Catalogue > At random

En La Era (In The Era) is an abstract work documenting the Experimental Concrete Workshop in Las Pozas, Xilitla. A diptych of Manuela’s subjective style of documentation, the film uses color and black and white to create two separate dreamlike and fragmented expressions of a single event: a group of foreigners immersed in the jungle among the surreal constructions of Edward James while creating sculptural works of their own. The film’s viewer is thrust into all that this stunning setting entails - the local residents, the nature, food preparation… En La Era is firmly grounded in the sensorial, with Camila Fuchs’s sound design melding sound scoring with field recordings from beyond the viewer’s visual frame of reference.

Manuela de Laborde is an artist and filmmaker from Mexico City. Laborde’s practice, by abstracting concepts from their concrete properties, looks to create [virtual] spaces and [regenerate] the image. Inspired by simplicity of expression, economy of detail, location of exhibition, her practice is a meditation on physical presence. To the eye, her work carries aesthetic claims and pleasure; yet in its presentation is performative and in its purpose, conceptual. In 2012 she exhibited her solo show, Maquettes, in Generator Projects, Dundee; in 2013 screened, Sun, at London MexFest with the live score of Camila Fuchs; her short films Viveros, The exponential Nature of Images and Le Visible et L’Invisible where shown at Antimatter FF, Jihlava IDFF and Milwaukee UFF; and this year her thesis film, As Without So Within, was screened at Toronto International Film Festival, Winnipeg WNDX (Best International Short), 25fps Festival in Zagreb (Grand Prix), FICM of Morelia and International Film Festival Rotterdam, New Directors MoMA + FSLC and VideoBrasil among others. Manuela is currently one of the ‘resident’ filmmakers for Oberhausen Film Festival - Conditional Cinema for which she is finishing her film, Ficciones. During October this year Manuela attended the artist residency at LIFT (Liaison of Independent Filmmakers in Toronto).