¡Que Viva Mexico!

Attend in-person

Location
3834 Main Street
Riverside, CA 92501

To ensure a safe and enjoyable experience, COVID-19 safety guidelines are listed below:

• At this time, face masks are required regardless of vaccination status.
• If you feel unwell, please reschedule your visit.
• Feel free to use hand sanitizing stations and wash hands as necessary.
• As always, large bags, food, and drink are not permitted in the museum and theatre.
• We are following an enhanced cleaning protocol and our ventilation filters are changed regularly.
• Culver Cinema capacity is currently limited to 50%.

An inherent risk of exposure to COVID-19 exists in any public space where people are present. We cannot guarantee you will not be exposed to COVID-19 during your visit. Those visiting UCR ARTS do so at their own risk of such exposure.

Presentation Descriptions & Presenter Biographies

Luka Arsenjuk
Cinema and Media Studies, University of Maryland, College Park

Presentation: Sergei Eisenstein and the Audio-Visual Nonrelation
The presentation will discuss Sergei Eisenstein’s conception of audio-visual montage by raising the question of audio-visual articulation in cinema more generally. Audio-visual articulation as such, the very possibility of constructing and thinking image-sound relations, is always structured by the existence of a more fundamental nonrelation. In other words, there exists no such thing as a proper audiovisual signifier that would allow us to inscribe the difference between image and sound and to thereby give their relation a stable form. Relations between images and sounds are, on the contrary, constituted through the absence of form, a fact which may be expressed by saying that not only are image and sound different from each other, but that each inscribes its difference from the other differently. Without assuming that his work offers some kind of a unified solution, the presentation will focus on some of the ways Eisenstein’s thinking took up or ignored the problem of the nonrelational constitution of audio-visual relations.

Luka Arsenjuk completed his PhD in Literature at Duke University (2010) and works as associate professor of cinema and media studies and core member of the Comparative Literature Program at the University of Maryland, College Park, where he also directs the Program in Cinema and Media Studies. He is the author of Movement, Action, Image, Montage: Sergei Eisenstein and the Cinema in Crisis (University of Minnesota Press, 2018) and has written essays on cinema, philosophy, political theory, and the relationship between politics and art. In 2018, he won the Society for Cinema and Media Studies Award for Best Essay in an Edited Collection for his essay “to speak, to hold, to live by the image: Notes in the Margins of the New Videographic Tendency” (in The Essay Film: Dialogue, Politics, Utopia). He is currently working on a new book project, tentatively entitled Counter-Logistics: Cinema and the Politics of Movement, which will be published by Northwestern University Press. He serves as one of the co-editors of Discourse: Journal for Theoretical Studies in Media and Culture.

https://sllc.umd.edu/directory/luka-arsenjuk

Maria Belodubrovskaya
Cinema and Media Studies, University of Chicago

Presentation: Point or Counterpoint? Stalin-Era Film Songs in Transnational Context
The transition to sound in the USSR led to an emergence of the film song as a major attraction. Many Stalin-era films included songs, and many of these songs became huge hit at the time and are still remembered today. Though a lot of work has been done on the Soviet film score as it relates to prominent composers Sergei Prokofiev and Dimitri Shostakovich (by Kevin Bartig and Joan Titus, respectively), little has been written on the Soviet film song. This paper examines film songs in Stalin-era cinema from the transnational perspective. Did the song function differently in Soviet cinema in comparison to Hollywood or Bollywood? If it did not, what does it tell us about the propaganda potential of the song and its status as a socialist-realist artifact? Answering these questions might shed new light on the tension between the popular and ideological in translational audiovisual art.  

Maria Belodubrovskaya is Associate Professor in the Department of Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Chicago. She is the author of Not According to Plan: Filmmaking under Stalin (Cornell University Press, 2017), a revisionist history of Soviet film production during the Stalin era and an institutional study of how ideology structures cultural production. The book examines five institutions of Soviet cinema—policymaking, production planning, directing, screenwriting, and censorship—and shows that it was impossible to build a mass-producing culture industry while working with artisanal production methods, weak control mechanisms, and an entitled artistic workforce. She is currently working on her second book, Beyond Montage: Film Aesthetics and Propaganda under Stalin, which addresses Soviet film aesthetics during this same period. Her articles on Russian film aesthetics, history, and theory have appeared in Cinema Journal, Film History, Slavic Review, Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema, Projections: The Journal of Movies and Mind, and KinoKultura.

