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Ivan Argote

Reddishblue Memories

Doc. expérimental | 16mm | couleur | 11:52 | Colombie, France | 2017

Reddishblue Memories by Iván Argote, uses the artist’s affective memories as part of an ongoing project of research and speculation based on a rumor associated with the history of George Eastman’s Kodak company, and its switch from Kodachrome to Ektachrome. This was allegedly done for ideological reasons : in the late 1960’s they realized that Kodachrome pictures turned reddish with time, and in the context of Cold War decided that the United States’ archives could not end up with the enemy’s color, and so developed the Ektachrome process, in which pictures eventually turn blue. The film, which was made in Ukraine as part of an art exhibition, is narrated simultaneously in Ukrainian by Oxana Shachko founder of Femen, and in Spanish by Ivan Argote himself. In the film, many issues concerning the relationship in between colors and politics raise, as orange revolution, white and black armies, purple and red revolutions in South America.

Iván Argote (Bogotá, 1983, lives in Paris) works explore the relationship in between history, politics and the construction of our own subjectivities. His films, sculptures, videos, collages, and public space installations temps to generate questions about how we relate to the others, to the state, to patrimony and traditions. His works are critics, sometimes anti-establishment, and deal with the idea of bringing affects to the politics, and politics to the affects with a strong and tender tone.