The black-and-white film Everness (titled for a Borges poem about infinity) liberally interprets a scene from James Joyceʼ s “The Dead,” replacing Joyceʼ s elderly protagonists with a sexy young couple, and introducing a more self-consciously intellectual tone. Where Joyceʼ s story revolves around two Irish ballads sung by the characters, Cesarco alternates the narrative scenes with shots of records playing two solemn songs, one Brazilian, one Spanish.
The film opens with a young man offering his theory of tragedy, which he defines as “the arrival of an enigmatic and supernatural message that the hero fails to fully and timely comprehend.” In his description, this message contains “a word that has the power to change oneʼ s life.” This is followed by a tense scene featuring the young man and his silent, standoffish wife that remakes the final section of Joyceʼ s story. In the original passage, the narrator broods over mortality and despairs for his marriage after learning about his wifeʼ s vivid memories of a childhood love, Michael Furey, who died after leaving his sickbed for just a glimpse of her face. Whether or not we recognize the source, which is not identified, it is as if weʼ ve come into an independent film partway through, though the male protagonistʼ s jealousy and insecurity are clear enough. In the final scene, the young couple share breakfast silently and with seeming tenderness. How or whether their relationship has been restored is unclear, as is the import for the couple of the opening discourse on tragedy. Even for viewers unaware of the workʼ s translation of an Irish short story to a Spanish-language high-concept art piece, the filmʼ s extended takes and narrative ambiguities are satisfying and intriguing.
Addressing a far more daunting subject is the color film Zeide Isaac,which features the artistʼ s 94-yearold grandfather (zeide in Yiddish), a Holocaust survivor who reads a thoughtful but troubling text on which the two collaborated. We see the old man in a modest domestic setting, silently reading or gazing into the camera, while in a voiceover he expresses the will to testify to the campsʼ horrors, but also acknowledges the limits of testimony. Though every experience of the camps is unique, he acknowledges, each narration of those events is codified; facts and memory compete, and, over time, retellings change memory itself. We may regret the passing of the Holocaustʼ s last survivors, as Joyceʼ s narrator in “The Dead” dreads his own demise. But even the survivorsʼ memories, Cesarco argues, are already corrupted by the very act of their recitation.Text by Brian Boucher
Alejandro Cesarco (Uruguay, 1975) lives and Works in New York. His work has been shown in museums and gallerys in USA, South America and Europe. He has curated exhibitions in the United States, Uruguay, Argentina and a project for the 6th Mercosur Biennial, Porto Alegre, Brazil (2007).
In his latest New York solo, the young New York-based Uruguayan artist exhibited two short 16mm films transferred to DVD, both in Spanish (with English subtitles), that address literature and translation, history and memory. “Two Films” coincided with his exhibition “Three Works” at Tanya Leighton in Berlin. Both included the 2008 film Everness (12 minutes), which in New York was shown along with the 6-minute 2009 film Zeide Isaac.
www.cesarco.info