BAUTISTA.

WORK
For me the image is a mental construction. 2009-2019
I point to a serie of connections since the use films@ernestobautista.net
of recognizable signs from their immediate ernestobautistaprojects@gmail.com
perception to acquire through their interactions, visual artist/ writter/ filmmaker
new connotations and human dimensions,
through a scheme that defines a complex vimeo.com/bautistawork
situation of mismatch. I start from artistic ernestobautista.net
investigations and interdisciplinary academic
research to expanded cinema, though poetics imdb.com/name/nm10634035/
that could review reality. My work is a constant independent.academia.edu/bautistawork
collision between poetry and violence,
darkness, death, memory, transcendence, instagram.com/bautista.work
forgetfulness. It flows between complexity of
theory and literature and the strength of shock
from universal poetic signs. The notion of the
infinite, the ephemeral, the obscure, and his
immediate social reality generates an endless
source of information and knowledge that I
use, since are my legacy. My approach allows
me to question and reconstruct a different
perception and awareness of reality.
 THE INFINITE MEMORY
2016-Current
Artistic research project.
Expanded film/documentary installation.
Documentary.

The infinite memory is a documentary film

project in four chapters, based on a storytelling
dynamic relating memory, dreams, death and
transcendence. I’m achieving to register the
personal signs to create new meanings of the
present. Explore the way creation of memory
can exist as an infinite display through the
constant try of rebuilding past through the
logic of dreams. And through this, highlight the
act of remain as an act of pure creation. Every
time to have the possibility of create a real new
memory upon the existing one. The title comes
from the human desire to be remembered by the
people we meet and we loved, the only way we
can be eternal until we are forgotten, and then,
for the people they could share the memory of
ourselves and so on. Until forever.

Shintoism says the second death is when we

are forgotten. I’m mapping connections that
define our identities in so many ways, all what
is related to any sense of belonginess pass
through our memory. As we live and we go from
birth to death, we goes collecting memories
as a natural process. When finally, our life is
out, our memories are done and (depends on
how we harvest our transcendence) lost. But
there is never a real memory, we got illusions,
we storage memory on the same way we
remember a dream, we fill the empty spaces of
information with questionable visions of what
our subconscious thinks remember. Important
details keeps storage clear on our head, but
what is not, is just not relevant, and can be
replaced by many similar information. In that
way, our heads build memories like we build the
memory of a dream. Dreams are just a reflection
of our existence, of our inner world, as a remain
of our perception of our reality: our conditions,
our environment. We create dreams through
mere perceptions, barely build upon our senses.

LINK ON VIMEO
Psychology explores dreams because they are
the rawest subconscious articulated creation,
you can tell too many things by study the dream
of a person. The constant revelation of how we
perceive our sense of existence and what is TEASERS
beyond, in that way, nobody, think of dreams as [ https://vimeo.com/191862864 ]
a memory to define our memory. Every time we
remember a dream, or many dreams, we are just
changing the dream itself.
TEATRO DEL DESENCUENTRO
(THEATRE OF DISENCOUNTER)
2018-Current
Artistic research project.
Expanded film installation.
360 film installation.
Movie.

Teatro del Desencuentro is an installation film of

360 degrees, with a standard version.
The work is based on perennial situations, but
made more visible in 2014, with the
Migrant children from Central America (especially
from the Northern Triangle), who are being held
in cages at ICE while their immigration status is
ratified. The children, characters of the film, are
three children of different ages and backgrounds
(which are not important in the film because to
their philosophical and existential burden) that
live in a cage of 2mx4mx2m and that through
their interaction and questions, they go from
being defenseless and lost children to being
lucid and aware of their possibilities. The work
is divided into three parts: The Awakening, The
limits of childhood and Architectures.

LINK ON VIMEO
TEASERS
[ https://vimeo.com/309405220 ]

[ https://vimeo.com/305023586 ]
THE VOICE AT THE
EDGE OF THE VOID
2017-Current
Artistic research project.
Expanded film installation.
Documentary.
Videogame interactive installation.
Videogame.