https://cms.uchicago.edu/people/maria-belodubrovskaya

Sharon Daniel
Digital Arts and New Media, University of California, Santa Cruz

Presentation: EXPOSED: Documenting COVID-19 in the criminal punishment system
This hybrid paper/artist presentation will focus on the interactive documentary EXPOSED [https://unjustlyexposed.com], conceived in a state of ‘emergency,’ to provide a cumulative public record and evolving history of the coronavirus pandemic’s impact on incarcerated people. EXPOSED, documents the spread of COVID-19, over time, inside prisons, jails, and detention centers across the US, from the perspective of prisoners and their families. Original interviews, combined with quotes, audio clips and statistics collected from a comprehensive array of online publications and broadcasts, are assembled into an interactive timeline that, on each day, offers abundant testimony to the risk and trauma prisoners experience under coronavirus quarantine.  EXPOSED launched on October 30, 2020 and will continue to be updated on a weekly basis until the pandemic crisis in carceral spaces across the US is resolved. The scale of the project is intended to reflect the scale of the crisis. For July 8th alone, the timeline includes over 100 statements made by prisoners afflicted with the virus or enduring anxiety, distress, and neglect. The monochrome, image-less, headline-styled interface, which allows viewers to step through thousands of prisoners’ statements, is designed to visualize their collective suffering, signal that the injustices they endure are structural, and demonstrate that the criminal punishment system in the US, itself, constitutes a public health crisis.

Sharon Daniel is a media artist who produces interactive and participatory documentaries focused on issues of social, economic, environmental and criminal justice. She builds online archives and interfaces that make the stories of marginalized and disenfranchised communities available across social, cultural and economic boundaries. Daniel’s work has been exhibited internationally as well as on the internet. Most recently, a solo exhibition titled “Convictions” at STUK Kunstcentrum, Belgium presented the body of new media documentary work she has produced over the last 14 years, addressing the troubled intersection of criminal and social justice. Each of the five works in CONVICTIONS examines various aspects of the criminal justice system through first hand testimony and evidence given by impacted individuals. Detailed descriptions and links to these works can be found at http://sharondaniel.net. 

Daniel’s works have been shown in museums and festivals such as WRO media art biennial 2011 (Poland), Artefact 2010 (Belgium), Transmediale 08 (Germany), the ISEA/ZeroOne festival (2006 and 2010), the Dutch Electronic Arts Festival DEAF03 (Netherlands), Ars Electronica (Austria), the Lincoln Center Festival (NY/USA), the Corcoran Biennial (Washington DC) and the University of Paris I (France). Her essays have been published in books including Context Providers (Intellect Press 2011), Database Aesthetics (Minnesota University Press 2007) and the Sarai Reader05 as well as in professional journals such as Cinema Journal, Leonardo and Springerin. Daniel was awarded the prestigious Rockefeller/Tribeca Film Festival New Media Fellowship in 2009 and honored by the Webby Awards in 2008. She is a Professor in the Film and Digital Media Department and the Digital Arts and New Media MFA program at the University of California, Santa Cruz where she teaches classes in digital media theory and practice.

http://www.sharondaniel.net

Diego Zavala Scherer
Escuela de Humanidades y Educación, Region Occidente, Tecnológico de Monterrey, Mexico

Presentation: Habeas Corpus and Habeas Viscus in Webdocumentaries: The Body as the Beginning and the End.
Through these two critical concepts for documentary film and representation: habeas corpus (Nichols, 1991) and habeas viscus (Weheliye, 2014), this presentation analyzes the implications and complexities of interactivity and their strategies to compel, evoke, empathize, and move to action. The communication explores absence and neglection as creative starting points, which triggers two main questions: 1) which elements link the world to the narrative world presented in the web documentary? And 2) how this representation aspires to become a representative piece of a group, a social movement, or a community.

Diego Zavala Scherer (diego.zavala@tec.mx) Research Professor at Tecnológico de Monterrey, México. Holds a PhD in Communication (Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona). Coordinates the research group in Arts, Communication, and Digital Culture, part of the Humanities and Education School at Tecnológico de Monterrey. Member of the Mexican National Research System (SNI, CONACYT).

Last publications:
(2019) Estrada Álvarez, A., Defossé, N. y Zavala, D. Cine político en México (1968-2017) (Political Cinema in Mexico (1968-2017)), Peter Lang, Londres/Nueva York.
(2018). The American Nightmare, or the Revelation of the Uncanny in three documentary films by Werner Herzog, Comunicación y sociedad, no. 32.

