Red and Shiny — Giuliana Marmo

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Red and Shiny
2019

Video installation, colour/sound 1’28’’

Red and Shiny collects video material from several public Venezuelan networks, showing moments of ovation from every swear-in ceremony in which the founder of the Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela (PSUV, the Venezuelan United Socialist Party) and former president of the country Hugo Chávez Frías, and the incumbent president Nicolás Maduro have taken part in since their party’s rise to power in 1999. This creates a loop of continuous applause in celebration of the party’s triumph throughout the years, directed towards every public television and radiophonic network to be broadcasted.
On the other side, a television with no signal reproduces another loop, a montage of audio clips from the protests against the government that have taken place regularly since the regime’s coming into power. This includes some of the most significant protests, such as those in 2014 and 2017. The installation experiments with propaganda and censorship, through the contrast between image and sound, as well as the positioning of the viewer in the space, forcing them into being passive accomplices.