La Voz en la Limite del Vacio (The voice at the

edge of the void) is a research on the poetics
of existence gathered on an installation film
project that starts from the main human issues
generated from fear of death, transcendence
and legacy. At the technical level, it explores
the connections between virtual reality,
cinematography, installation and pure memory.
The first chapter: THE VOID. Part of a video
game created expressly for the project.
This work permeates all the explorations of
the different manifestos that have created my
perception of art, creation and death and which
are manifested even in development as The
Philosophy of Negative Spaces, The Spheres
of Cognition, The Manifesto of Death, The
Manifesto of Violence, Disarticulative Thought,
The Limits of Entropy of the Human Mind and
The Limit of Memory. Manifestos of which have
departed much of my production and that I am
still debugging. So in this Project can be seen at
its maximum expression.

The story is about a child going through the

different levels of the void while being guided by
a voice-over that in turn criticizes his presence
and the logic in which existence itself is
articulated.

LINK ON VIMEO
TEASERS
[ https://vimeo.com/201880128 ]
CONSTRUCTION OF THE CITIES OF
THE HOUSES OF MEMORY
2018-Current
Artistic research project.
Expanded film/documentary installation.
Documentary.

This is an artistic research upon existence and

memory. In my head, I have been building for
a long time now, collecting from my closest
ones, a city where are all the houses that no
longer exist can be, houses where the memory
has happened. I’m recreating it now inside a
heterotopy, a virtual stage. This city grows with
the new houses that they share with me. I will
build a story there, a novel, upon all the words
from the beloved, vanishing, almost gone
through time, memories.
Construction of the Cities of Memory as a
theoretical discourse, is an exploration of the
approaches of the space of Gaston Barchelard
in two of his books “The poetics of space” and
“Dialectics of the inside and the outside,” of
the theory of the Immersive Reality and the
Heterotopies of Michel Foucault, as well as a
prolongation of previous investigations. The
research base its pilars on the use of virtual
reality, 3d modeling, architecture, cinema,
installation, literature (upon the final novel) and
documentary.

The project explores connections between

contexts, the personal readings of the home and
the individual forms of intimacy within the idea of​​
the city. Latin American nostalgia is the context
where I feel that this idea of ​​space happens best.
The project, as a process is developed through
the exercise of memory, houses with their own
history to which we can not return but which still
inhabit the mind.

A house is a person. Just as there are livable

people, there are places that inhabit us. As
Manuel says in one of the interviews: My house
means the only place where I feel safe, not free,
but safe.

Just as death as a process of conclusion,

liberation and transfiguration is presented
here confrontational and chaotic, it invites us
to develop semantic formulations about the
hierarchies of human consciousness and their
intimacy as spatial reflections. I think Bachelard
says it best when he says The house-nest is

LINK ON VIMEO
never young. It could be said that it is the natural
place of the function of inhabiting. He turns
to her, always dreams of returning to her. It is
natural that we inhabit it, but, within specific
TEASERS
circumstances, it is a need that also inhabits us.
[ https://vimeo.com/235528686 ]
MUSEUM OF INFINITE
2018-Current
Artistic research project.
Expanded film installation.
Documentary.

www.museumofinfinite.org

The Museum of Infinite is developed to reach for

the very boundaries and possibilities of concept.
How to reconstruct reality upon imagination?
Upon scape?. To propose a cluster where to
gather different kind of perspectives about limits
in order to produce artistic investigations and
projects.
The Museum of Infinite is a complex and long
term artistic/mathematical/philosophical/
architectonical project based on the redefinition
of the idea of development of space explored
previously (and based upon) authors like
Michel Foucault, Gaston Bachelard, Sthephen
Hawking, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, and
is developed to reach for the very boundaries
and possibilities of concept and to propose
a cluster where to gather different kind of
perspectives about limits in order to produce
artistic investigations and projects.

LINK ON VIMEO
TEASERS
[ https://vimeo.com/203062556 ]
RELATIONAL LITERATURE
2018-Current
Artistic research project.