Rodrigo Sigal
ENES, UNAM, and CMMAS, Mexico

Presentation: Electroacoustic Soundtrack Composition for !Que Viva Mexico!
I conceived the work as an experiment to “recompose” a soundtrack in a very different way from what I would have imagined. The composition was commissioned by my dear friend Dr. Paulo C. Chagas for the project ¡Que Viva Mexico! – Transnational Film and Audiovisual Art.
During the composition infinite alternatives emerged on how to approach a work of such artistic importance and so well known internationally. I decided that my compositional proposal should contribute to generate a dialogue an not a permanent and definitive soundtrack. Using timbre and space as central elements of the structure was a special challenge that I wanted to explore from the beginning. I decided then to interpret the movie from two different approaches. First, the “literalism” according to which behaviors, visual layers and characters are central elements that the soundtrack seeks to identify, isolate, develop, show and explore. Secondly, the “abstraction”, according to which the sound ideas emerged from the analysis of the visual message and the director’s possible ideas and concepts, the impact of the events and the sonification of a broader environment than the one we see on the screen. I seek, then, to contrast the relationship between the descriptive intention of a film in its temporal and social context, against the current idea of visual as an integral element of interdisciplinary creative discourse.

Rodrigo Sigal (www.rodrigosigal.com) is a composer, cultural manager and full time professor since 2017 at ENES, UNAM, Morelia, where he is also the coordinator for the Music and Artistic Technology undergraduate program (www.enesmorelia.org), interested in new technologies especially in the electroacoustic music field. Since 2006, Sigal has been the director of the Mexican Centre for Music and Sonic Arts (www.cmmas.org) where he coordinates numerous initiatives of creation, education, research and cultural management in relation to sound and music. He earned a doctorate degree from the London City University and completed his postdoctoral studies at UNAM. He has a diploma in cultural management from the UAM-BID and has continued his studies and creative projects with the help from various scholarships and support from institutions like FONCA (SNCA member 2011-18) and the DeVos Foundation for cultural management, among others. He has the “Researcher candidate” level at the National Researchers System from Conacyt and for 20 years he has taken part in the Luminico project (www.luminico.org), he is the director of the “Visiones Sonoras” festival (www.visionessonoras.org) and editor of “Sonic Ideas” journal (www.sonicideas.org).

Paulo C. Chagas
Department of Music, University of California, Riverside

Presentation: Sound Imaginations: Audiovisual Immersive Installation
Sound Imagination is designed as project combining scholarship on sound studies and artistic research on immersive sound and visual composition. It was developed during the three years of my Senior Residence at the UCR Center for Ideas and Society. In March 2020, shortly before the outbreak of the corona virus pandemic, I presented in the Black Box of the Culver Center for the Arts in Riverside, CA the immersive audiovisual installation Sound Imaginations with 3D videos and ambisonics sounds I captured in São Paulo (Brazil), Riverside (CA), Moscow (Russia), Mannheim (Germany), and Pune (India). Focusing on the idea of listening cultures, the audiovisual installation reflects on listening habits and techniques, and cultural and historical aspects that are related to them. It explores different environments, technical devices, architectures, space and time structures that represent individual and social listening contexts. It aims to gain insight in questions such as: How different cultures have different approaches of listening? How different human beings listen in different ways? How we listen to surrounding machines, living beings, spaces and cultures? Immersed in the audiovisual environment, the audience experienced the diversity of listening cultures from these different geographic and cultural areas while immersed in a multimedia environment with multi-projection of 3D videos – 1 large screen and 12 monitors – and multi-channel sound projection (7.1) of ambisonics sounds. This material was presented in multiple layers of synchrony and asynchrony between image and sound unfolding relationships of conformity, contesting, and complementarity from which it emerges real and virtual sound imaginations.

Paulo C. Chagas is professor of composition at the University of California, Riverside. He created more than 180 works for orchestra, chamber music, electroacoustic, audiovisual and multimedia. His works resulted from numerous orders and have been acclaimed in the United States, Europe, Russia, Asia and Brazil. Chagas develops extensive research in semiotics, philosophy, electroacoustics, multimedia, and technology. His book Unsayable Music (Leuven University Press, 2014) presents theoretical, critical and analytical reflections on key themes of contemporary music. He recently edited the book Sounds from Within: Phenomenology and Practice (Springer, 2021) and published the book Zwischen Klängen und Apparaten: zur Theorie und Praxis der elektronischen Musik [Between sounds and apparatuses: theory and practice of electronic music] (Rediroma, 2021) Chagas has received several international awards, including recently the prestigious Fulbright research grant for an audiovisual composition project in Russia.

Nikolay Maslov
UCR ARTS, University of California, Riverside

Presentation: Eisenstein’s Dynamic Square Revisited
This presentation will explore Sergei Eisenstein’s Dynamic Square, which was the subject of a lecture given by the filmmaker in 1930. Eisenstein’s lecture proposed that films and filmmakers adapt a flexible square format, which would allow for the interplay of various aspect ratios within a single film. Eisenstein argued that a standardization of aspect ratio would paralyze film’s compositional efforts, stunting the development of possibilities for film grammar, montage, etc. This presentation will recontextualize the idea of the Dynamic Square within the context of present-day cinematic media, which takes the form of numerous, dynamic aspect ratios (both vertical and horizontal) across various platforms. 

