and debates offering direct contact between audiences and video creators. The sessions focus on a range of subjects, from monographics of well-known directors to specific themes such as video dance and video poetry, or collective sessions dedicated to emerging authors.

The programme is open to everything currently going on in the field of video in Barcelona, complementing the FLUX Video Auteur Festival with its content and extending its sphere of influence beyond the dates of the festival, which takes place in December.


HABITUAL VIDEO TEAM is a non-profit association that has as its main objective the promotion of activities related to the visual arts, specifically, video art: www.habitualvideoteam.org.

A fundamental area of their work is the organisation of festivals, cycles and video shows, such as the FLUX Video Auteur Festival: www.fluxfestival.org, and the INFLUX Audiovisual Performing Arts Festival: www.influxfestival.org.

Another area of Habitual Video Team’s activity is video documentation of cultural events mainly related to experimental music and poetry performances. In 2012 they launched the SUMMA project in order to convert this audiovisual heritage (more than 1000 recordings) into a non-profit online video archive: www.summa-hvt.org.

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