The MUSAC Dialogue Group on Cinema programs a conference in tribute to the video

The MUSAC, through the Dialogue Group on Contemporary Cinema (GDCC), dedicates a few days to the video-creator Toni Serra, also known as Abu Ali (1960-2019), as a tribute to this beloved and admired regular guest of the GDCC after his death in 2019. Toni Serra was an artist, video-creator and author of texts and other sub-media, as well as co-director and founding member of the UFO-Observatory Archives of the Center for Contemporary Culture of Barcelona (CCCB).

Through his videos, Toni Serra explored different visions, in a no man’s land between experimental essay and poetry, with a constant presence of the notion of trance and the realities of dreams. An extraordinary creator, Serra has bequeathed an unusual work, carried out with a method based on collaboration, immersion and commitment; that provides a radical critique of the notion of vision that has been imposed on the global dominant culture; and finally entering a journey of knowledge hand in hand with spirituality and mysticism.

The program of this tribute includes the projection of a large part of his work, as well as the premiere of several pieces belonging to his last work, which his unexpected death would leave unfinished. The conference is completed with several theoretical sessions in which some of the most knowledgeable voices of his work participate: Rosa Llop (Coordinator of the OVNI Archives), Gabriel Villota (Doctor in Audiovisual Communication and professor at the University of the Basque Country) and Palmar Álvarez-Blanco (Professor at Carleton College and co-founder of ALCESXXI)—, as well as members of the GDCC. All activities are free until full capacity is reached.

About Toni Serra *) Abu Ali

Toni Serra *) Abu Ali (Manresa, Barcelona, ​​1960 – Barcelona, ​​2019), author of videos, texts and other sub-media, was a founding member of the UFO Archives [Observatorio de Vídeo No Identificado].

In his first works, in Barcelona, ​​New York and Tangier, he questioned beauty, the mystery of the ephemeral and the marginal. Starting in 1994, back in Barcelona, ​​he started the TV Code video series, a personal immersion in the criticism of the alienation mechanisms of the mass media, trying to parody its spectacular seduction and deconstruct its hypnotic capacity to create social models and identity stereotypes. The progressive realization that criticism should be a means that helps to illuminate and discover new worlds would lead him to reflect and experiment on the relationship between video and the visionary, with inner experience and with the visions that pass between worlds, spaces and times. , between the real and the unreal, sleep and wakefulness, poetry and prophecy.

Toni Serra made about forty videos —some of them under a pseudonym— including pieces such as Pura fe (1991), Minnesota 1943 (1995), Archivos Babilonia (2001-2005), Istishara (2004), Una Cruz en la Selva ( 2008), Al Barzaj(2010), Trance with the Green Man (2015), El Canto de la Hoopoe (2015), 7 Contemplaciones (2016) or En el Camino de las Abejas (2018), made for the exhibition Behave, at the Miró Foundation of Barcelona.

Nam June Paik Award

His artistic work also includes installations, such as Fez. Ciudad interior (CCCB, 2022), which won the City of Barcelona Award; Al Barzaj (Entremundos) (Espacio Zero01, Olot, 2011) or Istishara Archives (Cologne, 2006), with which he received the Nam June Paik Award.

His death in 2019 would leave his latest video-graphic project unfinished, Illuminations: the experience of Light (Multiverse Grant, 2018), on the notion of the experience of Light and Contemplation, experimentally based on the architecture and mystical poetry of Iran, of the routes he creates and of the landscapes in which he is inscribed. Lighting and contemplation have been a constant in all his work.

About the conference program

The conference will begin on Friday, June 10 at 7:00 p.m. with a conversation with Rosa Llop, coordinator of the UFO archives, followed at 8:00 p.m. by the screening of the films Entremundos (2013), Los Sures (2008) and The Job (2010).

On Saturday June 11 at 11:00 a round table will be held with the participation of Rosa Llop, Gabriel Villota, Palmar Álvarez-Blanco and members of the GDCC. Next, a selection of the following interviews and presentations of Toni Serra Hackeando el veil (2008); Look, see, observe, contemplate(2012); and Reality and its transparencies (2017). In addition, at 7:00 p.m., Gabriel Villota gives the conference Toni Serra *) Abu Ali: Opening the vision; followed from 8:00 p.m. by the screening of the short films 1991 Nex tHundred Years (1991), Le problème algérien et l’économie française (2006) and Midnight Sun (2016). Starting at 10:30 p.m., the museum’s courtyard will host the screening of The Way of the Bees (2018) and the premiere of Asemanstan–The Land of the Skies (2019), pieces sketched for Toni Serra’s unfinished project in Iran, Illuminations: The experience of Light.

The conference will culminate on Thursday, June 16 at 8:00 p.m. with a screening session that includes the pieces La noche (1994), Total War (1994), Dar al Ajira (2004), desFrontex (2013), La vida en Harmony (2018), The song of the hoopoe (2015), and 7 contemplations (2016).