Nikolay Maslov is Curator of Film & Media Projects at UC Riverside ARTS. At UCR ARTS, Nikolay curates a weekly screening series of independent, documentary, and foreign films and works closely with the campus and local community on bringing guest speakers and film-related programming. He has worked with artists such as John Jennings, Stacey Robinson, Anna Wittenberg, Alexandro Segade, Kate Alexandrite, Crystal Sepúlveda, Kent Anderson Butler and Venzha Christ, among others, on exhibitions, programs, and artist projects at UCR ARTS. Nikolay also oversees various digital initiatives, including recently co-curating the online exhibition Art In The Plague Year. Additionally, Nikolay oversees UCR ARTS’ OFF THE BLOCK, an award-winning summer documentary workshop for local area high school students. Nikolay is also Associate Faculty in the Film, Television, and Video Department at Riverside City College. He received his BA in English from UC Riverside and an MA in Cinema and Media Studies from USC’s School of Cinematic Arts, where he was an Annenberg Fellow.  

Sam C. Shin
PhD in Digital Composition, University of California, Riverside

Presentation: Audiovisual Frontiers: A Virtual Exhibition
Audiovisual Frontiers is an ongoing virtual exhibit of audiovisual works that puts the wide range of possibilities within the audiovisual on display. Audiovisual pieces are inherently multifaceted because they exist in multiple modes simultaneously. This naturally elicits questions about the very nature of audiovisual works. How do different pieces fall on the spectra between audio and visual? Or on the spectra between diegetic and nondiegetic sound? Can these works tell us who the creators are – for example, an artist vs. a composer? I will present my answers to these questions by using examples from the exhibit. Although there are no absolutes when it comes to the medium, that is exactly what makes audiovisual works exciting, and unique to each creator.

Sam C. Shin is a music maker and programmer whose work explores the impact of technology on contemporary life. Sam also draws from outside the Western Classical tradition through his interest in electronica and Korean culture. His work has been presented at SICPP, SPLICE Institute, West Fork New Music Festival, Electronic Music Midwest, and the Music and the Moving Image Conference. Sam is currently a doctoral student in Digital Composition at UC Riverside where he studies with Ian Dicke, Dana Kaufman, and Paulo C. Chagas. Other composition teachers include Elainie Lillios, Mikel Kuehn, Chihchun Chi-sun Lee, Michael Sidney Timpson, and Eric Chasalow. When not composing, Sam can be found playing Japanese video games and taking pictures of his cat.

Kirsten Lambinicio / Brandon Babu
EARS Student Group, University of California, Riverside

Presentation: Transnational Songwriting Camp
This presentation will explore the creation of audiovisual works through the use of transnational songwriting camps. This will all be under the context of songwriting camps previously hosted by the EARS Student Group. The typical flow and structure of a camp will be covered. The presentation will also cover collaboration in a virtual setting and the challenges that come with that. These include language barriers, time constraints, audio quality discrepancies, and more. Examples of works created in past camps can/will be shown. The scope and magnitude of events like this will also be shown.

The EARS Student Group is a UC Riverside based music organization dedicated to the advancement of new multi-disciplinary approaches to sound, electroacoustic music and multimedia. Composers, performers, researchers, media artists, faculty and students work together to develop new strategies for research and education. EARS is committed to facilitating the development of new art forms and performance modalities that arise out of ever-evolving digital technologies. EARS is also ever-expanding and has active chapters in Riverside and Mexico.

Brandon Babu is a 4th year undergraduate electrical engineering major at UCR. He is also one of the co-presidents of the EARS Student Group. Brandon loves music. He produces, writes, sings, and plays guitar. Brandon’s work at EARS ultimately focuses on helping students feel at home while collaborating and creating with each other. Brandon currently works as an electrical engineer for EDGE Sound Research, where he helps develop and build new age audio experiences. He also works for EDGE Studios, where he assists in giving clients a professional studio experience and audio engineering services.

Kirsten Lambinicio is a 3rd year Business Administration major concentrating in Information Systems at UCR. She is passionate about the rise of technology as well as expressing her creativity through music and the arts. In addition to being a singer-songwriter and performer, her interests include playing piano/guitar/ukulele, dancing, acting, and community involvement. She has found a second home in EARS Student Group as co-president, enthusiastic about helping other aspiring musicians on their journey. Some of her current professional life consists of working as a marketing/social media coordinator for EOI Records, engaging directly with artists and their team. With her strong beliefs in unwavering optimism and authenticity, she is eager to discover where else her adventures will take her.