‘HE VISTO EL MAR

EN LA BOCA DE UNA
PISTOLA’
(I have seen the sea
in the mouth
of a gun)
2018
Vinyl letters
The infinite memory is a documentary film on acrylic plate.
project in four chapters, based on a storytelling
dynamic relating memory, dreams, death and
transcendence. I’m achieving to register the
personal signs to create new meanings of the
present. Explore the way creation of memory can
exist as an infinite display through the constant
try of rebuilding past through the logic of dreams.
And through this, highlight the act of remain as
an act of pure creation. Every time to have the
possibility of create a real new memory upon the
existing one. The title comes from the human
desire to be remembered by the people we meet
and we loved, the only way we can be eternal until
we are forgotten, and then, for the people they
could share the memory of ourselves and so on.
Until forever.

Shintoism says the second death is when we

are forgotten. I’m mapping connections that
define our identities in so many ways, all what is MANIFESTO Establish the contundency of death don’t
related to any sense of belonginess pass through OF DEATH setle a declaration but a motor of life, as
our memory. As we live and we go from birth to 2016 an acceptation of our mortal condition as
death, we goes collecting memories as a natural Glossy poster motivation of adquiscition and collecting of
process. When finally, our life is out, our memories 0.70mx1m memory as our most precious property. We
are done and (depends on how we harvest our are something raw and ephemeral, but we can
transcendence) lost. But there is never a real harvest greatness and eternity on our short
memory, we got illusions, we storage memory on existence, which take us beyond.
the same way we remember a dream, we fill the
empty spaces of information with questionable
visions of what our subconscious thinks
remember. Important details keeps storage clear
on our head, but what is not, is just not relevant,
and can be replaced by many similar information.
In that way, our heads build memories like we
build the memory of a dream. Dreams are just
a reflection of our existence, of our inner world,
as a remain of our perception of our reality: our NEW PROMISES
conditions, our environment. We create dreams 2018-Current
through mere perceptions, barely build upon our 360NEW
film PROMISES
installation
senses. Psychology explores dreams because (SKETCHES)
they are the rawest subconscious articulated 2016
TEASERS
creation, you can tell too many things by study Print on bond paper.
https://vimeo.
the dream of a person. The constant revelation of com/191862864
how we perceive our sense of existence and what
is beyond, in that way, nobody, think of dreams as
a memory to define our memory. Every time we
remember a dream, or many dreams, we are just
changing the dream itself.
LINK ON VIMEO [ https://vimeo.com/203065561 ]

NEW PROMISES New Promises is a literary project with visual

2013-Current applications. Ask phrases and its content on
It is an intervention traveling street showcases situations. That
project of van allows to points to an audience which their
containers on trucks diversification is highly targeted. There are rich
that cross Central and diverse atmospheres in these moments
America and Mexico that one of these vehicles continuously
to the border with transits (customs borders, cities, shops,
the U.S., with specific highways, roads, etc.), I try to propose poetry
texts. to a collective thought that, among to be
thoughtful about ordinary things, doesn’t stop
to be intimate. Thus, I can propose, trough all
of this, one (or many) new (s) starting point (s).

LA LUZ DE LA NOCHE SE DETIENE CONMIGO

(The light of the night stops with me).

IGUAL QUE EL SOL AUNQUE LA MUERTE

(Just like the sun… even if death….)

AUNQUE SEA UNA FRONTERA TE PROMETO

NO DETENERME
(Even if [there is/ I am] a frontier, I promise you
not to stop)

‘LA DISTANCIA MUERE CONMIGO’

(Distance dies with me)
2017
Vinyl letters on the wall.
 ‘LA PALABRA’
2013
Pipe of gasoline
intervened with the
words “La Palabra”
(The word).

On 2013 I intervened a pipe of gasoline with

the words “La Palabra” (“the word” in spanish)
and took a photo of the truck parked on a gas
station.
The project, whole itself is more than a
dialogue about the word and detonation. Is a
manifesto of the social structure of the word
and its interpretation. So it is to a collective
level, as an individual level.
Then, the word as possible thought and as a
container for ideas. And ideas as total vehicles
of social stimulation.

