Baltasar Thomas

  • El Ausente

    El Ausente is a short film about a garden that aims to persuade its inhabitants, visitors and onlookers to disengage from thinking about past (events and feelings) and future (desirable states and outcomes) and instead engage with the ever available present.

    Its images are accompanied by a voice that speaks seductively amidst a discordant melody of analogous and disparate sounds. The voice and sounds give shape to an ongoing friction between ambition, indecisiveness and acceptance.

    ‘El Ausente’ (‘The Absent’) – SD-video, 12’35, 2016
    Mira
    Escucha
    El jardin canta
    Que canta?

    No puedes escuchar?
    Tienes algo mejor que hacer?
    Seguro

    Basta
    Basta de buscar    		Look
    Listen
    The garden is singing
    What’s it singing?

    You can’t listen?
    Got something better to do?
    Are you sure?

    Stop
    Stop searching

  • Playground

    A simple objective/experiment/game: go somewhere, anywhere, and observe.

    ‘Playground’ / ‘these streets’) – HD video, 2’47, 2014

    I recorded children playing in a playground. A wide shot of a residential exterior. The shot, and consequently how I manipulated it’s textures and selected which moments to highlight in the edit, serves as a demonstration of two beliefs that central to my understanding of images:

    • a single image contains many different possible narratives and concepts.
    • these narratives and concepts can support one another or be entirely conflicting, depending on the context (among an endless amount of factors, foremostly: the social and cultural background of the viewer and the presentation of the final image/artwork).

    As an example; an image of a children’s playground can become a symbol of the uninhibited life-experience only children have access to, or it can become a symbol of the violence inherent in human nature. It can be a symbol of anything, really. The main point being: meaning is fickle, unsteady – likely to morph by slight nudging into a certain direction.