Still_Móvil Chile: Photographic Dance

Manuel Vason began his career as a fashion photographer. From his native Padua he moved to Milan where he worked with big names in the industry and his images were published in magazines such as Vogue, Dazed and Confused and Flash Art. He quickly jumped onto the international scene in Paris, New York and London, the city where he encountered the world of performance and where he currently lives.

He has collaborated with artists such as La Ribot, Franko B., Ernst Fischer, Guillermo Gómez Peña, Steven Cohen, Gilles Jobin, among others, and exhibited his creations in America and Europe. "I consider my practice as a hybrid. I use photography, I do collaborations and performances. I do not see photography as a passive tool of documentation, but as an active agent of construction," he emphasizes.

Vason has always been drawn to discovering what happens when we face a camera. "It is much richer than the mirror and behind it we can find another agent with whom to generate a dialogue. This interaction between photographer and actor has been the central focus of my work. It is the art of change and transformation," he completes, referring to the concern that led him to the world of dance on this occasion.
"I felt the need to push my search into a new territory: choreography. It introduced me to a new concept and forced me to find another methodology. The body continued to be the subject of my research, but the relationship between stillness and movement became a kind of paradigm,” he adds.

This is how STILL_MÓVIL emerged, in collaboration with the South American Dance Network, a venture where a varied group of Latin American choreographers had to make a new piece that could only be shown through a single image, made with the Italian artist.
With residencies that took place between May and October 2011 -in Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina, Peru, Paraguay, Bolivia and Chile – 50 performers of those nationalities materialized the interaction that was sought.
“The project does not want to transform dance into photography, but it intends to suggest a world in which we can actively create and choreograph the images with which we are made,” he points out about the commitment that focused on workshops, exercises and exchange of roles between the participants.

The result is 45 innovative photos, along with videos, texts, drawings and sounds. A record that will soon be published in the book STILL_MÓVIL – Performance, Photography, Colaboração, which also forms the intercontinental traveling exhibition that comes to GAM after having been exhibited in Uruguay, Brazil and Paraguay.

The season is also accompanied by three conferences: one by Manuel Vason himself, another framed in photography day with the participation of Jorge Brantmayer, Rita Ferrer and Nuri Gutés; and a final meeting with La Red de Danza Independiente – also collaborators of his arrival in Santiago – the Red de Danza Sudamericana and Danzalborde.

Every Saturday there will also be a performance practice by national choreographers Nuri Gutes, Javiera Peón Veiga, Claudia Vicuña, Rocío Rivera and Iván Sánchez, the same creators who participated alongside Manuel de Still_Mobile. "It is an act of exchange. Between artists, art forms, cultures, between each image created and the viewers," he concludes.