WAVES OF MEMORY
2018
Painted letters on the
street.

I propose to activate the floor of the city, literally. My idea is to create

interventions on the street, stencils in bold letters that can be painted
directly on the asphalt. The streets, the roads and the ground have all
these elements that create the notion of the past and the time of the
city. And that from memory lead to remember the things for which
we fight and keep fighting. My country has been a context whipped
up by war in the last century, and with urban violence in the new one.
Currently there is a silent chain of situations that happens as a war
between the gangs and the army and the police. For me, it is important
to point out these contextual settings to create common points where
I can explore the histories of both nations from the war through the
creation of dreams that from the poetic images written on the asphalt,
the asphalt as a sign of passing memories, ephemeral sensations
of the past crackling between our roads. The spirituality of the urban
environment through these notions of collective memory.

It seems important to emphasize the power of a people’s desire on their

own circumstances. The cinema, from the beginning of its history has
been an exploration of the memory of reality, through its short history,
has been acquiring a variety of moral judgments and has been stripped
and modifying the elements that comprise it, but something invariable
has been that it is a subjective lens that includes critical and subtle
elements that comment on a context, or capture it in time.
PREVIOUS WORKS
(selection)
2009-2015

MASSES
2009
Transparent lighter stuffed
with human blood. Blood has
three classes of anticoagulants
(heparin, antithrombin and
ethylenediaminetetraacetic
acid, or EDTA).

The lighter is itself an experience, the metaphor, syncretised, of my own expression like a social individual. Gathers two
apparently non-related elements: The blood, which has a wide diverse readings (violence, genetic inheritance, historic
roots, family, hate, passion, death) enclosed in the recipient that does the lighter, which does not represent anything but a
detonation device is the second element. But here’s where a third element comes in with a symbolic charge, mystified:the
fire (the capacity, the power, the energy, the combustion), implicit into the physic metaphor as a potential element.

<<Strictly speaking, the mass, as a psychological fact, can be defined without waiting for individuals to appear in mass
formation. In the presence of one individual we can decide whether he is “mass” or not. The mass is all that which sets
no value on itself- good or ill- based on specific grounds, but which feels itself “just like everybody,” and nevertheless is not
concerned about it; is, in fact, quite happy to feel itself as one with everybody else.>>
DIALOGUES Dinning set (four chairs and table) incinerated with oxyacetylene torch,
2013 placed in the middle of an empty space.

A dinning set, put on the middle, as a space of meeting, a center of a

family communion; seems very significant to extrapolate toward much
more complex fields such as the enclosures of the mind, as part of an
area of development of internal dialogues.
ESSAY ABOUT GRAVITY ESSAY ABOUT GRAVITY
VIDEO PHOTO
2010 2010

LINK ON VIMEO
Video. Wooden staircase incinerated with 4 kinds of fuel (ether, gasoline,
alcohol, sterling) until it consumes.
[ https://vimeo.com/285280664 ]
Essay about gravity is essentially semiotic. Since the relationship of
languages whitin a three-dimensional pattern, which not only consists
of the image proposed, but their timing and their spatial implications as
part of a narrative line. The combustion and tragedy. The ratio of the
element with its trigger.

LINK ON VIMEO
HABEAS CORPUS
2013

[ https://vimeo.com/284356678 ]
Video projection on the floor, 5:00m HD loop.
Open grave and bones on fire.

There is a promise of trasendence implicit in the image of the bones on

fire. A form of presence where meat sacrificed its desire as a promise.
Enabling a dialogue with memory and hope.

ONE DEATH FOR MY CHILDREN

2015
Public intervention. Crashed, rusty, burnt
Mustang car taken from a local scrap yard
with the sits softly flaming along the night
with kerosene and motor oil.
I find the presence of a media culture scenario the right place to
highlight subconscious processes related to the construction of
collective and personal memories. The action of taking the remains
of a functional, burnt, crashed car from a scrap yard and put it back to
street to light it at night for a moment is a dialogue between contexts.

