Audiovisual Appropriation with Hilomental

Hilomental: Videological Sessions is a project that explores ways of thinking about images and thinking with images collectively. Created by Arturo Bastón and Fèlix Pérez-Hita in 2012, the project consists of open gatherings in which two or more participants engage in dialogue through audiovisual fragments, building a spontaneous conversation around a specific theme. Screenings are combined with the participants’ reflections and contributions from the audience, generating playful, critical and shared discussions about contemporary visual culture.

This edition’s session will focus on appropriationism in a broad sense. We learn to speak by imitating, and we continue to do so throughout our lives, adopting references, styles and forms of representation. Copying, appropriation and reinterpretation have always been fundamental drivers of culture, both mainstream and marginal or oppositional. Through numerous examples, the session will explore different forms of audiovisual appropriation, from analogue practices to the present day, shaped by an artificial intelligence capable of generating millions of recombinations of the cultural production of history.

The Centre Cultural Joan Triadú hosts this event, organised as part of Panoràmic. Arts i Visual Cultures, which celebrates its tenth edition this year and comes to Vic for the first time. The session will be led by Hilomental — audiovisual directors and editors Fèlix Pérez-Hita and Arturo Bastón — and will feature Andrés Hispano, a visual artist, filmmaker, curator, writer and university lecturer whose career has focused on visual culture and the analysis of images.