Residing in the Borderlands

For TAKE X of our year-long, monthly film series RESIDING IN THE BORDERLANDS, we are excited to have Eli Cortiñas with us for the screening of this iconic video diary and experimental film documenting personal and world changes over more than a decade.

Eli explains her choice of films as follows: “What strongly resonates with me is Hershman’s ability to translate the fragmentary self into a visual code that seems highly fictional, staged and controlled, and incredibly intimate and sincere. The Electronic Diaries is a wonderful and long-term search for personal identity. Hershman’s proto-avatar breaks and defies the infamous fourth wall, addressing us in an almost confessional manner, and switching its aspect from the expected and imposed image of what a woman is ‘supposed’ to represent to the self-representation of a woman’s interior. The persistent engagement with the surface of the female face finds its analogy in the surface of the medium itself. These diaries unfold a simultaneous double archaeology of personal and technical developments over the course of twelve years.”   

Eli Cortiñas is a video artist of Cuban descent, born in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. Her artistic practice can be located within the appropriation tradition, using already existing cinema to de- and re-construct identities as well as narratives according to new discourses. Her collage-like video essays and installations mix found imagery with documentary strategies. She was a guest professor at the Art Academy Kassel and the Art Academy Mainz and is currently a professor at the University of Art Braunschweig. Her work has been presented in solo and group exhibitions at museums such as Museum Ludwig, Centro Atlántico de Arte Moderno, and Centre Pompidou, as well as in international Biennials and festivals such as the Riga Biennale and the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen. She lives and works in Berlin.