Pablo Martinez-Zárate: AIR 2022/2023

What can art and art education offer us towards the reimagination of our horizons of possibility?

Pablo Martinez-Zárate is interested in the different roles that artistic research and pedagogy can play in a world shaken by multi-faceted crises. For his sabbatical project at Iberoamericana University of Mexico City, his research at the Academy explores this question by engaging with different artistic communities, as well as undertaking aesthetic and narrative experiments.

In his book Machines to Hear and Listen at the End of Time. Towards a Practical Critique of Communication, Pablo coined the concept of ‘eccentric pedagogy’; a movement that seeks to escape the ‘center’ against all odds. Inspired by different Latin American traditions, this pedagogical focus suggests a perennial need to draw away from the forces of power that may condition or coerce pedagogical experiences. The first and final site of questioning is always the participants’ own imagination – and their capacity to express themselves, resist comfort zones and push limits. Pablo’s approach to eccentric pedagogy builds on critical methodologies such as the poetics of information, forensic imagination, media archaeology, expanded montage, and the aesthetics/ethics of the camera-body and the body-camera.

During the last couple of years, as founder and head of IberoDocsLab (Laboratorio Iberoamericano de Documental), he’s been working on what he calls “a practical critique of communication” – an effort to build a methodological framework for the implementation of artistic research projects and radical pedagogical experiences within the university. Tuning into the Research Department’s own interest in the pedagogy of artistic research, he worked with students of the Master’s programme on two workshops centered around his ideas of camera-body and body-camera as well as forming the Critical Pedagogy and Artistic Research Speculative Group. 

The residency had several concrete outcomes for Pablo: public presentations at the Academy, the publication of Eccentric Pedagogy. Artistic Research in Times of Crisis, the production of the essay film Oblique Takes. Meditations on Art and Crisis, and a video series around the idea of the studio as a site of critical occupation Studio Variations. The film premiered at the International Documentary Festival of Mexico City (DocsMX) in its official competition in October 2024, and he has been invited to present the main ideas contained in the book in several places and formats.

Pablo Martínez-Zárate is a media artist, documentary filmmaker and scholar living and working in Mexico City. He holds a masters degree in digital media from the University of Edinburgh and a PhD in Communications. His work explores the interconnection between memory, body and territory through experimental media practice. He is considered one of the pioneers and foremost exponents of web and interactive documentary in Mexico and Latin America. 

His films, interactive projects and installations have shown in important museums in Mexico and festivals such as DocsMX and Ambulante in Mexico City, MIDBO in Bogota, or IDFA in Amsterdam. He is professor at Universidad Iberoamericana Mexico City, where he founded IberoDocsLab.org, a platform for critical innovation in documentary practice. Pablo has published two non-fiction books that seek to reflect on the power of art in a world in crisis. He’s been a guest lecturer and speaker at places such as at University of Southern California, Emerson College Boston, Zurich University of the Arts and EICTV San Antonio de los Baños, Cuba. 

Publicatie Eccentric Pedagogy (2023)

Year

2022