Beatriz will reflect on Oriana (which screens at Episode 11 on Thursday) and its companion piece Oenanthe. She will discuss how they were made (what it means to filmicly translate an experimental novel); and how they enact relationships between plural protagonists, the land, and the non-human world, beyond possessive individualism.

ORIANA (2023)
Oriana is based on feminist writer Monique Wittig’s novel Les Guérillères from 1969. In Wittig’s experimental text, heteronormative gender roles are rejected through the use of a newly created grammar that challenges conventional binary arrangements. Santiago Muñoz’s free and procedural reinterpretation of Les Guérillères transposes Wittig’s remarkable linguistic inventions into an equally unconventional filmic structure. In the work, a band of militant feminists – mostly close collaborators and acquaintances of Santiago Muñoz – are invited to inhabit an undefined space-time proposed by the artist.

Filled with inexplicable encounters, Oriana unfolds across forests, caves, rivers, and the ruins of industrial and colonial infrastructures. Through frenzied choreographic interludes and silent rituals, this elaborate audiovisual experience charts a world of perceptual distortions and collective processes. Everyday objects turn into mysterious assault weapons, while ancestral spirits and the recently deceased hauntingly pervade the filmic space. By bringing together these disparate elements, Oriana’s unusual storylines make abstract, hybrid characters tangible. These storylines are enhanced by the original soundtrack by Brazilian post-punk band Rakta.

Beatriz Santiago Muñoz develops her films and videos through writing, as well as through chance encounters and structured improvisation with non-actors. The mutual recognition of each other’s presence is thus the starting point for establishing pivotal audiovisual connections, which form the conceptual basis of her work. Throughout Oriana, these elaborate connections are further heightened by the work’s intricate structure. This way, Beatriz Santiago Muñoz convincingly transforms Wittig’s radical literary world into thought provoking audiovisual encounters, while reimagining viewers as subjects of perpetual becoming.

OENANTHE (2023)
Oenanthe is a companion piece to Oriana, and part of the series of work’s that are related to Wittig’s work. These two 16mm films were shot just a few minutes from Dannemarie, where Wittig grew up, comissioned by Crac-Alsace.

Cardamine des prés
Primevère
Bourse-à-pasteur
Grande consoude
Renouée bistorte
Lotier corniculé
Tulipe
Ortie
Epicine des bois
Raifort
Aspérule odorante
Pissenlit
 
-We say that they can’t make babies!
-So it has a shell.
-There is a part without fur and as its fur reflects the sunlight only one
part of its body can be seen!