TEDIUM is a video art screening program, co-curated by Galeria SENDA and the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts of Moscow, which features the work of Spanish and Latin American artists with whom Galeria Senda has collaborated throughout almost thirty years: Glenda León (Cuba, 1976), Teresa Serrano (Mexico, 1936), Miguel Angel Rios (Argentina, 1953), Anna Malagrida (Spain, 1970), Isabel Rocamora (Spain, 1968), Adrián Balseca (Ecuador, 1989) and Miralda (Spain, 1942).

With this initiative, the Pushkin Museum invites Galeria SENDA to participate in the museum’s 100 WAYS TO LIVE A MINUTE, a digital project “where people who create and reflect on art share their experiences of meaningful living of time”.

While the curatorial concept behind the program revolves around the notion of “tedium” — understood as a human emotion of inquietude, that results from a particular experience of time —  the final video art selection (defined jointly by SENDA and Pushkin Museum) offers to the digital public of both institutions an overview of the work of some of the most interesting artists from the Ibero-American artistic panorama, who employ the medium of video to explore intimate themes or to address identity, inquietudes and social matters.

“All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone,” said the seventeenth-century theologist and scientist Blaise Pascale. And yet, these days, we are learning not to fear the silence of time. Confined in our domestic space and forced to reduce our social life and work activity, we experience time’s most unexpected dimensions. Dealing with an unknown pacing of seconds, minutes, hours and days, we are learning to domesticate tedium — an intimate human emotion that has been an object of fascination and exploration of poets and philosophers for centuries — from Lucrecio to Leopardi, to Baudelaire and Oscar Wilde, amongst many others. In this instance, we might also discover that tedium can be a prelude for new ideas, unexpected sense of awareness or artistic inspiration.

Art can teach us a lot about unconventional ways of conceiving and experiencing time. In particular, video art is devoted to a distinct aesthetic (and politics) of time perception, often recalling the emotion of tedium: it breaks with the established modes of moving image storytelling of television and cinema, offering unconventional narrative timing to the eyes and the hears. In some way, video art turns us into pensive spectators, inclined to the patient awaiting of the unexpected, which might never come.

SENDA’s passion for video art is cultivated by supporting artists that work with video and moving images techniques, as well as by fomenting the culture of collecting video art in different ways. For instance, the director of SENDA, Carlos Durán, is the co-founder of the LOOP Barcelona festival and fair, a polyhedric international event, entirely dedicated to moving images arts. Celebrating its 18th edition in November 2020, LOOP has turned Barcelona into a reference of the international video art scene.

The video works featured in TEDIUM will be exclusively broadcasted by Pushkin Museum as part of their 100 WAYS TO LIVE A MINUTE on-line project, in a section, specially designed for this collaboration, of the website https://100waystoliveaminute.pushkinmuseum.art/?lang=en.

TEDIUM will unfold in three appointments: Saturday, May 30, Wednesday June 3, and Saturday June 6. Each day, at 19.00 Moscow time, a series of video artworks will be presented to the public and made available to be watched for 24 hours.

Saturday, May 30 (19:00 Moscow time  / 18:00 Barcelona time)

Glenda León (Cuba, 1976):

Hablando con Dios / Talking to God (2018)

Espejismo II / Mirage II (2019)       

Cada Respiro II  / Each Breath II (2015) 

Suspension / Suspension (2003) 

Anna Malagrida (Spain, 1970):

_El Limpiador de Cristales / The Window Cleaner (2010)

_Frontera / Border (2009)

_Danza de Mujer  / Woman Dance (2007)

Wednesday, June 3 (19:00 Moscow time  / 18:00 Barcelona time)

Adrian Balseca (Ecuador, 1989):

_Grabador Fantasma / Phantom Recorder (2018)

_Suspensión I  / Suspension I (2019) 

_Medio Camino  / Halfway (2010)

Miguel Ángel Ríos (Argentina, 1943):

_Landlocked (2014)

_Piedras Blancas / White Stones(2014)

_Mulas / Mules (2014)

Saturday, June 6 (19:00 Moscow time  / 18:00 Barcelona time)

Isabel Rocamora (Spain, 1968):

_Horizonte de Exilio / Horizon of Exile (2007)

Teresa Serrano (Mexico, 1936):

_A Room of Her Own (2003)

Miralda (Spain, 1955):

_Apocalypse Lamb New York (1989–2018)

_Apocalypse Lamb Barcelona (1997–2018)