I use the object as a subtle torch, where beyond the poetic image there
is an object story with a context, names, places and lives involved,
but also just a sign on a global society where beauty of death is
undeniable under a dream frame image but as a media report is also
a political scenario. It can count as a prayer, or homage, as an altar, as
a ritual of devotion, but also as a way to remember the circumstances
of a personal, spiritual historical and social reality beyond signs of fire
and death.
 There is a promise of trascendence in every
breath we spend, in every idea, even if we don’t

LINK ON VIMEO
consider to make it happen. We are dying all the
[ https://vimeo.com/285340698 ] time, every second. Fight against this ways of
death is part of our way to live. We should be
predisposed to take the death and resurrection
as part of the everyday, as a necessary
atmosphere to understand our memory.
Does people think about to build re-thinked
perspectives of trascendence and legacy
beyond death? Do we reach a metaphisycal
heritage trough nostalgia and through poetic of
memory?

MIDNIGHT SUNS
2014
Two human sculls on fire. Photography, video

THE LIMIT
2010
Steel reinforced. Gas
hose. ditch. In Situ
Installation.

The promise of the limit as a warning stated and intimidating, but at

the same time, something contemplated, with hypnotism and beauty,
strength, mysticism and magic. Emotional relationships of internal
spaces and spatial speculations of the possible and the impossible.

LINK ON VIMEO
[ https://vimeo.com/285223007 ]
 LINK ON VIMEO
[ https://vimeo.com/285277684 ]

RELATIONS OF THE DIVIDED BODY

2013
Two human skulls cut and reassembled.

Symmetry is a starting point. Respecting the semiotic of elements

(death, genetic history, age, humanity itself as a sign, expiration),
and trying just to confront them themselves with a sculptural image,
geometric and being at the same time an airtight container completely
sealed, on a basic form (globe, ball, moon).

I’ve been aiming to know how can be related the hermetism with the
containers of guts, but at the same time refer to the representative
signs of human intelect (brain, sight, hearing, smell). Therefore, this
semantic confrontation, tridimensional and poetic of the skull and all
signs related to it, totally close and becoming a ball (moon, planet,
sphere, stone, etc.), allows me to make a comment about what
happens when all the signs related to the skull gets closed into this ball,
conforming an structural poetic and sculptorical composition.

ORIGIN OF
FORGETFULNESS
2014
Anonymous human skull
with a hole of 8 mm.

Speaking of forgetfulness was my way of present an escape

from being, but at the same time a return to being. Start from a
unavoidable situation, perpetrate a physical bridge, a social sign
between the dimensions of oblivion and thought. Exhibit our
condition of containers of infinite that can die in a matter of seconds.
That memory is a collective dimension in which we invite and are
invited to the utopia of the eternal.
 In engineering, Torque is the biasing that
occurs when a moment is applied on the
longitudinal axis of a prism element or
mechanical construction, such as shafts
or, in general, elements where a dimension
predominates over the other two, although it is
possible to find in various situations.

LINKS ON VIMEO
[ https://vimeo.com/285278235 ]

[ https://vimeo.com/285266141 ]

[ https://vimeo.com/285247228 ]

TORQUE
2013
Mechanical shovel
and flag.

ORATORY
2014
Freezer container
with prayer stool.

Is a work that talks about semantical schemes about the sensitive and
poetic. The prayer as an overload, as a ghost that inhabit us. And the
relation with temperature with the action of pray as a complex ritual
that links the mind with the body.
As long as you get deeper into the corridor, the cold will increase until
become 0º. Where you will see the prayer stool and the light, to use it or
to watch it.
ernesto bautista
2009-2019
films@ernestobautista.net
ernestobautistaprojects@gmail.com

vimeo.com/bautistawork
ernestobautista.net

imdb.com/name/nm10634035/
independent.academia.edu/bautistawork

instagram.com/bautista.work