New Volume from Getty Research Institute’s Project on Latin American Video Art

Beginning in the 1970s and 1980s, the delayed arrival of the video medium in Latin America provided an important tool for the expression of dissent during an era dominated by military-regime governments.

Given the close relationship between those regimes and the media conglomerates controlling television broadcasting, the portable video camera represented a decentralized media outlet for voicing opposition to State violence. Video art in Latin America was—and still is—closely related to the desire for social change. Themes related to gender, ethnic, and racial identity as well as the consequences of social inequality and ecological disasters have been fundamental to many artists’ practices.

Encounters in Video Art in Latin America (Getty Research Institute, $65) explores the history and current state of artistic experimentation with video throughout Latin America. Departing from the relatively small body of existing scholarship in English, much of which focuses on individual countries, this volume approaches the topic thematically, positioning video artworks from different periods and regions throughout Latin America in dialogue with each other. Organized in four broad sections—Encounters, Networks and Archives, Memory and Crisis, and Indigenous Perspectives—the book’s essays and interviews encourage readers to examine the medium of video across varied chronologies and geographies.