El largo invierno, a video work that lies somewhere between an autobiography and a personal manifesto, narrates in six acts the influence that the mass media have exercised on the author, Bajo Ibáñez. This is a media related autobiography in which memories of his actual life are confused with those of his televisual life.

With El largo invierno Bajo Ibáñez offers us his last will in video format and divided into six parts. Like all last wills, it implicitly portrays the personal affinities of those to whom the author offers his legacy, and by omission, those to whom he has denied it. He enumerates six reasons behind his silence and promises that “this time, it will be different”.

Personal memories are blended in with the common memory constructed by the mass media. Events that take place beyond space and time are incorporated by the onlooker into his own imaginary, a personal yet, thanks to television, global entity. There is nevertheless a basic concern in this video: no matter how cruel images get, the media always render them trivial, superficial, and empty. El largo invierno attempts to confirm this hypothesis and underscores it with the soundtrack. The latter includes dramatic moments, voices expressing the author’s thoughts, and pop melodies and Nat King Cole tunes that strongly contrast with what is being shown on screen.

In this video Bajo Ibáñez examines, names and discerns the basis of his videographic emotions. He observes and shows the effects that catastrophes provoked by wars caused by the decisions of the powerful have on the general population and how this makes him feel sadness, frustration, repulsion, pain and suffering, after which he withdraws into a life of silence. Silence is here thus a sign of loyalty to the world and to his own work. Bajo Ibáñez has used words and images to express his rage, and yet he feels disenchanted. Not even the small joys of life, such as the possibility of having been born when the Apollo I reached the moon, make him feel positive, “I wouldn’t be me, I would be an other”. As a solution to the conflict he puts a message in a bottle and throws it into the sea (secretly hoping that someone will pick it up and save him).