Mercedes Bergliaffa:

July - August, 1999
audiovisual installation, (text and drawings)
Altan of the Prelature, Plasy Monastery
Center for Metamedia

We have said words,
Words to wake up the dead,
Words to make a fire
Words to sit on and smile.
From „Ashes“ in the book “The lost Ones´ Adventures.“ Alejandra Pizarnik

 

When I made the installation, the idea was to present an intimate object in a large space, almost as my personal diary. While I was in the Czech Republic, I wrote and recorded different things every day. I also intended to use in the installation materials which I found in the surroundings. But the most important thing I intended to transmit with the whole work was a certain rhythm associated to the time of the place (the monastery and the region) and the person I was observing. That´s why the words (in the sound and on the writings on the walls) were important, but the silence (in the sound and in the images) were important, but the silence (in the sound and in the images) were very important too. „I talk inside myself I should talk inside myself. Not my voice stubborn in looking as a human voice, but the other one, which testifies that I have never left the forest.“ (from „Extraction of the Stone of Madness“, by Alejandra Pizarnik, an Argentinian poet who died when she was 36, years ago.)

Mercedes Bergliaffa, Plasy 1999


Mercedes Perez Bergliaffa, a visual artist from Argentina, is involved in both art production and Art History research as they are related to social issues. She studied in Visual Arts and Art History at the National University of La Plata (UNLP), Argentina. In 1999, she effected a residency at the Center for Multimedia in the Czech Republic. In 2001, with a grant from the Antorchas Foundation she went to work at the Banff Centre for the Arts (Canada). During 2000 and 2002, she organized art exhibitions and events, and was a curatorial assistant in Argentina and Italy. She specializes in Latin American art and works at the Nacional de Avellaneda University in Buenos Aires. Mercedes was on regular artist residency in Plasy supported by UNESCO Bursary and was invited to joing the Fairy-Tales project by Denise Carvalho.