SILVIA
RIVAS

Glass Beads

Glass Beads

Video installation | Single channel video. Video VHS-DV. Sonido stereo. 14′ 56″ en loop. 1990

About the work

In the actual video section, there were pioneers like Jaime Davidovich, David Lamelas or Margarita Paksa, as well as other younger artists who had been working specifically in that medium. At that time, I saw it as an opportunity to generate sensations, all-encompassing situations specific to the electronic medium, so as to add sense to my installations. I made that first video, which I’ve never digitalized and still have on VHS, in a really old house in the Palermo neighborhood that had been squatted and ended up being my studio. With a group of friends to help me, I threw water down the stairs and from the upper floor, which had a balcony overlooking an internal courtyard. There was so much water everywhere. The water poured down and ran out into the street, endlessly, it was as if the house was flooding the outside world and not the other way round. That piece was called Glass Beads, alluding to the beads on a necklace. Drops of water formed on the ceilings and on the stair rails and the light made them look like crystals.

Silvia Rivas at The movements of wonder, interview by Andrés García La Rota.

Falta compartida
Rolf Art, Buenos Aires, 2019.