YOSHUA OKÓN

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LAGO BOLSENA, 2004

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Video Installation.
3 channels.
3 synchronized projections.
Sound.
Duration: 12:47 minutes, loop.
Dimensions: variable.

For Lago Bolsena, Okón worked with residents from Santa Julia, a supposedly ill-reputed and so-called dangerous neighborhood in Mexico City. After going door to door, all the neighbors from one block of Lago Bolsena Street agreed to participate in a collaborative performance in which they played exotic "savages" from an isolated community, documented by Okón and the camera crew, who posed as anthropologists studying the tribe's rituals and customs.

The resulting video is displayed on three horizontally adjoining projections: the left channel a wide-shot, the middle shows a medium shot, and on the right is an extreme close-up. This zoom-like form is a stand-in for the scientific method of traditional anthropology, which moves deductively from the particular (micro) to the general (macro).