MAP 2.0.1

Joan Leandre


When any audiovisual material, whether television or film, goes through Leandre’s grinder, it automatically becomes something else. Every image, irrespective of its origin, when it is inserted into one of the artist’s works, is imbued with a specific aesthetics and assumes an appearance very distant from its original one. The exercise in montage, or rather “mega montage” – as is stated in its title – , that constitutes this piece, manages to transform a series of media sources into a composite of light and sound that fit into the rhythm imposed by the artist. From that moment onwards, they are equipped with a double capacity: on the one hand, their original meaning is forever blanked out, as well as any links that could refer back to it, and, on the other hand, by means of the montage and disassemblage processes that the author himself inflicts on these sources, new possibilities of meaning appear. This multiplicity of meaning has the effect of inserting these same images into new and unexpected levels of interpretation.

Map 2.0 is divided into two main sections: analog self reflection and intensive frame attack. Both compilations make up a broadcasting frame that Leandre has called BRCW Scape, which is nothing else than a private and imaginary broadcasting channel, a place from which to broadcast his own personal understanding of what entertainment is.

The first partition (which is in nature close to a music score) consists of a video-scratch exercise very similar to that practiced by DJs in music. In this part of the video we are confronted with a compilation of fragments taken out of different media sources: television ads, horror films, etc. Nothing is what it was at first after being inserted into the rhythmic pattern under which the different images are combined, and under the specific monochrome aesthetics which is imposed on all images. The intentions with which these images were originally created, whatever these were, are hereby supplanted by a feeling of anguish and desperation.

A simple bag of crisps in a television ad or a famous soft drink being poured over some ice cubes, instantly become something else: an opaque mass that, as it takes control of our screens, threatens us with its mere presence.

The second part of this video affords us a very similar experience to the previous one, even though it has been edited with a different rhythm. On this occasion, the main part of the composition is based on the deconstruction of a chase scene in a horror film. In the dialogues we hear the desperate scream of someone who is trapped in a world of images which can’t be understood nor controlled. intensive frame attack is precisely that, an attack. We, the spectators, are being attacked by the image. We want to escape (BRCW Scape), get out of there, return to a different signifying field, where things are exactly what they appear to be; but we can’t, there is no turning back. Time goes by (the 13 minutes that this video lasts) and the attack becomes more and more intense: “it is just behind me”, screams the screen, and you know, without any doubt, that it is you they are referring to.

Technical datasheet

  • Title: MAP 2.0.1
  • Direction: Joan Leandre
  • Production: 1995.
  • Duration: 00:12:56
  • Formats: Betacam Digital - DVD
  • TV systems: PAL
  • License: Copyright