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Carlos Casas: Where Documentary Meets Experimental Film

The Catalan artist’s new work turns landscapes into otherworldly, eerie short films.

While landscapes can be undeniably beautiful, they can also hold a bleak power, especially in desolate places that experience extreme conditions. But even then, when you first view them they become objects of contemplation invoking a sensation of the sublime—however if you place yourself in the vista and not only see it, but also listen to and feel it, capturing its atmospheric qualities, then that's akin to one of Carlos Casas' films.

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The Catalan artist's two latest works are video edits and reinterpretations of some of the many research materials he’s been gathering since 2000. His attraction to landscapes started with the END trilogy, where he met inhabitants from the world's most extreme landscapes: Tierra del Fuego in Patagonia, the Aral Sea in Uzbekistan, and the coast of Siberia. “I was interested in the collective imagery of those places and their mythical concept for the end of the world” explains Casas, who released the last part of the trilogy in 2008. They’re documentaries with few words that take a close look into the routine of three men and their daily challenges to survive extreme cold and distance.

This year the artist revisited those works, dedicating his time to reviewing and reinterpreting images and sounds of the landscapes recorded in the locations where he produced END, along with visiting additional countries like the Philippines. From this he developed the Fieldworks series, which features landscapes edited with natural sounds mixed with radio frequencies to “reach another dimension.” "I see this work as some sort of post-structuralist movie where documentary meets experimental film," Casas states.

Fieldworks

zamboanga_Philipines Fieldworks

Images and sound captured in Zamboanga city Mindanao, Philipines during sunset.

Glitter

The sunlight is reflected on the only piece of water left in the Aral Sea creating the formal port of the city of Moynak. The multicolored effect is produced by the high density of the mineral nutrients and chemical pollutants in the lake.

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War and Peace

During a performance at the Cervantes Institute in London last month, the artist released War and Peace, a series of videos to honor the 1965 Soviet movie of the Tolstoy novel, by Russian Sergei Bondarchuk. Looking like a Fieldworks sequel, the landscapes remain but they are slowly twisted and start to gain new contexts though the sound effects created by Casas.

In Summer a sunny mountain landscape is slowly turned into an arid, creepy scene.

In

Fall

water droplets fall from twigs, a river flows, the sun sets and the sound emphasizes the feeling of an impending end.

Casas will be in Brazil for the closure of Rio de Janeiro's Multiplicidade festival on November 26th where he will compose live soundtracks for the END trilogy films with the Brazilian group Chelpa Ferro.