Overview
As part of And what it became is not what it is now, Joaquin Aras’ two-channel video Snuff 1976 will be screened at the Electric Cinema, the oldest working cinema in the UK.
In Snuff 1976, Aras remakes the entire soundtrack to the Northern American low budget 1976 film Snuff, which was filmed in Argentina. Capitalising on the myth of snuff films in Latin America and during Argentina’s most violent years, the film was promoted as showing a real murder on screen, marketed with the tagline ‘The film that could only be made in South America, where life is cheap’. In his practice Aras investigates the potential of unearthing, interrupting, resisting and remaking film histories, often challenging historic omissions and hegemonic narratives. In the 1976 film Snuff, the original voices were dubbed from Spanish into English and the whole cast was from Argentina, though their names were not credited and the producers reported that they disappeared after the making of the film.
For Snuff 1976 Aras researched and met with original cast members, making the Argentine remake of the entire soundtrack including voices, music and sound effects. A two-channel video, the film Snuff plays through one channel and the process of producing the remake of the soundtrack in the other, returning the film to its original language and with a few sentences from one of the film’s actresses, reminds audiences that the film and its story was never real, only ever a fiction.
Please note that the original 1976 film Snuff has an 18 rating and does include sex and nudity, violence and gore. Over 18’s only. To book your free ticket please go to Eventbrite.
Joaquín Aras is an artist based in Buenos Aires, Argentina (b. 1985). He was recently selected for the CCA Kitakyushu Fellowship Program 2018-2019 (Japan) and recent exhibitions include solo exhibitions at Móvil (2016), La Ene Museum (2014) and Isla Flotante (2012) in Buenos Aires; and group exhibitions at Panorama del Videoarte Argentino in MNA Bolivia and Videoartistas argentinos in Central Galería, Brasil. In 2020 Joaquin will undertake a residency for Argentinian artists at Gasworks.
