Distopia
Oscar Muñoz
(Colombian, born in 1951)
2014
Medium/TechniqueSingle channel HD video, black and white, silent
DimensionsAspect Ratio: 16:9
Duration: 14 minutes, 55 seconds
Duration: 14 minutes, 55 seconds
Credit LineLizbeth and George Krupp Acquisition Fund for Contemporary Art
Accession number2015.2251
On View
Not on viewClassificationsElectronic media
Collections
Muñoz dips page after page of typed text into liquid that lifts the letters and destroys legibility. They are a Spanish translation from George Orwell's 1949 dystopian novel 1984. It describes an ominous future controlled by Big Brother where workers in the Ministry of Truth delete contradictory histories and redundant words from the dictionary to create a pure efficient language: Newspeak. Instead of burning texts into ash, Muñoz ripples them into pools, in a gesture almost like a reverse typewriter, setting letters free.