Blanca sobre negra (White on black), 2004
Ortuño, Pedro
Video-installation
Blanca sobre negra tells us little stories of the inhabitants of a quiet little town called Blanca. Using the registers of the documentary, the camera explores the micro-stories of three weavers talking about their jobs and routines, stories of precarious work, of social injustice and of lack of future prospects for their children. A network of lives, shaping, together with other similar lives, a social and production system built at the expense of its participants. Each subject (female worker) relies on a completely external pattern of social behaviour in order to keep the system operative, although economically and humanly unsustainable.
This work is part of a series of videos by Pedro Ortuño presenting country areas that are becoming impoverished and marginalized by techno-economical and globalizing networks of wealth and power. On the other hand, the social, cultural and labour environment of this small town in Murcia is engaged in a micro-political dynamics of exploitation, deregulation and deprivation.
