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Ferrera-Balanquet, Raul

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Digital access to this material is pending artist's approval. Materials may be viewed onsite at the Goldsen Archive, Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Kroch Library, Cornell University.

New media and information technologies have been a blessing for my creative process. Since my youth, I have practiced several art forms including drawing, performance, writing, media arts, dance, photography, installation and theater. With the birth of new media, I have been able to bridge these expressions and create unique art objects that are closer to my multimedia self. After 1980, when I migrated to the United States, a process of remembering forced me to produce my artwork at the same time I was building a very strong notion of my ancestors and my present social realities. The type of cultural isolation I experienced at the University of Iowa forced me to dig into my cultural heritage and my experience as a Cuban in exile. In spite of the absence of Latino Art classes, I solved that gap researching at the school's library and attending workshops sponsored by Women Against Racism. I was lucky to attend a class on Latin American Cinema conducted by film historian Ana Maria Lopez who was, at that time, studying a PhD at the university. It was then that I understood the difficulties I was having trying to articulate my experiences in the context of Iowa and the United States and the social and cultural conditions of people of color.

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    Rockefeller New Media Foundation --Supplementary Material
    Ferrera-Balanquet, Raul (2006-12-20T16:23:34Z)
    We have stated earlier that we have chosen, for the construction of the framework of the project- its structural foundations- four specific socio-cultural, historical and technological contexts. Three of these contexts are the concept of Mobile Cinema, developed by the Cuban Film Institute during 1960's; the Traveling Circus and Arcade Video Games as popular cultural forms, and the use of new media technologies in "Latino Territories" at the beginning of the XXI Century.
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    2004 Rockefeller New Media Foundation Proposal
    Ferrera-Balanquet, Raul (2006-12-18T14:58:28Z)
    "Traveling Corners/Esquinas Rodantes" explores the virtual and the physical results of a nomadic movement and an informational cartography where immigrants from Yucatan, Mexico operate in the context of a transnational US urban metropolitan enclave such as Los Angeles, at the same time; maintain tides with their native land. The project must be understood as a network narrative where the physical and the virtual components create the "whole". In the physical space, there is an installation consisting of: 1) a network linking an interactive kiosk with a hardware, DVD projector, four computers and an internet site; 2) an iron cast/DVD installation surrounded by the four computers; 3) digital graphics/photographs; 4) a performing space; 5) an audio station; 6) DVD with monitors, 3 a model of an imagined territory called "Futura T'ho"; 8) artworks created by the collaborating artists; 9) an artist book and 10) the simulacrum of a tourist shop. The virtual space consisting of a CD-Rom, an interactive DVD and series of Internet based elements (game, chat, multimedia display, database, live stream, QTime movies, informational website and flash animation).